LJ-SEC: (ORIGINALLY POSTED BY sunfell)

Here's an excellent partial transcript of Mikey Weinstein's opening remarks at a debate he participated in at the USAF Academy.

Now I know I'm at war, and my legions are at war. We are not at war with Christianity and we are not at war with evangelical Christianity. Ah, but we are at war with a subset of evangelical Christianity with a long technical name that I hope won't take the rest of my time. I'll say it just one time today: it's premillennial, dispensational, reconstructionist, dominionist, evangelical, fundamentalist Christianity. I know it's a long name. We'll just call them Bob. Dominionist Christianity - the leaders you know very well: Robertson, Dobson, used to be Haggard - he's had a career change - D. James Kennedy, John Hagee, alot of people that I won't be going out to dinner with, and for a long time.

Ultimately what we have now in America - when this thing started at the AFA I thought that this was something that would be, you know, a Tiger Woods 2-inch putt to fix. Little did I know that it was something that is actually plaguing, in a massive way, our entire Pentagon. We now have 737 US military installations that the Pentagon acknowledges - it's actually closer to 1,000 - in 132 countries around the world and in everyone of them there is a presence of the Officers Christian Fellowship for the officers and Christian Military Fellowship for the enlisted. I'm sure some of you are here today. Now, the goals of these organizations are fascinating, and they're unabashed about it, and they view it as a higher goal than the oath they took, many of them here, to support and defend, protect and preserve the Constitution of the United States, which is our social contract, and was the very first time in human history that a governing document for a nation-state did not invoke the name of a specific deity.

The first goal is they want to see a spiritually transformed US military - I'm not done, goal number 2 - with ambassadors for Christ in uniform, and, number three, empowered by the holy spirit. My problem is the "in uniform" part and the "during the day" part.

March 1789, the Constitution finally is running our country. December 1791, the Bill of Rights is passed. The Bill of Rights contains of course the First Amendment, which has those 16 golden words which sets up the dynamic tension between the Free Exercise clause and the Establishment Clause.

I'm sure that my friend Jay has a different pespective about this concept of separation of church and state. But I'm gonna tell you from my perspective - we don't have time to put on evidence today - it exists. I view it as the separation of supernatural and natural, and the technologically most lethal organization ever created by homo sapiens, which is our honorable and noble US military. I am sad to report to you today as I come to you with the gun smoke in my face from this battle, that that wall is nothing but smoke and debris.

There's more, and a link to the audio of the debate.