Michael L. “Mikey” Weinstein is an undisputed chief of the nationwide motion to revive the obliterated wall separating church and state in essentially the most technologically deadly group ever created by humankind: the US armed forces. Described by Harper’s journal as “the constitutional conscience of the U.S. army, a person decided to power accountability,” Mikey’s household has an extended and distinguished U.S. army historical past spanning three consecutive generations of army academy graduates and over 130 years of mixed energetic obligation army service in each important fight engagement our nation has been in from World Conflict I to the present World Conflict on Terror. Mikey is a 1977 Honour Graduate of the US Air Pressure Academy. He left Mr. Perot’s make use of in 2006 to focus his full-time consideration on the nonprofit charitable basis he based to immediately battle the far-right militant radical evangelical non secular fundamentalists: the Army Non secular Freedom Basis.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen interviewed Michael L. “Mikey” Weinstein of the Army Non secular Freedom Basis (MRFF) about coercion, neutrality, and future weapons. Weinstein stated service members reported superiors “strongly encouraging” attendance at politically charged documentary screenings, typically demanding proof, whereas the Pentagon denied any directive. He argued that even tender command stress erodes constitutional nonpartisanship and might endanger careers. Turning to AI, drones, and autonomous programs, he warned that ideological seize could be “encoded” into design, amplifying supremacy at machine pace. He likened Christian nationalism within the power to a metastatic menace to democratic governance. His treatment: resist, doc, and litigate.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What had been the precise incidents that led the MRFF to publicly name out stress on energetic service members to attend the “Melania documentary screenings?
Mikey Weinstein: As quickly because the movie started gaining traction, we began receiving outreach from service members—one thing that’s frequent for us—asking what they need to do.
We obtained studies from service members that their superiors had been strongly encouraging attendance at screenings of Melania and, in some instances, treating it as functionally necessary. Some service members stated they had been anticipated to point out proof of attendance, corresponding to ticket stubs or on-line confirmations. These accounts got here from a number of installations and throughout totally different branches, not from a single unit sort.
A Division of Defence official advised reporters there was no directive requiring service members to look at the movie.
One other journalist requested what our purchasers did. Many attended as a result of they had been involved about skilled penalties in the event that they stood out or appeared noncompliant. Some tried to keep away from attendance by citing sickness or household obligations, however many concluded that attending was the lower-risk choice.
One service member described the screening being linked to a “Unit Exercise Occasion”—a class of morale or cohesion occasion—and reported concern that skipping it may have an effect on evaluations or standing inside the unit.
Public consciousness issues right here. The movie’s Rotten Tomatoes scores grew to become a part of the general public dialogue, with reporting highlighting the hole between viewers scores and critic evaluations, in addition to questions on how attendance was being mobilized.
Additionally it is important for readers unfamiliar with army norms to know that the U.S. army is predicted to take care of a nonpartisan posture and command local weather. That’s the reason allegations of command stress round a politically charged cultural product elevate severe issues. The Pentagon has denied any official requirement to attend.
Charlie Kirk was shot and killed at Utah Valley College in Orem, Utah, on September 10, 2025. Within the hours following his dying, reporting famous that Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth appeared with troops in a public non secular context.
They bowed their heads and prayed for him. The actual fact is that Dwight D. Eisenhower was a five-star basic, the commander of your complete U.S. army, and he had by no means voted for president till he voted for himself when he ran. He felt strongly that the army ought to be nonpartisan. While you begin viewing the army as a praetorian guard meant to serve Caesar relatively than the Structure, one thing elementary has gone flawed.
The oath shouldn’t be taken to a selected model of Christianity. The oath of workplace and the enlistment oath are taken from the U.S. Structure. Each member of the army swears to the Structure. Each civilian who enters authorities service does the identical. We’re a constitutional republic. That’s the basis.
What we’re seeing now could be an effort to show the army right into a Christian nationalist power. That’s the actual conflict going down, and so they have largely succeeded. In case you are not a Christian nationalist—if you’re not a straight, white, Christian male—you stand out.
We had seventeen purchasers within the room in Quantico, Virginia, when Pete Hegseth demanded that every one generals, admirals, and senior enlisted advisers attend so he may communicate. Trump appeared as properly. The viewers sat stone-faced.
