UPDATE: Email just received from Russell E. Lloyd, Medical Center Director, Wilkes-Barre VA Medical Center:
On the advice of VA’s Office of General Counsel, the Bible has been removed and will not be replaced.
Russell E. Lloyd
Medical Center Director
Wilkes-Barre VA Medical Center
Back in August of last year, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) had a win on behalf of our veteran clients at the Wilkes-Barre VA Medical Center in Pennsylvania, getting a Gideons “New Testament, Psalms, Proverbs” removed from the facility’s POW/MIA, or “missing man,” table.
The day after this exclusively Christian Gideons New Testament was removed, a top Wilkes-Barre VA official sent the following e-mail to MRFF Founder and President Mikey Weinstein (emphasis added):
From: (A top official at VA Medical Center Wilkes-Barre's name and e-mail withheld)
Subject: RE: [EXTERNAL] REQUEST TO REMOVE Book of Faith from the POW-MIA Table commemoration display
Date: August 24, 2023 at 3:27:50 PM MDT
To: Michael L Weinstein <mikeyw4444@icloud.com>
Cc: (CCs withheld)
Mikey,
Thank you for taking time to speak with me this afternoon about this concern. As we discussed, our memorabilia area is located in an open space of the Medical Center for Veterans, employees and visitors to enjoy. Our POW/MIA table has all the items listed on the DoD website, minus the book of faith which is optional. At times materials are removed or added by individuals visiting the Medical Center since the table is not behind a locked cabinet. Our team periodically checks the area to ensure the space is used appropriately and we do remove items which have been left intentionally, or by accident. In the future, if a book of faith is found to be displayed on the table, please notify myself or our Patient Advocate, (VA Medical Center Wilkes-Barre Patient Advocate name withheld), so we can have it removed.
Again, thank you for speaking with me and have a wonderful evening.
The Gideons New Testament had been removed the day before by a Patient Advocate at the facility, who sent the following e-mail to Mikey immediately upon personally removing it:
From: (VA Medical Center Wilkes-Barre Patient Advocate name and e-mail withheld)
Subject: RE: [EXTERNAL] REQUEST TO REMOVE Book of Faith from the POW-MIA Table commemoration display
Date: August 23, 2023 at 8:12 AM
To: Michael L Weinstein <mikeyw4444@icloud.com>
1012 AM I personally just walked over and took it off the table.
Thank you,
(VA Medical Center Wilkes-Barre patient advocate name withheld)
A few hours before removing the New Testament and sending that e-mail to Mikey, the Patient Advocate had emailed the VA official who wrote the first email above, forwarding an e-mail from one of MRFF’s veteran clients, a 27-year Air Force veteran. This is what the Patient Advocate wrote:
“Can you please check on this again and respond. A veteran must have put another one out.”
The Bible had already been removed once earlier that month, according to MRFF’s lead client, but when that client returned on August 23, it was back, and, as the above e-mails say, was removed again on that day, with a top VA official writing to Mikey the next day:
“In the future, if a book of faith is found to be displayed on the table, please notify myself or our Patient Advocate … so we can have it removed.”
Well, it is now the future, and the POW/MIA table once again has a Bible on it, and this time it’s no little Gideons “New Testament, Psalms, Proverbs.” No, now it’s an enormous Bible that’s so big and taking up so much of the table that, as I said in my title, if a missing man did return they wouldn’t have room to eat!
These are the before and after photos from last August when MRFF, with no fuss, got the Gideons New Testament removed from the display:
And this is the gargantuan Good Book that someone has now decided to make their sanctimonious statement with:
When MRFF’s Air Force veteran client from back in August sent the photos of this voluminous violation of the VA’s religious symbols regulations, which state that “displays should respect and tolerate differing views and should not elevate one belief system over others,” Mikey, following the instructions from the VA official who said last August, “In the future, if a book of faith is found to be displayed on the table, please notify myself or our Patient Advocate … so we can have it removed,” notified her.
But this time, there apparently is going to be a fuss, with Assistant Medical Center Director William Klaips telling Mikey that he needs a whole week to investigate, and the table, which the facility repeatedly referred to in August as “our” table, suddenly becoming the American Legion Auxiliary’s table, somehow making the jumbo symbol of the Jesus juggernaut on it okay.
