C.G. Chaplains Ordered to Interrogate Guardsmen

Religious, athletic, and medical professionals in North America are facing increasing pressure to not only get vaccinated against COVID-19, but also censor their concerns to keep getting paid.

The U.S. Coast Guard developed an accusatory script for chaplains to use when quizzing service members on their requests for religious exemptions from vaccines.  For example, the script directs chaplains to challenge service members with “visible tattoos” if they cite 1 Corinthians 6:19-20, which tells Christians to keep their bodies pure as “temples of the Holy Spirit.”  Chaplains must grill service members who object to vaccines developed with aborted fetal cells on whether they also abstain from “Tylenol, Pepto Bismol, Aspirin, Ibuprofen, Benadryl, or Claritin, all of which were developed using fetal cells. ... Note response in memo.”  Another document includes a list of quotes by religious leaders in several faiths promoting COVID vaccination.  

The First Liberty Institute (FLI) told Just the News (JTN) it obtained them from a service member who said they were distributed to chaplains by judge advocate generals.  “We know with certainty that chaplains received” the script, which is marked “draft,” putting them “in the untenable and unconstitutional position of deciding which religious beliefs are legitimate and which ones are not,” Mike Berry, FLI General Counsel for this public interest law firm, told JTN.

Lt. Cdr. Brittany Panetta declined to comment on the authenticity of the documents, or whether the script was approved, except to say the Coast Guard “adjudicates requests for religious accommodations on a case-by-case basis,” providing an Aug. 31 directive. “This adjudication is informed by input from the member’s command, medical, judge advocate, and military chaplain, in accordance with relevant Coast Guard policy, which is itself informed by law, including the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the U.S. Constitution,” she said.

Harvard Law School professor Noah Feldman argued such intrusive questions violate the Founders’ individual conscience framework that led to the First Amendment.  “People who decide first that they don’t want to be vaccinated, and then search online for religious authorities who might back them up ... are doing what many before them have done — and exactly what religious liberty is supposed to protect,” he said in a Bloomberg column.

JTN shared the Coast Guard documents with Feldman, but he didn’t respond to a request to analyze them.

Rev. Dr. Kenneth L. Beale, Jr.
Chaplain (Colonel-Ret), U.S. Army
Pastor, Ft. Snelling Memorial Chapel