Military Religious Freedom Foundation
Encyclopedia
The Military Religious Freedom Foundation is a watchdog / advocacy group and civil rights
Civil rights
Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from unwarranted infringement by governments and private organizations, and ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repression.Civil rights include...

 organization whose stated goals are to ensure that members of the United States Armed Forces
United States armed forces
The United States Armed Forces are the military forces of the United States. They consist of the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, and Coast Guard.The United States has a strong tradition of civilian control of the military...

 receive the Constitutional
United States Constitution
The Constitution of the United States is the supreme law of the United States of America. It is the framework for the organization of the United States government and for the relationship of the federal government with the states, citizens, and all people within the United States.The first three...

 guarantee of religious freedom
Freedom of religion
Freedom of religion is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or community, in public or private, to manifest religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, and observance; the concept is generally recognized also to include the freedom to change religion or not to follow any...

 to which they are entitled by virtue of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment
Establishment Clause of the First Amendment
The Establishment Clause is the first of several pronouncements in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, stating, Together with the Free Exercise Clause The Establishment Clause is the first of several pronouncements in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution,...

.

Background

The organization was founded by Michael Weinstein in 2005 for the purpose of opposing the spread of alleged religious intimidation by evangelical Christians in positions of power within the US military. Weinstein experienced discrimination due to his Jewish faith while a cadet at the United States Air Force Academy
United States Air Force Academy
The United States Air Force Academy is an accredited college for the undergraduate education of officer candidates for the United States Air Force. Its campus is located immediately north of Colorado Springs in El Paso County, Colorado, United States...

. After his sons experienced discrimination as well while at the Academy, Weinstein founded the MRFF in 2005.

Weinstein describes the group's target as "a small subset of evangelical Christianity that's called premilliennial
Premillennialism
Premillennialism in Christian end-times theology is the belief that Jesus will literally and physically be on the earth for his millennial reign, at his second coming. The doctrine is called premillennialism because it holds that Jesus’ physical return to earth will occur prior to the inauguration...

, dispensational
Dispensationalism
Dispensationalism is a nineteenth-century evangelical development based on a futurist biblical hermeneutic that sees a series of chronologically successive "dispensations" or periods in history in which God relates to human beings in different ways under different Biblical covenants.As a system,...

, reconstructionist
Christian Reconstructionism
Christian Reconstructionism is a religious and theological movement within Evangelical Christianity that calls for Christians to put their faith into action in all areas of life, within the private sphere of life and the public and political sphere as well...

, dominionist
Dominionism
Dominionism is a term used to describe politically active conservative Christians that are believed to conspire and seek influence or control over secular civil government through political action, especially in the United States, with the goal of either a nation governed by Christians, or a nation...

, fundamentalist
Fundamentalist Christianity
Christian fundamentalism, also known as Fundamentalist Christianity, or Fundamentalism, arose out of British and American Protestantism in the late 19th century and early 20th century among evangelical Christians...

, evangelical Christianity or just Dominionist Christianity
Dominionism
Dominionism is a term used to describe politically active conservative Christians that are believed to conspire and seek influence or control over secular civil government through political action, especially in the United States, with the goal of either a nation governed by Christians, or a nation...

." The group is asking the United States Congress
United States Congress
The United States Congress is the bicameral legislature of the federal government of the United States, consisting of the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Congress meets in the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C....

 to hold oversight hearings regarding what it alleges is the Defense Department's failure to abide by the Constitutionally mandated separation of Church and State
Separation of church and state in the United States
The phrase "separation of church and state" , attributed to Thomas Jefferson and others, and since quoted by the Supreme Court of the United States, expresses an understanding of the intent and function of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States...

.

From its inception, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation has advocated for and assisted thousands of active duty U.S. servicemen/women and veterans who have contacted the MRFF regarding alleged religious discrimination, harassment and aggressive proselytizing by Evangelical or Fundamentalist Christians. The MRFF reports that more than 90% of the servicemen/women and veterans who contact the MRFF with complaints are Christians.

