As a result of the exposure by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) of endorsements by Gen. Petraeus and Maj. Gen. Mark Hertling on the cover of Under Orders: A Spiritual Handbook for Military Personnel -- a book promoting Christianity and denigrating non-theists -- it appears that these endorsements are going to be removed from the book, and that the book's author, Army chaplain Lt. Col. William McCoy, is going to take the fall for the constitutionally impermissible conduct of the two generals. Here's what's happened in the few days since my initial post about Petraeus's endorsement of this book appeared.

As is often the case here at the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), while in the course of investigating one report of constitutionally questionable activity within our armed forces, we stumble into something else that's just as bad or worse. It happened again this week. One of the thousands of MRFF supporters worldwide -- the indispensable "eyes and ears" who alert us to everything from the most egregious of constitutional violations to articles we might be interested in -- emailed MRFF founder and president Mikey Weinstein an interview with Air Force Chief of Chaplains Maj. Gen. Cecil Richardson from the August 11 print edition of the Air Force Times. Richardson, as many will remember, caused quite a stir back in 2005 when he was quoted by the New York Times as saying that Air Force chaplains "reserve the right to evangelize the unchurched." I'll get back to Richardson's Air Force Times interview in a minute, but first, here's what else this interview led MRFF to discover.

Like many a good oppressed American Christian, retired Lt. Gen. William "my God was bigger than his" Boykin has now written of his unbearable persecution and suffering in a book. As expected, Boykin, in Never Surrender: A Soldier's Journey to the Crossraoads of Faith and Freedom, claims that the quotes from his evangelical pep rallies that caused him so much trouble were "ripped out of context" by the media. But, in explaining this alleged out of context quoting, Boykin himself resorts to ripping his own words out of context -- the only way he can make his backpedalling seem plausible.

In a news release dated July 23, 2008, Americans United for Separation of Church and State announced that it has asked the Department of Defense (DoD) to investigate the "Free Day Away" program at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri.

It seems that martial artist turned political activist and commentator Chuck Norris has figured out what's wrong with Congress. There are just "too many cooks in the kitchen." Norris's brilliant idea to remedy the situation? Cut the House of Representatives down to one representative per state. Norris's thought-provoking argument for this inane proposition? The Constitution says that "each state shall have at least one Representative," a clause that, according to Norris's remarkable interpretation, was intended to provide an option that each state, regardless of population, have only one representative.

As reported last week by the Wall Street Journal and many other news outlets: "CNN Segment Convinces Majority of Non-Christians that Army Discriminates: Nearly Half of Christians Agree."

Contrary to the claims of historical revisionists like David Barton, who assert in defense of faith-based initiatives such nonsense as "you'll find early on that we were, in the federal government, funding programs that did mission work" and "you'll find early on that under George Washington -- he funded a number of those programs -- as did John Adams, as did Thomas Jefferson, as did James Madison," there were actually only two federal government programs during the 19th century that can even be remotely compared to today's faith-based initiatives, and neither of these occurred during the administrations of any of the four presidents listed by Barton.

Much has been written about George W. Bush's 4th of July appearance at Monticello, mainly to report on the protestors who showed up at this event. What hasn't gotten much notice, however, is that Bush added to the audacity of this appearance by having the gall to misquote Thomas Jefferson's last known statement about the Declaration of Independence, editing out what was also Jefferson's last known dig at unions between government and religion.

On June 26, I posted a piece here titled MRFF Urges DoD to Pull the Plug on TBN Special, Demands Investigation, regarding the objections of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) to the re-airing by the Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN) of a 4th of July Christian concert special. MRFF considers roughly twenty minutes of the two-hour "Red, White, and Blue Spectacular," including an interview with a U.S. Army general and the dipping of two American flags by a military color guard to Christian pop star Carman, to be in violation of military regulations, the U.S. Code, and the Constitution.

Quite a few articles were written last week about speculative McCain VP pick, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, many focusing on Jindal's signing into law a bill that will allow the teaching of creationism, through "supplemental materials," in Louisiana's public schools. Some of last week's articles mentioned Jindal's association with former Texas Republican Party co-chair and pseudo-historian David Barton, a name all too familiar to those of us who closely follow the religious right, but largely unrecognized by just about everyone else on the left, in spite of the impact he managed to have on evangelical voters in the last two presidential elections.

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) has sent the following letter to Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, urging that appropriate action be taken to halt the re-airing of a 2003 Fourth of July Christian concert, and demanding an investigation into the appearance in this program of active duty military personnel, including, among other things, an interview with a prominent three-star general, and a military color guard dipping two American flags to Christian pop star Carman.

