Friday Evening, December 1, 2023 | |
|
MEDIA COVERAGE OF MRFF’S VICTORY
GETTING BIBLES ON POW/MIA TABLES
REPLACED WITH BLANK JOURNALS AT ALL
LEXINGTON, KENTUCKY, VA FACILITIES
After a VA medical center in Lexington, Kentucky, removed its entire POW/MIA table display rather than remove the Gideons “New Testament — Psalms and Proverbs” from it, as a group of twelve veteran MRFF clients wanted, the executive director of the Lexington VA Health Care System made the right call.
In a November 28 letter, the system's executive director informed Mikey Weinstein that Bibles will no longer be a part of POW/MIA table displays in ANY of the system's facilities, but will be replaced by blank journals, writing in his letter:
“All table displays within VA Lexington Health Care System
will contain the following: small table, white tablecloth, single rose, vase, yellow ribbon, slice of lemon, salt, bread plate, glass, candle, empty chair, and a journal.”
As expected, the Lexington VA's decision to remove the Bibles from its POW/MIA displays has made MRFF's enemies
apoplectic with Christian nationalist outrage.
| |
POW/MIA table at the Lexington VA Health Care System's Troy Bowling Campus prior to the removal of the exclusively Christian Gideons “New Testament — Psalms and Proverbs” | |
|
LEXINGTON NPR STATION WEKU
COVERS MRFF
Lexington VA removes Bible from
display after veteran complaints
By: John McGary
Thursday, November 30, 2023
WEKU, Lexington, Kentucky’s NPR station, covers MRFF’s victory in getting the Bibles removed from the Lexington VA's POW/MIA tables, quoting Mikey Weinstein saying:
“If you'd put a Koran on there, or if you'd put the Satanic Bible, or you put an atheist book, you know, there'd be blood in the streets. But why is it okay, because it's majority faith, that you stick that on there?”
| |
|
FORMER FOX NEWS
“JOURNALIST” TODD STARNES
COVERS MRFF
VA Medical Center Orders Bibles Removed
From All Missing Man Table Displays
By: Todd Starnes
Wednesday, November 29, 2023
Former Fox News personality and Christian nationalist Todd Starnes makes the usual false claims about Bibles on POW/MIA tables, writing, “Part of the display has traditionally included a Bible,” and that the Lexington VA, by removing the Bibles, has “desecrated one of the most sacred tables in America.”
Starnes also writes that Mikey Weinstein “went on to allege the permanent display of a Christian Bible is not even allowed in a VA chapel.”
| |
|
MRFF's rebuttal of Todd Starnes’s
predictably dishonest article
| |
|
The following timeline of the real history of POW/MIA tables completely debunks Todd Starnes’s lies that “Part of the display has traditionally included a Bible” and that the VA “desecrated one of the most sacred tables in America” by removing the Bible.
Bibles were NOT originally included on these tables. That so-called “tradition” didn’t start until over three decades after the Vietnam combat pilots known as the River Rats started the original tradition in 1967.
| |
|
1967 – The POW/MIA table tradition was created by the Red River Fighter Pilots Association, an association of Vietnam combat pilots informally known as the “River Rats.” They began the tradition in May of 1967 at a meeting at Korat Royal Thai Air Force Base in Thailand, held by a group of pilots to discuss ways to prevent so many pilots from being shot down and captured. The original tradition created by the River Rats at this meeting did not include a Bible among the table’s items.
1985 – The American Legion passed a resolution to set a POW/MIA table at its events. In its official chaplains manual, the American Legion listed the items to be placed on the table. In keeping with the original tradition, a Bible was not among the items in the American Legion’s version. This was the version that became the standard, and is still widely used today.
1999 – The VFW Ladies Auxiliary published a script for the setting of the POW/MIA table in a 1999 issue of its magazine, adding a Bible to the table’s items. This is the earliest evidence of a Bible being added to the table.
c. 2000 – The National League of POW/MIA Families put out a script for the setting of the POW/MIA table that was almost identical to the one published in the 1999 issue of the VFW Ladies Auxiliary magazine, including the addition of the Bible. The National League of POW/MIA Families script first appeared on the organization’s website in 2000.
