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    Senior Member HAPPY2BME's Avatar
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    Military Censors Christian Chaplain, Atheists Call for Punishment

    Breitbart
    by Ken Klukowski 24 Jul 2013

    A Christian chaplain in the military is being officially censored for engaging in free speech, and anti-Christian activists are demanding he be punished.

    Lt. Col. Kenneth Reyes is a Christian chaplain currently serving in the U.S. Air Force. He is stationed at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Alaska. As an ordained clergyman whose duties are to provide religious instruction and spiritual counseling, he has a page on the base’s website called “Chaplain’s Corner.”

    Reyes recently wrote an essay entitled, “No Atheists in Foxholes: Chaplains Gave All in World War II.” This common saying is attributed to a Catholic priest in World War II, made famous when President Dwight D. Eisenhower said during a 1954 speech: "I am delighted that our veterans are sponsoring a movement to increase our awareness of God in our daily lives. In battle, they learned a great truth that there are no atheists in the foxholes."

    As reported by Fox News’s Todd Starnes, when Reyes referenced this famous line in his essay, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) contacted the base commander, Col. Brian Duffy, demanding he take action on Reyes’s “anti-secular diatribe.”
    MRFF’s letter says that by Reyes’s “use of the bigoted, religious supremacist phrase, ‘no atheists in foxholes,’ he defiles the dignity of service members.” They accuse him of violating military regulations.

    My legal research on this issue uncovered no regulation prohibiting Reyes’ speech, which looks like expression protected by the free speech and religious freedom provisions of the First Amendment. Military leaders did not respond to Fox’s inquiries asking the Air Force to identify any such rules.

    Nonetheless, only five hours after MRFF’s complaint, the essay was removed from the website. Duffy has profusely apologized to MRFF for not stopping this religious leader from sharing religious thoughts.

    But this response—which again appears to be a violation of Reyes’s First Amendment rights—is insufficient for MRFF. They said, “Faith based hate, is hate all the same,” and, “Lt. Col. Reyes must be appropriately punished.” (Emphasis added).

    So MRFF is saying that the coercive power of government must be used to punish a military officer, who is also an ordained Christian minister, for making ordinary religious references consistent with his faith.

    Retired Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin of the Family Research Council—one of the leaders of a new religious liberty coalition for the military—responded, “A chaplain has been censored for expressing his beliefs about the role of faith in the lives of service members… Why do we have chaplains if they aren’t allowed to fulfill that purpose?”

    MRFF is activist Mikey Weinstein’s organization. He called observant Christians “fundamentalist monsters” seeking to impose a “reign of theocratic terror,” and he described sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ in the military as an act of “spiritual rape” that makes believers “enemies of the Constitution” who are committing an act of “sedition and treason” against this nation.

    The Obama-Hagel Defense Department and Air Force have met with Weinstein and MRFF over a period of four years and recently told Congress that there are no problems with suppressing religious speech in the military. However, because this growing wave of anti-Christian extremism has been exposed to the public, the U.S. House has inserted new religious liberty protections for military members in pending legislation.

    President Obama threatens to veto the legislation. Reyes's story makes it more likely that Congress will stand its ground and fight to protect the religious liberty of him and countless others in the military, as those service members continue risking their lives to fight for all Americans.

    http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2...for-Punishment
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    The Obama-Hagel Defense Department and Air Force have met with Weinstein and MRFF over a period of four years and recently told Congress that there are no problems with suppressing religious speech in the military.
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    House Refuses to Fund ‘Atheist Chaplains’ at Defense Department


    July 25, 2013 - 5:49 PM

    By Shannon Quick



    Rep. John Fleming (R-La.)


    (CNSNews.com) – House members voted Tuesday to bar the use of federal funds to hire “atheist chaplains” at the Department of Defense after Rep. John Fleming (R-La.) reminded his colleagues that the concept didn’t make any sense.“It’s just total nonsense, the idea of having a chaplain who is an atheist,” Fleming told fellow House members. “When it comes to the idea of an atheist chaplain, which is an oxymoron – it’s self-contradictory – what you’re really doing is now saying that we’re going to replace the true chaplains with non-chaplain chaplains.”

