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Faith and Freedom
Saturday, January 3, 2009
By Brian Blair
Mikey Weinstein gets eight to 12 death threats per week at his New Mexico home. They threaten to kill his dogs or his daughter.
People call him Satan. The Antichrist. The Most Dangerous Man in America.
And those are some of the nicer labels.
“I knew this wouldn’t be like riding a unicorn through a cotton candy forest passing out lollipops to singing animals,” he said while speaking from his house. “This is bloodsport.”
He refers to his role as founder and president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, a role that will bring him to Columbus’ Unitarian Universalist Congregation to speak Jan. 11. The foundation’s goal: to ensure that all military members have the religious freedom guaranteed by the Constitution.
The 1977 U.S. Air Force Academy graduate and former White House counsel for President Ronald Reagan launched the nonprofit agency in 2005. Weinstein, who is Jewish, became angered after his sons were subjected to harassment from fundamentalist Christian superiors at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colo.
His sons and other Jews and non-Christians were pressured by commanders that they should attend a showing of the Mel Gibson movie, “The Passion of the Christ.” “This isn’t like facing your shift manager at Taco Bell,” he said.
Advocate needed
Since the organization began, some of Weinstein’s strongest support has come from Christians. The leader said military personnel who have stepped forward with complaints of coercion and more need an advocate.
“These are spiritual rape victims of fundamentalist Christian predators wearing a superior rank,” he said.
Mikey Weinstein
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The registered Republican with 130 years of military service in three generations of his family offered a caution.
“People love to attack us as trying to take away somebody’s warm, cuddly, teddy-bear Jesus,” Weinstein said. Not so, he said. Half of his relatives are Christian. Some of his most recent support came from the California Council of Churches. It represents 5,500 Protestant congregations, 21 Protestant denominations and millions of believers. |
He supports the concept of chaplains. He rejects the idea of those chaplains on duty evangelizing military personnel who haven’t sought insight or help.
“Every religious faith is allowed to flourish in this country,” Weinstein said. “But none are allowed to engage the machinery of the state and the prestige of the federal government to force others to accept their particular views.”
Columbus’ Jim Martin, a member of the local Unitarian congregation, recently discovered Weinstein from the documentary, “Constantine’s Sword.” He agrees with the leader’s focus.
“A setting like the military really should be religiously neutral,” Martin said. “And a person’s religion shouldn’t be coupled with advancement.”
Those are charges that many of Weinstein’s military clients have claimed.
The Military Religious Freedom Foundation boasts 11,000 military clients. It is suing U.S. Department of Defense on behalf of a Fort Riley, Kan., soldier alleging bias toward evangelical Christianity.
Weinstein said the kicker is that many evangelical Christians also have been targeted. “They’re being told,” said Weinstein, “‘You’re not Christian enough.’”
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