AF Colonel Accused of Imposing Religion

[Bennie_P]

RAF MILDENHALL, England – An Air Force colonel is being criticized for improperly referring airmen under her command to a far-right religious Web site.
Col. Kimberly K. Toney sent a e-mail Jan. 16 to the 501st Combat Support Wing inviting airmen to enjoy a linked video highlighting an inspirational individual on 4marks.com, a Roman Catholic Web site.
The video featured Nick Vujicic, a 25-year-old who was born without arms or legs. According to the video’s introduction, Vujicic finds his “greatest joy in this life is to introduce Jesus to those he meets and tell them of his (Jesus’) great desire to get to know them personally by allowing him to become their Lord and Savior.”
Air Force Master Sgt. Jeffrey L. Thompson, a member of the 501st, sent a letter to Toney that complained she had inappropriately advanced her faith in an official capacity.
“My own impression of your e-mail was an organizational endorsement of Christian faith, because the e-mail, article and video compelled us to witness an exercise in religious-specific faith that I felt was in conflict with DOD neutrality on religion,” Thompson said in his letter.
Thompson, who says in the letter that he is a Roman Catholic, had no further comment Monday.

The full article military.com/features/0,15240,184775,00.html?wh=news

4marks.com has been reviewed on Catholic cutlure as being yellow for the following reasons

4marks is an Internet platform which helps people meet and exchange information, enabling them to connect in the physical world and strengthen Christian culture.
The educational area of the site offers several subscription courses for individuals, groups and families. In order to take full advantage of this site’s features you must subscribe to one of their services — without a subscription the biggest resource is the articles section. The site’s yellow rating is due to a film produced by 10,000 Catholics for Obama. Please see these articles in the Catholic Culture Library: Can a Catholic Vote in Support of Abortion? and Thoughts on “Roman Catholics for Obama ’08”

They call it far right wing when it has a pro-Obama film on it.

Seems to be a site of confussion…

 

[Benedict108]

It’s kind of hard to look at this situation. The military can be a weird place when it comes to religion, especially if you are a commander and they feel that you influencing your troops by propigation.

My experience in USAFE (United States Air Forces Europe), was that they are always trying to be extremely p/c, and one can be referred to EO fairly easily. I would love to see the email and the complaint if it is ever filed. Then I could have an opinion on it, but I have to say that Mildenhall was never as bad as my base…LOL, RAF Lakenheath.

 

[Bennie_P]

It’s kind of hard to look at this situation. The military can be a weird place when it comes to religion, especially if you are a commander and they feel that you influencing your troops by propigation.

My experience in USAFE (United States Air Forces Europe), was that they are always trying to be extremely p/c, and one can be referred to EO fairly easily. I would love to see the email and the complaint if it is ever filed. Then I could have an opinion on it, but I have to say that Mildenhall was never as bad as my base…LOL, RAF Lakenheath.

A commander should not use his/her power over their troops in the area of religion. But I suspect that she was innocently trying to share an inspirational story. This web site she posted is questionable even for Catholics. What was strange about the story is they call it a far-right wing Christian web sight. So I checked it out. And it actually allows opposing views both far-left and far-right and is very confussing on what the Church teaches. But just for the fact it is a Christian site the media automatic labeled it extreme far-right. And that labeling is what stood out to me the most. IMHO it is a bad site, because of the confussion it presents.

When I was in the military in the 70s, we would faith days when I was stationed at Ft Hood. We would be given time off to attend "revival’ type programs. We were not forced to attend and those events were organized by the Chaplain Corp. At one of them though was were I made my first steps in embracing Christ, which started the long process of me becoming a Catholic.

 

[Benedict108]

A commander should not use his/her power over their troops in the area of religion. But I suspect that she was innocently trying to share an inspirational story. This web site she posted is questionable even for Catholics. What was strange about the story is they call it a far-right wing Christian web sight. So I checked it out. And it actually allows opposing views both far-left and far-right and is very confussing on what the Church teaches. But just for the fact it is a Christian site the media automatic labeled it extreme far-right. And that labeling is what stood out to me the most. IMHO it is a bad site, because of the confussion it presents.

When I was in the military in the 70s, we would faith days when I was stationed at Ft Hood. We would be given time off to attend "revival’ type programs. We were not forced to attend and those events were organized by the Chaplain Corp. At one of them though was were I made my first steps in embracing Christ, which started the long process of me becoming a Catholic.

I suspect you are right. In all my years in service and all the bases that I have been to, I have never had a commander push religion on troops. I think you are right. She was probably trying to share an inspirational story. There does tend to automatically be a lot of bias when religion is mentioned. I guess we’ll have to wait and see what happens to the Col. Toney.