Stop and Repent

Published On: March 15, 2016|Categories: MRFF's Inbox|Comments Off on Stop and Repent|

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.
I really hope that you and your husband stop and repent of your anti-Christian crusade before you die. Your desire to persecute Christians for daring to speak of the Scripture in military circles exposes your own hatred and bigotry born under the false pretense of “separation of church and state”. There is no such wording in the Constitution. And a chaplain speaking to someone about the Bible, homosexuality or Christ does not constitute a government establishment of a religion.
You think you’re saving people from what you see as the scourge of Christianity, when in fact you are only contributing to their condemnation…….the same condemnation that you and all those in your organization will face if you don’t repent.
You aren’t going to live forever. Do you really want to face the Lord after all the anti-Christian hatred you have been spewing? If Christ were here today, would you spit in His face the way you do Christians?
Everything you have done and represent is forgivable if you ask for that forgiveness.
Please do not bother responding to this email, as I have no desire to debate anything with you because there is nothing I can say that will change your heart. Only God can change it, and only you can allow Him to do that.
(name withheld)
Dear (name withheld),
When someone is so full of twisted notions, confusion and misunderstanding, it is not only

important that we reply, it is urgently necessary.

You are grievously mistaken. There is no anti-Christian crusade here; no one here is persecuting Christians “for daring to speak of the Scripture in military circles.” You should understand that

there are laws and regulations guiding the practice of one’s religious faith for those in the military

because it is part of the government. Our professed desire that people have the freedom to

choose their religion, religious belief or non-religious belief is part of the founding concepts of

this nation. So with protecting that freedom in mind, religious expression is limited and regulated

to its appropriate time, place and manner. Within that framework there is no problem.

When you suggest separation of church and state is a false concept because “there is no such

wording in the Constitution,” you miss an important point. There are many things in law that derive from concepts put forth by the founders. The separation of church and state has long been understood to

be an essential part of our Constitutional framework. You may note that Jesus is not mentioned in

the Constitution either; that doesn’t mean either he or Christianity do not exist.

However, a military chaplain who preaches that homosexuality is a sin is out of order and should

not be in the military. That may be his belief, but the laws of the country and the regulations of

the military do not allow that sort of bigotry to be preached by a military chaplain.

We have no quarrel with Christianity, but when some people attempt to put Christianity forward as

the one and only true faith, when they preach bigoted, discriminatory nonsense as an officer of the

U.S. military, they are out of line and have to be stopped.

You are welcome to your beliefs, of course, but when you couch condemnatory judgments and hateful rhetoric in a form that wants to pass as religious belief, it is shameful and hypocritical in the extreme. And it is that extreme that we recognize and repudiate as being inappropriate and unacceptable in the U.S. military.

It is incredibly arrogant of you to claim to speak for God. And given what you’ve chosen to say, the God you claim to speak for is far too small to be meaningful.

Mike Farrell

(MRFF Board of Advisors)

Dear (name withheld),
It doesn’t work that way. You don’t get to contact Mikey’s wife and pass judgment on us based on an article full of lies, distortions and omissions and be able to walk away.
America has grown up since the Constitution was written. We have Congress that passes laws and the Supreme Court that rules whether they are Constitutional or not, when asked. It’s foolish to state that if it isn’t in the original Constitution, it is to be ignored.
The Christian writers of all the articles out there know the truth and facts but are being deceptive in order to rile up mainline Christians to help the Dominionists ones to make our soldiers “warriors for Christ” and every war a crusade.
We are neither an atheist organization nor are we anti-Christian. Mikey is Jewish (and prays to the same Father we do 3 times a day) and 80% of the Board, Advisory Board, volunteers and supporters (244 in total) of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) are Christians. In fact, 96% of our 45,200+ soldier clients are Christians – Catholics, Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Methodist, Lutherans, Baptists, Evangelicals, etc. We fight for the rights of these Christians more than any other religion but it never makes the news.
We Christians involved with the MRFF in any way, take umbrage at your judgmental remarks.

It is not our view that the Bible has no place on a POW/MIA table but the Constitution and subsequent Supreme Court rulings that we must obey.

