A New Film: Chaplains in the Military.

Chris Rodda at Talk 2 Action writes about a new film that looks at religion in the military. You can learn more about the film here.

Here's an excerpt of Rodda's post:

While MRFF does receive a good number of complaints about chaplains, it is actually far more common in complaints about the pushing of religious beliefs on the troops for the pushing to be coming from a superior officer or senior NCO than from a chaplain. InChaplains Under Fire, one of the chaplains interviewed describes an incident that is very typical of the kind of incidents reported to MRFF. The chaplain recounts what he walked into when he was called in after a member of a Marine unit committed suicide and a senior NCO's pronouncement of his theological opinion had made the situation even more upsetting for the other members of the unit.

"But the evening after, there was a senior staff NCO who talked with the guys, and he stated, 'We've lost one of our Marines, but we need to go forward with the mission that we have, even though right now that individual is burning in hell.' And luckily I came in afterwards, dealing with especially those who were immediately close with him."

Chaplains objecting to this sort of behavior by NCOs, officers, and even other chaplains, is not uncommon. Among the thousands of service members who have contacted MRFF, ninety-six percent of whom are Christians themselves, have been a number of Christian chaplains. These are the chaplains who understand what Billy Baugham and Arthur Schulcz, who, in Chaplains Under Fire, talk about the infringement on the First Amendment's free speech rights of the chaplains, just don't get. Chaplains are there to serve the troops and ensure their First Amendment rights, not the other way around. Chaplains simply do not have the right to push their beliefs on the troops, nor should a chaplain encourage their congregation to push their beliefs on their fellow troops, as one chaplain is shown doing inChaplains Under Fire. While chaplains certainly do have the same right as a civilian minister to preach the beliefs of their religion in the setting of an actual worship service, statements like the following from a chaplain in a worship service are troublesome.

"How many of you on a day to day basis go up to your neighbors in your workspace and witness to them about Christ? Why not? It's risky, isn't it? Somebody might look at you, and they might label you something, right? Two words. He's a Jesus freak. That's a little bit scary. I'm not saying that God's calling you to go to Baghdad and preach the word there, because, first of all, I don't think you're gonna get clearance to get off the base to do that. But God's got plenty of missions for you every single day right here on base."

On the one hand, evangelizing is part of the Christian faith, so the chaplain has the right to talk about it in a worship service, but on the other hand, the chaplain's military congregation does not have the right do what the chaplain is encouraging them to do -- evangelize in the military workplace.

More Weapons for the Crusade.

From lezgetreal a horrifying story about the inclusion of biblical citations on munitions manufactured for the US army.

Mikey Weinstein, the slightly crazy, ever-entertaining, absolutely driven founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation is quoted in the article.

01/18/09-by Bridgette P. LaVictoire
Coded Biblical messages in our military’s rifle sights? This might seem like an oddity, but ABC News has discovered that one of the prime manufacturers of military rifle sights, Trijicon, has placed coded references to Jesus and other Biblical passages on rifle sights sold to the Marines. Often the messages are cryptic and would require one to either be well versed in the Bible or be able to look them up. Often they are written in a manner such as “2COR4:6″ so that they may seem innocuous. Instead, this one is a reference to Second Corinthians 4:6 and that passage is specifically “For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” Another one is JN8:12 or John 8:12 and reads “Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” Other citations come from Revelations, Matthew, and other parts of the Bible.

Such a practice is not denied by Trijicon. In fact, their director of sales and marketing, Tom Munson, told ABC news that the passages had always been there, and blamed the issue being raised on a group who were “not Christian.” Of course, the fact that these sites are potentially being used by soldiers on the ground in Afghanistan and Iraq never seemed to fit into their equation. Many Muslims still vilify the West for the atrocities committed by the Crusaders in the Middle Ages, and the images of Americans as Crusaders come to take Muslim lands has been a prime selling point for the bin Laden corruption of jihad.

The practice of inscribing these sites began under Trijicon’s founder Glyn Bindon, a devout Christian from South Africa. Bindon died in a plane crash in 2003. The company is centered in Wixom, Michigan. According to Trijicon’s website “Guided by our values, we endeavor to have our products used wherever precision aiming solutions are required to protect individual freedom. We believe that America is great when its people are good. This goodness has been based on Biblical standards throughout our history, and we will strive to follow those morals.”

The coded references are on the military’s Advanced Combat Optical Guides or ACOG’s, and that the military was not aware of the problem until it was brought to their attention recently. The references are in the same font and size as the sights’ serial numbers.

According to Michael Weinstein of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, “It’s wrong, it violates the Constitution, it violates a number of federal laws.” Trijicon, of course, claims that they are not violating the law. The MRFF is dedicated to preserving the separation of Church and State within the military. According to Weinstein, a former soldier and current attorney, people have complained about commanders commenting that these guns have been “spiritually transformed [into] firearm[s] of Jesus Christ.” He is also on record as saying “this is probably the best example of violation of the separation of church and state in this country. It’s literally pushing fundamentalist Christianity at the point of a gun against the people that we’re fighting. We’re emboldening an enemy.”

Whether or not the inscriptions violate the Constitution or the law, the wisdom of including them is highly suspect. “It allows the Mujahedeen, the Taliban, al Qaeda and the insurrectionists and jihadists to claim they’re being shot by Jesus rifles,” according to Weinstein. It also means that the hostile environment that created people such as Major Hasan, the Ft. Hood shooter, is reinforced within the very weapons that these men and women are being asked to carry into combat. Additionally, it does give a major propaganda weapon for the Taliban and Al-Qaida to use to claim that the United States is at war with Islam rather than being at war with just the extremists.

Trijicon received around $100 million in contracts in 2008, and in 2009, got an additional $31 million for a new weapons sight.

Female Soldiers Not Protected by The Constitution They Defend.

The excellent Kathryn Joyce has an article at Religion Dispatches today about military women and abortion. Read the whole thing here. And a clip:

Starting in 1979, Defense Department appropriations bills have been used to restrict or prohibit the use of federal funds—meaning all military health coverage—for abortion services at overseas military hospitals. Although President Clinton reversed the ban shortly after taking office, anti-abortion forces in Congress made the ban permanent in 1995, preventing future presidents from altering the rules by executive order.

What began as a funding ban, compelling women to pay for abortion services themselves, was later extended into a more comprehensive embargo on performing abortions in any military hospital except in cases of rape, incest or threat to the life of the mother. Rep. Susan Davis (D-CA), argued that “servicewomen do not receive the protection of the Constitution they defend,” and tried unsuccessfully in 2005 and 2006 to repeal the ban—or at least to bring it in line with current Medicaid standards by allowing abortion funding in rape and incest cases. Opponents like Kansas Republican Jim Ryan postured in response claiming that, “allowing self-funded abortions would simply turn our military hospitals overseas into abortion clinics.”

In fact, before Roe v. Wade the situation was reversed: servicewomen were pressured into having abortions due to a military policy of automatically discharging pregnant women. That policy ended with Crawford v. Cushman, a 1976 U.S. Appeals Court case ruling that the discharge rule violated due process.

The result of the ban is that active-duty servicewomen and military dependents are faced with a number of equally unappealing options: venture out to local hospitals while overseas, to medical facilities that may have different standards of care, where medical workers may not speak English, or where there is animosity towards the U.S.; seek a back alley abortion in a country that prohibit abortion; or undertake an arduous process of obtaining permission from commanding officers to fly home or to a neighboring country, find space on a military transport or pay for a commercial flight home—a prohibitive cost for lower-ranking servicewomen—and return to their units aware that their superiors know intimate details about their medical records.