A BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW
Whenever a virulent form of any religion has engaged the machinery of the state -– and by that, I’m talking about the armed forces, where the sticks and stones are that break our bones -- we end up with oceans and oceans of blood. And it’s happening again now.
-- Michael "Mikey" L. Weinstein, President, Military Religious Freedom Foundation
* * *
Michael "Mikey" Weinstein represents an extended family of graduates from the U.S. Air Force Academy. As his biography proudly notes: "Mikey comes from a family that has dedicated itself to the service of the United States. One indication of the family’s commitment is its multi-generational association with the nation’s military academies, in particular, the United States Air Force Academy. His father graduated from the United States Naval Academy. Mikey is a graduate of the Air Force Academy, as are his brother-in-law, eldest son and daughter-in-law. His youngest son is currently a cadet at the Air Force Academy.
"Weinstein served for ten years on active duty in the United States Air Force as a Judge Advocate, stationed at military installations in California, New Mexico, Illinois, and Washington, DC. He also served as the Air Force’s first Chief of Telecommunications and Information Systems Procurement Law."
His love of the Air Force and the military is equal to his passion for the Constitution. That is why he is now a man with a mission: to stop the growing evangelical takeover of our military, particularly at the academy level.
Weinstein founded and heads the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. Its mission is to ensure the separation of church and state in our military -- and the right of academy and military members to be free from religious coercion and harassment.
Sounds simple enough, doesn't it?
But under the Bush Administration, the phrase "Onward Christian soldiers" has been taken literally by many in the Pentagon, our military training centers, and the VA system.
Weinstein recently wrote a compelling book, With God on Our Side: One Man's War Against an Evangelical Coup in America's Military, describing the growing evangelical threat to cadets, GIs and veterans who are not fundamentalists.
We talked with Weinstein recently about the dangerous trend of our armed forces becoming shock troops for Jesus, with the missionary zeal coming from the highest levels.
* * *
BuzzFlash: Can you tell us about the personal history that you and your family have with the Air Force Academy and in the Reagan administration?
Michael L. Weinstein: Certainly. My family is a Jewish-American family, so a little bit unique in that we have three consecutive generations of military academy graduates. My youngest son was the sixth member of my family to attend the Academy, including myself. My father is an Annapolis graduate. In my immediate family, we have over 120 years of combined military service to the country, in pretty much every major combat engagement America’s been in from World War I to the current so-called global war on terror.
I am a registered Republican, and I spent over three years in the West Wing of the Reagan White House, initially working for the Office of Management and Budget. Then I moved over to become Assistant General Counsel for the entire White House Office of Administration. There, I was named the committee management officer for the Iran-Contra investigation. The family has a very, very strong military history, and obviously three generations of military academy graduates.
BuzzFlash: Are you an attorney, too?
Michael L. Weinstein: Yes. And I guess for the last 41 months, I’ve become this thing called a civil libertarian/political activist.
BuzzFlash: You wrote a book which we are offering on BuzzFlash.com as a premium. It’s called With God on Our Side: One Man’s War Against an Evangelical Coup in America’s Military. Clearly, you speak from first-hand experience. Why did you write the book?
Michael L. Weinstein: As the new governor in the State of New York, Elliot Spitzer, has stated, you cannot change the world by whispering. The book was an attempt at a private scream.
What I found at the Air Force Academy was nothing short of something that could destroy the republic. An essentially evangelical, fundamentalist, Christian perspective was being imposed on those that were not evangelical fundamentalist Christians, in complete and total disregard of the First Amendment and the Bill of Rights, where the separation of church and state clearly resides.
I know that the religious right fundamentalists believe that separation of church and state is just a myth, like Paul Bunyan or Bigfoot. But we also can go to the body of the Constitution, to Clause 3, Article 6, where the Founding Fathers were so prescient. The framers were careful to make sure that we didn’t have what had befallen Europe, where men of the cloth had been men in political power. Clause 3, Article 6, basically says we’ll never have a religion test for any position in the federal government.
But I guess that didn’t mean the Air Force Academy, or the Air Force, the Marine Corps, Navy, or Army. Indeed, they have prepared Geiger counters that they hold up to all of their members, up and down the chain of command.
We are not at war at all with Christianity, or even Evangelical Christianity. Half of my own family is Christian. We are, however, at war with a small subset of Evangelical Christians who go by the long technical name -- premillenial, dispensational, reconstructionist, dominionist, evangelical, fundamentalist Christians.
The leaders are well known: Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, James Dobson, John Hagee, and the list used to include Ted Haggard, before he had some career issues. Basically, they believe that it’s their inalienable right to push this weaponized gospel of Jesus Christ. Either you’re with us, or if you’re not with us, we or our version of Jesus will eradicate you.
BuzzFlash: How did you become aware of what’s happening there now?
Michael L. Weinstein: I really have to thank Mel Gibson. When Mel came out with his wonderful movie in February of 2004 -- I forget the name -– it was called the "Jesus Chainsaw Massacre," or "Freddie Versus Jesus" -– when that movie came out ["The Passion of the Christ"], I was not contacted by my three children who were at that time at the Academy. I was contacted by non-evangelical Christian members of the faculty. They knew that my wife and I had given a lot of blood, sweat, tears, money, and effort over the years, because we loved the Academy. They wanted to know if I was aware of just how profoundly, how comprehensively, the Academy as an entity was coming down on the cadets and staff to go see this movie.
I was stunned. For three straight days, the cadets were marched into Mitchell Hall, this huge, two-acre dining facility, and General Myers was exhorting them, pressuring them, to go see this thing.
No comments:
Post a Comment