Kerby Anderson
Imagine being in the Army and watching a presentation about extremism. Up pops a slide with the title “Terrorist Groups” and under it are labels that identify the National Right to Life and anyone with a “Choose Life” license plate as an extremist. Mind you, this slide just followed a slide of the terrorist group ISIS.
This is not the first time we have seen such Army training slides. During the Obama administration, we discussed on my radio program other slides that identified “evangelical Christianity,” Catholicism, and Mormonism as different forms of “religious extremism.”
Danielle Runyan is Senior Counsel and Chair of the Military Practice Group at First Liberty Institute. Her editorial documents what I just discussed and then goes on to explain that this incident at Fort Liberty was not a one-time error. When members of Congress denounced such activity in their letter, the Army response was that the slides were not vetted and implied this was an exception.
Daniele explains that “the repetitive nature of these events in the Army over the past decade, as well as the woke ideology that has plagued our nation and destroyed the careers of thousands of religious servicemembers over the past four years,” make it hard to believe this wasn’t intentional.
She mentions a briefing given to Army personnel at Camp Shelby that identified the American Family Association as a “hate group.” At another briefing, the Defense Equal Opportunity Institute explained that it considered extreme leftist organizations to be a reliable source for training.
If the Army wonders why they are having trouble recruiting Christians to serve in the military, they might want to look at what they are teaching in these training sessions.
This post originally appeared at https://pointofview.net/viewpoints/army-and-religious-liberty/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=army-and-religious-liberty
