Air Force Sentry Greetings: Less Is More

Published On: March 19, 2015|Categories: MRFF's Inbox|0 Comments|

Accessibility Notice

This post was created on the previous version of the MRFF website, and may not be fully accessible to users of assistive technology. If you need help accessing this content, please reach out via email.

Hi,
      I strongly support the goals of your organization, but I think the issue below is not one of the most important fights you should be prioritizing.  Is it that much worse than saying, “God bless you” to someone who sneezes?  If you are going to object to every individual’s every reference to God I’m afraid that it will diminish your effectiveness when fighting the really egregious abuses of authority.  And we must fight those.  
     I wish you great success in protecting the Constitutional rights of our fellow citizens who have volunteered to risk their lives by serving our country.  

(name withheld)


 

Hi (name withheld) –
Thanks for your note to the MRFF.  Mikey Weinstein has read your email and shared it with me, asking if I’d send you a quick reply.  I’m a volunteer who supports the MRFF in a variety of ways, including email correspondence.  I’m also a Christian, a USAF Academy graduate (’85), a veteran USAF officer, and now a civilian business executive in supply chain management / logistics.
First, thanks very much for your statement of support.  As you probably know, much of the correspondence we receive is of a critical nature, which in itself is fine except for the fact that too much of that criticism is expressed in offensive, nasty, and sometimes in threatening verbiage.  So to receive a polite note from someone who is obviously taking a gracious approach to this issue is appreciated.
That said, I would like to give you my perspective on the Robins AFB issue, which in my view is not an unimportant one for the MRFF to address.
The concern that was raised was not related to individual service members privately sharing a comment with one another, which would be the case in someone responding to a sneeze with “God bless you” or “Gesundheit”, a common courtesy which is embedded in the fabric of our social interactions.  Instead, the issue in this case is that the Robins AFB security forces were instructed or sanctioned to use, as part of the ‘official’ greeting at the base entrance, “Have a blessed day.” That elevates it from a personal, informal comment (like responding privately to a sneeze) to one which now has the color of official authority or sanction.
I agree that within the broad range of concerns brought to the MRFF by service members, this particular one is milder than some of the more egregious violations.  The aspect that I’d ask you to consider is whether it should matter that the Constitutional ‘line’ defended by the MRFF was only crossed a little bit?  In my view, every encroachment deserves correction, otherwise the line is being moved.  If it’s okay today for a military group to use a sanctioned greeting of a religious nature in an official setting, then does it become okay for a military superior to greet his subordinates in a similar manner?  At the heart of the matter is the same issue that the MRFF addresses in literally every situation where we raise a concern — whether the time, place, and manner of a religious expression is appropriate.  In this case, I’d argue that it is not.
Unfortunately this particular situation is being misrepresented by conservative media outlets as being either about the right of an individual to say “bless you” to another individual or even, as you’d suggested, about the right of an individual to “mention God” — but neither is the case.  I’ve also seen a good bit of commentary suggesting that the objection was raised because someone finds the phrase to be “offensive”.  As a lifelong Christian myself, I’m certainly not offended by the phrase, yet I still recognize that its use in this scenario is inappropriate.
For that matter, I’d ask you to consider what the conservative commentary would have been if the ‘sanctioned’ gate greeting had been “Assalamu Alaykum” (Muslim), or “Namaste” (Hindu), or even “Welcome to Robins AFB and remember that religion is the opiate of the masses” (Atheist).  I can assure you that the response from MRFF would be exactly the same in each of those cases.  But I’d wager that the conservative response would be entirely different, and that reveals why the “blessed” greeting is problematic from a Constitutional perspective.
Thanks again for writing and for your good wishes.
Peace,
Mike Challman
Christian, USAF veteran, MRFF supporter

 

Share This Story

Leave A Comment