Magnum Opus Response from Stalwart MRFF Supporter, Christian, USAFA Grad, Veteran, Blue Star Dad Mike Challman to Hate-Filled Christian Nationalist USAFA Grad who writes: “Mikey, your reputation precedes you”

From: “Cadet Jon Doe”
Subject: Mikey, your reputation precedes you
Date: June 22, 2022 at 2:58:24 PM MDT
To: Information Weinstein <[email protected]>

Greetings Mikey Weinstein,

I’m a USAFA grad and was recently playing golf with about another dozen grads at a scramble event put on by our local church to raise money for our missionary programs.

Your name came up about halfway thru the front 9 of our charity game and I just wanted to say that the consensus among us all was that you represent the largest black mark of shame against our alma mater ever since its inception. Everyone had a story to tell about what a sorry POS you and your little gang of anti-Christ haters are.

You and the MRFF are the worst kind of Christian abusers and we all felt that you should just retire the MRFF and change your hateful hobbies to shooting stray dogs or kicking homeless people.

You and the MRFF are exactly the evil which Jesus warned about in his many prophecies.

We don’t need “karma” because we have Jesus and He will see that you and yours meet the end that you deserve.

Hope to never see you in this life and we wonder how you even sleep at night with all the anti-Christian carnage you have caused?

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Response from MRFF Supporter Mike Challman:

Greetings, fellow Zoomie – 

I read your note to Mikey a couple of weeks ago with interest and have been keen to respond.  Took longer than I expected to get back to it, but I still think it’s important to reply.  Like you, I am a USAFA grad (’85) and to this day still remain pretty well engaged within the graduate community and other USAFA-related things. Also like you, I am a Christian (lifelong, committed and active).  Unlike you, I am not confused about the role and mission of the MRFF, and I know that no one in our organization is “the worst kind of Christian abuser”.

The MRFF is neither anti-religion generally, nor anti-Christian specifically.  We are a pro-Constitution organization, committed only to ensuring “that all members of the United States Armed Forces fully receive the Constitutional guarantees of religious freedom to which they and all Americans are entitled by virtue of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.”  When we say, “all members”, we mean ALL members – career military, new recruits, officers, enlisted troops, left-handed people, Yankee fans, golfers with horrible slices, people who cannot properly pronounce “gyro”, West Point grads, etc etc etc.  ALL members.

Our view of ALL people includes, of course, Christians.  We fully support the religious freedom rights of every Christian and defend those with the same fierceness that we defend any military member’s right to any religious belief, including non-belief.  What we oppose with the same ferocity is action by a military leader (of any rank), or by a military organization more broadly, to inappropriately advance a sectarian religious belief (including non-belief).  And even in THAT case, we do not object to the right of a military leader to hold those beliefs, we only object to inappropriate ACTIONS regarding the time, place, or manner that those beliefs are expressed.

But I get why you would hear from some Christians that the MRFF is just a dirty bunch of filthy anti-Christians (even though we are not).  It’s because the group that is far-and-away the biggest abuser of the Constitutional rights of military members is a small set of dominionist, evangelical Christians who believe it is their God-given right to preach their truth anywhere, anytime, to anyone.  But since you took the same commissioning oath that I did, to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, then you know as well as I do that our Constitution does not allow for that… most definitely not in the military.  Within such a rigid hierarchical structure it can be difficult at best (and let’s be serious, more likely impossible) for lower ranking members to object to the misguided proselytizing of higher-ranking zealots.  Hence the critical need for the MRFF. 

Lastly, as to what you and that group of four-putting fellow grads think about Mikey Weinstein, I’ll just say this.  There are more grads, myself included, who have a great deal of respect for Mikey.  He has chosen a difficult path for noble reasons and there are many of us who proudly stand with him.  But Mikey would also be the first to tell you that he doesn’t need your approval.  Although, from my perspective, your attacks are a type of recognition – sort of like a great ballplayer getting booed at an opposing ballpark.  If the dominionists are booing, then we know that we are on the right track.

Happy to continue this dialogue if you are interested… although I’m not certain this email will reach you.  Most of our critics hide behind fake names (like “Cadet Jon Doe”) and use bogus email addresses that won’t accept replies.  But hey, you’re a Zoomie so it’s hard for me to imagine that you’d be so weak and cowardly.