Roughly twenty p.c of senior army management—generals and admirals—are totally dedicated Christian nationalist MAGA adherents. Of the remaining eighty p.c, most are pretending to conform as a result of they don’t wish to jeopardize their retirement or their households. They rationalize their silence. The ultimate group—about twenty p.c—stay in service as a result of they care deeply about their subordinates. They know that in the event that they go away, they are going to be changed by full-on MAGA management that may torment these underneath their command.
This can be a career through which persons are anticipated to offer their lives for his or her fellow residents. Injecting Christian nationalism into the U.S. army is, as I describe it, like injecting most cancers into the corporeal type of essentially the most technologically deadly group ever created by Homo sapiens. This isn’t a small matter.
Jacobsen: What dangers do you see rising as synthetic intelligence, robotics, drone programs, and autonomous weapons grow to be extra central to army operations—particularly if ideological seize continues and people stay deeply embedded within the command loop?
Weinstein: You might be asking about AI and robotics—drone know-how, satellite tv for pc programs, and autonomous platforms. That is a vital query.
If a MAGA-dominated army, rooted within the worst components of Christian nationalism—such because the New Apostolic Reformation and the Seven Mountains Mandate—controls these programs, then the ideology will form the know-how. These programs is not going to be constructed on ideas of equality, variety, or inclusion. They are going to mirror dogma.
Individuals usually don’t wish to find out about these actions as a result of the small print are overwhelming. However you can’t separate ideology from design. A robotic offensive functionality will mirror the values of those that management it.
Now we have seen this explored in common tradition—The Terminator, The Matrix, and different movies—however you might be at present in Ukraine, which is years forward of the leading edge in drone warfare. That is primarily a drone conflict. The advances made there—usually by younger folks—are extraordinary. Drones are being developed that may get better our bodies from the battlefield. I’ve seen this.
If the U.S. army advances technologically at this tempo, incorporating drones, robotics, and AI, the result is easy: these programs might be ruled by the parameters and protocols of these in energy. And people people overtly reject even acknowledging systemic prejudice, bigotry, or historic injustice.
They declare that specializing in ethnicity, tradition, or faith is divisive, insisting as a substitute on a false universality. That framing is itself one other type of racism and exclusion. Now we have seen this earlier than. The distinction now could be that we’ve social media, superior automation, and unprecedented technological attain.
You’re the first journalist to ask me that query, and it issues. Any AI, robotics, or army know-how developed underneath this framework will inevitably mirror MAGA-style supremacy. That ideology is an alloy: white, straight, Christian, and male. That’s the easy reply.
Jacobsen: You referenced earlier the British and Roman Empires as the 2 main army powers most akin to the US earlier than its rise. That prompted a thought.
I used to be as soon as an govt in a minor political social gathering in British Columbia, Canada, earlier than it dissolved honourably. Throughout that point, we held a personal assembly with a number of different minor events—teams that had successfully grow to be advocacy events relatively than electoral forces. Three hereditary elders from an Indigenous band visited us to talk.
Of their custom, youthful brothers communicate on behalf of elder brothers as a result of interrupting elders is taken into account deeply disrespectful. I later interviewed a few them and gained perception into their views. Some communities stay deliberately remoted—not out of animosity, however by selection. There’s a sense of “you do your factor, we are going to do ours.”
One of many elders referred to North American white tradition—Canada and the US broadly—as “the Romans.” That framing struck me. It suggests a distinct chronological and civilizational perspective, one that could be extra indifferent and subsequently extra diagnostic.
When outsiders view us that means, are they seeing parallels to the issues of Roman civilization throughout its decline? Are a few of these errors being repeated now?
Weinstein: Constantine was the determine who fused Christianity with the army and political energy of the Roman Empire. He did so primarily underneath his mom, Helena’s, affect. There is a vital e book, Constantine’s Sword, printed within the early 2000s, and a 96-minute documentary by the identical identify. That documentary focuses partially on my household and our early battle on the Air Pressure Academy, and it addresses this actual difficulty.
If the US involves be seen as a fundamentalist Christian army energy, that may play immediately into the narratives promoted by Islamic extremists and different adversaries. It makes it far simpler to forged us as “the opposite.”
