MRFF Assists Multiple Clients (…once again) in Quickly Ending Commander’s Attempted Imposition of Personal Religious Bigotry Over U.S. Military Unit’s Planned Holiday Celebration
October 3, 2024
Mikey, along with assistance of three highly dedicated and honorable MRFF Installation Representatives, assisted a group of 26 active-duty clients (including 17 Christians and 9 representing other religions or non-religious) in bravely standing up for their Constitutional civil right and guarantee of religious freedom in the face of their Commander’s brazenly myopic religious beliefs.
MRFF and its clients have a significant documented history of standing up to superiors’ attempting to force their own faith tradition/beliefs, however divisive they may be, on subordinates while blatantly disregarding their oath to uphold the U.S. Constitutional mandate for religious neutrality per the ‘No Religious Test’ Clause (Article VI) and numerous established DoD Rules & Regulations. MRFF Senior Research Director Chris Rodda summarized a few of these extremely divisive actions regarding holiday observances:
Yes, it’s that time of year again — that time when we have U.S. military commanders, some of whom have risen very high up in the ranks, who are terribly worried that spooky decorations and kids in costumes might summon the Prince of Darkness. And, so, these Lucifer-leery leaders try their damnedest to get their unit’s or base’s Halloween parties canceled or, as with this year’s “New Testament Holiday Costume Party,” replaced with good, wholesome, non-Satan-summoning Christian fun. Last year it was a commander and his wife hosting a Bible knowledge contest on Halloween for soldiers “who do not wish to honor Satan,” and before that a commander who tried to cancel his base’s Halloween party, claiming that Halloween is “disrespectful to Christian personnel” because it elevates “satan over Christ.”
This most recent example of another oath-defying Commander attempting to force whatever flavor of Christian denomination (…estimated at 200+ US & 30,000+ Worldwide) they personally choose to follow down the throats of their subordinates, is extremely well detailed in the following email from one of MRFF’s 26 clients:
From: (Active Duty Junior Enlisted Member’s e-mail address withheld)
Subject: MRFF Saves Halloween From Being Replaced By Commander’s New Testament Costume Party
Date: October 3, 2024 at 2:52:07 PM MDT
To: Mikey WeinsteinHello MRFF.
I am an active duty service member (junior enlisted) writing on behalf of 26 other active duty service members (me included, both enlisted and officer ranks) in great thanks to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. For helping us stop our Commander from ruining Halloween for ourselves and our families. Seventeen of us, like me, are Christians by the way. Others are from other religions and some no religion.
I was assigned this summer to our unit’s Halloween Party Steering Committee along with many others to help our unit’s morale. Our job was simple. Just to organize a nice traditional Halloween celebration for our unit and its families for Thursday 31 Oct 24 in the early afternoon and evening. We’ve all been working hard on this for several months now.
We had filed all the appropriate paperwork to get our large multipurpose room in our unit’s HQ building as the Halloween Party venue. Took forever and was a real pain in the ass but we got it done. Lots of good eats, beverages, games etc. and typical Halloween fun and stuff for the families and especially the kids too.
Then just the other day our Commander said some jacked up shit to our (senior enlisted title and rank withheld) about how “Halloween is inspired by demons and the devil” and that “celebrating Halloween is the devil’s work” and that he “won’t support anything that supports Satan.” Yes he actually said this shit. Not very surprised as he is big on pushing his Christian faith anywhere and everywhere within our unit. He also now sometimes wears a “Trump 2024” hat lately around our unit premises. We know that’s so messed up too. Nobody says anything though because he’s the Commander.
Our (senior enlisted title and rank withheld) was able to talk him out of totally canceling our Halloween party. But our Commander decided instead to “encourage the troops” (meaning do what I say!) to come to a brand new event that he and his wife would put on at the same time our event was supposed to happen called a “New Testament Holiday Costume Party”. Where those unit personnel and the families attending dress up as their favorite New Testament characters. Are you f——ing kidding me? I shit you not that is what he decided to do.
He also got our prior (superior military unit designation name withheld) approval to hold the unit Halloween event in our HQ multipurpose room revoked. And guess what? Now his “New Testament Holiday Costume Party” gets to be there instead of our unit Halloween party.
Everyone was pissed as f— about this! We went to our base’s MRFF Reps right away who got us to Mikey Weinstein just as fast. Mikey encouraged us to hang in there while he reached out to our senior command chain on our behalf.
It took 2 days after Mikey and the MRFF intervened but the good news is that the Commander’s “New Testament” party has just been scratched. And our unit’s Halloween Party is totally back on and is going to once again be held in our multipurpose room per the original plan we had already gotten approved!
No word at all yet from our Commander about any of this and we doubt he will say anything at all as he is obviously the Big Loser here. Even though it was bad before with him and us now pretty much everyone in the unit despises him for trying to cancel our Halloween event due to “the devil”.