Peace,

Mike Challman
Christian, USAFA Graduate, Veteran, Blue Star Dad, MRFF Supporter

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Response from MRFF Supporter Rabbi Joel Schwartzman

On Jun 22, 2022, at 4:49 PM, Rabbi Joel Schwartzman wrote:

Dear Coward:

First, we all know that this response is going into a cyber-void because 1) there is no such email address as the one listed here that will reach any writer, 2) you didn’t even have the decency or courage to sign your missive.  Can we not dispense with these infantile games in which you like to indulge?

I sincerely doubt that you were ever an Academy cadet.  The folks who attend the Zoo generally have the ability to think for themselves.  You, on the other hand, write like a clone of a quasi-Christian hate group.  You talk about Jesus’ prophesies as if you were an authority but you did not and probably cannot quote any one of them.  I who wrote my rabbinic thesis on The Trial and Death of Jesus in Jewish Writings Since 1939 probably know more about the Synoptic Gospels and the New Testament than you and/or your bigoted, clueless cohorts.  What you espouse is as far from what cadets are taught about the UCMJ and the United States Constitution as the earth is from the sun.  The sum of your knowledge of what the military allows or of Christianity and Jesus’ teachings could fit into a thimble, a very small thimble at that!

I should like you to cite a single case of “Christian carnage” that you claim that the MRFF has caused.  The fact is that MRFF is more supportive of Christianity and of the rights of Christians in the military to believe and practice as Christians than you and your gang of cyber-thugs have ever been or ever will be.  That’s the irony of your emails, of which I grow weary because lately they have all seem to sound the same.  Your ignorance is just simply boring; your threats of eternal damnation are as ludicrous as they are delusional.

I suggest that you try some other line of work than writing emails that you do not sign, and making threats you do not even yourself understand.  There is no hell except the one you create for yourself that is permeated with false religious drivel and simplistic hate. 

Ch, Col, USAF (Ret), Joel R. Schwartzman

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Response from MRFF Supporter and Volunteer

On Jun 22, 2022, at 5:07 PM, a MRFF Supporter wrote:

Cadet Jon Doe,

There was not one thought in your email to Mikey, and those of us supporting the MRFF, that gave even a glimmer of Jesus of Nazareth. Appears so easy for the likes of you and others,  to spew hatred and ignorance..it simply flows out of you like hot damaging lava expelled frm the volcano of internal darkness..

[Name withheld] Volunteer for MRFF

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Response from MRFF Supporter and Volunteer

On Jun 22, 2022, at 4:40 PM, a MRFF Supporter wrote:

Dear Cadet Doe

First of all, I think it important for you to know that the overwhelming number of members of the MRFF, and the overwhelming majority of its funding comes from Jesus loving Christians who simply do not want to have others in the military force religion, even Christianity, upon them.

As one of millions of Americans who paid for your education at the USAFA, it is comforting to know that you gained so much courage in your education and your service to our country that you cannot give your real name in your missive.

Also, as one of millions of Americans who is also a veteran, it is comforting to know that your military service instilled in you a respect for your fellow service members who served by your side, prepared at a moments notice to potentially save your life, while being Jewish, Muslim, Hindu or even Atheist and not at all concerned about your faith.

Finally, please allow me to remind you that when you entered the Academy, you took an oath to the Constitution of the United States. Not only does that Constitution NOT include, Jesus, Christianity, or Christ anywhere within it, it does include the First Amendment, which guarantees religious freedom for people of all faiths and no faiths. 

I am sorry for the ignorance and hatred that you and your golfing friends carry. I hope that Jesus will offer you the wisdom to see the same kind of love for fellow humans that Jesus possessed. 

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Response from MRFF Supporter

Dear Cadet Doe,

Wow! It is amazing to see such a whiny, and pathetic email you and your fellow Blue Falcons Christian Nationalist professional victims send to a man who actually remains faithful to his oath to the Constitution. Mikey protects the civil and religious rights of everyone in the military, including Christians from those who use their religion to trample the religious rights of others in the military. Being ignorant of reality I am sure that you don’t know that 95% of Mikey’s nearly 78,000 clients are Christians, as are 85% of his paid and volunteer staff and board members.

