by:
Bob Unruh
Given the current threats under a progressive administration in
Washington on religious rights, especially for members of military, it
took “real courage” for an admiral simply to say he gave a Bible to a
hurting soldier and would do so again.
That’s according to Gen. Jerry Boykin, executive vice president of the
Family Research Council, which was the target of a violent attack by a leftist last year.
Boykin was citing
the bold statement by Coast Guard Rear Admiral William D. Lee at Thursday’s National Day of Prayer event in Washington.
Lee recalled a recent meeting with a young soldier who had tried to kill himself but survived the gunshot to his own head.
Lee said he knew he needed to respond, and he gave the soldier a Bible.
“The lawyers tell me that if I do that, I’m crossing the line. I’m so
glad I’ve crossed that line so many times,” said the admiral, who
received a standing ovation.
That statement, Boykin said, is worthy of admiration.
“Rear Admiral William Lee demonstrated real courage yesterday when he
spoke at the National Day of Prayer event in the nation’s capital,”
Boykin confirmed.
“I have seen courage manifested in many ways, including the ultimate
sacrifice of one’s life for one’s country, but this type of moral
courage is becoming more and more rare,” Boykin said. “This is
especially true as we live in an environment increasingly hostile toward
religious expression.
“The kind of courage that the admiral displayed yesterday is a
refreshing reminder that there are still courageous men in uniform. Rear
Admiral Lee spoke of rules in the uniformed services that prevent
Christians from sharing their faith and he pledged to continue to be
open about his faith regardless of the pressure not to. He obviously
knows that he has a constitutional right to share his faith unimpeded.
Talking about Jesus Christ with interested friends and colleagues should
be as natural and protected as talking about sports teams and the
weather. That it is now under threat is simply un-American.”
Boykin said, “You want a real hero? Just look no further than Rear Admiral William D Lee.”
Lee had pledged not to back down from “my right under the Constitution to tell a young man that there is hope.”
And he warned that military members need to be prepared for “the storm that I am almost certain will come.”
“Hopefully, the skeptics who have offered opinions about the extent of hostility toward Christians in our uniformed services will wake up
and take notice of what the admiral said yesterday,” Boykin said. “He is
giving you the truth and it is hard truth that must cause concern among
all Americans and not just Christians.”
The speech followed a week of controversy after the
Washington Post reported
last Friday that anti-Christian activists had met with senior Pentagon
officials to press for the court-martial of Christians in the military
who “promote their personal religious beliefs to their subordinates or
to extend preferential treatment for any religion.”
The Post said the activists were given assurances that an instruction
booklet on proselytizing would be forthcoming within the next few
weeks.
According to FRC, since then, the Pentagon has issued several
statements, but none has explained what assurances were offered in the
meeting and if none were offered, why the Pentagon has not made clear
that anti-Christian activist Mikey Weinstein has misrepresented his
relationship with the Air Force.
Since Monday evening, more than 130,000 people have signed an
FRC petition urging the Pentagon to scrub plans to censor religious beliefs.
WND reported just days ago
that the Pentagon announced military members who want to talk about
their faith with other members have every right to do so, backtracking
on a previous warning against “proselytizing,” which it said could be
subject to court-martial.
The
statement from Lt. Cmdr. Nathan Christensen said the Department of Defense “never and will never single out a particular religious group for persecution or prosecution.”
The Pentagon walked back its statement after the Alliance Defending
Freedom filed a Freedom of Information Act request for records relating
to Pentagon statements on the issue.
“Members of our military should not be denied the very freedoms they
fight to defend. Freedom of religion and speech are paramount among
those freedoms,” said ADF Legal Counsel Joseph La Rue. “We appreciate
the Pentagon’s clarification, but little or no evidence exists of
coercive proselytization in the military, so we are still troubled over
what motivated the original comments.”
The Pentagon’s Christensen said in the statement that the Department
of Defense department “makes reasonable accommodations for all religions
and celebrates the religious diversity of our service members.”
