As a Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Air Force Reserve and the only military chaplain serving in the U.S House, Congressman Doug Collins (R-GA-09) is committed to protecting certain rights for military chaplains.
Monday, Collins was successful in getting an amendment added to the Conference Report for the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2020. The report released by the U.S. House and Senate Armed Services Committees includes Collins’ amendment to protect religious liberty for all chaplains serving in the military.
According to Collins, the amendment will guarantee the government is not involved in the establishment and determination of religion, ensuring the church is the sole determiner of whether a military chaplain is qualified to represent his or her religion.
“Allowing the military to serve as the sole determiner of whether a chaplain is qualified to represent his or her religion wrongly allows the government to dictate religious qualifications and how our military chaplains provide for the spiritual needs of our service members,” said Collins.
“As a former pastor and a chaplain in the Air Force Reserve, protecting our religious liberty and the role of the church is deeply personal for me. I want to thank Ranking Member Thornberry, Rep. Austin Scott (R-GA-08), Chairman Inhofe, and Senators Lankford, Hawley and (David) Perdue (R-GA) for working with me to ensure this amendment was included in the conference report, and I look forward to seeing this signed into law.”
Congressman Scott has also been working on other issues affecting the military. Recently, he testified before the House Armed Services Committee’s Subcommittee on Readiness regarding e the state of housing on military bases.
“In addition to overall quality and safety of the military housing, I am also concerned with housing contracts for particularly young servicemembers,” said Scott. “I am concerned that young servicemembers are being forced to pay out-of-pocket costs in situations where they lose an arbitration hearing versus a multi-million dollar corporation. I believe there is a great need for senior installation leaders to be involved in the mediation process to help servicemembers work with base-level offices to avoid this undue burden.”
