Posted on Apr 2, 2016
Have your religious beliefs (or lack thereof) affected your life in the military? Has your career or personal life been affected?
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Have you ever experienced any prejudice or discrimination due to belonging to minority religion or having a superior who is of a different religion? Have you ever been treated differently by your peers dunno religion?
Posted >1 y ago
Responses: 6
Yes. Particularly by those of fundamentalist Christian ideologies. When a superior runs down the line to ask everyone's faith - and gets to me and they find out I had no professed religious beliefs - and THEN they loudly announce that they found the "volunteer" for Christmas duty... and every Sunday... and Holy Week... and when I went to IG and saw the Creche on their front counter and was told to shut up and pull the duty...
It happened many times during my career.
It happened many times during my career.
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SGT (Join to see)
That's very unfortunate. I've never seen anyone being discriminated against that blatantly
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MCPO (Join to see)
SGT (Join to see) - That's probably because you follow a majority religion (Christianity), so it never impacted you and you never really took notice of it. I'm not saying this as a jab or anything, just statement of fact. Kind of like married military members not seeing how duty rosters are made during holiday periods or after FTXs or deployments...
But non-majority religious folks - and all the single members - see what's going on.
But non-majority religious folks - and all the single members - see what's going on.
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SGT (Join to see)
MCPO (Join to see) I'm actually an atheist. I've heard my fair share of inappropriate comments but I've never had leadership who discriminated against me, nor seen someone else discriminated against. I've heard of it happening but it's never gone on around me. Sorry you had to deal with things like that during your career.
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When and Where I served Religion was pretty much a Non-Issue. If you are any kind of Conservative, Orthodox Faith, US Navy is probably not the place for you. The Sailors that I served with were not a very religious group.
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PO1 William "Chip" Nagel
There is a quote I love. "Religion is like a Penis, It's good you have one, glad you like it, just don't whip it out and wave it in my face".
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I do not wear my religion on my sleeve. I livestock farm and usually have mud, manure, and "other stuff" on me unless I'm specifically doing something other than farm errands in town. Even then, I am usually in Carhartt's bibs and steel toes and that's the level of formal attire at our church. It would be fair to say I look like a well-groomed, junkyard dog. The only public display of faith anyone would notice is that My wife and I, my daughter and son-in-law and grandchildren say grace before any meal or snack, at home or out. I've never felt discriminated against. I have had people say that I'm not anything like they expected when the first met me. The only question I've asked is "Am I better or worse than my first impression?" The only religion related answer I've received is that "For a religious person your much smarter, nicer, and more intelligent than I expected."
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