“Service members can share their faith (evangelize), but must not
force unwanted, intrusive attempts to convert others of any faith or no
faith to one’s beliefs (proselytization),” he said.
The Department of Defense, Christensen said, places “a high value on
the rights of members of the military services to observe the tenets of
their respective religions and respects (and supports by its policy) the
rights of others to their own religious beliefs, including the right to
hold no beliefs.”
He said members are free to exercise their constitutional right to
practice their religion “in a manner that is respectful of other
individuals’ rights to follow their own belief systems; and in ways that
are conducive to good order and discipline; and that do not detract
from accomplishing the military mission.”
The issue surfaced after
Weinstein met with department officials and then wrote that Christians
in the military are “monsters” who must be stopped from talking about
their faith.
Weinstein had declared: “We face incredibly well-funded gangs of
fundamentalist Christian monsters who terrorize their fellow Americans
by forcing their weaponized and twisted version of Christianity upon
their helpless subordinates in our nation’s armed forces.”
In an interview with Fox News, Weinstein said the military needs to begin prosecuting Christians who share their faith.
“Someone needs to be punished for this,” he said. “Until the Air
Force or Army or Navy or Marine Corps punishes a member of the military
for unconstitutional religious proselytizing and oppression, we will
never have the ability to stop this horrible, horrendous, dehumanizing
behavior.”
It seemed the military was listening, with a statement that,
“Religious proselytization is not permitted within the Department of
Defense.”
Weinstein,
according to Fox News’ Todd Starnes,
told officials at the meeting that U.S. troops who evangelize are
guilty of sedition and treason and should be punished, by the hundreds
if necessary.
But
leaders of the Washington-based Family Research Council said the Pentagon’s apparent intent to punish evangelism makes no sense.
“Why would military leadership be meeting with one of the most rabid
atheists in America to discuss religious freedom in the military,”
asked FRC President Tony Perkins in a Fox News interview. “That’s like consulting with China on how to improve human rights.”
Boykin said, “This has the potential to destroy military recruiting
across the services as Americans realize that their faith will be
suppressed by joining the military. Our brave troops deserve better. If
chaplains and other personnel are censored from offering the full solace
of the Gospel, there is no religious freedom in the military.”
Ron Crews of the Chaplain Alliance for Religious Liberty told
Starnes: “Saying that a service member cannot speak of his faith is like
telling a service member he cannot talk about his spouse or children. I
do not think the Air Force wants to ban personnel from protected
religious speech.”
However, Weinstein told the Washington Post that such conversation is a national security threat and “sedition and treason.”
Ken Klukowski, a senior fellow for religious liberty at FRC, noted
that Weinstein cites Focus on the Family founder James Dobson as
“illustrating the extremist, militant nature of these virulently
homophobic organizations’ rhetorically charged propaganda.”
Weinstein concludes: “Let’s call these ignoble actions what they are: the senseless and cowardly squallings of human monsters.”
Kulkowski pointed out that Weinstein endorses the Southern Poverty
Law Center, which publishes a list of “hate groups” that lump together
Christian organizations such as FRC with the Ku Klux Klan.
As WND reported, the man
who shot a security guard at FRC headquarters last August, Floyd Lee
Corkins II, confessed that he targeted FRC because of information
provided by SPLC.
Asked by the FBI why he picked FRC to attack, Corkins stated, “It was
a, uh, Southern Poverty Law, lists, uh, anti-gay groups. I found them
online. I did a little bit of research, went to the website, stuff like
that.”
FRC said that when Corkins later pleaded guilty to a charge of
domestic terrorism, the SPLC “was connected in federal court in this
first domestic terrorism conviction in Washington, D.C., under the post
9/11 law.”
SPLC has refused FRC’s demand to remove the Christian organization from the hate list.
In an FBI interview, Corkins confessed he wanted to “kill as many people as I could.”
