U.S. Department of Defense to Implement Guidelines to Protect Service Members’ Religious Freedom

The U.S. Department of Defense says new guidelines will be put into place to protect religious liberty rights for military service members.

According to CBN News, the U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper began looking into the issue after hearing that some military members and chaplains were banned from attending worship services off base during the coronavirus pandemic.

The new guidelines, called Instruction 1300.17, say that the DOD must:

• Acknowledge that service members have the right to observe the principles of their religion.
• Accommodate religious practices and procedures for service members.
• Ensure that religious beliefs shall not serve as a foundation for discrimination, loss of promotion, education, training, or assignment.
• Require that military departments implement training and oversee the performance of these policies and procedures regarding the religious practices of service members, commanders, chaplains, and recruiters.

The policy also states military leadership must accommodate “individual expressions of sincerely held beliefs,” adding that “a Service member’s expression of such beliefs may not, in so far as practicable, be used as the basis of any adverse personnel action, discrimination, or denial of promotion, schooling, training, or assignment.”

First Liberty Institute first submitted a letter to Esper in May, asking for “clear DOD…