Petty Officer 3rd Class Garret Matthews…fills cups for communion during the battalion’s field training exercise aboard the Combat Center, Jan. 9, 2016. Rear Adm. Brent Scott, Chaplain of the Marine Corps, offered a religious service with music, communion and a sermon. (Official Marine Read more
In a seemingly rare occurrence, the US Air Force Academy received a bit of positive press when the American Family Association asked people to sign a petition thanking USAFA for protecting the religious liberty of its cadets. Noting the faux-controversy of USAFA football players taking a knee in the end zone, the AFA first quoted the official USAFA response:
The United States Air Force Academy places a high value on the rights of its members to observe the tenets of their respective religion or to observe no religion at all. Recently, the United States Air Force Academy received a complaint about its football players kneeling in prayer. An inquiry was initiated, which found the football players’ actions to be consistent with Air Force Instruction 1-1 and its guidance on the free exercise of religion and religious accommodation.
The United States Air Force Academy will continue to reaffirm to cadets that all Airmen are free to practice the religion of their choice or subscribe to no religious belief at all. The players may confidently practice their own beliefs without pressure to participate in the practices of others.
The AFA concluded with: Read more
Each year since 1993 the President has declared January 16th to be “Religious Freedom Day,” in order to remember the passage of Thomas Jefferson’s 1786 Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. President Obama is scheduled to release his proclamation tomorrow.
Jefferson’s statute continues to be a strong expression for the value of religious liberty even today. Though the statute has been discussed in many places and in great depth, there are two important points to take from the statute. First, Read more
Update: Nearly a month later, Mikey Weinstein complained that the disclaimer discussed below was “lipstick on a pig.” Weinstein appeared offended that he hadn’t been consulted and that his demand that Col Hundley be “publicly punish[ed]” was ignored.
The latest US service member to publicly mention his faith and get castigated by Michael “Mikey” Weinstein is US Army Col Thomas Hundley. In a 400-word post at the US military’s official Health.mil, Col Hundley provided one of his regular “Motivational Monday Messages” and recounted his grandfather’s admonition “You just gotta give God a little something to work with.”
He finished with
I challenge you to join the Operation Live Well team on the journey to attain a “new you” in 2016. All we have to do is give God and ourselves a little something to work with. Happy New Year!
and included a list of “improvements” for 2016, among which was
1. Improve your spiritual fitness through increased prayer.
Cited by Military.com’s Bryant Jordan, Weinstein said he complained because Read more
Michael “Mikey” Weinstein frequently publishes messages written in support of his organization, as he did last week when he published a letter from a supporter to Franklin Graham berating Graham for his defense of US Air Academy football players taking a knee in the end zone. The supporter first summarized what he believed was Graham’s position:
You contended that young football players at the USAF Academy should be free to kneel down in a circle before a football game if they wished.
While it’s not too far off, that’s not actually what was happening. Football players were Read more
Soldiers assigned to the 214th Military Police Company and 229th Military Police Company are led in prayer during the farewell brief at Read more
Over the past months, a few critics have tried to draw attention to one particular person on the staff of Republican Presidential candidate Ben Carson.
Originally his foreign policy advisor, Carson’s new campaign chairman is Bob Dees, a retired US Army Major General and former executive director of Campus Crusade for Christ (now “Cru“) which had a substantial ministry to the US armed forces called Military Ministry (now “CruMilitary“).
As early as November 10th of last year, James Bamford at Foreign Policy described Dees as
a retired general who believes Muslims pose a threat to the U.S., the military should spread Christianity, and Carson should be president.
But the statements that Bamford apparently found ‘disturbing’ were fairly benign: Read more
When dozens of retired General Officers lobbied Secretary of Defense Ash Carter to lift restrictions on Sikhs serving in the US military, the DoD had a somewhat odd response [emphasis added]:
A Pentagon official speaking to Military.com on background said there is no Defense Department policy on Sikhs…to review…
The Defense Department issues standards that the individual services may interpret broadly and implement on their own, with no service bound by a decision made by another…
In essence, the DoD said it doesn’t have a policy preventing Read more