As defenders of the Constitution we fight for the separation of church and state.
“…but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.” (Article I, III)
This means that from the President to Congress to the military – no one’s job is based on their religion.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion (Establishment Clause), or prohibiting the free exercise thereof (Free Exercise Clause).”(First Amendment)
The Establishment Clause means that you cannot favor one religion over another even though it is in the majority. This clause respects the RIGHTS of all religions. Our military is SECULAR and there are people of other faiths that don the uniform that love this country.
The Free Exercise Clause (which is subservient to the Establishment Clause) means that our soldiers are free to exercise any religion they want or no religion at all but cannot elevate one God above others.
“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 Supreme Court heard the Lemon v. Kurtzman case in 1971 and ruled in favor of the Establishment Clause. Subsequent to this decision, the Supreme Court has applied a three-pronged test to determine whether government action comports with the Establishment Clause, known as the Lemon Test:
Government action violates the Establishment Clause unless it:
1. Has a significant secular (i.e., non-religious) purpose,
2. Does not have the primary effect of advancing or inhibiting religion
3. Does not foster excessive entanglement between government and religion
 Parker v. Levy:
“This Court has long recognized that the military is, by necessity, a specialized society separate from civilian society… While the members of the military are not excluded from the protection granted by the First Amendment, the different character of the military community and of the military mission requires a different application of those protections. … The fundamental necessity for obedience, and the consequent necessity for imposition of discipline, may render permissible within the military that which would be constitutionally impermissible outside it… Speech [in any form] that is protected in the civil population may nonetheless undermine the effectiveness of response to command.  If it does, it is constitutionally unprotected.” (Emphasis added) Parker v. Levy, 417 U.S. 733, 1974
The Bible on the table does not represent all of the 83,000+ POW/MIA’s. Within the missing are soldiers of other beliefs or of no belief system and to deny this is ludicrous, especially since my uncle was an atheist and is MIA.
In other words, if you want a Bible on the POW/MIA table you have to include the Torah, Koran, representations of other religions and atheism in order to be in compliance with the Constitution, Lemon Test and Parker v. Levy. It’s either all religions or none but because some Christians don’t want to share the table, the Bible had to be removed.
The blame is placed squarely at their feet…not ours.
I really hope that the military – with the backing of lying Christian writers – stop and repent of their false accusations before they die. They don’t have to wait until then to die in order to spit in Christ’s face because they are doing it now.
“These six things doth the LORD hate: yea, seven are an abomination unto him: A proud look, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, An heart that deviseth wicked imaginations, feet that be swift in running to mischief, A false witness that speaketh lies, and he that soweth discord among brethren.” Proverbs 6:16-19
The military is sowing discord toward the mainline Christians (see above) because they refuse to be Dominionists.
US Army chaplain MAJ James Linzey, who, in a 1999 video, described mainstream Protestant churches as “demonic, dastardly creatures from the pit of hell “that should be “stomped out.”
 
This is the thinking of the military of today throughout the chain of command all the way to the Pentagon. They believe that the only “true” Christian is one that is “born-again” and has a “spiritual birthday.” All mainline Christians (see above) and those Christians born before 1952 when Bill Bright made up the 4 Spiritual Laws, are destined to hell.
This thinking is destroying our military from the inside and it is being perpetrated from the Pentagon down to the lowest soldier in a leadership position. It has taken “morale, good order, discipline and unit cohesion” and shredded it beyond recognition, all in the name of Jesus.
If you belong to one of the mainline Christian churches mentioned above, then we are fighting for you, too.
“I am for freedom of religion and against all maneuvers to bring about a legal ascendancy of one sect above another.”
Thomas Jefferson’s letter to Elbridge Gerry January 26, 1799
Pastor Joan
MRFF Advisory Board Member
Dear (name withheld),

I understand that Mr. Weinstein has already responded to your March 13, 2016 email to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (“MRFF”) and that your email instructs us not to respond.  However, Mikey has asked me to respond further.  We have a policy of responding to every letter receive, despite any request to ignore it.  You do not get to declare our condemnation and then simply disappear.

 

You state there is nothing you can say to change our hearts.  I similarly doubt I can make you understand the law, but you had your say and now I’ll have mine.

 

First, we are not on an “anti-Christian crusade.”  We fight for the religious freedom of every soldier, sailor, airman, Marine, cadet, and veteran.  In fact, over 96% of our clients are Christians!  We do not persecute Christians, but defend them, as well as service members of all other faiths or no faith, from religious discrimination at the hands of their superiors.

 

Second, although the words “separation of church and state” do not appear in the Constitution, that does not mean that the Constitution does not require such separation.  The phrase was first used by Thomas Jefferson in a letter to the Danbury Baptist Association in Connecticut in order to express the intent and function of the First Amendment: “I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should ‘make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,’ thus building a wall of separation between Church and State.”  The U.S. Supreme Court has stated that Jefferson’s words, “may be accepted almost as an authoritative declaration of the scope and effect of the [First] Amendment.”  Reynolds v. U.S., 98 U.S. 145 (1879).  See also Everson v. Board of Edu., 330 U.S. 1 (1947) (“In the words of Thomas Jefferson, the clause against establishment of religion by law was intended to erect a wall of separation between church and state.”).