The MRFF was nominated for Nobel Peace Prize
Nobel Peace Prize
The Nobel Peace Prize is one of the five Nobel Prizes bequeathed by the Swedish industrialist and inventor Alfred Nobel.-Background:According to Nobel's will, the Peace Prize shall be awarded to the person who...

s in 2010, 2011 and 2012.

Mission Statement

According to its website, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation's mission is to ensure that:
  • No religion or religious philosophy may be advanced by the United States Armed Forces over any other religion or religious philosophy.

  • No member of the United States Armed Forces may be compelled in any way to conform to a particular religion or religious philosophy.

  • No member of the United States Armed Forces may be compelled in any way to witness or engage in any religious exercise.

  • No member of the military may be compelled to curtail – except in the most limited of military circumstances and when it directly impacts military discipline, morale and the successful completion of a specific military goal – the free exercise of their religious practices or beliefs.

  • Students at United States military academies are entitled to the same Constitutional rights pertaining to religious freedoms and the free exercise of those freedoms to which all other members of the United States Armed Forces military are entitled.

  • No member of the military may be compelled to endure unwanted religious proselytization, evangelization or persuasion of any sort in a military setting and/or by a military superior or civilian employee of the military.

  • The full exercise of religious freedom includes the right not to subscribe to any particular religion or religious philosophy. The so-called “unchurched” cede no Constitutional rights by want of their separation from organized faith.

  • It is the responsibility of the military hierarchy to ensure that the free exercise of religious freedoms of all enlisted personnel are respected and served.

  • All military personnel have the right to employ appropriate judicial means to protect their religious rights.


Notable cases

MRFF has filed multiple federal lawsuits against the Pentagon and the Secretary of Defense, with military members as co-plaintiffs, asserting a pattern and practice of constitutionally impermissible promotions of religion by the military. Additionally, MRFF president and founder Mikey Weinstein has spoken to students at a number of the U.S. military's educational institutions: The U.S. Air Force Academy's National Character and Leadership Symposium, the Air Force JAG School, the Air Command and Staff College, and the US Army War College.

Notable among those who have been represented by the MRFF is Jewish veteran Akiva David Miller, who alleged that he suffered religious discrimination and aggressive Christian proselyzation while receiving care at the Iowa City V.A. Medical Center beginning in 2005.

2006 saw the exposure by the MRFF of a promotional video by Christian Embassy
Christian Embassy
The Christian Embassy is an evangelical organization affiliated with Campus Crusade for Christ. Like its parent organization, Christian Embassy describes itself as non-political and interdenominational.-Mission statement:...

 (an offshoot of the evangelical Campus Crusade for Christ
Campus Crusade for Christ
Campus Crusade for Christ is an interdenominational Christian organization that promotes evangelism and discipleship in more than 190 countries...

) which was filmed in the Pentagon
Pentagon
In geometry, a pentagon is any five-sided polygon. A pentagon may be simple or self-intersecting. The sum of the internal angles in a simple pentagon is 540°. A pentagram is an example of a self-intersecting pentagon.- Regular pentagons :In a regular pentagon, all sides are equal in length and...

 and featured uniformed Generals. Following a MRFF-requested internal investigation carried out by the Department of Defense
United States Department of Defense
The United States Department of Defense is the U.S...

 Office of the Inspector General
Office of the Inspector General
Office of the Inspector General is an office that is part of Cabinet departments and independent agencies of the United States federal government as well as some state and local governments. Each office includes an Inspector General and employees charged with identifying, auditing, and...

, the report on "Alleged Misconduct by DoD Officials Concerning Christian Embassy" concluded that several violations of Defense Department policy were committed during the production of the promotional video. Chiefly among the violations was the obtaining of permission to film the video at the Pentagon by means of a willful "[mischaracterization] of the purpose and proponent of the video" by Chaplain (Colonel) Ralph G. Benson, as well as the acts of officers who used their name, rank, and uniforms as a means towards endorsing the Christian Embassy proselytizing message.

