ORDER FROM ABOVE?

Scott Air Force Base’s Prayer Breakfast Sparks Protest From Religious Freedom Group

A religious freedom group contends an invitation from the commander amounts to an order to attend.

An invitation to a prayer breakfast from the commander of Scott Air Force Base in Illinois brought a rebuke from a religious freedom group that said it amounted to an order to attend. “The prayer breakfast isn’t benign; it’s meant to be a massive proselytizing,” Michael Weinstein of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation said in a letter to Cmdr. Jeremiah Heathman, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. “You can’t use your position as commander to force (this). In military culture, you’re being told to go there.” Brass at the base had no comment, but the wording on the invitation for the Feb. 25 event was edited to remove Heathman’s name.