Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I'm posting this review because S.E. Cupp not only mentions me in this book, but lies -- both outrightly and by omission -- about the organization I work for, and I want to set the record straight. Here's the passage from the book in which me and the organization I work for are mentioned: "But the Huffington Post did publish a column by Chris Rodda, the senior research director of something called the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, and, unrelatedly I'm sure, the author of 'Liars for Jesus.' For MRFF, which had already successfully campaigned to stop the Pentagon from sending Bibles to soldiers in Iraq, the move was finally the recognition that this special-interest group had been waiting for: 'So, while those who seek to use the U.S. military to inseparably combine religion with patriotism might find the Pentagon's decision `deeply troubling and disturbing' and will certainly get a lot of mileage out of this decision to spread the notion that the Obama administration is bent on `crushing' religion, we at MRFF see it as a good sign that, under our new commander in chief, the Department of Defense might just finally be starting to obey its own regulations."11 "The New York Times covered the MRFF's 2009 lawsuit against the military alleging that it forced religious practice on soldiers. The paper also covered MRFF's lawsuit against the Air Force, alleging a commander sent an email to his air personnel that directed them to an inspirational story on a Catholic website. And it covered MRFF's 2007 suit against the Defense Department on behalf of an atheist soldier who felt he was forced to attend prayer meetings. It seems the Military Religious Freedom Foundation has a direct line to the New York Times." Here are the lies in the above passage: 1. Cupp claims, "MRFF ... campaigned to stop the Pentagon from sending Bibles to soldiers in Iraq ..." Anyone reading that would think that MRFF was trying to keep our troops from getting Bibles to read, right? Well, MRFF has never tried to do anything of the kind. I don't know what incident Cupp is twisting to come up with this claim, so I'll give you the only two possibilities I can think of. MRFF has worked to stop Arabic Bibles from being sent to Iraq for the purpose of our troops proselytizing Iraqi Muslims, which is both forbidden by military regulations and endangers our troops by making the U.S. military look like crusaders. And MRFF has, on one occasion, demanded that the Pentagon cut its ties with one particular organization that sends Bibles to Iraq because of that particular organization's political and other objectionable activities. That's it. We have never done, and will never do, what Cupp's misleading claim says we've done. 2. Cupp claims, "The paper also covered MRFF's lawsuit against the Air Force, alleging a commander sent an email to his air personnel that directed them to an inspirational story on a Catholic website." What Cupp neglects to mention here is that the Catholic website that this commander (who was a her, not a him) directed her subordinate personnel to was a far right political Catholic website that had images depicting President Obama as Hitler and other highly objectionable political content. Of the over sixty complaints that MRFF received from Air Force personnel about this email, most were more shocked and offended by the objectionable political content than the commander's inappropriate use of military email to send a religious message. This is why the New York Times covered the story. It should also be noted that the NCO who first contacted MRFF after unsuccessfully trying to file a formal complaint against this commander was a Catholic himself. MRFF is in no way anti Christian. In fact, 96% of the service members who contact MRFF for assistance are Christians -- Catholics and mainstream Protestants who are being told by their fundamentalist military superiors that they are not Christian enough or the right kind of Christians. Cupp also mentions my book, "Liars for Jesus," a book which, incidentally, is unrelated to my work with MRFF. My book, the full title of which is "Liars For Jesus: The Religious Right's Alternate Version of American History Vol. 1," is a history book that debunks many of the lies about American history used by the religious right to further their political agenda. And, like MRFF, my book is in no way anti-Christian. In fact, it was a Christian minister who urged me to write it, and that same Christian minister who wrote the foreword to it.