In September 2008, the California Council of Churches IMPACT (CCCI), a public policy advocacy organization which represents numerous and diverse mainstream Protestant and Orthodox Christian communities, formally announced its endorsement of the MRFF's mission, with CCCI Board President Rev. John Freeseman stating "Our alignment with the Military Religious Freedom Foundation is on behalf of religious freedom for all people, regardless of belief or non-belief. It is not the function of the U.S. Military to proselytize our troops but to protect our constitutional freedoms."

Army Specialist Jeremy Hall is in litigation against the Department of Defense, alleging that as a self-proclaimed atheist he has suffered discrimination, harassment, and threats of violence from both his superiors and fellow soldiers while on active duty in Iraq. He was subsequently transferred by the U.S. Army back to the United States for his own safety. On October 10th, 2008, Specialist Jeremy Hall and the Military Religious Freedom Foundation filed a Notice of Voluntary Dismissal.

In February 2009, Colonel Kimberly Toney, commander of the USAF's 501st Combat Support Wing
501st Combat Support Wing
The 501st Combat Support Wing is a United States Air Forces in Europe unit based at RAF Alconbury, England. The wing traces its history to a World War II bombardment group which served in the Pacific, mostly bombing mainland Japan, in 1944–45...

 sent an email with a link to a religious-themed web video about the life story of Nick Vujicic
Nick Vujicic
Nicholas James Vujicic is an Australian preacher and motivational speaker. Born with Tetra-amelia syndrome, a rare disorder characterized by the absence of all four limbs...

. The sponsoring site of the video, 4marks.com, is a Catholic
Catholic
The word catholic comes from the Greek phrase , meaning "on the whole," "according to the whole" or "in general", and is a combination of the Greek words meaning "about" and meaning "whole"...

 website. USAF service members who looked at the site after following the emailed link complained that the site contained criticism of President Barack Obama
Barack Obama
Barack Hussein Obama II is the 44th and current President of the United States. He is the first African American to hold the office. Obama previously served as a United States Senator from Illinois, from January 2005 until he resigned following his victory in the 2008 presidential election.Born in...

. Weinstein said that the incident represented a textbook case of improper religious influence and added, "There’s a pervasive pattern of constitutional abuse when you have a wing commander who sends out a direct, proselytizing e-mail with a link to a Web site that slanders the president of the United States."

Following the Fort Hood shooting
Fort Hood shooting
The Fort Hood shooting was a mass shooting that took place on November 5, 2009, at Fort Hood, the most populous U.S. military installation in the world, located just outside Killeen, Texas. In the course of the shooting, a single gunman killed 13 people and wounded 29 others...

 in November 2009, the Christian right American Family Association
American Family Association
The American Family Association is a 501 non-profit organization that promotes conservative Christian values, such as opposition to same-sex marriage, pornography, and abortion, as well as other public policy goals such as deregulation of the oil industry and lobbying against the Employee Free...

 issued the statement "No More Muslims in the US Military", which explicitly stated that Muslim military enlistees be barred from military service in the United States armed forces on the grounds that "...just as Christians are taught to imitate the life of Christ, so Muslims are taught to imitate the Prophet in all things. Yesterday, Nidal Malik Hasan
Nidal Malik Hasan
Nidal Malik Hasan, USA is a United States Army officer and sole suspect in the November 5, 2009, Fort Hood shooting, which occurred less than a month before he would have deployed to Afghanistan....

 was simply being a good Muslim." MRFF founder and president Mikey Weinstein 's denunciation of the AFA position as "bigoted, racist, [and] vile" was featured prominently by Hatewatch, the official blog of the Southern Poverty Law Center
Southern Poverty Law Center
The Southern Poverty Law Center is an American nonprofit civil rights organization noted for its legal victories against white supremacist groups; legal representation for victims of hate groups; monitoring of alleged hate groups, militias and extremist organizations; and educational programs that...

 civil rights organization .

