A U.S. Air Force base has ceased extending religious greetings at its gates to uniformed members following the reported intervention of an anti-discrimination organization.
The Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), which has more than 100,000 members including both active-duty and veteran service members from different services and myriad ranks, said Thursday that it intervened following nearly three dozen received complaints about religious-oriented greetings at Kirtland Air Force Base’s front gates.
MRFF said in a Sept. 3 press release that it ultimately received 34 complaints dating back days and even weeks, including from 24 individuals who identify as Christian. Officials at the gates were continually offering greetings including “God bless you” or “Have a blessed day,” as part of what MRFF described as a “weeks-long blitz” played to the backdrop of a Defense Department that has been accused of pushing a Christian agenda to its men and women in uniform.
Military.com reached out to Kirtland Air Force Base for comment on the complaints and reported ceasing of religious greetings, as well as questions regarding on-base protocols and a timeline of how long such greetings have been taking place. No response was received at publication.
How the Complaints Forced Compliance
MRFF shared email exchanges as part of complaints received by military service members located at Kirtland AFB.
One Airman, whose name and rank was not provided, told the organization that they reached out to due to “something happening at the front gate of my base that is absolutely unacceptable, and frankly I’m stunned it’s been allowed to continue.”
“For multiple days over the last couple of weeks, the guards have been greeting me with ‘God bless you’ every single morning as I come through,” the individual wrote. “Not once, not twice… repeatedly, consistently, as if it’s an officially sanctioned script.”
That person, who said they are not Christian, found the purported repeated incidents an affront to their own beliefs and said they legally should be disallowed on a military installation.
“I should not have to be subjected to religious messaging at a U.S. military installation, especially from uniformed personnel acting in an official capacity,” the email reads. “This is not a harmless pleasantry. This is a blatant violation of the separation of church and state and an inappropriate imposition of a specific religious worldview on service members and all civilians on this base.”
They added that they wanted the issue to be addressed and stopped immediately, saying religious neutrality is not just optional and that repeated occurrences are “exhausting, infuriating, and frankly alienating.”
Another email exchange between an Air Force member and MRFF on Tuesday said that the situation was quickly rectified, in a matter of two or three hours, after issuing their own complaint.
“It’s now 1400, and I have gone through the same gate a couple times without hearing the religious greeting,” the Airman said. “After dealing with it repeatedly for weeks, seeing that change happen within hours is honestly incredible.”
Air Force Rules Disobeyed
MRFF and its founder, Mikey Weinstein, pointed to a specific provision that prove such greetings were not legally justified.
That is according to Air Force Instruction 1-1, Section 2.16, which states the following verbatim:
Balance of Free Exercise of Religion and Establishment Clause. Leaders at all levels must balance constitutional protections for free exercise of religion and the constitutional prohibition against governmental establishment of religion. They must ensure their words and actions do not discriminate against any individual or group because of their faith, belief, or absence of belief, or extend preferential treatment for the same. Leaders must ensure that their personal expression is not reasonably associated with their government role, but may engage in such expression per DAFI 52-201, Religious Freedom in the Department of the Air Force.
Weinstein, an Air Force veteran who lives in Albuquerque, N.M., where the base is located, told Military.com on Thursday that he himself also went through the gates on Wednesday on two occasions and experienced the same “proselytizing” and greeting that others claimed in their own complaints.
Two hours later, and after personally contacting the 377th Air Base Wing Command Chain, Security Forces Squadron and Public Affairs office, he said he returned. The greetings had discontinued.
“The Military Religious Freedom Foundation salutes its 34 Kirtland Air Force Base clients—24 of them practicing Christians—for having the guts to stand up to fight the illicit, immoral and unethical fundamentalist Christian ‘greetings’ being spewed forth by armed, uniformed U.S. Air Force security forces at the various gates of entry to this installation,” Weinstein told Military.com.
He added that the situation represents a “win” not just for them but for the Constitution that all military and civilian members of the Department of Defense are sworn to support, defend and protect—rather than “somebody’s twisted, tortured, perverted, personally favored version of the Gospel of Jesus Christ or the Gospel of anything else for that matter.”
