Religious freedom in the military is a hot topic following a controversial meeting between Pentagon officials and an anti-Christian activist seeking to remove God from the military, and now Congress is on the verge of preserving those freedoms through the annual National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA.
The furor over the rights of service members to share their faith peaked in April and May after Mikey Weinstein of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation held a meeting with Pentagon leaders and reportedly received assurances that members of the military found sharing their faith would be prosecuted.
Now, Rep. John Fleming, R-La., a member of the House Armed Services Committee, is advancing an amendment to the NDAA that would guarantee service members not only the right to believe as they wish but to express those beliefs freely as well.
“It allows for military members to exercise their First Amendment right within appropriate limits, so that not only can they maintain their beliefs of conscience … but also they can express it and they can take action, which means they can have a Bible on their desk or they can speak in a noncoercive fashion with other members,” said Fleming, who added that the amendment would not allow service members to disobey orders.
“If your commanding officer says, ‘Get in that tank and go shoot,’ you can’t say all of a sudden that, ‘It’s against my religion.’ You can’t do that,” he said.