Mikey

Madam,

As a resident of Colorado Springs I’ve heard the give/take associated with Mr. Weinstein and his ongoing and increasingly troubling attacks. During the course of this dialogue I’ve changed my view of the motivation of your founder. Having initially thought his was an honest objective to assure a friendly and environment for all service personnel I’ve come to understand what I now think is this persons agenda.

1. It appears the outsized ego of this person (Mikey) demand he finds ways to appear relevant and influential.

2. He is anti Christian, camouflaging his intolerance and narrow mindedness behind a false and dishonest statement of intent.

If the AFA is a factory producing Christian service personnel it could be because of the large percentage of Christians that enroll and graduate. While some criticisms of the AFA have been valid and useful your organization is taking on the aura of petty harping and irrelevance. I suggest you become more discriminating in your choice of issues and avoid using language that displays ongoing hostility toward Christians.

Thanks for the billboard, it is mobilizing and solidifying your adversaries.

(name withheld)

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Good Afternoon, (name withheld) –

Mikey Weinstein shared your email with me, and I’d like to take the opportunity to respond to you personally and offer a bit of my perspective about the concerns you’ve shared. I also want to thank you for providing your thoughts in a reasonable and appropriate manner – too many of the emails to MRFF are nothing short of vile and nasty. I’m always encouraged by efforts to engage in a more meaningful dialogue.

I am a 1985 graduate of USAFA, and an active and devout Christian. My involvement with MRFF came about as a result of my hearing Mikey’s name with increasing frequency in recent times as part of news stories about USAFA. To be frank, my going-in posture was more inclined toward dismissing and disagreeing with Mikey and MRFF. Much to my own surprise, at the end of my research and educational efforts I found that I’d arrived at two conclusions:

1 – Mikey is a force of nature, with an in-your-face style that can be off-putting, even to some people who agree with him. But at the same time…

2 – … the cause to which Mikey, MRFF and their supporters have committed themselves is a just and important one, and it deserves my backing, too.

The two main concerns you raised in your email are somewhat aligned with each of these thoughts, so I’d like to address them directly.

First, with regard to Mikey’s personality, ego and tactics –

I had to give this aspect quite a bit of consideration, to determine whether I could be comfortable supporting an individual who has such a take-no-prisoners approach. So I reached out to Mikey directly, and he offered me the opportunity to get to know him better through some direct conversations and interaction. Here is what I learned —

Mikey is passionate, but he is also compassionate. He is zealous, but he is not overzealous. He is uncompromising, but he is also….. well, on that point he is just uncompromising, which I think is appropriate.

Simply put, Mike is an agitator. I was a Political Science major at USAFA (I know, it’s an engineering school… go figure). When I look back at key civil rights battles in American history, virtually every successful effort has needed agitators who are willing to be passionate, zealous and uncompromising. To make sure the message is heard. To make sure that issues are not swept under the rug. To make other people uncomfortable. Mikey is someone with a laser-like focus on the issue that needs to be addressed. Is there room for other, less strident voices in this endeavor? Absolutely, and I’ve heard from a number of MRFF advisory board members and other supporters who have different personalities and approaches. But in my view, the role that Mikey plays to agitate, to get people talking about the issues, and to force people out of their comfort zones, is also critical to this sort of movement. Most of all, thought, I have found Mikey to be genuine, honorable and trustworthy… and that is why I can support him without hesitation.

Second, with regard to your concern that Mikey is ‘anti-Christian’ and flying a false flag –

I can assure you, both as a Christian myself and based upon my experiences interacting with Mikey and others at MRFF, that neither Mikey nor the broader group is anti-Christian. At the same time, it is very fair to say that Mikey and MRFF are ‘anti-Dominionist’. I realize that the labels ‘Dominionism’ and ‘Dominion Theology’ are not fully accepted by some of those to whom they are applied, but I think that the root definitions can be very fair and accurate in describing certain behavior. As I’m sure you know, Dominionism is used to describe the school of thought that says Christians should work toward a nation that is explicitly governed by Christian principles. As a Christian myself, I can understand and appreciate this idea. But as one who also believes in the importance of a multi-cultural and diverse American society, I recognize that this approach endangers the most basic principles of our Constitution.
Specific to the military environment, I have concerns about fervent believers of any type being able to promote a particular set of beliefs on an uneven playing field. You did not say whether or not you are a veteran – I hope you can appreciate the difficulty that a subordinate would have to deflect or ignore an effort by a superior to share something that is unwelcome. And I can assure you that the environment at USAFA is even more rigid in this regard than any other military organization with which I was involved during my time in the Air Force.

