IRD: Christian Leaders Must Speak Against Women in Combat & Conscription

on February 9, 2016

Institute on Religion & Democracy Press Release
February 9, 2016
Contact: Jeff Walton office: 202-682-4131, cell: 202-413-5639, e-mail: jwalton@TheIRD.org

Washington, DC—Endorsement by several Republican presidential candidates of registering women for a hypothetical military draft, and the Obama Administration’s removing remaining strictures against women in combat roles, have provoked controversy from some conservative Christians. Nearly all of the critics so far have been Evangelical, mostly Southern Baptist.

IRD Evangelical Action Director Chelsen Vicari commented:

“Christian leaders should oppose conscripting women into the military. Not only Evangelicals, but also Catholics and Christian pacifists should speak out. Can the church be silent about the potentially coercive militarization of America’s daughters?

“Women are serving and have been serving their country alongside men. We support and thank them for their sacrifices. Women have important roles to fill in the military, but women also play vital roles in the home. Forcing mothers, daughters, and our sisters to register for Selective Service would be a tragic mistake.

“I’m thankful for the Evangelical men gallantly opposing women being conscripted into the horrors of war. Their recognition that God made women and men uniquely different is not misogyny. Misogyny looks like men pulling women away from their families and sacrificing their safety for the sake of political correctness and their political careers.”

IRD Just War and Global Statecraft Scholar Marc LiVecche commented:

“Women being drawn into the fight is very different from intentionally integrating them into direct ground combat positions.

“Men have – or ought to have – a natural predisposition toward gallantry. We expect the men on a sinking ship to give up their seats on the lifeboat to women or to shield their female co-workers from the terrorist’s bullets with their bodies – as happened in San Bernardino.

“But in combat, while it’s true that the leaders of fighting units must never waste the lives of their men they nevertheless must be willing to spend them. If women are in their ranks, then either gallantry risks jeopardizing combat effectiveness as commanders honor it and shield their women from danger or commanders override gallantry and treat their women indiscriminately, thereby jeopardizing an important facet of human nature.

“Included in the array of obligations of being a man is the protection, care, and preservation of women — even those women who don’t necessarily need male protection.”

www.TheIRD.org

  1. Comment by Mony Conner on February 9, 2016 at 5:01 pm

    Very well stated and unequivocally true.

  2. Comment by Skipper on February 9, 2016 at 5:40 pm

    Absolutely, Christians must speak out. Even the Nazis didn’t draft women into the army. We can’t sit back when family structure is under attack.

  3. Comment by BabyBlue on February 9, 2016 at 6:21 pm

    I so disagree. Men and women can serve in so many ways in the armed forces – and they do so honorably – and even now brave men and women serve in harm’s way, laying down their lives for freedom and liberty and justice for all. Much of warfare is now not on the open fields of battle, but in the public cafe or on the cyber battlefield. I oppose the draft – we don’t need it – but I do support registration. For if one day we should find we need the draft it will be because we are facing a catastrophic disaster (for example, half of the country has been destroyed) and we will need to know all who are left who can be paid to serve their country in its time of great need if that unthinkable day should come. Either men and women register or no one should.

  4. Comment by AndrewDowling on February 9, 2016 at 10:44 pm

    Generic liberal nonsense. Lots of words, zero content.

  5. Comment by MarcoPolo on February 10, 2016 at 4:44 pm

    Well said, BabyBlue!

  6. Comment by Haze on February 10, 2016 at 1:46 pm

    I think the differences between men and women probably *do* mean men should be expected to be conscripted to fight (in certain very limited situations) and women should not, but I don’t think this is something that is clearly taught in Scripture and Christians should think very carefully about treating it as if it were.

  7. Comment by Antisthenes Diogenes on February 10, 2016 at 3:12 pm

    You have no problems with LGBTQs in our churches and government service so what’s your argument here?

