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38 Chaplains Ask Supreme Court To Stop U.S. Military From Punishing Their Faith
The Federalist ^ | 4/1/1024 | JOY PULLMANN

Posted on 04/01/2024 7:48:31 AM PDT by ducttape45

The chaplains say the Department of Defense continues to defy a 2023 law rescinding its Covid vaccine mandate.

A healthy little Dutch girl without a proper name died 52 years ago. Scientists keep her kidney’s cells multiplying in a process similar to cancer. They perform increasing numbers of experiments on derivatives of this baby girl’s kidney cells to develop technologies that include taste-testing experiments for PepsiCo. Her vivisection forms “the backbone of the global gene therapy market.”

Scientists call the baby girl HEK 293. HEK stands for “human embryonic kidney,” and 293 means she was the 293rd experiment in a set.

She likely died from an elective abortion, not a miscarriage, concludes a 2006 journal article and many other scientific publications. An older gestational age and harvesting her kidney while still alive would have made her more useful for experimentation, as Planned Parenthood officials affirmed of their baby harvesting operations in 2015.

Like many medications, Covid-19 vaccines and therapeutics were tested on cells made from HEK 293’s kidney. Some of the vaccines have HEK 293 cells inside them. That’s one of several reasons Capt. Rob Nelson, an Air Force chaplain, couldn’t in good conscience accept those treatments despite massive pressure from the military, he told The Federalist in a phone interview.

“I have five [children], and it breaks my heart to think of this. This girl continues to be violated as her cells are replicated over and over again,” he said.

Nelson is one of 38 military chaplains whose petition is now before U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts in the case Alvarado v. Austin. The chaplains say the Department of Defense continues to defy the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act rescinding its Covid vaccine mandate, which the petition says has allowed statistically zero exceptions.

Eliminating People with Strong Ethical Boundaries from the Military

The DOD continues to violate the law by failing to rescind its punishments of conscientious objectors such as denied training and deployments required for promotions, the petition says. In addition, of course, denying soldiers’ religious exercise violates the First Amendment’s guarantee that all Americans can freely exercise their faith in their everyday lives.

That is precisely why the military has chaplains, several told The Federalist. All soldiers, their families, and civilians working for the U.S. military “have a right to believe what they believe and no one can say otherwise. It’s the same reason we can’t have a religious test for federal positions. As a chaplain, my job is to make sure the free exercise of religion is allowed, that nobody infringes upon that inalienable right,” said Army Col. Brad Lewis, a chaplain also party to the suit.

Chaplains usually help determine whether soldiers receive religious accommodations for all sorts of things, from Norse pagans wearing beards to Sikhs wearing turbans and Jews eating kosher. While the military routinely approves such waivers, it told Congress it had denied essentially all religious vaccine waiver requests from soldiers who weren’t almost retired, say the plaintiffs.

“I got in with an age waiver,” Nelson noted of his military service. “They can supposedly give wavers for all kinds of things but not a religious accommodation.”

In its Supreme Court response filed March 27, the DOD claims it has removed all punishments from soldiers imposed “solely” for conscientious objections to vaccines. It claims removing career penalties that arise from banning conscientious objectors from career-promoting training and duties has no “lawful basis.” The DOD also says that because the vaccination requirement has ended, the case is moot.

“By denying religious exemptions, what the military has done is set about the removal of people who are willing to stand on conviction,” Lewis said. He and Nelson noted this dynamic is especially dangerous if cultivated among soldiers, whose job is to kill.

Four Years Deployed to Defend Freedoms the Military Denies Him

Lewis has dedicated more than 30 years of his life to the U.S. military, including 47 months of deployment. He’s taken seven deployments to Afghanistan, six to Iraq, and an entire year away from his wife and four children in South Korea. He’s a fourth-generation Assemblies of God pastor whose father also served in the U.S. military during the Cold War.

