Religious Freedom
From: (name withheld)
Date: December 12, 2021 at 8:17:04 PM MST
To:[email protected]
Subject:Religious Freedom
Why don’t you back off. How dare you endeavor to speak for everyone. If you choose not to believe, fine. But don’t you dare impede on others and tell them they can’t!!!!! That’s discrimination and self serving. Why don’t you dedicate your time to peace or feeding the hungry children of the world.
(name withheld)
Response from MRFF Board Member John Compere
On Dec 12, 2021, at 9:00 PM, John Compere wrote:
Since you do not tell us what you want us to back off from, it is assumed you are referring to the laying of religious wreaths. If so, please be advised some families of deceased military veterans do not want a religious organization to which they do not belong or adhere profiting, promoting its religion version & marketing itself by presumptuously putting its religious wreaths on the graves of their deceased loved ones without permission. Those families consider it uninvited & unwanted intrusions on the personal burial sites of their deceased family members.
The Military Religious Freedom Foundation represents, when requested, the religious freedom rights of those families to object & prevent what they believe to be thoughtless trespasses on their family graves. We do so because we respect their wishes & the religious group responsible for laying the religious wreaths does not. Religious freedom is a shield of protection & not a sword of privilege. Please see militaryreligiousfreedom.org.
Brigadier General John Compere, US Army (Retired)Disabled American veteran (Vietnam Era)Board Member, Military Religious Freedom Foundation (composed of 85% Christians)
Response from MRFF Advisory Board Member James Currie
Dear (name withheld):
I have been asked by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation to respond to your recent email. MRFF was founded by a man who attended the Air Force Academy, graduated from there, earned a law degree, and worked at some of the highest levels of our government. His goal in founding MRFF was to protect the religious freedom of all those who serve in any branch of the U.S. military. Most of the cases that MRFF takes on are brought to it by Christian servicemembers who are being pressured by someone in their military chain of command to embrace the particulars of the religion espoused by their superior, whether it is a commissioned officer or an NCO. The founder of MRFF has been joined by many other individuals—myself included—who have also served our country in uniform. We all have one thing in common: we all took an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic.
Perhaps you are not familiar with the Constitution, and particularly with the First Amendment to it. I won’t quote the entire First Amendment, only its first sentence, which is a prohibition on our government: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” Do you understand what this means, Ms. Holland? It means that our government has to remain totally neutral when it comes to religion. But, why take my word for it? President Thomas Jefferson, one of our most learned and erudite Founders, perhaps interpreted this amendment best when he wrote the following in January 1802:
“I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people [that is, the First Amendment] 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 & State.”
A wall of separation. That’s what Jefferson said that the First Amendment erected between church and state. Do you understand what that means? It means that the U.S. government should not be allowing a private group to go amongst the tombstones in a VA cemetery and place a Christian symbol—a Christmas wreath—on the graves of veterans buried there. Perhaps you do not know it, but there are seventy-four religious symbols that are accepted for placement on a tombstone in a VA cemetery, depending on the beliefs of the deceased veteran, and only a few of these symbols are Christian.
Perhaps you think it is perfectly okay for this Christian symbol to be placed on veterans’ graves, maybe even okay even if they were not Christian when they were alive. But what if it were some other religion’s symbol that was being emplaced? Suppose a Muslim group or a Hindu group were to decide to go among the tombstones in your local VA cemetery and place the icons of their religion on the graves there. Would that meet with your approval? I suspect that it would not, and MRFF believes that a Muslim or Hindu group has no more business doing such than does a group that is placing a Christian symbol on the graves. And, please don’t tell me that the Christmas wreath is non-sectarian. For at least 200 years the Christmas wreath has been a symbol of Christianity, recognized as such the world over. I could go on, but that’s probably enough. MRFF exists to protect the religious freedom of all veterans, including those who are no longer able to speak for themselves. That’s what this is all about, Ms. Holland.
Col. James T. Currie, USA (Ret.)
Board of Advisors, Military Religious Freedom Foundation
Response from MRFF Advisory Board Member Mike Farrell
On Dec 13, 2021, at 10:02 PM, Mike wrote:
(name withheld),
You’re not paying attention. No one here said anything about not believing. The MRFF is dedicated to the protection of peoples’ right to believe as they choose.
To use part of your rather intemperate and ill-thought-out message, “how dare you endeavor to” assume every veteran in the cemetery wants a Christmas wreath on her or his grave?
What about the vets who are not Christians? What about their families? Where is your passion for them? Do they not count? Because that’s the way they’ve been treated by this campaign you’re defending so vociferously. Do the beliefs of the non-Christians stand for nothing in your eyes? Is it be a Christian or you’re nothing? Is that your position?
If so, you might take another look at the Sermon on the Mount.
You seem to have jumped (or been pushed) to the conclusion that we are not believers. What gives you the right to assume that about us? What gives you the right to say we are telling people.and the families who love them that they can’t believe as they choose? I don’t know who you’re listening to, but if they said that they’re lying to you. And if they didn’t say that you might start thinking about an apology.
If you want to know what our position is, all you have to do is ask. An attack based on false information is not appreciated.
Mike Farrell (MRFF Board of Advisors)
Recent Posts
- May 6, 2024 | 8 comments
- April 29, 2024 | No comments
Let’s put this issue in a slightly different context:
The leaving of Christmas wreaths on non-Christians’ graves is not altogether different from a man putting his hand up a woman’s skirt without bothering to consider or ask whether the woman wants that hand between her legs.
A great many men engage in precisely this kind of activity but, irrespective of their numbers, nothing can ever make it right or, in most places, legal.
To further complicate the issue, such men often are married to women other than those under whose skirts they’re groping, and are fathers of daughters; in each case they would object and even become violent were they to find that a third party was engaging in that same activity with their wives or daughters.
As such, there’s more than a faint whiff of hypocrisy in all this, akin to how the pro-wreathers would react were unasked-for Jewish symbols being left on the graves of their Christian war dead.