The MRFF Senior Research Director Chris Rodda was invited to contribute an essay on religious expression in the military to the discursive volume "Attitudes Aren't Free: Thinking Deeply About Diversity in the US Armed Forces" published by Air University Press, the publishing arm of the Air University at Maxwell Air Force Base
Maxwell Air Force Base
Maxwell Air Force Base , officially known as Maxwell-Gunter Air Force Base, is a United States Air Force installation under the Air Education and Training Command . The installation is located in Montgomery, Alabama, US. It was named in honor of Second Lieutenant William C...

 .

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation initiated the January 2010 media coverage of the Jesus rifles controversy, when rifle scopes manufactured by US government contractor Trijicon
Trijicon
Trijicon ) is an American company, based in Wixom, Michigan, that manufactures and distributes optical sighting devices for firearms, including pistols, rifles, and shotguns....

 were discovered to be engraved with scripture citations. Following the breaking of this story by ABC News
ABC News
ABC News is the news gathering and broadcasting division of American broadcast television network ABC, a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company...

, the outrage provoked by this discovery was voiced by a diverse range of religious and political constituencies and within a week of the ABC News report, Trijicon announced that it would halt the engraving of the biblical inscriptions on all products sold to the government .

In April 2010, the Foundation successfully demanded the cancellation of evangelical preacher Franklin Graham’s scheduled participation in the Pentagon’s National Day of Prayer
National Day of Prayer
The National Day of Prayer is an annual day of observance held on the first Thursday of May, designated by the United States Congress, when people are asked "to turn to God in prayer and meditation". Each year, the president signs a proclamation, encouraging all Americans to pray on this day...

 event, thereby severing the affiliation between the Pentagon event and Shirley Dobson's (wife of Focus on the Family
Focus on the Family
Focus on the Family is an American evangelical Christian tax-exempt non-profit organization founded in 1977 by psychologist James Dobson, and is based in Colorado Springs, Colorado. Focus on the Family is one of a number of evangelical parachurch organizations that rose to prominence in the 1980s...

 founder James Dobson
James Dobson
James Clayton "Jim" Dobson, Jr. is an American evangelical Christian author, psychologist, and founder in 1977 of Focus on the Family , which he led until 2003. In the 1980s he was ranked as one of the most influential spokesman for conservative social positions in American public life...

) exclusively evangelical conservative Christian National Day of Prayer Task Force
National Day of Prayer Task Force
The National Day of Prayer Task Force is an American evangelical conservative Christian non-profit organization which organizes, coordinates, and presides over Evangelical Christian religious observances each year on the National Day of Prayer....

, and making this event inclusive of all religions.

The MRFF's leading role in the application of pressure on United States Air Force Academy
United States Air Force Academy
The United States Air Force Academy is an accredited college for the undergraduate education of officer candidates for the United States Air Force. Its campus is located immediately north of Colorado Springs in El Paso County, Colorado, United States...

 Superintendent Lt Gen Michael C. Gould
Michael C. Gould
Lieutenant General Michael C. Gould is the 18th Superintendent of the United States Air Force Academy. He assumed command on June 9, 2009. Prior to assuming the position of superintendent, he was Director of Operations and Plans, U.S. Transportation Command, Scott Air Force Base, Ill...

 throughout 2010 resulted in the release of the bi-annual Academy Climate Survey's results. The survey revealed that 41% of non-Christian cadets and 19% of all cadets were subjected to unwanted proselytizing .