Since you hide in the anonymous reaches of the internet and are too cowardly to identify yourself, which is surprising with the oversized clout that Evangelical and conservative Christians have it our country, including on the Supreme Court which has pretty much destroyed the Establishment Clause in its latest decision to make the taxpayers of Maine pay for Christian schooling in schools that won’t let non-Christians in or employ non-Christians. I am absolutely dumbfounded when I read an email like yours in which you and a dozen other well off USAFA academy grads playing in a church charity golf tournament are whining about Mikey when you should be rejoicing at the inordinate amount of power you have achieved, power that our Founders sought to prevent. But since conservative Christians have been playing the perpetual, pathetic, picked on victims for the last 50 years you guys still are playing the victim and casting dispersions on Mr. Weinstein. You just can’t get over the fact that state legislatures and the Supreme Court are making your beliefs the law. You cannot be happy because nothing will satisfy you until you silence all dissent and attempt to destroy the people and organizations that understand the real and present danger that people like you to pose to all Americans.

If you actually understood the role that Baptists and other persecuted minority denominations played in the Virginia Statute on Religious Liberty and the First Amendment you would be ashamed, if you are capable of shame. Baptists in Virginia were particularly at risk as the Episcopal Church was trying to reassert its historic role as the State Church of Virginia after independence. They went around to Baptist Churches and meetings, disrupting them, attacking pastors and members, even taking them to the closest lake, stream or river to “rebaptize” them until they nearly drowned. Without the First Amendment the Second Great Awakening which was the most formative religious revival in our country would not have happened, because the State Churches would have stopped the preaching of the Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians who led it.

John Leland was a Virginia Baptist pastor and leader. He worked with Jefferson to craft the Virginia Statute on Religious Liberty and Madison on the First Amendment. Leland wrote in 1790:

“The notion of a Christian commonwealth should be exploded forever. … Government should protect every man in thinking and speaking freely, and see that one does not abuse another. The liberty I contend for is more than toleration. The very idea of toleration is despicable; it supposes that some have a pre-eminence above the rest to grant indulgence, whereas all should be equally free, Jews, Turks, Pagans and Christians.”

Leland and others warned of the dangers to the danger of State religion until Jerry Falwell came along and turned it on its head. In 1791 Leland wrote: 

“These establishments metamorphose the church into a creature, and religion into a principle of state, which has a natural tendency to make men conclude that Bible religion is nothing but a trick of state.”

But even before Leland other early American Baptists opposed State religion. Roger Williams, a former Congregationalist minister in the Massachusetts Bay colony had to flee for his life, and ended up founding the Providence Plantation which became Rhode Island. He became a Baptist and established the first Baptist Church in the British North American Colonies. He denounced state backed religion in 1644 saying:

“An enforced uniformity of religion throughout a nation or civil state, confounds the civil and religious, denies the principles of Christianity and civility, and that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh.” 

Williams also said in that same year: 

“When they [the Church] have opened a gap in the hedge or wall of separation between the garden of the church and the wilderness of the world, God hath ever broke down the wall itself, removed the Candlestick, etc., and made His Garden a wilderness as it is this day…”

In 1773 another New England Baptist pastor, Issac Backus wrote:

“Religious matters are to be separated from the jurisdiction of the state, not because they are beneath the interests of the state but, quite to the contrary, because they are too high and holy and thus are beyond the competence of the state.” 

“God has appointed two kinds of government in the world, which are distinct in their nature, and ought never to be confounded together; one of which is called civil, the other ecclesiastical government.”

The fact is that you neither understand the the Constitution, the history of American Christians who fought for the religious rights of others because they knew from history, that if the State supported any religion or Church that the rights of all were in danger. This is because the highly politicized churches and para-church ministries who have groomed you teach myth as history and do not value the Constitution, the rights of other Americans or those abiding words of the Declaration, “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among them being life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.”