But, if this is the American Legion Auxiliary’s table, its members who put the Brobdingnagian Bible on it are not following the missing man table specifications of the organization that they are auxiliary to, which, as I wrote in a 2016 piece on HuffPost titled “Apparently, the American Legion Hates Jesus,” do NOT include a Bible, in keeping with the original table tradition started in 1967 by a group of Vietnam combat pilots, which DID NOT include a Bible.
According to the American Legion’s Chaplain’s Manual, the items to be included in a POW/MIA table display consist of:
Small table covered with a white table cloth
1 plate, fork, knife, spoon, and napkin set up on the table
1 glass inverted
1 chair placed at plate setting
Vase with a single rose in it and a red ribbon tied onto the vase
Slice of lemon on the plate and salt sprinkled onto the plate
White candle in a holder, lit at the beginning of the ceremony
POW/MIA flag draped over another chair in front of table
Folded American Flag on the table
The American Legion’s brand new “2024 Officer’s Guide and Manual of Ceremonies” also contains the same Bible-less list.
Ironically, that framed list on the Wilkes-Barre table next to the humongous holy book, which explains the symbolism of each of the table’s items, doesn’t include a Bible either.
Needless to say, Mikey is immediately sending one of his meek and mild letters to the Wilkes-Barre VA Medical Center’s director:
Russell E. Lloyd
Medical Center Director
Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania Veterans Affairs Health Care System
**BOTTOM LINE UPFRONT (BLUF):
(1) Medical Center Director Russell E. Lloyd, on behalf of its 14 military veteran client patients at your Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, VAMC facility, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) demands that you immediately remove the illicit, unconstitutional, enormous Christian Bible from the referenced POW/MIA “Missing Man Table” display which is under your personal control and direction.
(2) Incredibly, this is now the THIRD time MRFF clients have been compelled to demand the removal of a Christian bible from this POW/MIA table in just the last 7 months at your VA medical facility (see E-mail from 1 of MRFF’s 14 clients below). The first 2 times you removed the bible expeditiously. Your OWN staff even told us at MRFF IN WRITING on Aug. 24, 2023, at 3:27 pm MDT, after acceding to our demands to remove that bible for the 2nd time, to alert them if any other faith books were ever again placed on that POW/MIA table so that they (your own VAMC staff) could remove them. Indeed, here’s that e-mail from your own VA staff member, Amie O’Malia, to me at MRFF:
From: OMalia, Amie L. (she/her/hers)
Date: August 24, 2023 at 3:27:50 PM MDT
Mikey,
Thank you for taking time to speak with me this afternoon about this concern. As we discussed, our memorabilia area is located in an open space of the Medical Center for Veterans, employees and visitors to enjoy. Our POW/MIA table has all the items listed on the DoD website, minus the book of faith which is optional. At times materials are removed or added by individuals visiting the Medical Center since the table is not behind a locked cabinet. Our team periodically checks the area to ensure the space is used appropriately and we do remove items which have been left intentionally, or by accident. In the future, if a book of faith is found to be displayed on the table, please notify myself or our Patient Advocate, Nicole Gillen, so we can have it removed. (emphasis added)
Again, thank you for speaking with me and have a wonderful evening.
Looks like the 3rd time is NOT a charm, eh, Medical Center Director Lloyd?!
Dear Medical Center Director Russell E. Lloyd,
My name is Mikey Weinstein, and I am the head of a large civil rights organization called the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF, https://www.militaryreligiousfreedom.org). MRFF currently represents well over 86,000 active duty, reserve, National Guard, and military veteran clients, military academy OCS/OTS cadets and midshipmen, ROTC cadets and midshipmen, JROTC cadets as well as many clients among the 17 national security agencies, and DHS (Coast Guard) and DOT (U.S. Maritime Service). MRFF’s specific mission is to protect the constitutionally-mandated wall separating church and state in the above-referenced governmental venues.
MRFF has been retained by 14 military veterans who are also patients under your leadership as the Medical Center Director at your Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, Veterans Affairs Medical Center (VAMC), 1111 Veterans Drive, East End Blvd., Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, 18711.
