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January 15, 2020

Will Trump's Pentagon stand tall when atheists attack?

By Andrea Widburg

A formal blessing for the Space Force "official" Bible resulted in a squeal of outrage from a man who has dedicated his life to making sure that America's troops, who are mostly Christian, have no easy access to God.

When the Founding Fathers drafted the Constitution, 85% of the American population did not belong to the Church of England.  Were they in England, they would have had to pay to support the Anglican church and would have been barred from universities or government employment.  Things were easier in the colonies, with the hold the Church of England had over the population varying from one colony to the next. 

It was in this context that the Founders included in the First Amendment the language stating that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion[.]"  The Founders were not banning religion from America or even from government.  They were saying only that Congress could not set up a state church and demand that people belong to it or suffer the consequences.

This mandate did not affect the Founders' belief that God and morality were inextricably intertwined with a free, functioning country.  After all, as Thomas Jefferson wrote, to the extent that all people have inherent rights, they are inherent because a divine Creator endowed us with those rights.  John Adams believed that "our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.  It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

And then there's Mikey Weinstein, founder and president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation.  He is a fanatically anti-Christian atheist who has been on a crusade for years now to purge religion entirely from the United States military.  To Mikey, Christians in the military are "well-funded gangs of fundamentalist Christian monsters who terrorize their fellow Americans by forcing their weaponized and twisted version of Christianity upon their helpless subordinates in our nation's armed forces."

In the same article linked above, Mikey states his determination to destroy (tolerantly, of course) "evil, fundamentalist Christian creatures" who are "bandits" who "coagulate their stenchful substances" in religiously based organizations that support marriage and oppose abortion.  In fact, says Mikey, "[t]he basis of their ruinous unity is the bane of human existence and progress: horrific hatred and blinding bigotry."

Perhaps you won't be surprised to learn that, back in 2013, after Major Nidal Hasan committed an Islamic-inspired terrorist mass murder at Fort Hood, the Obama administration invited Weinstein and his Military Religious Freedom Foundation to work with the military to clamp down on...Christian fundamentalism.

Although we haven't heard much from Mikey of late, he hasn't gone away.  Indeed, he just popped up again, sputtering with outrage over the fact that the Washington National Cathedral blessed an official Bible on which the new Space Force can swear in its commanders:

We who are sane understand that today's military does not force anyone to swear anything on a Bible anymore.  It's simply that, should those who are willing to lay down their lives for this country wish to use a Bible, a blessed one will be conveniently handy.  Mikey predictably went off like a rocket:

"The Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) condemns, in as full-throated a manner as is humanly possible, the shocking and repulsive display of only the most vile, exclusivist, fundamentalist Christian supremacy," MRFF founder and president MikeyWeinstein wrote in a statement denouncing the Bible blessing. "The utilization of a Christian bible to 'swear in' commanders of the new Space Force or any other [Department of Defense] branch at ANY level is completely violative of the bedrock separation of church and state mandate of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution."

Mikey wasn't the only American offended.  A Twitter user who identified himself as Pastor Seth Wispelwey of the United Church of Christ in Tucson, Arizona, thought the blessing was "gross."  Others were equally offended.

It's possible that, as far as NPR is concerned — and it wrote the article quoted above — the real sin might just be that no one insulted Trump:

The blessing of the Bible also features flattering words for President Trump, who strongly advocated for creating the Space Force, from the Episcopal Church's bishop suffragan for the armed forces.

Mikey, meanwhile, is going to lodge a formal complaint.  It will be interesting to see if Trump's Pentagon is made of stronger stuff than Obama's was.

A formal blessing for the Space Force "official" Bible resulted in a squeal of outrage from a man who has dedicated his life to making sure that America's troops, who are mostly Christian, have no easy access to God.

When the Founding Fathers drafted the Constitution, 85% of the American population did not belong to the Church of England.  Were they in England, they would have had to pay to support the Anglican church and would have been barred from universities or government employment.  Things were easier in the colonies, with the hold the Church of England had over the population varying from one colony to the next. 

It was in this context that the Founders included in the First Amendment the language stating that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion[.]"  The Founders were not banning religion from America or even from government.  They were saying only that Congress could not set up a state church and demand that people belong to it or suffer the consequences.

This mandate did not affect the Founders' belief that God and morality were inextricably intertwined with a free, functioning country.  After all, as Thomas Jefferson wrote, to the extent that all people have inherent rights, they are inherent because a divine Creator endowed us with those rights.  John Adams believed that "our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.  It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other."

And then there's Mikey Weinstein, founder and president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation.  He is a fanatically anti-Christian atheist who has been on a crusade for years now to purge religion entirely from the United States military.  To Mikey, Christians in the military are "well-funded gangs of fundamentalist Christian monsters who terrorize their fellow Americans by forcing their weaponized and twisted version of Christianity upon their helpless subordinates in our nation's armed forces."

In the same article linked above, Mikey states his determination to destroy (tolerantly, of course) "evil, fundamentalist Christian creatures" who are "bandits" who "coagulate their stenchful substances" in religiously based organizations that support marriage and oppose abortion.  In fact, says Mikey, "[t]he basis of their ruinous unity is the bane of human existence and progress: horrific hatred and blinding bigotry."

Perhaps you won't be surprised to learn that, back in 2013, after Major Nidal Hasan committed an Islamic-inspired terrorist mass murder at Fort Hood, the Obama administration invited Weinstein and his Military Religious Freedom Foundation to work with the military to clamp down on...Christian fundamentalism.

Although we haven't heard much from Mikey of late, he hasn't gone away.  Indeed, he just popped up again, sputtering with outrage over the fact that the Washington National Cathedral blessed an official Bible on which the new Space Force can swear in its commanders:

We who are sane understand that today's military does not force anyone to swear anything on a Bible anymore.  It's simply that, should those who are willing to lay down their lives for this country wish to use a Bible, a blessed one will be conveniently handy.  Mikey predictably went off like a rocket:

"The Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) condemns, in as full-throated a manner as is humanly possible, the shocking and repulsive display of only the most vile, exclusivist, fundamentalist Christian supremacy," MRFF founder and president MikeyWeinstein wrote in a statement denouncing the Bible blessing. "The utilization of a Christian bible to 'swear in' commanders of the new Space Force or any other [Department of Defense] branch at ANY level is completely violative of the bedrock separation of church and state mandate of the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution."

Mikey wasn't the only American offended.  A Twitter user who identified himself as Pastor Seth Wispelwey of the United Church of Christ in Tucson, Arizona, thought the blessing was "gross."  Others were equally offended.

It's possible that, as far as NPR is concerned — and it wrote the article quoted above — the real sin might just be that no one insulted Trump:

The blessing of the Bible also features flattering words for President Trump, who strongly advocated for creating the Space Force, from the Episcopal Church's bishop suffragan for the armed forces.

Mikey, meanwhile, is going to lodge a formal complaint.  It will be interesting to see if Trump's Pentagon is made of stronger stuff than Obama's was.