Senior Combat Unit Officer Quickly Reprimanded After MRFF Represents Subordinates Harassed to Attend His & His Wife’s Vacation Bible School

July 23, 2024

MRFF President/Founder Mikey Weinstein has recently, and very publicly, called out the potentially horrific impact the Heritage Foundation’s proposed ‘Project 2025’ would have within the U.S. military, particularly in regards to unit strength and cohesion through established diversity/equality programs and rules/regulations (“It’s Project 2025, Stupid”, Op-Ed, Wednesday, April 10, 2024).  Within a few short weeks of this Op-Ed being published, Mikey’s cogent warning that “Fundamentalist Christian chaplains will be unfettered in their proselytizing…” manifests in real time as what can best be described as a ‘hyper-sectarian religious proselytizing grift’ orchestrated by a senior combat unit officer (and their wife) aimed at their subordinates children. The situation was brought to MRFF’s attention when 32 active duty clients (including 23 Christian service members along with Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, atheists and agnostics service members) were repeatedly and relentlessly subjected to a ‘sales pitch’ during mandatory unit meetings to the officer’s Vacation Bible School (VBS). These clients further reported to Mikey and MRFF’s Installation Reps that those unit members with children attending the VBS coincided with the unit’s list of quarterly performance awards recipients.

One of MRFF’s 32 clients in this matter provided the following detailed summary of this matter along with it’s quick resolution after working with MRFF Installation Reps and Mikey:

From: (Active Duty Enlisted Member’s/MRFF Client’s e-mail address withheld)
Subject: Military superior tries to force Christian Vacation Bible School on his subordinate families
Date: July 20, 2024 at 10:14:48 PM MDT
To: Information Weinstein <[email protected]>

Hello Mr. Weinstein and the MRFF Team here at (military installation name withheld) as well as all MRFF staff everywhere. Thank you all for getting some actual justice for us here against one of our superior officers who was trying to get us to pay his church to have our kids proselytized to his own Christian Faith.

I am an active duty military enlisted service member and the leader of 32 fellow active duty service members who reached out for the MRFF’s help here recently at (military installation name withheld). Our assigned military unit is large and diverse as to ethnicity, faith and political views et al. One of our MRFF Reps here on base has helped me write this e-mail to MRFF so that other folks can see the abuses that went on here.

I was raised Catholic but converted to Baptist after I married my wife. We are raising our kids Baptist. We have 23 other Christian service members in our MRFF client group here besides me and several Jewish, Muslim, Hindu service members along with some atheists and agnostics.

I am asking that MRFF please continue to protect all of our identities so that none of the 32 of us who asked the MRFF for help will suffer any reprisal or blowback.

In mid-May of this year one of our military combat unit’s most senior officers started “advising” us at official unit meetings to be sure to get our kids into Christian Vacation Bible School this summer. Not just any such Vacation Bible School but the one that our senior superior officer and his wife were personally teaching at their off base evangelical megachurch. Oh and by the way as if this wasn’t all messed up enough, there was a “suggested tithe offering” (aka tuition for Vacation Bible School) of $90 per kid! For most of us that amount of money was just way too much even if we had wanted our children to attend. In trying to get us to submit to his never ending pressure this senior officer would say stuff like “public school tries and always fails to prepare your kids for life (he and his wife home school their own kids of course) but our Vacation Bible School prepares them for the afterlife.” He would just not stop trying to sell us on this Vacation Bible School crap at every mandatory unit meeting we were having. It felt like he was stalking us all. He spoke constantly about “the evil work of the devil in this world” and made a special point to invite the non-Christians in our unit to have their kids attend to “save their souls even if mom and dad refuse to be saved”.  I could tell you many other jacked up things he said about all of this but I want to keep this short. We never had a clue whether this officer’s own superior chain of command knew what he was doing to us or even gave a shit if they did know?

We contacted Mr. Weinstein through one of our base MRFF Reps. Mr. Weinstein spent a good amount of time learning what had happened to us and explained how serious it was that our senior officer was violating our civil rights. Mr Weinstein then contacted our senior leadership and worked with us to cause an official unit investigation to happen. It took some weeks. Mr Weinstein and our base MRFF Reps were with us each step of the way.

Everything started moving fast as soon as our combat unit’s quarterly performance awards were announced just a couple weeks ago in early July at another mandatory unit assembly. There are 5 different awards and all 5 “coincidentally” went to military members who had their kids attend our senior officer and his wife’s Vacation Bible School.

I can tell you that Mr. Weinstein was in contact immediately again with our most senior leadership when the 5 quarterly awards were publicly announced. He made it clear that there was an obvious cloud over the awardees given the situation with our senior officer’s Vacation Bible School pressure tactics. Mr Weinstein demanded punishment for our senior officer who ran the Vacation Bible School with his wife.

Last week our unit was informed at another mandatory meeting that the quarterly awards for last quarter have just now been suspended indefinitely until further notice pending additional investigation. In the meantime our base MRFF Reps and Mr. Weinstein are working with us to file EEO and IG complaints about all of this bullshit.

We have heard and confirmed that this particular senior officer has now received a written reprimand in his official (military branch name withheld) personnel file over his nonstop stalking and pressure tactics to get our kids into his Vacation Bible School. While this is something very positive we wish there had been greater adverse action taken against this senior officer. As Mr. Weinstein said, “had some of the facts here changed so that this was a Muslim commander trying to force you to place your kids in ‘Vacation Quran School’ at his mosque there would have been a literal bloodbath in protest.”

I cannot give anymore detail on this without revealing information that might identify us to our (military branch name withheld) chain of command who would likely punish all 32 of us for requesting the MRFF’s intervention in the first place. We are hearing some shit talk going around that whoever among our unit’s members complained are “traitors” and “bad troops” for going to the MRFF. They accuse the MRFF of being a “woke commie group of America haters.” Some of them also seriously bad mouth Mr. Weinstein for causing all the trouble here. Which is completely false! He is the one who fixed it! We want to fight back but fear that we will out ourselves if we do. Eventually at least some of our names will probably be known as being clients of the MRFF here. We’re ok with it and we’ll cross that bridge if and when.

I just wish to say on behalf of all 32 of us here at (military installation name withheld) how much we are forever grateful to our own base MRFF Reps and Mr. Weinstein and all of the MRFF for stopping this senior officer’s unconstitutional Christian proselytizing of us and our families and especially our own children!

We had nowhere to turn to until we got the MRFF on this case and the MRFF has won it for all of us! We know and trust that the MRFF will have our backs if our chain or anyone else tries to target us for revenge of any kind. Our families have been tormented by all of this and the only bright light has been the quick and forceful action of the MRFF!

(Active Duty Enlisted Member’s/MRFF Client’s name, rank, MOS/AFSC, assigned military unit and installation all withheld)