For generations—definitely since World Conflict II, and even going again to World Conflict I—the US was seen not because the saviour of democracy, however as a principal provider of democratic beliefs: equality earlier than the legislation, political pluralism, and legitimacy no matter race, faith, or origin. That notion has been shattered.
This isn’t one thing {that a} midterm election will repair. The injury is generational. I’ve 4 kids and three grandchildren, and I usually marvel what sort of America—if any—will exist for them.
We reside in a small world now. Isolationism and nativism don’t function in a vacuum. Every thing impacts everybody else. The Monroe Doctrine ought to be a historic artifact, not a dwelling mindset—the concept that we management a whole hemisphere. That mind-set now not matches actuality.
It’s terrifying to create this inextricable combination—this intertwining of army energy, state authority, and company pursuits. That’s, by definition, fascism.
In his farewell handle, President Dwight D. Eisenhower issued what was arguably essentially the most essential warning of his profession. He cautioned the nation in regards to the army–industrial complicated. Firms like Basic Dynamics, Boeing, and Lockheed Martin changing into embedded within the essence of the state is straight out of the fascist playbook.
What we’re confronting now could be a fundamentalist Christian dad or mum–church–army–company–congressional proselytizing complicated. It’s pervasive and harmful—not simply to this nation, however to the world.
By harmful, I don’t imply symbolic hurt. I imply the prospect of large, actual violence. Not streams or creeks of blood, however rivers—oceans of blood. This imaginative and prescient aligns disturbingly properly with fundamentalist Christian nationalist theology. Of their eschatology, the Battle of Armageddon guarantees a river of blood 200 miles lengthy and several other toes deep, produced by what they see as a weaponized Jesus slaughtering unbelievers. That’s an obsession and a lust.
That is why your earlier query issues. Now we have seen imperial collapse earlier than. Neither the Romans nor the British Empire had synthetic intelligence, robotics, or autonomous weapons. They may not encode dogma immediately into killing machines. We do.
Now we have not seen a nuclear explosion since Nagasaki. It’s more and more complicated to consider that restraint will maintain indefinitely. You might be in a rustic proper now the place using a tactical nuclear weapon is usually mentioned as an actual threat. Air raid alarms interrupt interviews. That alone ought to be sobering.
The US was based on a transparent separation between the non secular and the temporal. That precept is embedded within the First Modification. Church and state are separated for a motive. The founders checked out European historical past—at Cromwell, on the Wars of Faith, on the Salem witch trials—and acknowledged that giant bloodshed occurred when political energy and spiritual authority had been fused. They explicitly rejected that mannequin.
But that’s exactly what is going on now. Many People noticed it coming. Too many selected disengagement. At this level, there is no such thing as a impartial floor. You both resist otherwise you collaborate. Selecting to do nothing is a type of collaboration.
That is removed from over. Every day, the state of affairs deteriorates. You might be reporting from a rustic that mirrors many of those dynamics. I obtain emails crammed with antisemitic hatred—”filthy Jew,” time and again. It’s all the time Jews. Once I ask about Ivanka Trump or Jared Kushner, who’re Jewish, the messages cease. That silence tells you all the pieces.
We’re in a deadly second. It have to be confronted. Individuals have to face up and act.
Jacobsen: The late Singaporean chief Lee Kuan Yew as soon as commented on what he known as the US’ “evangelistic zeal.” He was not referring narrowly to Christianity, however to a broader combine of faith, promoting, patriotism, and beliefs—what may be known as the impulse to proselytize “Americanism.” Drawing in your lengthy expertise with the U.S. army and people who serve in it, when does this technique operate properly—and when does it break down?
Weinstein: You stated it earlier on this interview. The army doesn’t operate until it’s politically neutral, and it should even be religiously neutral. There is no such thing as a various.
George Washington understood this. He was the primary to authorize chaplains within the army, a controversial resolution even then. The issue, as he acknowledged, is pluralism. Relying on the way you rely, there are literally thousands of Christian denominations—some estimates attain tens of 1000’s. With out neutrality, favouritism and battle are inevitable.
The army works solely when it serves the Structure alone.
Most of them don’t even like each other. Northern Eire is an apparent instance. For hundreds of years, Catholicism was successfully the one type of Christianity in Europe till Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation. The phrase Catholic itself means common, but Catholicism additionally accommodates many inner divisions.
