“Confirmation bias” is putting it gently. A lie is a lie even when the person being lied about is the President of the United States and the truth is ominous.

An old and admirable friend posted on Facebook, but now seems to have taken down, a link and apocalyptic commentary on a story about a supposed effort to make it a court martial offense to share one’s Christian faith in the military.

An individual Orthodox Christian (whose blog, in fairness to him, posts many stories without much filtering) passed on this similar story. Excerpts:

So President Barack Obama’s civilian appointees who lead the Pentagon are confirming that the military will make it a crime–possibly resulting in imprisonment–for those in uniform to share their faith. This would include chaplains …

This regulation would severely limit expressions of faith in the military, even on a one-to-one basis between close friends. It could also effectively abolish the position of chaplain in the military, as it would not allow chaplains (or any service members, for that matter), to say anything about their faith that others say led them to think they were being encouraged to make faith part of their life …

(Emphasis in original)

I earlier said “This sounds too lurid and absurd to be true, but it’s from several sources. Stay tuned.”

This morning, I saw another item from the Western Center for Journalism, which appears to be, er, more partisan that one might gather from its name:

According to Obama’s advisor on religious tolerance within the U.S. military, Christians sharing their faith, including chaplains, present “… a national security threat. What is happening [aside from sexual assault] is spiritual rape. And what the Pentagon needs is to understand is that it is sedition and treason. It should be punished.” …

And what does the Obama administration do in the face of Muslim war declared against the U.S.?

He threatens to court-martial all U.S. military personnel, including chaplains, if they share their faith ….

What are the facts behind these lurid opinions-masquerading-as-facts? Everyone is citing Breibart:

“Today, we face incredibly well-funded gangs of fundamentalist Christian monsters who terrorize their fellow Americans by forcing their weaponized and twisted version of Christianity upon their helpless subordinates in our nation’s armed forces.”
Those words were recently written by Mikey Weinstein, founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), in a column he wrote for the Huffington Post. Weinstein will be a consultant to the Pentagon to develop new policies on religious tolerance, including a policy for court-martialing military chaplains who share the Christian Gospel during spiritual counseling of American troops.

(Emphasis added) Read the whole Breibart piece; don’t trust me. It’s loaded with lots of inflammatory adjectives, but generally seems to state as fact only that which is fact. “Generally,” though, is important. There is no supporting citation or link for the assertion that the “policies on religious tolerance,” which apparently have not begun to be drafted, will include any “policy for court-martialing military chaplains who share the Christian Gospel during spiritual counseling of American troops.”

So: Weinstein is going to be a Pentagon advisor on new policies on religious tolerance. He’s not the one-and-only Obama advisor.

I’ve heard of Mikey Weinstein. He’s a bat-shit crazy but very loud voice of intolerance, who conflates soldiers’ “solemnly sworn oath to the Constitution” and “follow[ing] the military’s regulations regarding religion” — which he hopes to shape. It’s ominous that the Pentagon feels obliged to include him as a consultant. I’m on record against the Obama administration’s already-execrable record on domestic religious freedom, and this proposed appointment does not bode well.

But we are not yet where the “Christian” liars say we are, and they should be ashamed of themselves. There’s no exemption from the command against false witness for political “war.”

UPDATE: Breibart has a followup story May 1.

The Pentagon has released a statement confirming that soldiers could be prosecuted for promoting their faith: “Religious proselytization is not permitted within the Department of Defense…Court martials and non-judicial punishments are decided on a case-by-case basis…”.

Neither Breibart nor Fox News linked to the written statement for anyone who might care to look at the context, but it appears that the Pentagon is alluding to some existing regulation, not to anything concocted in whole or part by Weinstein.

More update (May 6). It looks like thanks are due ADF.

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“The remarks made in this essay do not represent scholarly research. They are intended as topical stimulations for conversation among intelligent and informed people.” (Gerhart Niemeyer)

Some succinct standing advice on recurring themes.