Crossposted at Equality Loudoun

This is an interesting one from Chuck Colson (of Prison Fellowship Ministries; read more about them here). In case you’re not aware, PFM operates a tax-free multi-million dollar headquarters located in Ashburn, and founder Chuck Colson produces both a daily radio and email commentary, broadcast nationwide. His topics rarely have anything to do with ministering to prisoners; rather, they represent salvos in the Republican/Christian nationalist-manufactured “culture war,” and reliably telegraph the talking points we can expect to hear from the rest of the Republican noise machine on any given issue.

Today’s commentary concerns the coming repeal of the disastrous “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.  According to Colson, “unless something is done,” military chaplains will be drummed out of the service en masse when gay and lesbian servicemembers no longer have to lie about this important part of their humanity in order to serve their country. Why? Because the hypothetical chaplains will have to “confront a profoundly difficult moral choice” between providing spiritual support to all servicemembers who ask for it, and…what? Refusing to do that? It seems that a military policy that actively encourages people to lie has not created any moral dilemmas for these hypothetical chaplains, but never mind.

Here, Colson approvingly quotes some retired chaplains quoting Colson, from his own “Manhattan Declaration”:

We will fully and ungrudgingly render to Caesar what is Caesar’s. But under no circumstances will we render to Caesar what is God’s.

Consider: Are the armed forces of the United States “Caesar’s,” or are they “God’s”? What are the implications of this (I assume) hasty and unexamined admission by Chuck Colson that he thinks military service is not in the realm of service to our nation, but is instead something to be rendered unto his God? And why are we, the taxpayers of Loudoun, supporting this anti-democratic nonsense?