I can also assure you that if the details of the situation were different – for example, if a Muslim was proselytizing about the Koran, that the response of MRFF would be exactly the same. The root cause issue that Mikey and MRFF are opposing is not Christianity – it is the use (or abuse) of a position of authority to impose a message on subordinates that may not be welcome or wanted and which is inconsistent with the protections offered to the subordinate by both the Constitution and Air Force regulations.

Does that mean that Christians cannot evangelize? No, it doesn’t mean that at all. I have evangelized in my everyday life, both professionally and personally, for many years. But I do it through the values that I demonstrate, and by doing by best to live a life of love and service. Proselytizing is another matter, and while know that the intentions of those who do it are good, that doesn’t make the action appropriate or Constitutional.

Thanks for the opportunity to share some of my thoughts with you.

Best Regards,

Mike Challman

USAFA graduate, Christian and MRFF supporter

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Mr. Challman,

While it appears you are persuaded that Mr. Weinstein is fighting the “good fight” his comments and actions tend to counter that statement. I am a veteran (Vietnam Era) and served under fire. However I don’t think that provides with any additional insight into this matter.

The effort to have God removed from the pledge, which is already said at the discretion of the cadet, is a bridge too far. The language regarding the Christian “mill” is an affront and insult to Christians. While you are welcome to kneel at the feet of the Weinstein altar of iconoclastic activity I, for one, will now work to counter his work. It would appear his mission is parallel with the CLU, which is a full on attack on Christianity.

To put perspective on this discussion suffice it to add that I was educated on the GI Bill, was a participant in the Vietnam Veterans Against the War and subsequently did a year of voluntary service in a poor minority area within the City of St. Louis. It is not my intention to offer a persuasive argument to change your point of view. I will conclude by saying I’m very disappointed that a declared Christian would support and participate in this attack. It is as perplexing as the support the Jewish community provided to the Bolsheviks before the Jews themselves became the targets of this radical group of haters. You may wish to refresh yourself with the writings and sacrifices made by Bonhoffer during the 30’s and 40’s when the Church was under attack. You are either a defender or an attacker, which are you?

(name withheld)

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Dear (name withheld),

Thanks for sharing more of your perspective. I understand where you are coming from, so I had considered not responding again. I agree that this discussion is unlikely to change either of our minds. But I decided to reply for a couple of reasons.

First, to tell you that I was really tickled by the literary elegance and evocative imagery of something you wrote –

“While you are welcome to kneel at the feet of the Weinstein altar of iconoclastic activity…”

Of course, I reject your proposition because I neither worship Mikey’s cause nor believe he is an iconoclast. But your turn of a phrase is very cool, and I want you to know that I enjoyed reading it.

I also want to follow up on your reference to Dietrich Bonhoeffer. I’ve been an admirer of Pastor Bonhoeffer for many years and have read a good bit of his work, including The Cost of Discipleship and Letters and Papers from Prison, as well as many of his essays. He was an impressive man of faith and a wonderful example of what it means to live one’s faith fully, even at great personal cost.

Your implication that there are parallels between Bonhoeffer’s opposition of the Nazi regime and what is happening today at USAFA is puzzling at best. At its worst, it would be terribly offensive to suggest any similarity between the work of MRFF and Nazism. But I’ll grant you the benefit of the doubt that you did not intend to do that. More broadly, though, to even suggest that the dissent being voiced by people such as me and the folks at MRFF somehow represents an effort by the power structure to persecute Christians is just silly… and backwards. It is the power structure at USAFA that has, over the course of the past 8-9 years, trod upon the Constitutional rights of some people within that community, in the interest of advancing a specific religious agenda.

No one is suggesting that Christians don’t have a right to our beliefs; only that the Constitution clearly prohibits the systematic imposition of those beliefs on non-Christians and non-believers. MRFF has taken no action or suggested any measures that would restrict the rights of a Christian to practice his faith. But the line that has gotten blurred, and at times even erased, is the one that would prevent a military superior from doing and saying things to promote his personal religious beliefs to other members of the military organization.

That doesn’t mean we have to feel good about what other people believe (or don’t believe) or that we have to agree with them in any way. But in the context of constitutionally protected freedoms to which all military members are entitled, USAFA and our entire military structure must respect an individual’s right to hold divergent beliefs that remain, from the vantage point of constitutional protections, equal to our own.

Lastly I’ll just point out that, even as a man of faith, Pastor Bonhoeffer put an equally high priority on fighting injustice, and he did not require anyone to convert to Christianity in order to garner his support. He pointed out in “The Church and the Jewish Question,” one of his earliest essays, that we have an “unconditional obligation towards the victims of any ordering of society, even if they do not belong to the Christian community.”

I could not possibly say it better myself. The obligation that I feel, and that others who support MRFF feel, is to support and defend the constitutional rights of military members who do not belong to the Christian community.

Peace,
MC