Over the past few months, other important issues have led me to stray from my usual writing on Christian nationalist historical revisionism, but that doesn't mean I haven't been keeping an eye on the progress of certain proposed Christian nationalist legislation, particularly Congressman Randy Forbes's House Resolution 888. The other resolutions I was following, the two Ten Commandments Weekend resolutions, were specific to the first weekend of May of this year only, a weekend that has already come and gone, making these a non-issue (at least for this year). H. Res. 888, on the other hand, is not year specific, calling for its proposed "American Religious History Week" to be designated "each year." The resolution currently has 86 co-sponsors -- 80 Republicans, and 6 Democrats.

(This is an adaptation of two pieces I wrote last month, titled "Obama Bashing Message from Pentagon Connected Ministry" and "Son of Obama-Bashing Minister Lies about Bibles for Our Troops." My initial reasons for writing these pieces were the clear 501(c)3 violation of Cecil Todd's political sermons and Tim Todd's lies about the military's distribution of Bibles, but, in light of the recent revelation of the Army's Public Affairs Office linking to an Obama-smearing blog in it's "Stand To!" news roundup, I think it's important to keep an eye on other Pentagon connected forces at work in the campaign against Obama, in this case a Pentagon connected ministry. At the next Revival Fires campmeeting, scheduled to be held the last week of this month in Branson, Missouri, Cecil Todd will be delivering a sermon titled "America's Biggest Nightmare!" to a crowd of thousands. I don't think it's too much of a leap to suspect that this upcoming sermon will be similar to the sermon excerpted below.)

A few days ago, a tip was sent to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) research department to check out an organization called Marshall Minute Military Ministries. MRFF has investigated a seemingly endless stream of evangelical ministries and para-church organizations operating within the military, from small Mom and Pop church groups to large scale, military-wide operations like Campus Crusade for Christ's Military Ministry, who are well on their way to accomplishing their goal of turning our military into a force of "government-paid missionaries for Christ." Marshall Minute, however, had escaped our attention -- until now.

On May 28, McClatchy's Washington Bureau reported that a Marine in Fallujah had outraged the city's residents by passing out coins that read, in Arabic, "Where will you spend eternity?" on one side, and "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. John 3:16" on the other.

In a Memorial Day message on the Revival Fires International website, evangelist Tim Todd urges his followers to "make an eternal investment into the lives of our U.S. Armed Forces serving in Iraq and Afghanistan" by donating money to send Bibles to the troops.

Tim Todd is the son of Revival Fires founder Cecil Todd, the minister whose recent sermon, "Who I Want In The White House!," accused Barack Obama of being "a Muslim in his heart," "posing as a Christian to get your vote," and wanting to bring the troops home from Iraq because he "doesn't want his Muslim brothers and sisters killed." Read more of Cecil Todd's sermon here.

The almost incomprehensible attack on Barack Obama below is excerpted from a "Sermon of the Month" by Dr. Cecil Todd, founder of Revival Fires International, a 501(c)3 ministry which, "at the request of the Chief Chaplains of the Pentagon," has been shipping Bibles to Iraq, via military airlift, since 2003. According to a Revival Fires press release this "full Bible is designed and authorized by the Chief Chaplains of the Pentagon." This Pentagon involvement and Bible distribution led Navy chaplain LCDR Brian K. Waite to Revival Fires.

In 2001, LCDR Waite, then a mega-church pastor and reserve chaplain, published a virulently anti-Muslim book titled Islam Uncovered -- a book which was pulled from the shelves in 2002 due to plagiarism and faked endorsements. A few months later, Waite was accepted into the Naval Chaplain Corps. As an active duty chaplain, Waite has not only endorsed Revival Fires in uniform on the ministry's website, but appeared on advertisements for, and as a featured speaker at, their 2006 and 2007 campmeetings. He is also scheduled to appear at their 2008 campmeeting, to be held in June. Past speakers at Cecil Todd's campmeetings have included both John Hagee and Rod Parsley.

Alright, it isn't actually a bake sale, but it might as well be. On May 15, the House of Representatives passed H.R. 5872, an act "To require the Secretary of the Treasury to mint coins in commemoration of the centennial of the Boy Scouts of America, and for other purposes." The other purposes? The sale of the coins by the Secretary of the Treasury, with a surcharge on each coin sold to "be paid to the National Boy Scouts of America Foundation." In other words, this is a congressionally mandated fundraiser for the Boy Scouts.