Thus, in the middle of a charity golf tournament you guys, all educated at taxpayer expense start bitching about Mr. Weinstein, calling him “the largest black mark of shame against our alma mater since its inception,” calling him “POS, “a Christ hater,” and that he and “the MRFF are the worst kind of Christian abusers.” 

I am sorry. That is a load of horse manure. If it wasn’t for the fact that so many senior ranking Christian military leaders are the ones most abusive of the rights of their soldiers, marines, sailors and airmen, misusing their positions of power to impose their beliefs on subordinates, there would be no need for Mr. Weinstein and the MRFF. These men and women who volunteered to serve their country often have no recourse but to contact Mr. Weinstein.

Now, since you are a sniveling coward Cadet Doe, who hides his name, when he graduated from the USAFA, and even your military experience as an officer, let me tell you a bit about me. I probably was an officer and commanding troops before were born. I have a combined 39 years, 4 months, and 6 days of unbroken military service divided between the Army and its reserve components and the Navy, which included 7 years of service in the Fleet Marine Force. I have served as an enlisted man, I was commissioned through Army ROTC and served as a platoon leader, company executive officer and company commander, as well as a battalion, group, and brigade staff officer before I went back into the National Guard in order to attend Seminary, becoming a Chaplain in 1992. I eventually voluntarily took a reduction in rank from an Army Major to Navy Lieutenant in February 1999. I have been in combat serving with Marine and Army advisors in Al Anbar Province during the surge of 2007-2008. I’ve also taught Ethics to senior officers at an important Staff College. Likewise, I am a bonafide historian with a regarding religion and racism in American politics that is coming out soon. I retired as a Commander in December 2020. In my career I met too many allegedly Christian officers who used their position to pressure subordinates to attend their churches, and other exclusively sectarian activities. 

You and your buddies are a bunch of whiny, ungrateful, pampered princes who use the name and words of Jesus in vain when you condemn Mr. Weinstein. If you actually knew the scriptures you would realize that the people that most the Jewish prophets of what we Christians call the “Old Testament” and that Jesus preached about were not the practices of non-believers, but those of the supposedly faithful who trampled the commandments, mistreated the oppressed, used their faith for profit and earthly gain, and one man who betrayed Jesus for 30 Pieces of Silver. Men like you, who talk about your charity while on a golf course while condemning Mr. Weinstein.

I personally doubt if you or your pampered prince buddies were ever the victim of any anti-Christian discrimination while serving, but I was, and Mikey and his team defended me. I preached a Biblical sermon completely within the history of the Christian tradition in my Chapel, and had a retired officer make false accusations against me demanding that my Commanding Officer have me tried by Court Martial. Instead, my Commanding Officer, disregarding the laws that give a Chaplain to faithfully preach the understanding of his or her faith, ordered an investigation. Mikey and his team supported me. The investigating officer found that no other parishioners or staff present corroborated the accusations, and even listened to a recording of the sermon made by another chapel member. I was exonerated, but at a tremendous emotional and spiritual cost. The man attempted to silence and destroy me, because his highly political faith determined that a Biblical sermon completely in agreement with the Christian tradition did not fit his understanding.

So when I see your email to Mr. Weinstein, I know exactly what you are. You are a privileged and professional victim. I think that some conservatives have a name for that, “Snowflake.” 

I am yours sincerely, but with no respect whatsoever,

(name withheld)

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Response from MRFF Board Member John Compere

To the contemptible coward who has neither the courage nor conviction to provide a correct identity –

Your repugnant ranting reflects only on yourself (you speak for no one else) & reveals only your insolent ignorance. The Military Religious Freedom Foundation (composed of 85% Christians) led by its Founder & President Mikey Weinstein (USAFA honor graduate) has represented over 79,000 military men & women (96% of whom are Christians) who requested their US Constitution right to freedom of religion be protected & has been a 7 time Nobel Peace Prize nominee for this advocacy. What have you done for our military men & women? Surely you have better things to do with your time & life than slinging sanctimonious sectarian slurs at fellow Americans you do not even know – but perhaps you do not.“Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.” – PASCAL (Christian philosopher)

Brigadier General John Compere, US Army (Retired)
Disabled American Veteran (Vietnam Era)
Board Member, Military Religious Freedom Foundation

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