The U.S. Navy is investigating complaints lodged by a sailors and Marines about a Bible and a “One Nation under God” placard placed on a POW/MIA table at the U.S. Naval Hospital in Okinawa, Japan.
The Military Religious Freedom Foundation, a radical group that has a history of targeting public displays of Christianity, filed the complaint on behalf of 26 military personnel and civilian staff.
They wrote a seven-page complaint alleging that a Christian Bible was placed on a Prisoner of War/Missing in Action display in the hospital’s public gallery.
“Why is that Bible there,” MRFF president Mikey Weinstein demanded to know in an interview with Stars & Stripes. “Can you imagine if somebody put a Quran there, or the book of Satan, or the Book of Mormon? It’s violates the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause as well as DoD and Navy regulations.”
Rear Adm. Paul D. Pearigen ordered an investigation into the public display at the Navy’s largest overseas hospital, the San Diego Union Tribune reports.
The Military Religious Freedom Foundation also wants the Navy to remove a placard explaining the reason why the Bible is a part of the display.
“The Bible represents the strength gained through faith to sustain those lost from our country, founded one nation under God,” the placard reads.
The MRFF was grossly triggered and offended by the statement – calling it unconstitutional and a “slap in the face to every non-Christian.”
“The statement on the Exhibit’s placard is nothing more than an illegal, unconstitutional proselytization from an extremist, fundamentalist Christian sect,” their attorney wrote. “It ignores all followers of other religions and totally ignores all those who subscribe to no religion – all in blatant violation of DoD and DON regulations.”
However, according to the U.S. Navy the Bible and the placard are on the table for a reason. Click here to read it for yourself.
Hiram Sasser, general counsel for First Liberty Institute and a former Army Reserve officer, urged the Navy to resist the demands of the militant MRFF.
“The Bible is on the table because it is part of the tradition that predates our current demands for political correctness,” Sasser told the Todd Starnes Radio Show. “When we telegraph to our global military competitors that the mere presence of a Bible mentally destroys some of us, we are doomed.”
So why is the Navy wasting its time to investigate the unfounded allegations made by Mikey Weinstein and his minions?
This is nothing more than a despicable attack by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation on the families of those with a loved one who is missing in action.
It’s time for the Trump Administration’s Pentagon to stop this radical group from bullying military families and desecrating any more Missing Man tables.
“You imagine if President Trump found out about this, that someone was complaining about a Bible being on a table? He’d probably put two on the table,” Sasser said.
Indeed.