Air Force Officer Told to Remove Bible from Desk

Townhall.com ^ | May 3, 2013 | Todd Starnes

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

Here is a NYT story on the subject, but the Air Force did a typical CYA on the problem.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/23/politics/23academy.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

A highlight or two:

“A chaplain at the academy, Capt. Melinda Morton, made public last month accusations that the religious problem at the academy was “pervasive.”

“Captain Morton had been on a team asked to draw up a program to promote religious tolerance. On Tuesday, she resigned from the Air Force saying that she did not believe her superiors genuinely wanted her to stay on to help resolve the problem.”

Elsewhere:

“A mandatory part of the Air Force’s nuclear missile launch officer “ethics” training was a Christian theological presentation, nicknamed the “Jesus Loves Nukes speech” by some nuclear missile officers.

“General Schwartz’s memorandum — an edict that stated in no uncertain terms that no commander or other leader in the Air Force can promote, or even give the appearance of promoting, their personal religious beliefs to any subordinate personnel was received by all Air Force commands.

“General Schwartz’s memorandum quickly made its way down through the ranks at bases throughout the Air Force, as one would expect an important statement of policy from the Chief of Staff would. One notable exception, however, was the Air Force Academy, where the top leadership did not distribute it to either cadets or staff, but kept it confined to a small group of senior officers at a staff meeting.

“One (Baptist) cadet reported that when he asked if he could post the Chief of Staff’s memorandum on a bulletin board at the Academy, the response he got was, “Don’t go there. Who’s side are you on?”

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

I am not afraid. But the purpose of a military is its mission, not for people to use working hours for their own use, no matter what that use is. And if that activity is even slightly disruptive, it is doubly wrong.

The purpose of the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) is not justice, as such, but “To preserve order and discipline in the military.” For this reason, criminal sentences are far different from what they are in the civilian world. Homicide, under some circumstances, may be punishable by only 3-4 years in prison; but child molestation could warrant 30-40 years, because it is considered very damaging to morale. There is even a criminal charge for when no other criminal charge exists.

Yet let us return to what is being argued here. There are soldiers, in an extremely hierarchical organization, who are displaying their religious affiliation. And there would be no problem with that on the surface, except that it implies a priority, any priority, beyond the military mission.

It implies a lack of partiality, favoritism or prejudice. And there is no statement or act that can prove otherwise, except the discretion of not openly displaying it during duty hours.

Let me cite you the tap dance that this means in real terms. I knew a Captain in the Army who was a blond haired, blue eyed, Irish Muslim. A convert who had married an Iranian woman. Even back in the 1980s, this was looked at askance, and he always had to behave in a manner above reproach, but was still periodically investigated.

Yet he was the recipient of considerable harassment, invariably from Christians, but once, likely inadvertent at first, from a military Chaplain. At first the Chaplain did not seem to grasp that he was a Muslim (as white people are not Muslims); but then he decided to spend a lot of time, yes, during duty hours, trying to convince him to convert.

The final straw was when the Chaplain discovered that before being a Muslim, he had been a Catholic, a religion that the Chaplain considered heretical. This culminated in a screaming match in the Captain’s office, with no hesitation on the part of the LTC Chaplain to try and “pull rank”.

With the intervention of several senior officers, the two men were escorted separately to the post commander’s office, where the post commander relieved the Chaplain on the spot, and was close to ordering him thrown in the stockade.

This is not the purpose of the military, or the military mission. And it went far beyond “leaving a Bible on a desk”. But scale and scope for such things do not matter to the military. When someone is hired to do a job, it is not persecution if they are told to not use their work time for other things, and to not distract others during their work time with other things, either.

This is not unreasonable. I can’t even count how many deeply religious people I knew in the military, but it was not a problem for all but a very few of them.

[Inyo-Mono]

One of my ancestors in the army, proselytized to a fellow soldier and converted him to Christianity. That was during the Revolutionary War.