Tag Archives: Public Expression

Colorado Candidate Pens Letter on Religious Freedom

Retired USAF MajGen Bentley Rayburn, potential competition for sitting US Rep Doug Lamborn, recently said Congressman Lamborn wasn’t doing enough for religious freedom in the Air Force. He wrote a guest column in the Colorado Springs Gazette, local to USAFA, giving his take on recent controversies:

Nobody can state with a straight face that the act of posting a Bible verse on a white board infringes or damages anyone else’s constitutionally protected individual rights…

Air Force Instruction 1-1 para 2-12 is without equivocation in stating that Airmen “should confidently practice [their] own beliefs while respecting others whose viewpoints differ from your own…”

To walk away from creating a culture at the Air Force Academy where ideas are expressed, debated, defended and strengthened is to make it a third-rate school, hardly deserving to be called a real university.

And what kind of men and women Read more

Army Chaplain: Government Trying to Silence Military Christians

Retired US Army Chaplain (Col) Ronald W. Benzing, now an endorser for the Associated Gospel Churches, addressed a local men’s group in North Carolina, describing how the US military has been trying to “silence” Christians. He cited what he described as a fairly recent incident:

“Two months ago we had an Army chaplain in Alaska who was told by an Air Force chaplain who was a senior chaplain, ‘You can’t preach that sermon Read more

US Government to Defend Mount Soledad Cross

The Department of Justice has said it will “strongly” defend the Mount Soledad cross (as it has said before), the subject of a continuous legal battle for more than 25 years.  The cross was ruled unconstitutional again in December 2013.

Obama administration lawyers have told the Supreme Court they will strongly defend the 29-foot-tall cross atop Mount Soledad in San Diego as a memorial to the nation’s war veterans and not an unconstitutional promotion of Christianity by the government…

The cross was aloft more 35 years before a 1989 lawsuit claimed Read more

Congressmen Call Air Force Religion Rules Unconstitutional

Update: Congressman Lamborn’s potential political rivals reacted, with Republican Bentley Rayburn, a retired Major General and 1975 USAFA graduate, saying Lamborn hasn’t done enough to support religious freedom at USAFA, while Democrat Irv Halter, also a retired Major General and 1977 USAFA graduate, says Lamborn has gone too far.

A few weeks ago congressmen asked the Secretary of the Air Force to document and explain the Air Force religious policy and its application at the US Air Force Academy, following USAFA’s command decision to pull down a Bible verse on a cadet’s whiteboard. As noted then and in a subsequent congressional hearing, the Air Force has relied heavily on AFI 1-1, a Chief of Staff level AFI published in the final days of General Norton Schwartz’s tenure in 2012.

Now, Congressman Doug Lamborn of Colorado (home to the US Air Force Academy) has written a letter signed by 22 other congressmen asking Secretary of the Air Force Deborah Lee James to revise the policy at issue:

The August 2012 Air Force regulations which govern religious freedom and expression (AFI 1-1) are inconsistent with Congressional intent and current law…

The first issue Lamborn cites is the “undefinable” standard the Air Force uses [emphasis added]:  Read more

Chuck Norris: Air Force “Airbrushes” Religious Liberty

Chuck Norris, a former Air Force Airman among other notable achievements, recently expressed disappointment at the Air Force’s decision to pull down a US Air Force Academy cadet’s Bible verse. He quotes and then agrees with retired General Jerry Boykin of the FRC, who noted

Once the academy allowed cadets to use these whiteboards for their personal use, censorship of religious commentary is unacceptable…

Norris then listed 10 examples of “prohibition of religious expression” in the military over the past few years, including USAFA’s Operation Christmas Child, Just War theory in ICBM training, the Camp Pendleton Cross, and the live Nativity in Bahrain.

He concluded the list with the perception that it gave him:  Read more

Air Force Reverses, Will Review Religious Freedom Policy (Video)

View the video from approximately 4:10.

How’d you like to be the cadet who posted Galatians 2:20?  You are personally responsible for influencing religious liberty policy in the US Air Force.  Nicely done.

A few weeks ago the US Air Force Academy made the news when a Bible verse was stripped from a USAFA cadet’s dry erase board. The incident led Congressmen to question the Air Force leadership about the incident when they appeared for a budget meeting. Secretary James and Air Force Chief of Staff General Mark Welsh were initially defensive, citing AFI 1-1 as the justification for the command action against the cadet, though they did agree to provide a written explanation for the action. General Welsh famously expressed his “single biggest frustration” over what he called the untrue “perception [of] religious persecution” in the Air Force.

In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee last week, Secretary James seemed to have tweaked the Air Force reaction.

In response Read more

Multiple Religious Freedom Groups Call Military Policy Insufficient

A strikingly broad-swath of religious liberty groups has written a letter (PDF) the office of the Secretary of Defense contending the military’s recent religious accommodation policy “change” doesn’t go far enough. In one point they make:

Even if an original accommodation request is approved, religiously observant service members would be required to submit a new request for the same accommodation every time they receive a new assignment…

In other words, a Soldier allowed to have a beard for religious reasons would have to re-apply with every assignment change for a continuing accommodation — and could conceivably have to shave in the interim.

The letter was signed by groups as diverse as the ACLU, ADL, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, the Becket Fund, Chaplain Alliance for Read more

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