Of these 14 honorably-discharged American military veteran patients/MRFF clients, 6 are practicing Christians (4 Protestants and 2 Roman Catholics), 2 practice the Jewish faith, 1 practices the Islamic faith, 1 follows the Sikh faith, 1 follows his/her Native American/Indigenous Peoples faith, and 3 follow non-faith traditions such as humanist, secularist, atheist and/or agnostic.
Medical Center Director Russell, I’ll get right to the point here. The POW/MIA “Missing Man Table" display at your Wilkes-Barre, PA, VAMC facility, approved by YOU, sir, and apparently “sponsored" by the American Legion Auxiliary in Pennsylvania, has a wholly unconstitutional, ginormous Christian bible prominently displayed on it to the utter exclusion of any other religious faith or non-faith tradition. Do you require some help, sir, in discerning the bigoted, hateful, prejudiced and universally hurtful message you are spewing out by allowing and enabling this travesty to occur?! By your flagrant and repeated official endorsement of ONLY the Christian faith, to the exclusion of all other faith and non-faith traditions, in this solemn VA-endorsed display, you wretchedly denigrate and willfully marginalize all other veterans who adhere to other faith and non-faith traditions.
How DARE you, sir!!
This BREAKING news article from MRFF’s Senior Research Director, Ms. Chris Rodda, contains all of the relevant and salient information for you on this pitifully shameful matter, sir.
www.dailykos.com/...
Please see the e-mail infra from one of our 14 MRFF client complainants on this deliberately fundamentalist Christian nationalistic matter, which provides excellent detail as to the scurrilous, unconstitutional violations REPEATEDLY occurring under your continued direction, sir.
Medical Center Director Russell, your allowing this partisan display to promote and proselytize Christianity and ONLY Christianity is an atrocious and singularly ignominious act of illicit, unconstitutional Christian supremacy, exclusivity, triumphalism, and exceptionalism. It viciously violates not only the No Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution and its construing caselaw but your own VA regulations as well.
The display of Christian proselytizing material as the sole religious item in a VA medical center display is in clear violation of the VA’s own regulations and policies regarding religious displays, which state that a display “should not elevate one belief system over others,” such as VA Directive 0022, "Religious Symbols in VA Facilities," January 31, 2020, (emphasis added):
2. POLICY. Religious symbols may be included in a passive display, including a holiday display, in public areas of VA facilities (see subsection a. below), if the display is of the type that follows in the longstanding tradition of monuments, symbols and practices that simply recognize the important role that religion plays in the lives of many Americans. Such displays should respect and tolerate differing views and should not elevate one belief system over others. …
b. VA is committed to inclusivity and nondiscrimination and evaluates all displays in public areas on a case-by-case basis in accordance with the policy stated above. VA particularly encourages the placement of diverse religious symbols together in passive displays in public areas.
The display of a Christian Bible would not even be allowed as a permanent display in a VA facility chapel, let alone a public display area, as it is on this POW-MIA table. VA medical facility chapels are required to be “religiously neutral” at all times when there is not an actual service taking place for a particular faith group, as is clearly stated in VHA Directive 1111, “Spiritual Care,” July 21, 2021 (emphasis added):
9. CHAPELS AND OTHER WORSHIP FACILITIES
a. Chapels. The chapel, or a room set aside exclusively for use as a chapel, must be reserved for patients’ spiritual activities, such as: worship, prayer, meditation and quiet contemplation. Such chapels are appointed and maintained as places for meditation and worship. When VA chaplains are not providing or facilitating a religious service for a particular faith group, the chapel must be maintained as religiously neutral, meaning it cannot be viewed as endorsing one religion over another. Religious literature, content and symbols must be made readily accessible to VA patients and visitors in a chapel or Chaplain Service office at their request. The only exception to the policy on maintaining chapels as religiously neutral are the chapels at VA medical facilities which were built with permanent religious symbols in the walls or windows. In these cases, the VA medical facility Director must also designate an appropriately sized room or construct a religiously neutral chapel, which is maintained in accordance with this VHA directive and VA Space Planning Criteria …
So you can better understand the history of sectarian Christian bibles, or related Christian proselytizing material, placed on these “Missing Man Table" displays, please take a good look at this article, also authored by MRFF’s Senior Research Director, Ms. Chris Rodda:
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/op-eds/bibles-dont-belong-on-pow-remembrance-tables
Here is yet another useful article for your review please from MRFF’s Ms. Chris Rodda:
https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/5/7/1855980/-MRFF-Files-Lawsuit-to-Remove-Bible-from-VA-Facility-POW-MIA-Table
Additionally, here is an impactful timeline for your further review as well, clearly showing that a Christian bible was NEVER a part of the “Missing Man Table” POW/MIA table display from its origination until numerous decades afterward:
1967 - The POW/MIA table tradition was created by the Red River Fighter Pilots Association, an association of Vietnam combat pilots informally known as the “River Rats.” They began the tradition in May of 1967 at a meeting at Korat Royal Thai Air Force Base in Thailand, held by a group of pilots to discuss ways to prevent so many pilots from being shot down and captured. The original tradition created by the River Rats at this meeting did not include a Bible among the table’s items.
