MRFF stopped our commander from promoting his bible in physical conditioning runs

From: (Active Duty Senior NCO/MRFF Client’s e-mail address withheld)
Subject: MRFF stopped our commander from promoting his bible in physical conditioning runs
Date: September 5, 2024 at 9:14:43 AM MDT
To: Information Weinstein <[email protected]>

Hello to Mr. Weinstein and the MRFF action team.

I am an active duty senior NCO in a combat unit. And yes I am also a Christian (Church of Christ) who is married to my Christian wife and we are raising our kids Christian.

I recently reached out to our (military installation name withheld) MRFF Rep regarding the divisive religious actions of our (combat unit designation name withheld) commander regarding early morning physical training (PT) runs with our unit.

Simply put our commander started carrying and holding his bible high in the air for the whole unit to see before after and during these PT runs. He never actually “said” anything about why he was doing this but I can assure you that the message was fully received by our unit. Shortly after he began doing this some of our younger members of our combat unit also started bringing their bibles for these training runs and holding them up in the air whenever our commander did it during these PT exercises. 

Then on the following mornings of PT exercises our commander would always “reward”  these young troops by picking them to lead as element leaders of our unit at the front of our PT running formations. This clearly sent the message of his “special approval” for those troops who also carried their bibles and raised them whenever he did during our PT runs.

Just like every military unit ours also has members from many different religions including Muslims and Sikhs and Jews as well as members who don’t follow any faith structure at all. They as well as Christian troops like myself were shocked by all of this! I knew something had to be done but didn’t want to face the anger of our commander.

I’ve been in the (military branch name withheld) long enough including a number of intense combat engagements down range to know that what our commander did with his promotion of his bible during our PT runs badly hurts our unit solidarity rather than helps it.

I realize that as a senior NCO I should have spoken up to him personally but frankly feared his reaction if I tried. Believe me I and other NCO’s involved here don’t feel happy about our failure to act. I and the others won’t let that happen again.

Instead I contacted our MRFF Rep here after doing a little “quiet research” and getting advice from one of our (military installation name withheld) JAGs and she put me in immediate touch with Mr. Weinstein.

Within an hour of my call with Mr. Mikey Weinstein he had called me back explaining that he had contacted the Exec. Officer for Colonel (name withheld) who is the commander of (senior reporting unit designation name withheld). Mr. Weinstein told me that on my behalf and the behalf of at least 35 other members of our unit (2/3s of whom are also Christians like me) who wanted our commander to stop promoting his bible during our PT runs, he had made the demand to have these actions stop immediately as violations of the civil rights of our unit members by our commander.

It worked. We have had 5 PT runs since that time and there have been no further bible displays during any of them at all. Our commander stopped bringing and displaying his bible and the younger troops had been previously advised by our unit EO designee, after Mr. Weinstein’s intervention with that phone call, to stop as well.

Our commander has said absolutely nothing at all about no longer using his bible during our PT exercises. But I can tell you that the damage has been done as many of us have lost respect for him as a result and also for not mentioning any of this after he was forced to stop by MRFF contacting our superiors to make him stop. On behalf of our entire unit, I want to thank our MRFF Rep here at (military installation name withheld), Mr. Mikey Weinstein and the whole of the MRFF for handling this matter. I realize that we should have confronted our commander ourselves but again were very concerned about inciting him to anger against us for doing so since this involved his personal Christian faith. The MRFF took that fear away and got the job done. A lot of lessons learned here and everyone is very grateful to the MRFF for all of this! Thank you to the MRFF for doing what we should have  done in the first place but didn’t. Easy for those who weren’t involved to criticize us for asking for MRFF’s help but none of you were here to go through this fxxxing mess. 

(Active Duty Senior NCO/MRFF Client’s name, rank, MOS/AFSC, unit designation, and military installation all withheld)

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