All 26 of us want to thank our base MRFF Reps (all 3 of them) 2 of whom are coming to our unit Halloween Party and especially Mikey Weinstein for jumping into this mess immediately for us all and getting it squared away for us. Now our military families and spouses and kids will have a real Halloween bash to be proud of!
Please do not reveal any of our names to the public because we know our Commander and those in our chain who agree with him would try to tune us up good for going to the MRFF for help and for the MRFF getting us the Big W here. We so appreciate what the MRFF does for all of us in our country’s armed services because there is just no way we can do it ourselves without facing very bad consequences from our superiors.
(Active Duty Junior Enlisted Member’s name, rank, MOS/AFSC, unit, and installation all withheld)
These ongoing incidents of Christian Supremacy and naked religious bigotry are the undeniable premise of the now infamous ‘Project 2025’ (aka/dba ‘The Presidential Transition Project’) as was forcefully and bluntly called out by Mikey in his Op/Ed of April 10, 2024 (https://shorturl.at/lPk4q) including the following:
Project 2025 plans to purge the government of tens of thousands of non-MAGA personnel and replace them with MAGA loyalists are already well under way. The goal, according to a must-read Axios article, is (emphasis added) “to install a pre-vetted, pro-Trump army of up to 54,000 loyalists across government to rip off the restraints imposed on the previous 46 presidents.” The vetting process includes filling out Project 2025’s “Presidential Personnel Database & Presidential Administration Academy Questionnaire.” Prospective appointees will attend the “Presidential Administration Academy” to be ready “on Day One” to “immediately begin rolling back destructive policy and advancing conservative ideas in the federal government.”
Project 2025’s plans for the military are equally sweeping, as laid out in the 920-page Project 2025 book Mandate for Leadership. Fundamentalist Christian chaplains will be unfettered in their proselytizing, the most senior flag officers (three and four stars) will be “instructed” to make sure they’re “not pursuing a social engineering agenda,” courses at the military academies will be audited “to remove Marxist indoctrination” and tenure for (presumably non-MAGA) professors will be eliminated. And, of course, the current policies that allow transgender individuals to serve will be reversed.
We at the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (mrff.org) fight ‘round-the-clock to prevent our nation’s military, its 18 intelligence agencies, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the U.S. Coast Guard, and the U.S. Maritime Service from EVER being transformed into a fatal force multiplier for the blood-thirsty MAGA maniacs who developed and plan to implement Project 2025, fueled by the appalling propellant of fundamentalist Christian nationalism. And we at MRFF have been, are, and will continue to be the direct targets of the cowardly wrath of these same MAGA villains.
(To this end, please see Margaret Atwood’s disturbingly dystopian The Handmaid’s Tale or the TV series of the same name streaming on Hulu).
So, in the ensuing seven months before our next national elections, may I respectfully urge you to IMMEDIATELY take at least 300 to 600 seconds out of your busy day? Why? Because you MUST think about and deeply internalize NOW the beyond-shocking consequences to our country should Project 2025 ever be actualized by those who planned, developed and intend to implement it with unremitting fury and vengeance. Indeed, actualized well beyond that of the ugly lynch mob of “Unite the Right” racists and nazi-loving fascists and Christian nationalists displayed in Charlottesville, Virginia on August 11 and 12 of 2017.
It will savagely terminate justice, freedom, and democracy in America. It will turn our United States military into the quintessential MRFF nightmare of a zombie army of imperious, fundamentalist Christian crusaders. It will propel tyranny and despotism and autocracy and fascism. It will spew bigotry, misogyny, and hatred of “The Other” and prejudice writ unimaginably ginormous as newly bedrock U.S. policy. It will spell The End of all we know as decency and American freedoms as laid out in our precious U.S. Constitution.
As others have joined Mikey & MRFF in calling out this dystopian vision for America, the completely unbelievable and highly hypocritical backpedaling by one presidential campaign may potentially earn consideration as a new Olympic event:
The Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank, and at least two dozen Trump allies created Project 2025 as an in-depth Christian nationalist policy roadmap for a second Trump presidency. A recent 30-second ad spot from the Harris campaign promises that “Trump’s Project 2025 agenda will give him unchecked political power with no guardrails.”
While Trump has insisted he has nothing to do with Project 2025—and the federal abortion ban it advocates—the plan’s architects have said exactly the opposite.
https://newrepublic.com/post/186797/trump-threatens-kamala-harris-project-2025
With a well-deserved hat tip to ‘The Bard’ (aka William Shakespeare) and Hamlet, “The lady doth protest too much, methinks”
Mikey & MRFF will continue their commitment in calling out the illegal and unit cohesion destroying religious divisiveness that all too many U.S. Military Commanders embrace as they apparently salivate over the opportunity to impose the extreme religious intolerance envisioned in the Trump/Heritage Foundation Project 2025.
Recent Posts
- October 2, 2025 | 4 comments