Lewis was the senior chaplain on Hawaii’s island of Oahu when the Army recommended him as one of two chaplains in 2020 to receive instruction at the U.S. Army War College.

War College training is the height of an Army career. It’s preparation for high-level officer assignments. While he studied there, Lewis was ordered to take a Covid vaccine. But his conscience wouldn’t let him.

The immense global pressure for an untested medical treatment alarmed Lewis’ long-developed spiritual spidey senses: “The fact that commerce and travel and careers were hinging on receipt of this vaccine, that bothered me.” It seemed to violate biblical injunctions against total obedience to any state.

Lewis and his wife spent months talking about what to do. They knew objecting could kill his career right as he hit its peak, after decades of personal and family sacrifices.

In the end, he couldn’t violate his duty to obey the still, small voice inside, Lewis says. So he filed for a religious exemption. Like almost every other solely religious exemption of the 37,000 DOD told Congress soldiers filed, it was delayed. Then it was denied. So were Lewis’ appeals. He says his superiors told him he could get vaccinated or get drummed out of the military, but while Lewis was willing to sacrifice his body for his country, he would not sacrifice his soul.

So the Army punished him, first by leaving him with no orders upon graduation from War College. That left Lewis and his wife to sit for 11 months in student housing with no assignment for Lewis while another class of students came and went.

“My career was ended by those 11 months of unrated time,” Lewis said. The inaction the Army forced him into destroyed his ratings in the military’s evaluating system. When Congress ended the vaccine mandate, the military assigned Lewis to a rural post in Maryland, where he mostly oversees civilian contractors across the world who have local pastors to tend their spiritual needs.

He says he’s asked superiors whether he will have any opportunities to use his high-level, taxpayer-provided War College training. Lewis says they repeatedly ignored the question. So he’s filed to retire and will leave the Army for good in early 2025.

“I took real strength in the idea that my faith is more important than some bureaucrat’s opinion of my faith. It sustained me, it got me through,” Lewis said.

After asking The Federalist to provide Lewis’ birth date and Social Security Number and to delay this article’s publication, U.S. Army spokeswoman Heather Hagan, who according to her email signature works in the Pentagon, finally provided this in response to a request for comment: “As a matter of policy, the Army does not comment on ongoing litigation.”

Not Just about Harvesting Killed Babies

Each conscientious objector’s reasoning is in some way unlike all the others’. There are commonalities, but they blend in individual ways, like fingerprints. That’s why religious objections to vaccines are not erased by a European Covid shot called Novavax, which its owner claims was developed and produced with no human embryo brutalization.

Army Chief of Chaplains Thomas Solhjem, who is now retired, highlighted Novavax when it came out in 2022. He ignored many soldiers’ religious objections not based on the vaccines’ use of murdered babies. They include concerns about damaging human health and reproductive capacity, ignoring natural immunity, the ethics of allegedly emergency decrees, the lack of informed consent, and heavy-handed manipulation tactics that include refusing to acknowledge any potentially legitimate conscience objections to the shots whatsoever.

It’s also unlikely any medical intervention today lacks a connection with the discarded little girl. Research done on cells descended from HEK 293’s tiny body is so “ubiquitous” now, wrote Dr. Melissa Moschella in 2020, that “Anyone who wants to completely avoid benefiting from the use of HEK 293 would effectively have to eschew the use of any medical treatments or biological knowledge developed or updated within the past forty years.” Even Tylenol was developed using cells her body generated.

Lewis said Solhjem’s video “blew my mind” because the job of a chaplain is not to negotiate people’s religious beliefs, it’s to support their exercise: “He didn’t say, ‘I stand with you. No matter what your reasons are, you have a right to believe them, and I will stand and die here defending your right.’ … It’s antithetical to what chaplains are supposed to do.”

‘The Department of Defense Is Hostile to Religion’

Several chaplains provided The Federalist “scripts” that military branches sent chaplains to pressure conscientious objectors into compliance rather than ascertain whether their objections were sincere. They include quotes from figures such as imams and preacher Russell Moore supporting vaccination.

