Report: DoD called Catholics, Evangelicals, Jews, and Mormons religious extremists like Al Qaeda

The Chaplain Alliance for Religious Liberty is an organization of chaplain endorsers, the faith groups that provides chaplains for the U.S. military and other agencies needing chaplains. According to this organization, the endorsers in the Chaplain Alliance speak for more than 2,000 chaplains serving the armed forces.

The Chaplain Alliance has issued a press release alleging, based on a review of documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, that in training materials, the Department of Defense classified Catholics, Evangelicals, Jews, and Mormons as religious “extremists” similar to Al Qaeda. The Chaplain Alliance also claims that the military deemed the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “hate group” list a “reliable source” for this conclusion.

Earlier this year, the Chaplain Alliance uncovered a U.S. Army Reserve Equal Opportunity training brief that it says expressly pronounced “Catholicism,” “evangelical Christianity,” and “Mormonism” as examples of “religious extremism” like Al Qaeda, Hamas, and the Ku Klux Klan. This led to the FOIA request that uncovered the latest assault on religion by our military establishment.

There was never any reason to suppose that the left’s long march through our institutions would not encompass the U.S. military. And we’ve seen plenty of evidence of the success of this portion of the long march. The JAGs effective reversal of U.S. anti-terrorism policy set by our elected civilian leadership is a case in point.

Even so, I would not have expected our military to engage in a head-on verbal attack against God-fearing folk who take their peaceable religion seriously. I’m hoping that a review of the underlying documents (which don’t seem to be posted) will show the Chaplain Alliance press release to be overstated.

However, our military is indisputably gung-ho, can-do, and mission-oriented. When the mission is a perverted one, such as political correctness, we shouldn’t be surprised if the results prove ugly.

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