US Air Force Prepares to Cry Havoc and Let Slip the Dogs of Fundamentalist Christians Proselytizing

[unhappycamper]

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/25186-the-usaf-prepares-to-cry-havoc-and-let-slip-the-dogs-of-fundamentalist-christian-proselytizing-war

"Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war." William Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar", Act 3, Scene 1, Line 273

US Air Force Prepares to Cry Havoc and Let Slip the Dogs of Fundamentalist Christians Proselytizing War
Saturday, 26 July 2014 13:04 By Mikey Weinstein, AlterNet | Op-Ed

"Justice delayed is justice denied"; these salient words apply in full to the conditions and prospects of religious liberty in the U.S. Air Force (USAF). What lies at stake is the alteration (and possible evisceration) of one of the only protective barriers restraining the brutal spread of ruthless fundamentalist Christianity spread throughout the U.S. military: Air Force Instruction 1-1, specifically Section 2 .11 (AFI 1-1).

Would the United States Air Force sooner throw the basic religious rights of Air Force personnel into a stinking garbage heap than "court controversy" with Tea Party bigots and religious extremists in the United States Congress and their incestuous gangs of fundamentalist Christian, parasitic parachurch organizations like the Family Research Council (FRC), the American Family Association (AFA), Focus on the Family (FOF) and the Officers Christian Fellowship (OCF) to name only a few of these rapaciously religious extremist entities?

Sadly, telltale signs of dubious, constitutional queasiness and pathetically faux ambivalence by Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark A. Welsh III have clearly revealed that this may well be the case. The floodgates of state-sponsored evangelizing/proselytizing and fundamentalist Christian supremacy, exceptionalism and primacy by newly emboldened "Hobby Lobby"-style Christian fundamentalists within the Air Force are set to literally fly open, with devastating effect.

It should be a no-brainer: AFI 1-1 and similar protections and regulations on religious expressions should, if anything, be strengthened – not deliberately and so shamefully diluted. Instead, the changes being considered by the USAF, as it craters and cowers before these fundamentalist Christian lawmakers and their private sector parachurch persecutors, will authorize "witnessing," preaching and proselytizing on the tax-payer's dime provided the "tormentor" airman is projecting his/her "sincerely held" religious beliefs upon the "tormentee" airman. Prohibition on such "testifying" would ONLY apply if these expressions are determined to "have a real, not hypothetical adverse impact" (according, of course, to the subjective, arbitrary and clearly conflicted determination of Air Force leadership).

[COLGATE4]

1. Michey Weinstein has been fighting against this for

years now. His organization deserves support.

[longship]

2. The Air Force Academy is in the shadow of Focus on the Family.

You know, that looney toon, theocratic outfit.

I blame Reagan for this. It was under his administration that military chaplains were compressed from the multitude of different sects (IE, Congregational, Methodist, Baptist, etc.) into "Protestant". Of course, this meant, in spite of the diversity of beliefs between the sects, one could promote the most conservative of the sects if one could appoint chaplains of a specific segment of religious opinion.

That's what happened, especially at the Air Force Academy, but generally in the entire armed forces of the US. The liberal religion chaplains were blocked out.

By the way, James Madison was against chaplains in the military. Me, too. Especially when it is exploited like this.