A Bible was removed from the waiting room of a Chillicothe Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Athens, Ohio, after a veteran complained.
“Our government is secular and must remain secular,” the unidentified veteran wrote.
Mikey Weinstein, the founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, fired off a letter to the medical center on behalf of the veteran—alleging that the presence of the Bible inside a government facility is a violation of the U.S. Constitution.
Weinstein, a fussy little man with a strong aversion to our Lord, said the Bible’s placement in the waiting room was “illicit and unconstitutional.”
In other words, Good Housekeeping is fine, but the Good Book is not.
The panicked VA staff scoured the entire building to ensure there were no other Bibles lurking about—waiting to spontaneously convert people. They found one.
“The Athens CBOC is unsure how this came into the clinic, but it has been removed,” Associate Chief Adam Jackson wrote to Weinstein.
Ron Crews, the executive director of the Chaplain Alliance for Religious Liberty, called the VA’s decision to ban the Bible “absolutely ridiculous.”
“There is nothing wrong with a Bible being left in the waiting room along with other reading materials,” Crews told me. “If someone doesn’t want to look at the Bible, they don’t have to look at it. But it can be there for someone who may want to look at it and may find it helpful in a time of crisis.”
That’s a good point. Let’s say you’re in the waiting room dealing with a medical crisis. Would you find greater comfort in the Bible or a back issue of People?
Jackson seemed genuinely shocked that a Bible had somehow made its way inside the building.
“We routinely have environment of care rounding teams that look for such material,” he wrote to Weinstein.
A goon squad tasked with cleansing the building of Christianity? Now that’s mighty creepy, folks.
Now we know why the VA can’t provide adequate medical care to our veterans—they’re too busy rounding up contraband Bibles.
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