Sign on Marine Base in Hawaii
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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.1. Has a significant secular (i.e., non-religious) purpose,
2. Does not have the primary effect of advancing or inhibiting religion, and
3. Does not foster excessive entanglement between government and religion.
Pastor Joan,
Thank you for your email. I appreciate it.
All you have cleared up is that your organization is more mis-guided than I originally thought…and I thought you were pretty bad.
What religious rights? Everyone is free to practice whatever religion they choose. The Government cannot ESTABLISH a national religion. THAT is what the First Amendment means. I’m surprised you and your supposed JAG lawyers don’t know that. There is nothing that states a separation of Church and State. Show me that clause. Is that the Separation Clause of the 42nd Amendment? The Good and Plenty Clause? There is nothing in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights that states a separation of church and state.
This country was FOUNDED on the belief of divine intervention. Declaration of Independence, that you live under, indicates we have rights endowed by our Creator. You seek to enforce this right…against the very entity who gave it to you. You are happy to live under that protection, but seek to limit anyone who speaks it.
You claim you act on requests of our soldiers. I seriously doubt that claim. Ours is a volunteer force. If someone is truly offended…by a sign…he/she can quit the military…and I hope they do. They are in no position to protect a country if they are offended…by a sign.
The oath of any office and enlistment ends with “So help me God”. The Rifleman’s Creed…part of the Marine doctrine…states, “Before God, I swear…”. God is in the very fabric of this country and the forces sworn to protect her. It used to be people would come to this country to BECOME Americans, now, thanks to people like you, people are trying to change America to become something else.
I love how you end your email, “If the military would abide by the laws and the media would stop the lies, distortions and omissions concerning religion and the military, we wouldn’t be having this fight.” You call it a fight. You indicate the military needs to do something. The media is lying. You’re are a leftist organization who cannot survive on your own merits and seek only tear down everyone else. You cannot, in good conscience, really state what the problem with the sign is. Only that it’s an opportunity for you to pick a fight. Like I said before, you are only trying to make a name for yourself.
Be an AMERICAN Joan. There is nothing harmful about this sign. You, Mikey, and your whole organization really need something to do.
(name withheld)
Dear (name withheld),
Our Founding Fathers were Deists.
Deism:
“The belief that God has created the universe (thus the word Creator) but remains apart from it and permits his creation to administer itself through natural laws. Deism thus rejects the supernatural aspects of religion, such as belief in revelation in the Bible, and stresses the importance of ethical conduct.”
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/deism
“Because religious belief, or non-belief, is such an important part of every person’s life, freedom of religion affects every individual. Religious institutions that use government power in support of themselves and force their views on persons of other faiths, or of no faith, undermine all our civil rights. Moreover, state support of an established religion tends to make the clergy unresponsive to their own people, and leads to corruption within religion itself. Erecting the “wall of separation between church and state,” therefore, is absolutely essential in a free society.” Thomas Jefferson, to the Virginia Baptists (1808) ME 16:320.
This is his second known use of the term “wall of separation,” here quoting his own use in the Danbury Baptist letter.
This wording of the original was several times upheld by the Supreme Court as an accurate description of the Establishment Clause.
Jefferson’s concept of “separation of church and state” first became a part of Establishment Clause jurisprudence in Reynolds v. U.S. 98 U.S. 145 (1878). In that case, the court examined the history of religious liberty in the US, determining that while the constitution guarantees religious freedom, “The word ‘religion’ is not defined in the Constitution. We must go elsewhere, therefore, to ascertain its meaning and nowhere more appropriately, we think, than to the history of the times in the midst of which the provision was adopted.” The court found that the leaders in advocating and formulating the constitutional guarantee of religious liberty were James Madison and Thomas Jefferson. Quoting the “separation” paragraph from Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists, the court concluded that, “coming as this does from an acknowledged leader of the advocates of the measure, it may be accepted almost as an authoritative declaration of the scope and effect of the amendment thus secured.
In 1878 “separation of church and state” became part of the Establishment Clause BY LAW.
The Treaty of Tripoli was signed at Tripoli on November 4, 1796.It was submitted to the Senate by President John Adams, receiving ratification unanimously from the U.S. Senate on June 7, 1797, and signed by Adams, taking effect as the law of the land on June 10, 1797; a mere 8 years since our Constitution went into effect. If what was written was wrong in anyway, there would have been uproar. But, it passed unanimously and confirmed that America was not founded on Christianity.
