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Christian Proselytization Charged At Ohio's Wright Patterson Air Force Base

By Howard M. Friedman

This week's Dayton (OH) Jewish Observer carries a story on Christian proselytizing in the military at Fairborn, Ohio's Wright Patterson Air Force Base. Mikey Weinstein, president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, says he has received more than 100 complaints about activities on the base. In July 2006, a former military contractor charged that staff meetings were opened and closed by Christian prayer, and military trainees were evaluated on whether they enthusiastically participated. Trainees who did not attend Christian prayer services on Sunday received unpleasant alternative assignments. Senior officers, the contractor charged, prayed as an aid in making decisions, and many saw the Iraq war as being religiously motivated. Wright Patterson's public relations office said that while the Air Force is committed to the prohibition on establishment of religion, "consistent with the Free Exercise Clause of the Constitution, Air Force members and employees may freely exercise their own religions, to include participating in worship, prayer, study and voluntary discussions of religion so long as it is reasonably clear they are acting in their personal, not official, capacity."

Wright Patterson is the home of the U.S. Air Force National Museum. Among the military displays in the museum is a Holocaust exhibit designed to show that the U.S. goes to war to defeat tyranny.

Full post as published by Religion Clause on July 17, 2008 (boomark / email).