Nobel-Nominated Advocate: Weinstein on Military Religious Rights

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): A Further Inquiry

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/09/25

Michael L. “Mikey” Weinstein is an undisputed leader of the national movement to restore the obliterated wall separating church and state in the most technologically lethal organization ever created by humankind: the United States armed forces. Described by Harper’s magazine as “the constitutional conscience of the U.S. military, a man determined to force accountability,” Mikey’s family has a long and distinguished U.S. military history spanning three consecutive generations of military academy graduates and over 130 years of combined active duty military service in every significant combat engagement our country has been in from World War I to the current Global War on Terror. Mikey is a 1977 Honour Graduate of the United States Air Force Academy. He left Mr. Perot’s employ in 2006 to focus his full-time attention on the nonprofit charitable foundation he founded to directly battle the far-right militant radical evangelical religious fundamentalists: the Military Religious Freedom Foundation.

In this Nobel Peace Prize nomination interview with Scott Douglas Jacobsen, Weinstein reports that MRFF has assisted tens of thousands of service members—most of them Christians—facing coercive proselytizing or discrimination. With repeated Nobel Peace Prize nominations and growing visibility, Weinstein continues to warn of the dangers of Christian nationalism in the military, urging vigilance against threats to constitutional democracy.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Today, once again, we’re here with the prolific Mikey Weinstein from the MRFF. As far as I know, you recently received a nomination for a Nobel Peace Prize.

Mikey Weinstein: Well, we can’t identify the person. I can tell you the person was a leader of a civil rights organization that won the Nobel Peace Prize. So this person is a Nobel Peace Prize laureate. And you can Google it: legislators, heads of state, university professors in relevant fields, and past laureates can nominate people. The Nobel Committee keeps nominators confidential for 50 years.

Jacobsen: Who made the nomination? If you know the individual, I believe that’s important. What are the criteria required to be part of a nomination?

Weinstein: For instance, Trump often mentions being nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has publicly claimed to have nominated him, as have some other lawmakers in past years. But he has never been nominated by a prior winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.This is actually our eighth nomination, Scott, but it’s the first one in a decade. We haven’t been nominated in ten years, so we’re pretty pleased about it—especially about the individual who decided to nominate us.

Given the rise of the Trump movement, that could be one reason behind this nomination. Whatever the reason, we’re obviously pleased about it. The Nobel Peace Prize Committee does not reveal nominators for fifty years. So if you and I are still around in fifty years, you’ll know. I know who it is, and eventually, you’ll know too. We’ll take it. We’re pleased about it.

Mostly, it’s not narcissism; it’s necessity. It helps establish credibility and validates our work. Most of our clients—the overwhelming majority—are military personnel, including active-duty, reserve, and guard members. We have clients across the 18 elements of the U.S. Intelligence Community, including places like the FBI, NSA, and DIA.

Also the U.S. the Coast Guard, which operates under the Department of Homeland Security in peacetime, and the U.S. Maritime Service, notably the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, which is administered under the Department of Transportation. That’s why I’m happy for our clients; it adds a level of credibility.

By December 15, 2025, we’ll mark MRFF’s twentieth anniversary as a recognized 501(c)(3). My wife and I actually started this fight in early 2004, and the spark was Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ, which opened in U.S. theatres on February 4, 2004. The “Jesus Chainsaw Massacre” or “Freddy versus Jesus.” Have you seen that movie?

Jacobsen: I saw it years ago.

Weinstein: It was pretty bloody.

Jacobsen: It’s a step above the God’s Not Dead series.

Weinstein: Yes, it is. It’s much more along the lines of Apocalypto in terms of the blood. They were beating Jesus so badly that in the theatre I stood up and said, “Stop! I’ll convert! Just stop beating him up so badly!”

But in all seriousness, at the Air Force Academy—where two of our children (and our daughter-in-law) were enrolled—there was a tremendous amount of pressure from the cadet chain of command and the officer chain of command in Colorado Springs to push the cadet wing, which is the student body, to see that movie. That was our Lexington and Concord moment—the spark that started our fight.