    Speaking about the current DOD rules for chaplains on the House floor, Fleming said: “Chaplains must possess appropriate education credentials, two years of religious leadership experience, and more importantly, must receive an endorsement from a qualified religious organization attesting to the tenants of the endorser’s faith…In June this body twice affirmed that the military is not permitted to appoint atheist chaplains.”

    The House voted Tuesday to approve Fleming’s amendment to the 2014 DOD Appropriations Act (See H.R. 2397.pdf) which he said was an effort to “…define what a chaplain is. A chaplain is a minister of the faith -- someone who believes in a deity of a spiritual life who is assigned to a secular organization.”

    The amendment passed with 227 Republicans and 26 Democrats voting in favor of passage.

    Fleming introduced the amendment in response to an earlier proposal by Rep. Rob Andrews (D–NJ) that stated: “The Secretary of Defense shall provide for the appointment, as officers in the Chaplain Corps of the Armed Forces, of persons who are certified or ordained by non-theistic organizations and institutions, such as humanist, ethical culturalist, or atheist.”

    “Basically, the standard is to be recognized as a church by the Internal Revenue Service,” Jason Torpy, president of the Military Association of Atheists and Free Thinkers explained.

    http://cnsnews.com/news/article/hous...nse-department



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    Global Study: Atheists in Decline, Only 1.8% of World Population by 2020


    July 24, 2013 - 2:18 PM
    By Michael W. Chapman

    (CNSNews.com) – Atheism is in decline worldwide, with the number of atheists falling from 4.5% of the world’s population in 1970 to 2.0% in 2010 and projected to drop to 1.8% by 2020, according to a new report by the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in South Hamilton, Mass.
    In its report, Christianity in its Global Context, 1970-2020: Society, Religion, and Mission, researchers analyzed data on church membership and activities from thousands of Christian denominations and other religions worldwide, presenting that data from 1970 and 2010 for a 40-year comparison and, using that information and related demographic data to forecast the world religious makeup in 2020.

    (SeeChristianityinitsGlobalContext(1).pdf)

    The numbers show that in 1970 there were 165,500,000 atheists worldwide, about 4.5% of the global population. In 2010, the number of atheists had fallen to 136,582,200 or 2.0% of the population. If trends continue, according to the study, there will be 136,685,000 atheists in 2020, or about 1.8% of the world population.

    “Projections to 2020 indicate a sustained decrease of the global share of the non-religious,” reads the study. “This is due primarily to the resurgence of Buddhism, Christianity, and other religions in China, and Christianity in Eastern Europe.”
    “If this trend continues, agnostics and atheists will be a smaller portion of the world’s population in 2020 than they were in 2010,” says the study. “Although the number of atheists and agnostics continues to rise in the Western world, the current growth of a variety of religions in China in particular (where the vast majority of the non-religious live today) suggests continued future demographic growth of religion.”

    “From the point of view of 1970-2010, there has been a global religious resurgence, and it seems likely to continue into the future,” reports the study.

    In reference to agnostics, the data show they constituted 14.7% of the world’s population in 1970 but declined to 9.8% of the population in 2010; they are projected to fall further by 2020, to make up 8.9% of the population.

    (SeeChristianityinitsGlobalContext(1).pdf)

    Commenting on the study, Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, said that much of the decrease for atheists “is attributable to the demise of that atheistic genocidal wonderland called Communism: the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 led to a spike in religious affiliation, both in Russia and in Eastern Europe,” as the study documents, and “China is also in the throes of a religious revival.”

    Citing the data from the report, Donohue said “Russia was 38% Christian in 1970 and in 2010 the number jumped to 71%. The world’s first officially atheistic state, Albania, is now 63% Muslim and 32% Christian.”

    While Christianity and Islam dominate on the world religious stage, the data show that Islam is on the rise. Christians comprised 33.2% of the world’s population in 1970, 32.8% in 2010, and are projected to be 33.3% in 2020. For Islam, Muslims comprised 15.6% of the population in 1970 and grew to 22.5% in 2010; they are projected to hit 23.9% of the world’s population in 2020.

    “Two religions, Christianity and Islam, dominate religious demographics and seem poised to continue that dominance in the future,” reads the study. “In 1970 those two religions represented 48.8% of the global population, and by 2020 they will likely represent 57.2%.”
    http://cnsnews.com/news/article/glob...opulation-2020



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