In January 2011, the MRFF demanded that the US Army cease and desist their policy of administering a “spiritual fitness” component to the mandatory Comprehensive Soldier Fitness
Comprehensive Soldier Fitness
The Comprehensive Soldier Fitness is a program of the United States Army that was launched in October 2009. With the long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, many soldiers experienced financial, marital and other personal problems, presumably due to serial deployments and spending significant periods of...

 program test, whereby soldiers’ combat-readiness and ability are judged on the basis of their religiosity. MRFF also utilized the media to bring criticism to bear on the fact that evangelical Christian rock
Christian rock
Christian rock is a form of rock music played by individuals and bands whose members are Christians and who often focus the lyrics on matters concerned with the Christian faith. The extent to which their lyrics are explicitly Christian varies between bands...

 concerts were being organized and funded under the auspices of the Spiritual Fitness program .

Military Religious Freedom Foundation litigation sparked by a prayer luncheon hosted by the US Air Force Academy's chaplain service (which featured retired Marine Corps Lt. and fundamentalist Christian Clebe McClary as keynote speaker) was reviewed by a federal judge on February 2011. U.S. District Judge Christine Arguello's ruling stated that the plaintiffs (which included both the Foundation and USAFA professor David Mullin) lacked sufficient legal standing to challenge the event.

A significant MRFF victory arrived in 2011 when the US Air Force, in response to the pressure caused by the release of internal training material via a Freedom of Information Act request, revised the ethical indocrination course material to which nuclear missile launch officers were exposed as a standard component of their training. The course has been defended by a spokesman for the Air Force's Air Training and Education Command as a means towards "[helping] folks understand why we’re doing what we’re doing. In the missile launch industry, it takes a certain mindset to be able to walk in the door and say, yes, I can do that” Included in the a course is the PowerPoint presentation Who Are You When No One Is Looking: Five Ethical Principles For Service To The Air Force, a presentation which reveals a Christian militarist perspective and which heavily quotes Judeo-Christian
Judeo-Christian
Judeo-Christian is a term used in the United States since the 1940s to refer to standards of ethics said to be held in common by Judaism and Christianity, for example the Ten Commandments...

 scripture and contains a synopsis of the Just War Theory of St. Augustine of Hippo. Controversially, the PowerPoint also contains a slide excerpting the words of former Nazi Party member, SS Sturmbannführer
Sturmbannführer
Sturmbannführer was a paramilitary rank of the Nazi Party equivalent to major, used both in the Sturmabteilung and the Schutzstaffel...

, aerospace engineer and rocket scientist Wernher Von Braun
Wernher von Braun
Wernher Magnus Maximilian, Freiherr von Braun was a German rocket scientist, aerospace engineer, space architect, and one of the leading figures in the development of rocket technology in Nazi Germany during World War II and in the United States after that.A former member of the Nazi party,...

, who is quoted as stating that "We wanted to see the world spared another conflict such as Germany had just been through and we felt that only by surrendering such a weapon (the ballistic missile
Ballistic missile
A ballistic missile is a missile that follows a sub-orbital ballistic flightpath with the objective of delivering one or more warheads to a predetermined target. The missile is only guided during the relatively brief initial powered phase of flight and its course is subsequently governed by the...

) to people who are guided by the Bible could such an assurance to the world best be secured." in reference to his 1945 surrender to American occupation forces and subsequent recruitment by the United States Office of Strategic Services
Office of Strategic Services
The Office of Strategic Services was a United States intelligence agency formed during World War II. It was the wartime intelligence agency, and it was a predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency...

 via Operation Paperclip
Operation Paperclip
Operation Paperclip was the Office of Strategic Services program used to recruit the scientists of Nazi Germany for employment by the United States in the aftermath of World War II...

  . MRFF client and missile officer training attendee Damon Bosetti recounted to the media that he and his Air Force colleagues would refer to the religious portion of the ethics training course as the "Jesus loves nukes speech". In September 2011, Senator John Cornyn
John Cornyn
John Cornyn, III is the junior United States Senator for Texas, serving since 2003. He is a member of the Republican Party. He was elected Chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee for the 111th U.S. Congress....

encouraged the Air Force to resume the class.

External links

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