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4044 Pasadena Avenue
Sacramento, CA 95821
916) 488-7300
(916-488-7310 – FAX
www.churchimpact.org

Rev.Dr. Rick Schlosser,
Executive Director

Elizabeth Sholes
Director of Public Policy

Rev. Gail Benson
So/CA Health Care Director

African Methodist Episcopal
African Methodist Episcopal
     Zion
American Baptist
Armenian Church of the West
Christian Methodist Episcopal
Church of the Bretheren
Christian Church
     (Disciples of Christ)
Community of Christ
The Episcopal Church
Ethiopian Orthodox Church
Evangelical Lutheran Church
     in America
Greek Orthodox
Independent Catholic Churches
International
Metropolitan Community
     Church
Moravian Church in America
National Baptist Convention
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)
Reformed Church in America
Swedenborgian Church
United Church of Christ
United Methodist Church
Church Women United
Orthodox Clergy Council

April 8, 2009

Hon. Eric Holder
Attorney General of the United States
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20530-0001

RE: Complaint filed by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation

Dear Attorney General Holder:

California Council of Churches IMPACT is the advocacy sister organization of the California Council of Churches. Our direct membership engages 5500 congregations and 1.5 million individuals, and we represent 21 denominations in the mainstream, progressive Protestant communities of faith with a combined membership of 6.5 million congregants in California.

A key tenet of our mission is preserving and protecting religious freedom for all people without exception. Over the past recent years,those of us in the mainstream faith community have watched as our own deep values and beliefs have been displaced and disrespected by a small but powerful group of people from the extreme religious conservative perspective. It has come to our attention over the last two years that nowhere is that more true than within our military.

The previous administration opened the floodgate for active, pervasive, and inappropriate evangelizing of both our own military troops and also the resident populations in nations where we have a military presence. This is a dreadful assault on our fellow believers in the Muslim faith and others.. By allowing - encouraging - the military's first duty to be conversion and proselytizing, we have converted our troops into a new Christian Crusade.

We are strongly allied with the Military Religious Freedom Foundation in its work to regain the proper role for the military. Our men and women are sent in harm's way for one and only one reason - to uphold our Constitution and protect our liberties. By permitting one variant of Christianity to be the central and even sole focus of our military's mission, we have perverted everything this nation stands for. Not only are our troops apparently being put in greater danger by arousing deep hostilities against us for this wanton evangelizing, we are also demoralizing our men and women who joined the military to defend their nation, not to become tools of a religious perspective most of them do not share.

We know of story after story concerning the abuses of faith laid down by Christian zealots against troops who are our own members. We know story after story of the misuse of religion against the populations of Iraq and other nations that do not practice Christianity and do not choose to do so. This is inflaming entirely justified rage against the United States, and our troops therefore are being put in grave danger due to the irresponsible and un-American evangelizing of too many of our nation's military leaders both on the ground and in the Pentagon.

We hail the statement this week by President Obama that America is NOT at war with the Muslim world, and we seek nothing more than an affirmation of that policy in practice as well as in philosophy. We are asking you to reaffirm the time-honored appropriate direction our military's role and to support the reinstatement of the separation of church in state that underpins true religious freedom. We ask this first within our own military and second but equally as a dominant policy of our foreign policy worldwide.

We are asking you therefore to find a settlement with the Military Religious Freedom Foundation in its lawsuit against the Department of Defense. Their petition is for a simple return to basic Constitutional principles and basic military practices that have served this nation well for over two centuries. We support this complaint and ask for your settlement with MRFF.

Thank you.

Sincerely,
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Elizabeth Sholes
Director of Public Policy


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