Any close observer of this President and his policies would conclude similarly:
The Family Research Council has said that there is a “growing hostility” to religion in the U.S. armed forces, including “concerted efforts to scrub the military of religious expression.”
“The climate of intimidation that began in the Air Force is bleeding over into every branch — leading
even military chaplains to wonder about their security in referencing the Bible,” said Family Research Council's president, Tony Perkins, July 9.
The D.C.-based Christian-advocacy organization’s report, “A Clear and Present Danger: The Threat to Religious Liberty in the Military,” documents what Perkins called a “wave of hostility toward religious expression in the military.”
The report said that pressures to impose “a secular, anti-religious culture” on the U.S. military have “intensified tremendously” under President Barack Obama, noting numerous incidents of policy restricting Christian expression.
In January 2012, when the controversy over the HHS contraception and sterilization mandate first began, the archbishop of the Military Services Archdiocese sent a letter to Catholic chaplains, asking them to read it to parishioners to encourage opposition to the mandate. The secretary of the Army intervened, allowing the letter to be distributed but not read publicly, and only after a sentence was omitted.
In 2011, the Walter Reed Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., initially barred visitors from giving or using religious items during their visits. The policy was ended after objections from Congress.
A 20-year-old ethics course for nuclear missile officers led by a chaplain at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California was pulled for review in 2011 because of its use of Christian materials. These materials included texts from the Bible and texts related to St. Augustine’s just-war theory.
Christian prayers have been barred from some military funerals at the Houston National Cemetery. In July 2011, U.S. Rep. John Culberson, R-Texas, said that he witnessed some volunteer Veterans of Foreign Wars honor guards being prohibited from referring to God.
A September 2011 memo from Gen. Norton Schwartz, the Air Force chief of staff, told officers to avoid actual or apparent use of their position to promote their own religious beliefs, including open support of chaplain-run events.
Several prominent religious leaders have been disinvited from speaking events. In February 2010, Perkins was disinvited from addressing the National Prayer Luncheon at Andrews Air Force Base after he opposed the ban on open homosexuals serving in the military. Franklin Graham, son of the prominent Protestant minister Billy Graham, was disinvited from the Pentagon’s National Day of Prayer in May 2010 after criticizing Islam.
An Army Reserve training presentation given in Pennsylvania labeled Catholicism and evangelical Christianity as examples of religious extremism, alongside terrorist groups and the Ku Klux Klan.
The Family Research Council report said that such examples have a “chilling effect” and cause fears of “punishment and potential career destruction” among service members.
even military chaplains to wonder about their security in referencing the Bible,” said Family Research Council's president, Tony Perkins, July 9.Read the rest. Leave your reasons to discount the FRC study in the comments.
If the study is accurate, and I have no reason to suggest it isn't, this ought to concern us all.
Does it concern you?
