Jason Leopold: My Interview With Mikey Weinstein
By Jason Leopold
t r u t h o u t | Report
Thursday 14 June 2007
More than two years ago, Mikey Weinstein launched the Military Religious Freedom
Foundation, a nonprofit government watchdog group that aims to keep a close
eye on the military to ensure its adherence to the law mandating the separation
between church and state, after his son, a student at the Air Force Academy
in Colorado Springs, was harassed about his Jewish faith and urged by other
cadets and Air Force officials to convert to Christianity.
Weinstein is no military outsider. He describes his and his family's background
this way: As a 1977 honor graduate of the United States Air Force Academy, Weinstein
spent 10 years in the Air Force as a "JAG," or military attorney,
serving as both a federal prosecutor and a criminal defense attorney. His oldest
son and daughter-in-law are 2004 Air Force Academy graduates, and Weinstein's
youngest son is currently a first classman (senior) at the Academy and the sixth
member of the Weinstein family to attend the institution. Weinstein's father
is a distinguished graduate of the United States Naval Academy.
Since he launched his watchdog organization, Weinstein has been contacted by
more than 4,000 active duty and retired soldiers, many of whom served or serve
in Iraq, who told Weinstein that they were pressured by their commanding officers
to convert to Christianity, he told me during a recent interview at his home
in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Weinstein said the military has been hijacked by a right-wing, fundamentalist
Christian agenda, in what appears to be a clear-cut violation of the constitutional
separation between church and state, that has rippled across all four branches
of the military under President Bush.
"The rise of evangelical Christianity inside the military went on steroids
after 9/11 under this administration and this White House," Weinstein said
in an interview. "This administration has turned the entire Department
of Defense into its own personal faith-based initiative."
He recently published a book on the issue, "With God on Our Side: One
Man's War Against an Evangelical Coup in America's Military."
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Truthout contributor Thomas "Dennie" Williams contributed
to this story.
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