It took us twenty-two months before we realized there wasn’t an organization focused with laser-like precision on the very adversarial, communal, ritualistic, and tribal aspects of the U.S. military. I sent you an email this morning with a thank-you note. We got a call for help last night from an officer, and as it was a short note, you probably saw it. There was no other place for this officer to turn.

In the military, if you’re being persecuted for your religious faith—remember, the vast majority of our clients are Christians, Scott—they’re just not considered “Christian enough.” We also hear from Muslims, Jewish personnel, Buddhists, Shintoists, Native Americans, atheists, agnostics, spiritualists, and humanists. We even have members of the Jedi Church straight out of Star Wars. We’ve had clients from nearly every belief; we just haven’t had a Scientologist. We’re still waiting for Tom Cruise to reach out, but he’s not really in the military—despite the Top Gun movies.

So this isn’t a joke. It’s a grave matter. Whenever any form of religious extremism merges with the state, history shows us the outcomes aren’t gentle.

We end up with oceans and oceans of blood. And we’re pretty much there right now. So it’s a grave matter. And the Nobel Peace Prize nomination, coming from a former laureate, validates what we’re doing. But all that really does is help open the door for more clients to come to us for help.

Because usually they can’t go to the judge advocates. I was a judge advocate—a military lawyer—in the Air Force. That’s a staff officer role; they’re not commanders. They can go to the chaplains, also staff officers and not commanders, but a significant portion of chaplains are themselves Christian nationalists. They can file an Equal Employment Opportunity complaint or an Inspector General complaint, but these rarely yield results. They promise anonymity but never truly provide it. And you might be stunned—maybe not—by the number of IG and EEO personnel in the military who are themselves our clients.

They can also go up their chain of command, but their chain of command is often the persecutor. That’s why they have to go to an NGO like ours. We provide what we call AARP: Anonymity, Action, Results, and Protection. And of course, we don’t charge. We’re a charity.

This all started with my wife and me as furious parents, seeing what was happening to our children, being pressured to see Mel Gibson’s blood-soaked movie The Passion of the Christ. We are now approaching 100,000 clients, and most of them are Christians. We have over 1,200 people working with the foundation, which is typical for most civil rights organizations. The majority are volunteers, and we have them on almost every military installation around the world. We even have them on nuclear submarines and nuclear aircraft carriers. That’s where we are today.

Jacobsen: As an important note, the current direct nemesis is Pete Hegseth. Let’s say this is a regular democratic situation. The term ends. Where does Pete Hegseth envision the military by the end of this term?

Weinstein: First of all, I caution you—we don’t know. We’re not going day by day, but second by second. This regime has been in power for barely eight months and a handful of days. What they want is something straight out of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale: Gilead, a fundamentalist Christian nationalist state.

We actually have a large number of evangelical clients. For them, it all comes down to time, place, and manner. In Canada, can you drive whenever you want? Actually, you cannot, Scott. Neither can I here in New Mexico. You can’t drive if you’re stoned, drunk, or too tired. It’s time, place, and manner. Likewise, you can’t proselytize “the good news of the gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ” anytime, anywhere, in an unrestricted way.

But Hegseth—or “Kegseth,” as we call him for his well-known drinking—now holds a monthly “Jesus Praise Service” in the Pentagon’s largest auditorium, usually late morning, during the duty day, in uniform. If you don’t show up, it will be noticed. That rips to shreds the separation of church and state, which is the cornerstone of the First Amendment. And the effect isn’t a trickle-down—it’s a tidal wave through commanders.

We’re getting inundated. I barely had time to return calls to my own staff and my own children yesterday. I’ve got four kids and three grandkids. One of my grandkids called me at 5:30 a.m. She’s in Ohio and too young to understand time zones. That’s the level of demand we’re dealing with: so many people reaching out for help.

To answer your question: Evangelicals don’t want to overthrow the country. Evangelicals understand that proselytizing requires the right time, place, and manner. Fundamentalists and Dominionists, especially those affiliated with the New Apostolic Reformation (NAR) and the “Seven Mountains Mandate,” differ. Think of Sarah Palin as an example. These Christian nationalists don’t want constitutional democracy. They want a theocracy.

They hate women. They hate Jews. They hate people of colour. They hate trans people. They hate LGBTQIA+ people. They hate Muslims. And they really hate the Constitution.