 

MRFF does not claim that a Chaplain “speaking to someone about the Bible, homosexuality or Christ” alone constitutes the wrongful establishment of a religion.  However, when military leaders endorse Christianity over other religions or non-religion – by, among other things, showing preferential treatment for those of the Christian faith, punishing those (even indirectly) who do not participate in prayer or Bible study, allowing the use of weapons with Bible quotes inscribed on them, publicly expressing personal beliefs while acting as an agent or representative of the military or any branch thereof, or including the Bible in a public display to honor all service members – the First Amendment has been violated.  See Lemon v. Kurtzman, 403 U.S. 602 (1971) (holding that an act or policy of a government entity or person acting in the capacity of an agent of the government violates the Establishment Clause if any one of the following is shown: (1) its purpose is not secular; (2) its principal/primary effect either advances or inhibits religion; or (3) it fosters an excessive entanglement with religion).  See also Parker v. Levy, 417 U.S. 733, 758-759 (1974) (“While military personnel are not excluded from First Amendment protection, the fundamental necessity for obedience, and the consequent necessity for discipline, may render permissible within the military that which would be constitutionally impermissible outside.”).

 

Finally, I assure you that nobody at MRFF would spit in anyone’s face and we are confident that the Lord, if we have to face him, will respond favorably toward us.  We protect our protectors from religious discrimination and persecution.  It is not up to you to declare our condemnation without knowing anything about what we do.  Perhaps when you face the Lord, He will have something to say to you about judging others and specifically stating that you have no desire to give them the opportunity to provide you with the truth of their mission.

 

Blessed be,

 

Tobanna Barker

MRFF Legal Affairs Coordinator

 

Dear (name withheld),

I felt a need to respond though you have stated that there be no bother.  Now I presume you are affiliated with the military in some way so with that basis I am going to weigh in.  Mikey has and does represent a large number of Christians in his area of influence.  Some of these cases are for persecution of said people.  Be this persecution in the form of antithetical nature, or due to due to unfair pressure on a junior member to acquiesce to another (senior member) “brand” of Christianity.
You will note that I have cc’d Mikey on this message due to the fact that I am on his National Advisory Board and I feel it is incumbent of me to keep him “in-the-loop” when I am addressing people who have “issues” regarding MRFF.  So, as I alluded to earlier, you have military affiliation.  With this position, all military personnel know that if you are going up against an opponent you must know them.  You must understand their objective, their staffing, their resources and most importantly their beliefs.  You stated that Mikey is against Christians; first off, he considers me a friend and I him, as a born again spirit filled believer I have yet to have him show angst toward me.  He is a believer as well in his own faith group so score one for not knowing beliefs.  I can further expound on the fact that there are several from all faiths and many like me, that support either monetarily or physically.  Furthermore one must understand ones own position in regards to your objective.  Placing yourself in a position of judgement over another especially since you are talking from your perception of Christianity goes contrary to Jesus own teaching – Judge not, lest he be judged (Matt. 7:1) and if anyone desires to be first, he shall be last of all and servant if all (Mark 9:35).

In conclusion, let me tell you a little about me so that you will have the correct syntax upon which to condemn me, I am a recently retired Command Chaplain with almost 32 years of service from a lower enlisted person all the way to the rank of Colonel.  I have been in combat four times and have been wounded twice.  I was in theater when 14 of my Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines ended their existence on this world to enter into their eternal rests.  I can absolutely assure you that these people died with their decisions made and as such I was honored to be their spiritual guide.  I may have omitted the fact that not all of them were Christians and also none were of my specific faith.  So now that you know a little about me as well as Mikey, you will know who you condemned to hell.

Before I close, Mikey is a great guy and what he needs is your prayers for at least you did not threaten to deliver the judgement you only conveyed your call for judgement.  You might want to read Bonnie Weinstein’s book “To The Far Right Christian Hater…You Can be a Good Speller or a Hater, But a You Can’t Be Both” so you can see the company you are associating with.

Blessings,

Quentin D Collins, (CH COL-R), PhD, ELI-MP
Member, MRFF Advisory Board
Director, FRAME Initiative
President and CEO, Stepping Out Families, LLC

 

 

 

 

Recent Posts

Share This Story