Donald Trump’s election has led to such a steep rise in fundamentalist Christian evangelizing and religious bigotry in the U.S. armed forces that the matter is reaching the level of a “national security threat,” according to information shared exclusively with Newsweek by an organization that represents and advocates for secular and minority religious views in the military.
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The number of complaints from servicemen and -women in the Army, Air Force, Marines and other service branches to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation has doubled in number since November 2016, according to lawyer Michael “Mikey” Weinstein, a former Air Force officer who founded the organization.
Many of the recent charges are coming from members of minority religions, including Roman Catholics, Jews and Muslims, and from atheists. Among the complaints: military family and marital therapy programs are being infused with Protestant Christianity, which would go against the U.S. Constitution; open anti-Semitism; anti-LGBT statements, posters, symbols and bullying; openly anti-Muslim teachers and Islamophobic attacks; a rise in on-base evangelizing; and increased pressure on recruits or […]
Some years ago, while assisting in classes that taught non violent communication in a woman’s maximum security prison near Charlottesville, I noticed the same alarming trend. The majority of the guards, the people coming in to teach were fundamentalists. At its roots, fundamentalism manipulates thru guilt. It feeds on the wounded, the less educated, women, children, the disabled, etc. It is a power over rather than power with and is driven by fear and anger. As a woman and a single mom, i find it incredibly scary. My father was Catholic, my mother was Lutheran. Each Sunday I was awakened at five am, dressed and taken to 6 am Mass by my father who demanded I kept this our secret. When he returned was instructed to put my pajamas back on; to feign sleep and stay mute. When I was 7, my Catholic cousins locked me in a room with them where they painted images of my burning in hell as I was a bastard whose parents weren’t married in the church.
As an adult visiting a long time African American friend, a woman who’d moved from LA to Selma to help take of her father, I witnessed the local Protestant Church turn on her. All the people she’d believed were Christians and friends started sending hate letters after she’d asked them change the annual Xmas party venues from a no blacks admitted country club to a neutral site.
I do have good compassionate friends who belong to varied types of Christian churches. It’s fundamentalist anything that I can’t condone. I hope to live to see more groups, alliances, schools, and communities that engage and nourish each other thru life affirming beliefs that support power with instead of power over.
Wow, incredibly important and significant article here, Stephen; thank you as always, for yet another subject I had not given much thought to, or had time to fully research.
In an odd I way I see parallels here with the underhanded and insidious/intentional way rightists turned gerrymandering into a weaponized tactic to basically guarantee wins across a majority of states in the last few mid-term elections.
I find it telling and ironic the loudest to scream hysterically about the Constitution and our country’s values, are usually the very same ones who are chopping away at the pillars that so many have sacrificed for in our history to build on solid ground. There is always room for improvement, yes; but these people are hypocrites at best, and morally deranged at worst.