FEATURED INBOX POST – Thanks and an Endorsement
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Greetings Mikey, MRFF staff and all who visit this website! I am an Army civilian with 25 years of dedicated service in supporting the needs of Soldiers and their families and I wanted write a brief note today for two purposes. First, I’d like to thank Mikey and the MRFF for the work they do to ensure that the wall of separation between church and state remains impermeable and to ensure religious freedom for all members of the Armed Forces including those who claim no religion. Second, I want to encourage all service members to reject any and all infringements on your individual rights given to you by the Establishment Clause of the Constitution of this great Nation and to reach out to Mikey and the MRFF as your dedicated advocates.
I have a deeply personal connection to the cause of the MRFF. I grew up an Air Force ‘brat’ but in a free-thinking household with parents who refused to indoctrinate me into a particular faith, and who instead, taught me to question everything and encouraged me to find my own truths. While this has served me well as an adult, I was often ridiculed as a child, going to school with other military brats, for not being mainstream Christian (I distinctly remember a very awkward moment in 2nd grade telling the class “I don’t believe in God, but it’s OK, my Mom knows!”). Worse though, is the silence I endured for the first 20 years of my adult life, working for the Army. I knew that sharing my Humanist beliefs with anyone in work circles could have disastrous consequences for my own career and for my then husband’s military career. So there was a huge part of my life, arguably, the part that defined me as a person, that I never shared with anyone I worked with, even some of my best friends. Today it’s a little embarrassing but I admit to attending church every Sunday with my ex, singing hymns, audibly praying to Jesus and otherwise playing the part because I felt the pressure to comply – to be like everyone else. The truth is, I always felt a little sick to my stomach afterward, not because of anything that was said or done in the service but because I knew I was not being true to myself.
Further along in my career I remember ‘fight or flight’ impulses kicking in as I sat through meetings with General Officers who insisted on promoting their beliefs among their staff. One day, a few years back, I sat in such a meeting when the CG vociferously rejected PTSD and TBI as factors in the ever-increasing suicide rate in the Army, blaming it instead on the devil who “had his claws in them.” I could take it no more and found the courage that time to stand up and walk out.
My reflection in the aftermath of that momentous event made it abundantly clear to me that the effectiveness of the military in the future depends not on new weapons systems or cyber capability or new ships and aircraft. What characterizes our challenges in the future is what we don’t know. We don’t know when we will fight, or who we will fight. We can neither predict the political conditions under which we are called to fight nor the brutality and violence that we will experience. What we absolutely DO know is that our competitive advantage on the battlefield rests in our people and the diverse talents, backgrounds and experience they bring to the fight. Inclusiveness, tolerance and freedom to believe and practice, without ridicule or undue influence what gives us strength and resolve as individuals, allows us to optimize and sustain this advantage.
To that end, what Mikey and the MRFF do to protect religious liberties and to ensure there will never be a religious test of office for anyone in the Armed Forces is pivotal – not just in promoting personal readiness, unit cohesion, and good order and discipline, but it ensuring our National Security.
So, thank you again to the MRFF for what you do every day to keep this Nation’s military the model for the rest of the world to follow. I have engaged Mikey and his staff personally and find them to be highly responsive, fully engaged, extremely enthusiastic and very effective in what they do and encourage anyone who has shared my own experiences (perhaps even more egregious) to reach out to them.
The strength of the Force depends on it.
(US Army Civilian’s name, grade and military installation withheld)