Treaty of Tripoli:
As the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion,—as it has in itself no character of enmity against the laws, religion, or tranquility, of Mussulmen [Muslims],—and as the said States never entered into any war or act of hostility against any Mahometan [Mohammedan] nation, it is declared by the parties that no pretext arising from religious opinions shall ever produce an interruption of the harmony existing between the two countries.
.The Constitution reflects our founder’s views of a secular government, protecting the freedom of any belief or unbelief. The historian, Robert Middlekauff, observed, “The idea that the Constitution expressed a moral view seems absurd. There were no genuine evangelicals in the Convention, and there were no heated declarations of Christian piety.”
“The Salem witchcraft was the rock on which the theocracy shattered”. George Lincoln Burr (1857 – 1938), Professor of History and Librarian at Cornell University
Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, then that of blindfolded fear.
Thomas Jefferson, letter to Peter Carr, August 10, 1787
History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.
Thomas Jefferson: in letter to Alexander von Humboldt, December 6, 1813
The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature; and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their history. Although the detail of the formation of the American governments is at present little known or regarded either in Europe or in America, it may hereafter become an object of curiosity. It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of Heaven, more than those at work upon ships or houses, or laboring in merchandise or agriculture; it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses.”
John Adams, “A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America” 1787-1788
If I could conceive that the general government might ever be so administered as to render the liberty of conscience insecure, I beg you will be persuaded, that no one would be more zealous than myself to establish effectual barriers against the horrors of spiritual tyranny, and every species of religious persecution.
George Washington, letter to the United Baptist Chamber of Virginia, May 1789
Christianity neither is, nor ever was a part of the common law.
Thomas Jefferson, letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, February 10, 1814
“The civil government functions with complete success by the total separation of the Church from the State.”
James Madison, 1819, Writings, 8:432, quoted from Gene Garman, “Essays In Addition to America’s Real Religion”
Strongly guarded as is the separation between Religion and Government in the Constitution of the United States, the danger of encroachment by Ecclesiastical Bodies, may be illustrated by precedents already furnished in their short history.
James Madison; Monopolies, Perpetuities, Corporations, Ecclesiastical
Endowments
“God has appointed two kinds of government in the world, which are distinct in their nature, and ought never to be confounded together; one of which is called civil, the other ecclesiastical government.”
Isaac Backus, An Appeal to the Public for Religious Liberty, 1773
During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity; in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution.
What influence, in fact, have ecclesiastical establishments had on society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the civil authority; on many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny; in no instance have they been the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wish to subvert the public liberty may have found an established clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just government, instituted to secure and perpetuate it, needs them not.
James Madison 1785 Memorial and Remonstrance against Religious Assessments
Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed by inserting “Jesus Christ,” so that it would read “A departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;” the insertion was rejected by the great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination.
As Thomas Jefferson wrote in his Autobiography, in reference to the Virginia Act for Religious Freedom
Joan Slish
Hi (name withheld),
You’re a long way from Hawaii. You might want to hear what an actual Marine officer who serves in that area thinks. Once you’ve read that and thought about it a little, maybe you’ll think again about who the ignoramuses are.
I am writing because I have seen the news regarding the Military Religious Freedom foundation contacting the Marine Corps Base Hawaii Commanding Officer regarding the removal of the God Bless the Military sign.
http://insider.foxnews.com/2015/09/27/hawaii-marine-corps-base-under-fire-god-bless-military-sign
I would like to add my support for the removal of the sign from the current location and it’s movement to either the chapel or off the base completely. I am a commissioned officer with XX years of service in the Marines and am currently stationed at MCBH XX. I drive by this sign every day, and do not think it is appropriate as it gives the impression that the military endorses one religion over another. I have not filed a formal complaint through my chain of command as I feel there would be repercussions, however if there is anything I can do to help in the effort to move the sign, please feel free to contact me.
Thank you,
(U.S. Marine Officer’s name, rank, MOS and unit withheld)
Best,
Mike Farrell
(MRFF Board of Advisors)
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I am an ABSOLUTE Atheist, but I don’t see why that particular sign gets you so riled up. It makes a LOT of people feel Good (after all, most of our troops and citizens are Christians , or at least believe in “God”)!
Go after those who try to convert us, or insist that their religious view is THE only path to the (non-existent) after life.
By all means let the ignorant believe that there is an after life…it helps the VAST majority of people cope with deaths of relatives and friends.
Geeze! Stay on the BIG STUFF !