I Believe in Religious Freedom
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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 believe in religious freedom. I also believe every person has the right to practice their faith in both public and private venues. If a soldier governs his life according to scripture and lives his public and private life according to the law if God, who are you to tell him he cannot do that. Frankly it’s only Christians you go after. Separation of church and state only goes to the formation of a state church, like the Church of England or the Swedish Lutheran church. It does not say that people cannot practice their faith in public. It does not say a person of religion must hide his faith as to not offend-atheists. No one is forcing faith on anyone, they are simply telling them about who and why Christ came for the whole world. If the soldier accepts Christ that’s ok. If not that’s ok. Nothing in the constitution ever guaranteed a freedom from religion ever!
(name withheld)
Response by MRFF Founder and President, Mikey Weinstein
Dear (name withheld),
Everything you say would be completely fine were it not for one small problem; we live in a country called the United States of America which is governed with a Constitution that explicitly separates church and state… We also have Pentagon regulations and Supreme Court decisions which make it very clear that members of the military do NOT enjoy the same degree of freedom of speech/religious expression that there civilian counterparts enjoy… perhaps do a little more homework before you send emails expressing such naïveté and ignorance… not withstanding the foregoing, Thank you for taking the time to reach out… Mikey Weinstein, Founder and President, Military Religious Freedom Foundation
I would agree however the constitution does not have a separation of Church and state anywhere except in the clause that says the government of the US cannot create a state church. It has nothing to do with a persons practice of their Religion in public or in government jobs. This separation of church and state has been taken so far away from the intent of what was written. The constitution only stops the government from creation of a church, in that it never stopped anyone’s freedom to practice it any place they want.
(name withheld)
Response by MRFF Founder and President, Mikey Weinstein
I am sorry but I do not have too much more time to spend with you… Your hubcaps completely 100% wrong… I am a constitutional lawyer and I presume you are not?… There are literally decades of decisions showing where our Supreme Court clearly outlines an absolute separation of church and state in this country… Please see lemon versus Kurtzman and, for the military, Parker versus Levy…to Name just a few……I don’t mean any personal offense, but you literally do not have any idea what you’re talking about…
Mikey Weinstein
I’m not a lawyer, however I have studied the constitution and unfortunately the Supreme Court has become corrupted by political influences left and right. I guess it’s impossible to not have that happened. However if you go by the intent of the constitution it was never intended to block the practice of religion by anyoneanywhere. It was only to keep government from being involved in religion. You want to suggest that people in the military cannot practice their faith. This would say that religious freedom is limited because someone might be offended. Well don’t look or listen. The problem is this then gets expanded to everything else, Hillary suggests churches should be required to change their position on abortion by government decree. So separation of church and state under you understanding goes only one way? Sometimes the rights of the individual cannot interfere with the rights of other either. No one holds a gun to military personal to go to Christian events, and if they don’t want to listen they can walk away. So stopping the Religions who all use their chaplains to recruit or bring people to their faith should be able to practice their faith. It’s just your organization is angry because the Christians are better at it than others.
(name withheld)
Response by Special Assistant to the President of MRFF Blake Page
Dear (name withheld),
You’ve said that government shouldn’t be in the religion business. I agree. Our military is a part of our government. Of course there’s nothing wrong with members of the military expressing their beliefs, as individuals. The problem arises when they use rank, positions of authority, or government resources to promote religion.
A chaplain’s job is not to recruit people to any religion. If it were, that would be a brazen example of the government getting involved in religion. Chaplains, after all, are a part of our government.
I haven’t heard anything from the Hilary campaign about forcibly changing churches views on abortion. For one that’s impossible. Second, it is likely that she said we need to change those views because they are objectively harmful to our population in dozens of ways.
Hope this helps,
Blake A Page
Military Religious Freedom Foundation
Special Assistant to the President
Director of US Army Affairs
Look at her speech to women’s summit. She clearly states that the beliefs of the church on abortion must be changed through law. Hillary also has said that such changes must be made in the church concerning LGBT issues.
Church views on abortion really aren’t something I know much about. So I’ll have to take a pass on discussing that business.