But, for example, the Bible doesn’t say Russell Moore is its chief prophet and interpreter. While theologians and church tradition are helpful guides that Christians should take seriously, the final authority over Christianity is the Bible itself, and it says every individual is responsible before God for how he understands and applies it.

“The Department of Defense is hostile to religion,” said the chaplains’ lawyer, Art Schulcz, who is also a veteran. He said the way the DOD handled the vaccine mandate has contributed to the military’s recruiting crisis by repelling recruits and current soldiers with serious faith convictions. In response to ongoing shortfalls, U.S. military branches are lowering enlistment standards and issuing waivers of risk factors such as marijuana use.

The U.S. military’s chaplains “recruiting deficit is extreme,” wrote Rear Adm. Gregory Todd, the Navy’s chief of chaplains, last year.


TOPICS: Current Events; Ministry/Outreach; Religion & Culture
KEYWORDS: faith; military; scotus
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I was a chapel manager between 1982 and 1992. I also worked for the federal government between 2003 and 2023 before retiring last year due to developing Long Covid.

During my enlisted time, I knew even then that the Department of Defense was hostile to religion, and it during my time as a chapel manager that they started supporting islam, and even satanic worship services. That's a huge reason why I separated. They wouldn't let me crosstrain, so I said bye bye. It's even worse now.

The DOD and the US government are even more hostile towards true chaplains today, those who take their faith seriously, and not those who were bought out, who were "in it for the money" or who couldn't cut it in a regular church setting.

In my view, the government does want chaplains who want to see folks come to a savings knowledge of Jesus Christ, they want those who are "sold out to satain."

Thoughts?

1 posted on 04/01/2024 7:48:31 AM PDT by ducttape45
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To: ducttape45

Pretty stinking sad that they have to go to he Supreme Court to get a ruling to affirm that yes, they do have a right to operate in the military, and should not be discriminated agaisnt, especially in a workforce where soldiers risk their lives protecting our nation!


2 posted on 04/01/2024 7:57:11 AM PDT by Bob434
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To: ducttape45

3 posted on 04/01/2024 7:59:20 AM PDT by dfwgator (Endut! Hoch Hech!)
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To: ducttape45

[[ they started supporting islam, and even satanic worship services]]

It is astonishing that after many many years of God protecting and prospering the nation and our military, that the higher upside would essentially say “ya know what? God has been good to us. BUT, we should change horses mid-stream because Satan might just benefit our troops more than God will, so, no more Christianity, all hail the evil one!”

What in t h e hell are they thinking?


4 posted on 04/01/2024 8:01:15 AM PDT by Bob434
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To: ducttape45
In my view, the government does want chaplains who want to see folks come to a savings knowledge of Jesus Christ, they want those who are "sold out to satain."

Yep! I was a military man for 8 years and then a volunteer chaplain to reserve military units in the Midwest for another 8 years. I have since become a conscientious objector, realizing we were duped into serving New World Order Satanic Globalism. Christians are called by the Prince of Peace to be commissioned into His service. His Gospel brings peace to everyone’s lives.
5 posted on 04/01/2024 8:06:12 AM PDT by Jan_Sobieski (Sanctification)
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To: ducttape45

Those DOD death injections were demonic from the start, like a Baal ritual. The devil set a trap of fear into the hearts of mankind and many submitted to it. Unfortunately, we are now witnessing the consequences globally.

“And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.” ~ Ephesians 5:11


6 posted on 04/01/2024 8:06:14 AM PDT by 444Flyer (John 3, Revelation 20, Joshua 24:15, 1 Kings 18:16-39, Pick a side...)
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To: ducttape45

“...taste testing experiments...”
PepsiCo?
WTH is that all about?
(I don’t drink any carbonated soft drinks; haven’t since late-50s.)


