Thread: Pentagon May Court Martial Soldiers Who Share Christian Faith - Obama Again

Pentagon May Court Martial Soldiers Who Share Christian Faith





by Ken Klukowski1 May 2013, 8:12 AM PDT6028post a comment
The Pentagon has released a statement confirming that soldiers could be prosecuted for promoting their faith: "Religious proselytization is not permitted within the Department of Defense...Court martials and non-judicial punishments are decided on a case-by-case basis...”.

The statement, released to Fox News, follows a Breitbart News report on Obama administration Pentagon appointees meeting with anti-Christian extremist Mikey Weinstein to develop court-martial procedures to punish Christians in the military who express or share their faith.

(From our earlier report: Weinstein is the head of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, and says Christians--including chaplains--sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ in the military are guilty of “treason,” and of committing an act of “spiritual rape” as serious a crime as “sexual assault.” He also asserted that Christians sharing their faith in the military are “enemies of the Constitution.”)

Being convicted in a court martial means that a soldier has committed a crime under federal military law. Punishment for a court martial can include imprisonment and being dishonorably discharged from the military.

So President Barack Obama’s civilian appointees who lead the Pentagon are confirming that the military will make it a crime--possibly resulting in imprisonment--for those in uniform to share their faith. This would include chaplains—military officers who are ordained clergymen of their faith (mostly Christian pastors or priests, or Jewish rabbis)--whose duty since the founding of the U.S. military under George Washington is to teach their faith and minister to the spiritual needs of troops who come to them for counsel, instruction, or comfort.

This regulation would severely limit expressions of faith in the military, even on a one-to-one basis between close friends. It could also effectively abolish the position of chaplain in the military, as it would not allow chaplains (or any service members, for that matter), to say anything about their faith that others say led them to think they were being encouraged to make faith part of their life. It’s difficult to imagine how a member of the clergy could give spiritual counseling without saying anything that might be perceived in that fashion.

In response to the Pentagon’s plans, retired Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin, who is now executive vice president of the Family Research Council (FRC), said on Fox & Friends Wednesday morning:

It’s a matter of what do they mean by "proselytizing." ...I think they’ve got their defintions a little confused. If you’re talking about coercion that’s one thing, but if you’re talking about the free exercise of our faith as individual soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines, especially for the chaplains, they I think the worst thing we can do is stop the ability for a soldier to be able to exercise his faith.”

FRC has launched a petition here which has already collected over 30,000 signatures, calling on Secretary Hagel is stop working with Weinstein and his anti-Christian organization to develop military policy regarding religious faith.

**UPDATE**

The FRC petition has now exceeded more than 40,000 signatures at the time of this update.

Breitbart News legal columnist Ken Klukowski is senior fellow for religious liberty with the Family Research Council and on faculty at Liberty University School of Law.

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2...hristian-Faith

http://www.alipac.us/f19/obama-puts-...9/#post1341973

New Policy Will Court-Martial Soldiers Who Share Religious Faith

May 2, 2013 by Ben Bullard

PHOTOS.COM

Would you want the government to have the power to make a judgment call about your religious beliefs (or lack thereof)?

If you’re a U.S. soldier who’s a Christian, Jew, Muslim or something else, would you want to entrust your fate to a military hierarchy steered, from the top, with the guidance of a man who founded an organization expressly designed to eradicate any form of individual religious expression from the ranks of fighting men and women?

It’s at hand. The Pentagon confirmed on Wednesday a story published by Breitbart alleging the military would begin court-martialing soldiers who share their religious faith.
In a statement it released to FOX News, Pentagon spokesman Nate Christensen wrote:

“Religious proselytization is not permitted within the department of Defense. Court martials [sic] and non-judicial punishments are decided on a case-by-case basis and it would be inappropriate to speculate on the outcome in specific cases.”

The new policy comes after Pentagon leaders met with Air Force officer-turned-activist Mikey Weinstein, who founded and leads the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF). Weinstein is ostensibly for the separation of church and state, but a read through his guest column at the Huffington Post betrays a peerless hatred for Christianity in particular.

Separation of church and state has always been a Constitutional tug of war, one that’s least elegantly fought when the struggle’s being waged by ardent atheists on one side and the very religious on the other.

But the desperation of the enlisted individuals whom death shadows on battlefields in foreign lands has existed in its own sacred, personal realm for militaries in all times and places. The rights of soldiers who call on the divine, cobbling together impromptu battlefield relationships as they seek to bond over faiths they may not even have previously shared, cannot be questioned.

The consolation of religious faith, shared among soldiers at once brave and fearful, is an eternal and de facto extrajudicial prerogative against which there must be no “policy,” as retired Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin told FOX News.

“If chaplains and other personnel are censored from offering the full solace of the Gospel, there is no religious freedom in the military,” he said.

http://personalliberty.com/2013/05/0...ligious-faith/