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]
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“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
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“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.
Hey Mikey get a shave and a bath and while your at it why don’t you have some words of respect for those four heroes who REALLY defended freedom and gave their lives to boot or do you have the guts for it?
He definitely has a gut for it.
One would think that Old Liar would know the laws of Tish Abov
And one would think that these people would know that the military is inherently coercive.
A “suggestion” from the commander is not a suggestion.
Great OPINION.
DoD Instruction 1300.17 explicitly protects the religious liberty of service members but strictly prohibits commanders from using their position to compel or coerce participation in religious activities. If administrative staff are leveraging the onboarding process to recruit subordinates into a “crisis prayer phone tree” while citing that the “commander is a man of the Lord,” it establishes an inherently coercive environment. The fact that a subordinate felt compelled to join to avoid “trouble on the first day” demonstrates the exact undue influence that military regulations regarding religious endorsement are designed to prevent. While Christianity may be the norm in the USA, not all service members are Christian. I’m curious how defenders of this “Man of the Lord” would feel if instead he was a follower of the Prophet, devotee of Vishnu, adherent to the Eightfold Path, servant of Hashem, answers to the Mother Goddess, or an Operating Thetan?