We were the first—and, really, the only—organization to warn about this almost a quarter century ago. Back then, people said, “Mikey and MRFF are wearing tinfoil hats.” Well, look where we are now.

With the murder of Charlie Kirk, let me make this absolutely clear for the record: we do not support political violence. We feel for his wife and children. But from our perspective, he was a horrible person, or at least the ideas he promoted were awful. It’s the standard Christian nationalist line.

The enormous number of continual statements he made about people of colour, Jews, women, LGBTQIA+ people, and Muslims were horrendous. Horrendous. But killing someone because of their views like that is also terrible.

This is where our country is. If you watched any part of that six-hour memorial service, it was terrifying for many people. I’ve heard from so many folks about it. It reminded people of what was happening in Nazi Germany. It wasn’t kumbaya, warmth, milk, happiness, and light. It was “us against them.” We’re a deeply divided country.

The real question I get asked by journalists every day is, “Mikey, do you think we’ve crossed too many rivers ever to get back?” And I hear the name of your country—Canada—brought up every hour. Canada, Canada, Canada. People say, “It’s cold up there.” Sure, it’s cold in Canada. However, I know many people who are looking to leave and doing everything they can.

We’re not going anywhere. We’re going to stay here and fight. I know what it feels like to have members of my family face this oppression. I faced it at the Air Force Academy my first year back in 1973. I’m an Air Force Academy grad. I’m also an Air Force brat. My dad went to the Naval Academy. I married an Air Force brat. My father-in-law flew 250 combat missions in Korea as an Air Force pilot.

But I had never really experienced antisemitism until I got to the Air Force Academy. I’m Jewish, but not very religious. By the way, happy Rosh Hashanah—it’s the year 5786 in Judaism. We start counting time from the last time a MAGA person showed compassion or empathy for another human being. Obviously, I jest, but you get the idea.

I chronicled those experiences in my books. This world does not want America to remain where it is right now: a Christian nationalist cudgel, a hammer, a radioactive entity smashing democracy. We are basically a neo-fascist country now, run by a sociopath. And as I tell people all day long, and I’ll say it in this interview now: in America, someday your children and grandchildren will ask you—if we survive long enough—“Grandma, Grandpa, Mom, Dad, what did you do to fight this?” The same question was asked in Germany during the Nazi era.

Either you resist or you collaborate. And if you decide to do neither, you are still collaborating.

Just look at the way he has treated Canada. Canada is our closest ally. He’s said things like, “The 51st state,” as though Canada would be better off annexed into America—let alone Greenland, or Denmark, or even the Panama Canal.

When you tell someone in the U.S. military—remember, the most technologically lethal organization ever created by humankind—that they lack integrity, honour, courage, or intelligence because of their chosen religious faith or lack thereof, that is no different than telling someone they’re stupid because of their skin colour or because they were born without a penis, i.e. a woman. That’s precisely what Kirk did when he demeaned Black women like Kamala Harris and Michelle Obama, or women of colour like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, implying they lacked the “essential brainpower” compared to a white male.

The approved formula for Christian nationalism in this country right now is four things: straight, white, Christian, male. And the number of senior flag officers—admirals, generals, or Senior Executive Service (SES) civilians—who have called me to talk is staggering. They tell me, “I love our airmen, Marines, sailors, soldiers, and guardians”—that’s the name for Space Force personnel—“but I now hate my service. I hate my military branch.” That is sick but totally understandable. It’s terrifying.

So I’m here to report today, if I’m the dipstick or barometer measuring this engine of Christian nationalism, that’s where we are. And you have to find a way to resist. People say, “We’ll fix it in the midterms in 2026.” But meanwhile, we have a sociopathic two-year-old as president talking about running for a third term in 2028, which is explicitly banned in the U.S. Constitution.

Fixing this assumes we’ll even have free elections next year. I remind everyone: if you don’t know what Germany was like in 1933, do some research.

So I’m reporting to you today—it’s metastasizing at an incredibly high velocity. It’s much worse now than it was during our last interview, and it continues to grow exponentially.

Jacobsen: Excellent. Mikey, thank you again for your time.

Weinstein: All right. Thanks, Scott. Appreciate it.

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