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Pentagon defends unconstitutional
policy against sharing faith
By Ken Klukowski
3 May 2013
Pentagon
personnel responded to
Breitbart News’ report about court-martialing service members who share
their
faith in the military, which the Pentagon confirmed on May 1, and the
Air Force
on May 2 separately confirmed a second time.
Now
the Pentagon claims the
opposite. But these new statements instead only compound the problem,
as the
Pentagon’s new definitions for terms squarely contradict what the
dictionary
says those terms mean. All this has taken place as the first flag
officer in
the military has stepped forward to defy the unconstitutional policy.
In
an official statement yesterday,
Lt. Cmdr. Nate Christensen, a spokesman for the Pentagon’s Defense
Press
Office, responded to Breitbart News’ reports by saying, “Service
members can
share their faith (evangelize), but must not force unwanted, intrusive
attempts
to convert others of any faith to one’s beliefs (proselytization).”
Unfortunately
for the Obama
administration’s leaders in the Pentagon, those definitions are
absurdly false,
and only confirm a central concern in the earlier columns. These
definitions of
evangelizing and proselytizing are contradicted by (1) general
dictionaries,
(2) legal dictionaries, and (3) theological dictionaries. We have not
located
any dictionary that supports the Pentagon’s novel and unprecedented
definitions
for these well-known words.
Evidently
it all depends on what
the meaning of the word “is” is, which is a debate the country thought
was
resolved in 2000. Even so, when trying to say the press is wrong, don’t
do it
by inventing new definitions that anyone with a sixth-grade education
and
access to a dictionary can confirm are utterly false.
The
words “evangelize” and
“proselytize” have identical meanings when referring to Christians. So
to make
proselyting illegal is to make evangelizing illegal.
The
dictionary defines “evangelize”
as “to convert to Christianity,” or “to preach the [Christian] gospel.”
Likewise, the dictionary defines “proselytize” as “to convert or
attempt to
convert.” They both mean sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Two
things to note. First,
“evangelizing” means to try to persuade your listener to become a
Christian,
which the Pentagon just reaffirmed for the second time in two days is
forbidden
in the military. Second, contrary to the Obama-Holder DoD’s definition,
“proselytizing” carries no connotation whatsoever of “force,” or
“intrusive
attempts” to do anything…
Read
the rest of the article at
Breitbart
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