On the prayer issue though, there is no fear of hearing prayer. No fear of being converted either. The reason that people like myself fight against entanglement of church and state is historic. The first step in starting a religious war is to raise up a religious army. The first step in taking away religious liberty is giving one religion liberties above all others. I’m not interested in interfering with anyone’s personal beliefs. It’s the use of the state as an extension of religion that I object to. Rhetoric has consequences, and when leaders like, Jerry Boykin for example, use state appointed authority to tell the world that the United States is fighting against Islam for Christianity, it inspires terrorism. It also produces a narrative that’s patently false and endangers the liberties of our compatriots at home. There are countless subtler examples than Boykin of course, but the degree of the offenses don’t change the nature.
I respect any person’s right to practice any religion peacefully, but only up to the point that their religious practice begins to take away the rights of others. I’m sure you would agree with that at least.
I don’t think as a nation we should put one religion over another as a government and I don’t believe the war in Islamic terror is religious, it’s simply because their belief of jihad in radical Islam promotes terror even among Muslims who don’t agree with their beliefs. Muslims as a whole aren’t the issue it’s just those who use the religion to commit murder. Those people we need to wipe out. Forced religion does not work. If Christians anywhere are using any kind of coerce to make people com to Christ they are no better than Muslims who do it. There are groups in the US guilty of terrorism like the Baptist church inMissouri.
Excellent. Then we agree on all points of principle!
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 (300 in total) of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) are Christians. In fact, 96% of our 47,300+ soldier clients are mainline Christians and we fight for them more than any other belief or non-belief.
Check out our mission statement to get to know us better instead of the lies you hear:
https://www.
Check out the honorable and distinguished military personnel whom we rely on for their expertise on religious neutrality in the military:
https://www.
The reason it seems we are picking on Christians (not all Christians, just the Christian Dominionists) is because it is the ONLY religion that oversteps the laws mentioned below and practices in-your-face proselytizing to the mainline Christians who are not “Christian enough” or “the right kind of Christian.”
In 2005, Major Chaplain James Linzey said on a video “Remember, the demons believe in Jesus Christ. They believe in the truth — see that’s Jesus Christ — and they tremble… They are as scared as little tiny mice running up and down the curtains in the cathedrals. Now, they’re in the cathedrals. They’re in the churches. They’re controlling pulpits. That’s how mainstream Protestantism has declined. Because they invaded the churches, and the mainstream Protestant churches stopped hearing the truth. So they want to squelch the truth by taking over the church. Now, this is not in my notes, but I was inspired by God because these are demonic, dastardly creatures from the pit of hell, and we need to stomp them out.”
Mainline Christians including Catholics, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Methodist, etc. should be stomped out in favor of the Dominionist sect of Christianity (which has hijacked our military all the way to the Pentagon).
If you were a mainline Christian would you like to be told this?
I see you are an “original intent” follower so how about this one:
Article 1, Section 8, Clause 12:
“To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years.”
Two years for the armies and the only other military that was intended to be permanent was the Navy:
Clause 13:
“To provide and maintain a Navy”
Do you want to go back to the original intent of our military and only keep the Navy? Of course, you don’t. Laws have been passed to expand our military capability since these clauses and are vital to our safety.
You don’t get to pick and choose which laws that are in effect today you want to accept.
Thomas Jefferson, letter to Peter Carr, August 10, 1787
“History, I believe, furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance of which their civil as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purposes.”
Thomas Jefferson: in letter to Alexander von Humboldt, December 6, 1813
John Adams, “A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America” 1787-1788
George Washington, letter to the United Baptist Chamber of Virginia, May 1789
Thomas Jefferson, letter to Dr. Thomas Cooper, February 10, 1814
“The civil government functions with complete success by the total separation of the Church from the State.”
James Madison, 1819, Writings, 8:432, quoted from Gene Garman, “Essays In Addition to America’s Real Religion”
“Strongly guarded as is the separation between Religion and Government in the Constitution of the United States, the danger of encroachment by Ecclesiastical Bodies, may be illustrated by precedents already furnished in their short history.”
