Unconstitutional Religious Test — Service Members Come to MRFF After Being Pressured to Join Commander’s “Crisis Prayer Phone Tree” at New Unit [New Video from Mikey Weinstein]
Mikey-7-21-26_1200x628
“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 sectionasked us each if we wanted to be placed on the‘commander’s crisis prayer phone tree.’”
“We asked what this ‘crisis prayer phone tree’ thing was and we were told that ‘our commander is a man of the Lord.’ … They were trying very hard to convince us to sign up for this phone tree.”
“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.”
— Active duty enlisted member and MRFF client
Recent Posts
- July 21, 2026 | No comments
“Unconstitutional religious test”? The only Religious Test Clause is Article VI, and it’s about whether faith can be required to hold office — not about a voluntary phone list. Nobody’s rank or job was on the line. And your own client says he was asked, he declined, and nothing happened to him. That’s not coercion — that’s the definition of a free choice. The Supreme Court threw out the “I felt uncomfortable” standard in Kennedy v. Bremerton (2022); the test now is actual coercion, which by your own account didn’t occur. Offering prayer support is literally why the military has chaplains (Katcoff v. Marsh). You took a decline-able offer, slapped “unconstitutional” on it, and called it a crisis. It isn’t one.