While you start equating the U.S. army with a selected, weaponized model of Christianity—promoted by figures corresponding to former three-star Basic Michael Flynn, Jerry Boykin, and others—you aren’t coming into a slippery slope. You might be in free fall. That free fall all the time ends in violence.
Our work shouldn’t be about attacking anybody’s private religion. We don’t care what a person believes. If somebody needs to worship Spider-Man or an elm tree down the road, that’s their enterprise. What we care about is time, place, and method.
Consider it the way in which you consider a driver’s license. A license doesn’t will let you drive everytime you need, nonetheless you need. You can’t drive whereas intoxicated, dangerously fatigued, or impaired by treatment. Rights are regulated by time, place, and method. The identical applies to non secular expression underneath the First Modification.
Proselytizing—whether or not non secular or ideological—can’t be imposed in settings the place it coerces others. You can’t scream fireplace in a crowded theatre. That precept governs all the pieces we do.
We don’t care about anybody’s model of Jesus. Eighty-four p.c of our workers are Christians. Our largest endorsing group is the California Council of Church buildings Influence Group, which represents roughly 5,500 Protestant church buildings throughout 21 denominations and almost two million Protestants. The declare that my household or this basis is hostile to Christians is just false.
Our mission is to assist the Structure. When leaders like Lee Kuan Yew spoke of America’s evangelistic zeal, they weren’t solely referring to faith, however to the tendency to export ideology and identification as ethical reality. That tendency turns into particularly harmful when framed as a campaign.
Many extremist teams explicitly body battle with the US as a continuation of the Crusades. Traditionally, there have been seven main crusades. Casting fashionable battle as an “eighth campaign” makes recruitment simpler and violence simpler to justify. It turns into an easy narrative: we’re good, they’re dangerous, and they’re the crusaders.
Now we have intervened repeatedly to cease U.S. army models from utilizing Crusader iconography. We stopped a Marine fighter squadron and an Air Pressure squadron from displaying Crusader imagery on plane fuselages and vertical stabilizers. We intervened at West Level. We stopped models on the Air Pressure Academy that wearing Crusader costumes at soccer video games. Eradicating Crusader symbolism goes on to your query: it denies our enemies a simple propaganda instrument.
If we seem political, or if we appear to favour one non secular religion over others, we achieve this at immense peril. That peril is actual, and the worth is paid in blood.
Jacobsen: As a closing level, it’s value remembering that almost all of deaths ensuing from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars didn’t happen on the battlefield.
Weinstein: That time usually will get neglected. At one level, the US was shedding roughly 22 veterans a day to suicide. PTSD could be very actual. The human thoughts is obscure, however historical past exhibits that just about each non secular custom—presumably with the partial exception of Buddhism—has, sooner or later, been tied to violence. Even then, Sri Lanka reminds us that Buddhism has not been immune.
Individuals are all the time making an attempt to reply the identical elementary questions: the place will we come from, what are we doing right here, and the place are we going? Radicalized Christian nationalism gives a very stark reply. It says you could be as brutal as Hitler, but when, in your closing breath, you settle for their model of Christianity, you obtain everlasting heaven. Conversely, you possibly can reside the most effective life conceivable, but when you don’t take their weaponized Christ earlier than dying, you might be condemned to everlasting hell. That binary—good versus evil, saved versus damned—is profoundly harmful.
When your army commander controls almost each side of your life and your loved ones’s life, this isn’t like having a shift supervisor at McDonald’s. You do no matter is important to keep away from battle as a result of your livelihood is at stake. You might be supporting a household. In lots of instances, each spouses are working, however the stress stays fixed.
Assaults on LGBTQ folks, folks of color, and people who don’t conform to Christian nationalism are extreme. Paradoxically, most of our purchasers are Christians. They’re focused much more harshly as a result of they refuse to advance to what Christian nationalists take into account the very best degree—the “degree twenty” model of Christianity, which is Christian nationalism itself.
Jacobsen: Thanks very a lot for the chance and your time, Mikey.
Weinstein: Keep in contact. I’m glad you might be doing what you might be doing.
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Scott Douglas Jacobsen is the writer of In-Sight Publishing (ISBN: 978-1-0692343) and Editor-in-Chief of In-
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