James Madison; Monopolies, Perpetuities, Corporations, Ecclesiastical Endowments
Isaac Backus, An Appeal to the Public for Religious Liberty, 1773
What influence, in fact, have ecclesiastical establishments had on society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the civil authority; on many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny; in no instance have they been the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wish to subvert the public liberty may have found an established clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just government, instituted to secure and perpetuate it, needs them not.”
“Where the preamble declares, that coercion is a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion, an amendment was proposed by inserting “Jesus Christ,” so that it would read “A departure from the plan of Jesus Christ, the holy author of our religion;” the insertion was rejected by the great majority, in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination.”
As Thomas Jefferson wrote in his Autobiography, in reference to the Virginia Act for Religious Freedom
The Unites States is not a theocracy and according to our Founding Fathers the Constitution is not based on Christianity or biblical law.
As defenders of the Constitution we fight for the separation of church and state.
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)
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
To place the Christian god above all others is in violation of the Constitution, Reynolds v. U.S., Lemon v. Kurtzman, the Lemon Test, Parker v. Levy and AFI 1-1, Section 2.12.
The time for “don’t look or listen” and “suck it up” where Christian dominance is concerned, is over.
When the military oversteps the laws in effect concerning religious neutrality, we step in to protect ALL soldiers’ religious freedoms.
Joan Slish
MRFF Advisory Board Member
Hi (name withheld),
We too believe in religious freedom. However, to maintain the separation of church and state it is important that no one in the government promote or appear to promote one belief system over others. To do that violates our government’s policy of ensuring everyone’s religious (or non-religious) freedom. No one here opposes the appropriate expression of religious belief, but because the military is part of our government there are regulations covering what and when religious expression is appropriate. It’s a question of time, place and manner.
We oppose proselytizing on the part of any belief or non-belief system. The reason you appear to believe we only “go after” Christians is because it happens that there are too many instances of fervent Christian belief moving someone to cross the line. As long as one’s faith is professed in the appropriate time, place and manner, we have no problem with it.
Best,
Mike Farrell
(MRFF Board of Advisors)
I see that you have had a series of exchanges with Mr. Weinstein. And it appears you remain unsatisfied. I’m sorry about that.
If it is your position that the Supreme Court “has become corrupted by political influences left and right” and that you have a better understanding
of the intent of the drafters of the Constitution I’m afraid there’s probably no way we can satisfy you.
We choose to abide by the law as it has been interpreted and refined and we insist that members of the military do the same.
You clearly have a political view that is inconsistent with current law and that is unfortunate, but there’s nothing we can do to help you with that. No one here is suggesting any “person of religion must hide his faith as to not offend-atheists.” Our position is simply that everyone has the right to her or his own belief (or non-belief) system and no one can impose his/her belief on others.
Sorry you have a problem with that.
Best,
Mike Farrell
(MRFF Board of Advisors)
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Religious freedom has its limits at the other person’s religious freedom. No-one must be forced to join a faith or a religious group. However, there is a tendency in today’s western societies, to overemphasize the feeling of being offended. It goes along with a surge of narcissism, which claims that whenever I feel somehow bad, someone else is to be blamed for it. Narcissism is a hypersensitivity to the feeling of being hurt. This is can unhealthy development. In the realm of religious freedom, it leads to a ban of religious expression in the public sphere – see France as a stark example. This creates new problems, such as extremism.
I can understand MRFF’s concern about such strong statements as colonel Kersten’s, if it was made for a public audience. However, MRFF’s reaction, demanding a public apology or more, seems to me disproportionate. The fact that some soldiers might fear being regarded less than others, is not enough to take measures against the colonel. Here is narcissism. No one has been harmed, but the fear of being harmed is overemphasized.
Laws cannot conclusively regulate religious freedom. The limits between active and passive freedom must always be negotiated and laws interpreted. However, as a Christian myself, I am concerned that western society is moving too far into a direction where negotiation is given up on the altar of narcissism, where any expression of faith is considered an offense – unless it is an expression of secularism.