1985 - The American Legion passed a resolution to set a POW/MIA table at its events. In its official Chaplain’s Manual, the American Legion listed the items to be placed on the table. In keeping with the original tradition, a Bible was not among the items in the American Legion’s version. This was the version that became the standard and is still widely used today.
1999 - The VFW Ladies Auxiliary published a script for the setting of the POW/MIA table in a 1999 issue of its magazine, adding a Bible to the table’s items. This is the earliest evidence of a Bible being added to the table.
c. 2000 - The National League of POW/MIA Families put out a script for the setting of the POW/MIA table that was almost identical to the one published in the 1999 issue of the VFW Ladies Auxiliary magazine, including the addition of the Bible. The National League of POW/MIA Families script first appeared on the organization’s website in 2000.
This new National League of POW/MIA Families version, created over three decades after the original, Bible-free tradition was begun by the River Rats, is now wrongly thought by many to be the original tradition and has led many to think that a Bible has always been included on POW/MIA tables and that it was the National League of POW/MIA Families that originated the tradition.
Here is that key e-mail mentioned supra from one of MRFF’s 14 clients on this instant matter at hand, received today at 11:06 am MST:
ALL CONCERNED:
I am writing on behalf of myself and thirteen other veterans who are seen and treated in the VA Wilkes-Barre Healthcare System. Since my transfer into the VA Wilkes-Barre Healthcare System in June 2023, this is the third time I have had to ask for a Christian holy book to be removed from the POW-MIA table which is prominently displayed on the First Floor in the small military museum where a lovely collection of military memorabilia is located. This isn't the only Christian symbol which is on display in the collection, but it is the one I have complained about repeatedly.
I have asked for the Military Religious Freedom Foundation to assist and intervene on my behalf and the behalf of my 13 fellow MRFF client/military veteran complainants. This is an egregious and thrice-repeated violation of American Veterans' First Amendment rights.
It is outrageous that the VA is allowing this to occur on their property and it must be stopped. I expect for the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the VA Wilkes-Barre Healthcare System, to do what they are legally required to do in order to protect EVERY ONE's First Amendment Rights.
I believe in the protections of the First Amendment. I support the meaningful words of SCOTUS Justice Hugo L. BLACK who wrote the quote below in support of the majority opinion in the historic 1947 decision Everson v. Board of Education:
“The First Amendment has erected a wall between church and state. That wall must be kept high and impregnable.”
It is vital to me and every American that this wall is built taller and made stronger. This request to remove the Christian holy book from the POW-MIA table is one small step to support that larger effort.
With My Regards, (MRFF Client’s name withheld)
Medical Center Director Russell, on behalf of its 14 military veteran client patients at your Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania VAMC facility, MRFF demands that you immediately remove the illicit, unconstitutional Christian proselytizing bible from the referenced POW/MIA “Missing Man Table” display, for the THIRD and FINAL time, which is obviously under your personal control and direction.
Failure to timely remove this unconstitutionally offensive, gigantic Christian bible from your POW/MIA “Missing Man Table" display will result in aggressive and highly visible Federal litigation to, inter alia, force your VAMC facility to follow its own VA regulatory structure prohibiting such wretchedly illegal and constitutionally-violative displays of singularly sectarian Christian religious dominance, exceptionalism, and exclusivity to the exclusion of all other faith and non-faith traditions at a critically needed, U.S. government medical facility.
We anxiously await your swift decision here, sir.
Sincerely,
Michael L. “Mikey” Weinstein, Esq.
Founder and President
Military Religious Freedom Foundation
505-250-7727