  8. Comment by Kingdom Ambassador on February 10, 2016 at 4:33 pm

    “And Yahweh spake … saying, Take ye the sum of all the congregation … every MALE by their polls; from [not twenty-one or eighteen, but) twenty years old and upward, all that are able to go forth to war….” (Numbers 1:1-3)

    Had the 18th-century founders established a biblical government based upon Yahweh’s moral law (including His warfare statutes), sending America’s daughters as cannon fodder into the next international bakers’ war wouldn’t be a likely reality.

    For more on how Yahweh’s unchanging moral applies today, see http://www.bibleversusconstitution.org/law-kingdomFrame.html.

    Then, find out how much you REALLY know about the Constitution as compared to the Bible. Take our 10-question Constitution Survey at http://www.bibleversusconstitution.org/ConstitutionSurvey.html and receive a complimentary copy of a book that EXAMINES the Constitution by the Bible.

  9. Comment by Byrom on February 10, 2016 at 9:39 pm

    I’m going to offer a somewhat different view on this discussion, and one which some might call sexist. I’m an “old” guy of 72, and a peace-time Army veteran. My view has been honed by 49-1/2 years of marriage and observation of both women and men for quite a few years.
    Women are by God-given nature a civilizing force in society, and especially for men. When we try to make women too much like men, we lose something precious in our world. When we encourage them to be just like men, we lose something precious in our society. That’s not just in war, but in other facets of society.
    In early May 2013, I met a young woman who was a probationary Houston firefighter/EMT, just out of the Houston fire academy. She was 4′-2″ tall, and a veteran of volunteer fire departments. Her driving desire was to “haul hose” like a man. I have no idea what the height requirements for HFD are. On May 31, 2013, she lost her life “hauling hose” in a big hotel fire in southwest Houston.
    We need to be very careful about how we consider women in our society. There may be very unintended consequences we don’t recognize.

  10. Comment by freddiethegreat on February 11, 2016 at 2:43 am

    I’m a military veteran. I was in the infantry and frequently carried my own body weight hung about me. Women just can’t make it. And none of us wanted women out on patrol with us. Any woman who disagrees: Trust me, you don’t want to be there. There IS no glamour. To become a ‘woman soldier’ is merely to become a poor copy of a man.

  11. Comment by Raymond Greenway on February 11, 2016 at 7:42 am

    I served for over 23 years in both Military Police and the Infantry. One unit I was in and I was assigned to the Supply Section there was the Supply Sergeant, the Unit’s Armorer, and a Supply Clerk were all females. One other clerk, a grunt, and myself did all the heavy work as the females didn’t have the upper body strength. The females maxed the PT test, yet couldn’t do their jobs,. The Army in it’s infinite wisdom lifted the strength requirements so that women can be Supply Specialists. This was a common theme when I was in the Army.
    Fast forward to almost 20 years since my retirement, women are now allowed in the Combat Arms. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that the standards will be lowered so that women will be allowed in the Combat Arms and will be required to register for the draft.
    The draft was reinstated in 1940 and we entered WWII in 1941. In the next few years we will be at war in a major conflict with either China or Russia and it will be a high intensity war. If we do not stop this nonsense, our mothers, sisters, daughters, and nieces will be used as cannon fodder and see them slaughtered in a WWII type of war.
    That will be a complete desaster for our society.

  12. Comment by Dr. Daniel Mercaldo on February 13, 2016 at 12:58 pm

    Thanks for some clear thinking on this subject.

  13. Comment by Barbara on February 18, 2016 at 10:22 am

    Just like every policy the left pushes, the line at first is always, “don’t worry, it’s only voluntary”, but be assured it soon will become compulsory. Whether it’s government schools, women working outside the home, birth control, preschool, assisted suicide, homosexual rights and on and on, they present it as just another option for those who so desire and then, little by little, it becomes the norm and, ultimately, you will be made to suffer consequences if you don’t actively affirm and participate in their agenda. Our present culture is a veritable showcase of the many destructive schemes of progressivism that began as a whisper and have evolved into the iron fist of government reducing our society to a hovel every day and most of us never saw it coming.

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