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“Gratitude, Concerns, and the mission”
From: MRFF Supporter “Phil” (Email address withheld)
Subject: Gratitude, Concerns, and the mission
Date: April 4, 2026 at 10:39:08 AM MDT
To: Michael L Weinstein <mikeyw4444@icloud.com>
I come to questions of faith and violence with a particular kind of interest. I am a Christian and a Quaker. I have two young sons. Sometimes, I watch them sleep and wonder about the world they will inherit and, when they are old enough, whether they might choose to serve in it.
The MRFF has been ahead of the curve for twenty years. I mean that precisely, not as flattery. Mikey Weinstein and his colleagues identified the infiltration of Christian nationalist ideology into the U.S. officer corps and non-commissioned officer, enlisted corps when most Americans considered it a fringe concern, concern seen as alarmist or uncharitable. They were proven right. Repeatedly. That track record matters now more than it ever has.
I was able to reach my own conclusions in part because of the years of assiduous work Mikey and his colleagues did: compiling what they heard and observed from friends within the military, listening carefully and persistently. Perhaps that is a Quaker trait. I believe there are many ways up a mountain, many branches on a tree. Variety is not weakness, for it is how living things survive. There are people in powerful positions right now who are in a pruning mood, and a pruned tree, however tidy it looks, is a more fragile one.
Here is what troubles me most as a Christian and as a father. The spirit of an American soldier has always been bound to the person next to them. The squad mate, the wingman, the battle buddy. That bond does not ask what you believe about the afterlife. It asks whether you will show up in this one. When soldiers are told their mission is to hasten a prophetic endpoint that their Jewish comrade, their Muslim wingman, their secular colleague cannot share. That is not unit cohesion. It is a recipe for forgetting what an American soldier actually is.
Consider what that soldier is actually fighting for: a prophetic culmination that saves them and abandons the person beside them. And consider what it means to be the one left behind: to learn that your battle buddy’s deepest conviction was not to bring you home, but to leave without you. We ask soldiers to serve in this life. To protect the living. To come home.
The MRFF defends that vision. Ninety-five percent of their clients identify as Christian — soldiers who simply want to serve their country without being conscripted into someone else’s eschatological project. Please support them.
– Phil (full name and all other ID withheld)
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