If you tell your friends, family or co-workers about Christian Dominionists, chances are, they'll think you're a nut or subscribing to conspiracy theories. But if you're in the armed forces, you might be well aware of these radical evangelicals should you happen to be a Jew, a Muslim, an atheist, or even "the wrong kind of Christian."
Consider these recent news headlines:
- September 30, 2010 – "Underground" Group of Cadets Say Air Force Academy Controlled by Evangelicals.
- September 29, 2010 – Civil Rights and Religious Groups Demand That Air Force Academy 'Climate Survey' Be Made Public; Report may reveal ministries using cult-like tactics to recruit cadets and estrange them from their families.
- August 20, 2010 – Troops Punished After Refusing to Attend Evangelical Concert.
- April 22, 2010 – Army Disinvites Franklin Graham from National Day of Prayer Event.
- January 25, 2010 – Jesus Rifles: Rifles with sights that are inscribed with Biblical references.
Who is behind these headlines? The Military Religious Freedom Foundation – or MRFF, for short.
On Thursday, October 7, 2010, at 7:00 p.m. Pacific, we'll be talking with representatives of MRFF, an organization that has been demonized by the religious right (see show details below for access information.) In fact, the Christian Coalition of America lists "Ending religious discrimination against Christians in the military" as one of its top legislative agendas for 2010, claiming:
Even though a federal court during October 2006 dismissed gadfly Mikey Weinstein's infamous lawsuit which accused the United States military of promoting Christianity, he filed yet a new lawsuit less than two months later, wasting American taxpayer dollars yet again. He is trying to force the Pentagon into wasting more time to check into his allegations. Undoubtedly, another federal court judge will strike down his latest exercise in futility and harassment of Christians in the United States military.
Christian Coalition of America will fight to ensure that evangelical Christian military chaplains and other personnel are not discriminated against as they have been during the past number of decades.
What groups like the Christian Coalition do not say is that MRFF represents close to 20,000 members of the armed forces who are saying that their freedom to believe — or not to believe — is trampled upon by evangelical Christian superiors.
And what the Christian Coalition does not mention is that 96% of the servicemen and women who MRFF represents are Christians.
MRFF: A Brief Background, Two Nobel Peace Prize Nominations.
The Military Religious Freedom Foundation was founded by Mikey Weinstein in 2006 and "is dedicated to ensuring that all members of the United States Armed Forces fully receive the Constitutional guarantees of religious freedom to which they and all Americans are entitled by virtue of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment."
Weinstein is far from the gadfly who is trying to rid the military of Christianity, as the Christian Coalition characterizes him. A 1977 Honor Graduate of the United States Air Force Academy, Weinstein spent over three years in the West Wing of the Reagan Administration as legal counsel in the White House. He worked at prestigious law firms in New York and Washington D.C., and served as the first General Counsel to Texas billionaire and two-time Presidential candidate H. Ross Perot and Perot Systems Corporation. Mikey was named one of the 50 most influential Jews in America by the Forward, one of the nation's preeminent Jewish publications. He also has received a nomination for the JFK's Profile in Courage Award and received the Buzzflash Wings of Justice Award. In addition, Mikey was honored by a distinguished civil rights organization Jews for Racial and Economic Justice with the Rabbi Marshall T. Meyer Risk-Taker Award, for those who have taken extraordinary risks in the pursuit of justice.
On October 15, 2009, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation was officially nominated for the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize. The nominator, who wishes to remain anonymous, happens to be the only Christian in the upper chamber of his country's national parliament; the country is an ally of the United States. Shortly thereafter, another anonymous Qualified Nominator submitted a second official nomination for MRFF for the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize.
MRFF's Fight to Defend Religious Liberty.
In an August 2007 interview with IndyWeek.com, Weinstein gave some examples of the types of cases MRFF is involved with:
An army private from Fort Bragg contacted me when he was going through basic training. When he signed up, they asked him his religious denomination and he said Christian, but they identified him as not being fundamentalist enough Christian, and they punished him by putting 'none' on his dog tags. When he got to Afghanistan, the commander said that the blessings of the Lord Jesus would not be on the unit unless everyone were evangelical, and since he would not convert, this 20-year-old private would be responsible for the deaths and injuries the unit might suffer.
In another case, we caught a three-star general who ordered his staff to put together a PowerPoint presentation demonstrating the direct parallel between the Book of Revelation and all of our combat movements in Tikrit, Mosul, Fallujah, Sadr City and farther east in Afghanistan. We were able to stop it after it got to 2,500 troops.
He went on to explain the evangelicals who are behind this type of activity:
What we're fighting here is a subset of evangelical Christianity that goes by a long name: pre-millennial dispensational reconstructionist dominionist fundamentalist evangelical Christianity. There's an organization for officers called the Officers Christian Fellowship, and for the enlisted folks called the Christian Military Fellowship. The first goal is a 'spiritually transformed' U.S. military. The second goal is [to be] ambassadors for Christ in uniform—by the way, if you check the last 2,000 years, that hasn't worked out too well. Thirdly, [they are] empowered by the Holy Spirit.
(Note: Rather than using complicated terms, we lump all of these types of evangelicals as "Christian Dominionists." Discover more about Christian Dominionists here and here.)
The God Discussion Panel on October 7, 2010.
Joining us on Thursday night will be:
- Chris Rodda, MRFF's Senior Research Director, columnist for Talk2Acton and Huffington Post, and author of Liars for Jesus.
- Leah Burton, MRFF Board of Directors, author of Palin's America – God, Guns & Greed (coming in March/April 2011) and consultant to the California Council of Churches.
- Mikey Weinstein, MRFF's Founder. Originally scheduled for the whole show, Mikey will not be available due to the ramped up schedule he is involved with in the extreme proselytizing in the Air Force. If he can, he will be with us for 10-15 minutes.
Show Details.
Tune in to the live God Discussion show on Thursday, October 7, 2010, at 7:00 PM Pacific time(time conversions below). We've reserved 2 hours for the show. As always, calls are welcome and the web-based chat room will be open, which we will monitor as best as we can in order to forward your questions and comments to our guests.
Time: Thursday, October 7, 2010 @ 7:00 p.m. PACIFIC (see time conversions below)
God Discussion on Blog Talk Radio:
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/god-discussion
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"It's not your Christ that I do not like, it is your Christians, they are so unlike your Christ!" ~ Ghandi
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