Christian Speech Removed From Facebook

Published On: April 24, 2020|Categories: MRFF's Inbox|0 Comments|

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.
No guts no glory. No backbone. Resign your commission if you are this incompetent. 
Former Combat engineer 
(name withheld)

Response from MRFF Board Member John Compere
On Apr 24, 2020, at 4:59 PM, John Compere  wrote:

 

First & foremost, thank you for your military service.
 
The US Constitution, American law & US Armed Forces regulations prohibit our secular military, as part of our secular government, from promoting or endorsing religion except in military chapels or military chapel channels. Military chaplains may not proselytize their religion version as official military religion on official military channels. That is why the unlawful practice was stopped by the military itself after complaints by military members, including Christians.
 
Brigadier General John Compere, US Army (Retired)
Disabled American Veteran (Vietnam Era)
Board Member, Military Religious Freedom Foundation (80% Christians)

Response from MRFF Advisory Board Member Mike Farrell
On Apr 24, 2020, at 6:35 PM, Mike  wrote:


Dear (name withheld),
 
Neither Mikey nor any of the rest of us at the MRFF “oppose what might be helpful means for coping with life and its challenges,” as you put it. Belief in God is a life choice one makes and everyone has the right to make it in her or his own way. It’s certainly not for us to interfere with the way one determines personal choices. And it’s certainly not our business to decide how one manifests such a choice in life. If prayer, for example, works for you, as it does for many of us, we have no problem with it.
 
Our interest, just so you understand, is in protecting the right of everyone in the military to believe or not believe, exactly as she or he chooses. Period. According to the statement you included with your email, Bill Donohue, who evidently presides over something called the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, would have you believe otherwise. He is wrong. He describes Mikey Weinstein as an “anti-Christian activist.” He is wrong again. I believe he has made such assertions in the past and I’m sorry he persists in such nonsense.
 
Mikey and those of us associated with the MRFF have no interest in stifling freedom, despite what Mr. Donohue would apparently have you believe. Not at all. We believe, as did our nation’s Founders, that the best way to ensure one’s freedom of religious or non-religious choice is to keep the government out of it, to separate the church and the state.
 
So you see, we agree that military personnel have every right to pray. We have no objection to prayer. We object to inappropriate proselytizing. What Mr. Donohue fails to note is that chaplains have a face book page wherein they can do all the praying and lecturing and teaching and enlightening they’d like. But that’s a separate page from that of the unit leader or commanding officer. The unit leader or commanding officer’s page may not be used to promote one particular belief system over others because that amounts to a government endorsement of a particular faith and violates the separation of church and state.
 
That’s all. We have no problem with Captain Smith or Major Ingram offering their prayerful thoughts, but they do not belong on the page that speaks to and for the entire unit.
 
I hope this helps you better understand the situation you’ve been roped into by, it appears to me, someone with an agenda that is not what it appears to be.
 
Please know my thoughts and prayers go to you in honor of your brother Michael.
 
Mike Farrell
(MRFF Board of Advisors)

Share This Story

Leave A Comment