This new National League of POW/MIA Families version, created over three decades after the original, Bible-free tradition was begun by the River Rats, is now wrongly thought by many to be the original tradition, and has led many to think that a Bible has always been included on POW/MIA tables and that it was the National League of POW/MIA Families that originated the tradition.
| |
|
And, as for Starnes’s claim that Mikey Weinstein “went on to allege the permanent display of a Christian Bible is not even allowed in a VA chapel,” MRFF doesn’t just “allege” that; it’s in the VA’s actual regulations. VA regulations prohibit any permanent display of items of one religion in its chapels except when an actual service for the religion is taking place. The rest of the time VA facility chapels are required to be kept religiously neutral.
VHA Directive 1111, “Spiritual Care,” July 21, 2021, states (emphasis added):
| |
|
9. CHAPELS AND OTHER WORSHIP FACILITIES
a. Chapels. The chapel, or a room set aside exclusively for use as a chapel, must be reserved for patients’ spiritual activities, such as: worship, prayer, meditation and quiet contemplation. Such chapels are appointed and maintained as places for meditation and worship. When VA chaplains are not providing or facilitating a religious service for a particular faith group, the chapel must be maintained as religiously neutral, meaning it cannot be viewed as endorsing one religion over another. Religious literature, content and symbols must be made readily accessible to VA patients and visitors in a chapel or Chaplain Service office at their request. The only exception to the policy on maintaining chapels as religiously neutral are the chapels at VA medical facilities which were built with permanent religious symbols in the walls or windows. In these cases, the VA medical facility Director must also designate an appropriately sized room or construct a religiously neutral chapel, which is maintained in accordance with this VHA directive and VA Space Planning Criteria …
| |
|
THE WESTERN JOURNAL
COVERS MRFF
Article also republished by WorldNetDaily
VA Facility Removes Bible from Table That Honors Imprisoned, Missing Service Members
By: C. Douglas Golden
Thursday, November 30, 2023
The Western Journal's article, dripping with sarcasm from beginning to end, begins: “Boy, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation sure showed them.”
MRFF Note: Yep, we sure did!
| |
Background on MRFF’s Lexington VA victory | |
|
"Appaling"
On Nov 30, 2023, at 5:02 PM, (name withheld) wrote:
Michael and staff, I just read a story about something so disgusting that your organization pushed for with apparently Chris Rodda leading the way. This was about the bible being removed from the missing man table. I can understand what you think your organization is fighting for but that’s not it. I am a veteran who does believe but also someone who doesn’t worship/go to church all the time. I guess you could say that I am the in between type person. But y’all having pushed to have that removed is a disservice to all of the men and women who have died for this country.
Y’all say that you are a veteran organization but really I don’t believe that you are. As a vet, we are supposed to protect freedoms. Your proper response to that should’ve been asking them to put in a second table without one. Because now all you have done is crap on every veteran and service member across this country who has and is currently serving.
You have violated the oath that military members take by suppressing the freedoms of those who are Christians that visit that facility.
You are a disgrace and need to stop imitating that you are a veteran organization.
(name withheld)
To see responses from
MRFF Founder and President Mikey Weinstein
and MRFF Board Member John Compere:
| |
If you haven't already, please take a minute to submit our petition letter opposing Turner's amendment to your representative and senators.
This form submits a letter to Congress on your behalf, which
will be sent to your U.S. Representative in the House and your
U.S. Senators urging removal of Christian Nationalist Rep. Turner's
blatantly unconstitutional NDAA amendment and, additionally,
sends a copy to the entire Senate Armed Services Committee.
| |
SUPPORT MRFF's SOCIAL MEDIA
Please Help Increase
MRFF’s Social Media Engagement
| |
PLEASE MAKE A
100% TAX-DEDUCTIBLE DONATION
MRFF is a 501C3 Nonprofit
| |
Please Share on Social Media | |
MRFF Information/Contact:
(505) 250-7727
| | | | |
