How far will religious extremists go to exert control over those who do not subscribe to the beliefs that the extremists champion? We do not have to look toward foreign nations such as Iraq or Syria or insanity of Isis to find examples of harsh, underhanded religious misconduct and deceit that the aggressively devout claim is carried out in the name of morality. We need look no further than the halls of the US Congress to find religious guerillas, and in the tax-free charities, and even find religious fanatics contaminating the ranks of our nation’s armed forces. How low these misguided faith warriors are willing to go is astonishing, for much of what they do to impose their faith upon others flies in the face of what their own scriptures teach. Such conduct of religious extremists is also unconstitutional.
The United States rose to greatness because it extended the rights of personal freedoms to its citizens, which included the freedom to believe or not believe in some never seen deity. There is spiritual strength in tolerance which is power beyond man-invented dogma. Those blinded by some ritualized “faith” will always fail to understand that attacking others in acts of spiritual sabotage will not unlock the gates of Heaven. One of the worst sins, if sins can really be graded, is to get swept up in spiritual pride for, if scriptural accounts are consulted, spiritual elitism has no place in God’s domain–for all things stand equal before the Creator. Seeking to impose some brand of man-contrived “faith” upon others therefore is not to practice one’s faith, but is the indulgence in activist politics of this imperfect world.
So we may ask: How far will religious extremists go to exert control over those of us who do NOT subscribe to self-serving belief systems that the extremists champion? Apparently a sewer atmosphere offers the extremists their best view of Heaven. Consider: Not so long ago, back in 2009, the military was screening service persons through the “Comprehensive Soldier Fitness” test (CSF), an alleged “holistic fitness program” which purportedly employed as a means to reduce the number of post-traumatic stress disorder cases that often led to suicide.
The test was allegedly an experimental Army mental-health and fitness project which had a critical portion in it devoted to what can only be termed the spirituality measurement of the one being tested. In practice it amounted to a religious test on service men and women who put themselves in harms way to protect what is professed to be the land of freedom. Clearly this type of “testing” tramples on the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. Indeed, Clause 3 of Article 6 of the body of the US Constitution explicitly declares it to be illegal to use any form of religious test in correlation with any government service. Perhaps we should note here that this so-called “fitness assessment” test happened to have been designed by the same psychologist who inspired the CIA’s torture program which was okayed with the blessing of the Republican administration of “born again” George W. Bush
In that sham of psychological practice, the standard for judging a person’s mental desirability was that the test required enlistee to believe in God or some similarly imagined “higher power” deity to qualify as “spiritually fit” to serve in the US military. The questions in that test were specifically written to approve only those who believed in God or similar entity and bar any nonbelievers from training. The test subjects had to measure up to the psychologist’s arbitrary level of spirituality. In other words, the test had been intentionally (devilishly) designed so that nonbelievers (of which the psychologist disapproved) were discriminated against. Military service persons were thus being entrapped and attacked for their asserted “lack of belief” as determined by religious fanatics who had wormed themselves into positions to pass judgment.
Thankfully there are persons of conscience and genuine integrity standing sentry against such mockery of true democratic principles being practiced by those religious fanatics who entrench themselves within military ranks. The Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), which currently represents many hundreds of Army soldiers who were once subjected to the so-called Comprehensive Soldier Fitness test, stepped in and strongly objected to the Secretary of the Army and to the Army’s Chief of Staff in regard to that travesty of true freedom. According to released Defense Department documents, after that registered objection the “spiritual” portion of the CSF test was then rated as being the Army Chief of Staff’s “third highest priority.” That, too, is curious.
Just what seemed more important than combating the spiritual sabotage of service men and women and be positioned as “third” in importance in its relationship to the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to our Constitution? In seeking to impose spiritual subjugation upon our service men and women who are willing to fight for our country’s freedom of religion or from religion was apparently trivialized as being of only “third in importance”. Our Founding Fathers, who sought freedom from obligatory faith requirements, must be weeping.
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