FREETHOUGHT BLOGS – Soldiers forced to attend candlelight prayer for suicide prevention

Published On: October 1, 2012|Categories: News|2 Comments on FREETHOUGHT BLOGS – Soldiers forced to attend candlelight prayer for suicide prevention|

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.

eagle_pray

by Sgt. Justin Griffith

Selected Article Excerpts:

  • Approximately 800 U.S. soldiers were ordered to participate in a candlelight prayer ceremony, and ‘spiritual fitness’ training for a recent suicide prevention campaign. The soldiers are assigned to Fort Sam Houston’s 264th Medical Battalion, responsible for training soldiers in their medical career after graduating boot camp.
  • There was no opt-out for the students, despite the fact that several of the soldiers identify as non-religious, or as adherents of religions that don’t pray. The action violates several military regulations (AR 600-20 Equal Opportunity, as well as AR 165-1 section 1-6, among many others), as well as constitutional law.

Click to read article

Recent Posts

Share This Story

2 Comments

  1. Michael A. November 7, 2012 at 11:22 am

    As an Air Force EO Director, I would strongly recommend that any or all of those soldiers who felt forced to attend go and talk to their EO personnel. They can file an informal complaint and get this issue addressed. If that does not work, they can file with the unit/base IG office. It should be addressed that spirituality cannot be mandated in the armed forces.

  2. Terri November 8, 2012 at 9:37 am

    It was stated that “maslows hierachy of needs” was used as a base for the spiritual fitness programme, when I did some reaserch on this, for me it looks to be more in the lines of ” scientology” infusion into the christianity points.

    I have to wonder if there were no conflicts in the ME would this even be happening, it seems to me that this indoctrination is of the type that promotes the US military as one of the Crusaders that went against the Muslims in earlier centuries.

Comments are closed.