7 posted on 04/01/2024 8:07:54 AM PDT by Carriage Hill (A society grows great when old men plant trees, in whose shade they know they will never sit.)
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To: ducttape45
You wrote:
"In my view, the government does want chaplains who want to see folks come to a savings knowledge of Jesus Christ"

You probably meant:

"In my view, the government does NOT want chaplains who want to see folks come to a savings knowledge of Jesus Christ"

8 posted on 04/01/2024 8:10:56 AM PDT by linMcHlp
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To: ducttape45
Some trust in chariots, and some in horses: but we will remember the name of the Lord our God. ~ Psalm 20:7
9 posted on 04/01/2024 8:12:11 AM PDT by 444Flyer (John 3, Revelation 20, Joshua 24:15, 1 Kings 18:16-39, Pick a side...)
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To: Bob434

The only thing that would clear the filth from the US military is a major war but, because we are led by perverted morons, we would lose that war.


10 posted on 04/01/2024 8:16:14 AM PDT by wildcard_redneck (He who sacrifices freedom for security deserves neither.q)
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“But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone: which is the second death.” ~

Revelation 21:8

Yet, the Lord doesn't want anyone to perish 2 Peter 3:9. But everyone has been given the gift of free will to choose whom they will serve. Ultimately that choice will determine where one spends eternity/intinity/forever...

I pray these evil doers at the DOD repent of their evil deeds and don't continue in their wickedness.

11 posted on 04/01/2024 8:30:20 AM PDT by 444Flyer (John 3, Revelation 20, Joshua 24:15, 1 Kings 18:16-39, Pick a side...)
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To: linMcHlp

You are correct, thanks for pointing that out!


12 posted on 04/01/2024 9:09:09 AM PDT by ducttape45 (Proverbs 14:34, "Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people.")
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To: dfwgator

Back in the day when chaplains “were” chaplains


13 posted on 04/01/2024 9:10:04 AM PDT by ducttape45 (Proverbs 14:34, "Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people.")
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To: Bob434
I basically asked that question during the staff meeting when the senior chaplain informed us that we would now start supporting satanic services. I told her I would decline to follow that order, and man, did I get yelled at! But what added salt to the wounds was a chaplain came up to me afterwards and said he felt the same way but didn't speak up because it would hurt his chances of promotion.

I just walked away from him.

14 posted on 04/01/2024 9:12:40 AM PDT by ducttape45 (Proverbs 14:34, "Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people.")
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To: Jan_Sobieski

My spelling/grammar was a bit off there in that statement, but I’m glad you got got the just of what I was saying. :-)


15 posted on 04/01/2024 9:15:29 AM PDT by ducttape45 (Proverbs 14:34, "Righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people.")
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To: ducttape45

Just ? I’m sure you meant gist .

…..


16 posted on 04/01/2024 9:17:52 AM PDT by Mears
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To: ducttape45

don’t blame you for walking off- i woudl have too- as for the woman, i would have had a hard time saying “Wow- has Satan ever got a hold on you!” or “Get the behind me Satan”


17 posted on 04/01/2024 9:21:57 AM PDT by Bob434
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To: ducttape45

Good for you! I have been wondering about a chaplain we know he left the diocese for a calling to the airforce and he has been a chaplain for a few years now. I suspect he will decline this as well.


18 posted on 04/01/2024 9:26:42 AM PDT by MomwithHope (Forever grateful to all our patriots, past, present and future.)
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To: ducttape45

People of strong Christian faith might perhaps be less likely to obey certain orders? Just a thought.


19 posted on 04/01/2024 9:26:53 AM PDT by Salman (It's not a slippery slope if it was part of the program all along. )
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To: ducttape45
. I told her I would …

I think I see the problem.

Didn’t Earn It.

20 posted on 04/01/2024 9:31:28 AM PDT by HIDEK6 (God bless Donald Trump. A)
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