Commander’s crisis Christian prayer phone tree

From: (Active duty enlisted member/MRFF client’s email address withheld)
Subject: Commander’s crisis Christian prayer phone tree
Date: July 21, 2026 at 9:02:03 AM MDT
To: Information Weinstein <[email protected]>

Mr. Weinstein and the Military Religious Freedom Foundation,

Thank you for providing helpful advice when we called you yesterday.

We are both active duty enlisted members of the United States (military branch withheld) newly stationed at (military installation withheld). 

Having just PCS’ed there we were going through the normal in-processing and onboarding process at our new unit assignment here when this jacked up thing happened.

Administrative staff of our command section asked us each if we wanted to be placed on the “commander’s crisis prayer phone tree”. Even though both of us happen to be Christians we were taken aback by this question as we in processed. 

We asked what this “crisis prayer phone tree” thing was and we were told that “our commander is a man of the Lord”. And since the commander knows everything going on in the unit when something bad happens the commander goes to the phone tree “to ask for the Lord’s blessings and collective prayers to help those going through any sort of bad times”. It was more than obvious that the only religion associated with this so-called “crisis phone tree” was Christian by the many statements made by the command section administrative staff. (For instance they told us that our commander sponsors a weekly bible study open to all troops in his conference room during the lunch hour.) They were trying very hard to convince us to sign up for this phone tree.

Now this might sounds like it would be nice but both myself and my fellow (military branch member name withheld) were pissed and insulted as this was clearly an attempt just as we joined this unit to make sure we were Christians in synch with I guess our commander’s obvious Christian religious views.

I declined to sign up for this phone tree but my fellow (military branch member name withheld) did it because he said he “didn’t want any trouble on the first day” here in our unit. He was the one who actually suggested that we reach out to Mr. Weinstein and the MRFF for advice here. As he had done several years ago on another matter similar to this involving Christian religious views in his unit at that time.

We both very much want to thank the MRFF for fighting so hard for the rights of our military members not to have to face the burden of a commander’s influence on our personal religious views.

If there is any blowback for my decision not to sign up for this list I will contact Mr. Weinstein immediately.

Please do not reveal any of our identification or contact information. But we wanted to send in this note so that others can see what is happening in our military and it is just plain wrong! 

(All ID information of active duty enlisted member/MRFF client withheld)

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