{"id":238,"date":"2010-08-23T16:05:00","date_gmt":"2010-08-23T16:05:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/beliefbeat\/2010\/08\/military-religious-freedom-watchdog-investigating-christian-concert-coercion.html"},"modified":"2010-08-23T16:05:00","modified_gmt":"2010-08-23T16:05:00","slug":"military-religious-freedom-watchdog-investigating-christian-concert-coercion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/08\/military-religious-freedom-watchdog-investigating-christian-concert-coercion.html","title":{"rendered":"Soldiers Coerced Into Attending Christian Concerts? Military Religious Freedom Foundation Investigates"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As requested, here&#8217;s a roundup of links regarding the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.militaryreligiousfreedom.org\/\">Military Religous Freedom Foundation&#8217;s <\/a>investigation of claims that dozens of&nbsp;soldiers&nbsp;have been punished for opting out of attending&nbsp;a religious concert series at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.eustis.army.mil\/\">Fort Eustis in Virginia<\/a>, organized by<a href=\"http:\/\/www.army.mil\/-news\/2008\/07\/09\/10753-fort-lee-commanding-general-reaches-out-to-soldiers\/\"> Maj. Gen. James E. Chambers, a born-again Christian<\/a>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.cbsnews.com\/stories\/2010\/08\/20\/ap\/celebrities\/main6791303.shtml\">Troops: Skipping Christian concert got us punished <\/a>(AP)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/religionclause.blogspot.com\/2010\/08\/us-soldiers-pressured-to-attend.html\">US Soldiers Pressured to Attend Commanding General&#8217;s Religious Concerts <\/a>(Religion Clause)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/chris-rodda\/us-soldiers-punished-for-_b_687051.html\">U.S. Soldiers Punished for Not Attending Christian Concert <\/a>(MRFF, for Huffington Post)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.truth-out.org\/spiritual-fitness-concert62563\">Army Anti-Discrimination Officials Pressured Soldiers Not to File Discrimination Complaints <\/a>(truthout)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/gospelsoundcheck\/2010\/08\/barlowgirl-concert-causes-cont.html\">BarlowGirl Concert Causes Controversy on Military Base <\/a>(Gospel Soundcheck, for Beliefnet)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The Military Religious Freedom Foundation is run by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.militaryreligiousfreedom.org\/about\/michael-l-mikey-weinstein\/\">Mikey Weinstein<\/a>, a Jewish lawyer&nbsp;who served in the Air Force (his three children are also Air Force Academy grads)&nbsp;and has been <a href=\"http:\/\/www.salon.com\/news\/feature\/2006\/12\/13\/weinstein\">warning for years about the influence of evangelical Christians in the U.S. military<\/a>. For more on his efforts, take a look at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.foreignpolicy.com\/articles\/2010\/05\/25\/mikey_weinsteins_crusade\">this May 25 story, &#8220;Mikey Weinstein&#8217;s Crusade,&#8221;&nbsp;in Foreign Policy magazine<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Check back for updates and share your thoughts in the Comments section below.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"Apple-style-span\"><span class=\"Apple-style-span\">*<a href=\"http:\/\/feedburner.google.com\/fb\/a\/mailverify?uri=beliefnet\/beliefbeat\">Click here to<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">&nbsp;<\/span><strong>subscribe to Belief Beat<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">&nbsp;<\/span><\/strong><\/a>and<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">&nbsp;<\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/www.twitter.com\/beliefbeat\">click here to<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">&nbsp;<\/span><strong>follow Belief Beat on Twitter.<\/strong><\/a><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As requested, here&#8217;s a roundup of links regarding the Military Religous Freedom Foundation&#8217;s investigation of claims that dozens of&nbsp;soldiers&nbsp;have been punished for opting out of attending&nbsp;a religious concert series at Fort Eustis in Virginia, organized by Maj. Gen. James E. Chambers, a born-again Christian: Troops: Skipping Christian concert got us punished (AP) US Soldiers Pressured&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Soldiers Coerced Into Attending Christian Concerts? Military Religious Freedom Foundation Investigates - Belief Beat<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/08\/military-religious-freedom-watchdog-investigating-christian-concert-coercion.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Soldiers Coerced Into Attending Christian Concerts? Military Religious Freedom Foundation Investigates - Belief Beat\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"As requested, here&#8217;s a roundup of links regarding the Military Religous Freedom Foundation&#8217;s investigation of claims that dozens of&nbsp;soldiers&nbsp;have been punished for opting out of attending&nbsp;a religious concert series at Fort Eustis in Virginia, organized by Maj. Gen. James E. Chambers, a born-again Christian: Troops: Skipping Christian concert got us punished (AP) US Soldiers Pressured&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/08\/military-religious-freedom-watchdog-investigating-christian-concert-coercion.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Belief Beat\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-08-23T16:05:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Nicole Neroulias\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Soldiers Coerced Into Attending Christian Concerts? Military Religious Freedom Foundation Investigates - Belief Beat","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/08\/military-religious-freedom-watchdog-investigating-christian-concert-coercion.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Soldiers Coerced Into Attending Christian Concerts? Military Religious Freedom Foundation Investigates - Belief Beat","og_description":"As requested, here&#8217;s a roundup of links regarding the Military Religous Freedom Foundation&#8217;s investigation of claims that dozens of&nbsp;soldiers&nbsp;have been punished for opting out of attending&nbsp;a religious concert series at Fort Eustis in Virginia, organized by Maj. Gen. James E. Chambers, a born-again Christian: Troops: Skipping Christian concert got us punished (AP) US Soldiers Pressured&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/08\/military-religious-freedom-watchdog-investigating-christian-concert-coercion.html","og_site_name":"Belief Beat","article_published_time":"2010-08-23T16:05:00+00:00","author":"Nicole Neroulias","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/08\/military-religious-freedom-watchdog-investigating-christian-concert-coercion.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/2010\/08\/military-religious-freedom-watchdog-investigating-christian-concert-coercion.html","name":"Soldiers Coerced Into Attending Christian Concerts? 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She and her family live in Seattle.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/author\/nneroulias"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/beliefbeat\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}