Everything Under the Moon

I was inprocessing today and I was at the chaplains office, the sergeant under the chaplain asked me for my religion, so he could enter in the systems for record, I told him asatru, he looked... and there was nothing. Norse? no. Nordic? no. Odinistic? no. Alright alright, I say, do you at least have pagan? no. So I say do you have Celtic at least? no. He then says we have druid. I say, I guess it'll have to do.


WHAT
THE
F*CK

I hate to complain, even more so at my first duty station at my first unit,when they just came back and lost a fuckton of people (4/4 Inf ft carson), but this is some serious shit. thought I'd share this for some advice on what do and to hear some opinions.

Also: same thing happened at basic expect I told the fatty my religion she looked at my, put none, and sent me off.

Yeah same happened to me when I was in. I didn't want to pick a Chrisitan religion but I saw the list they had and just picked no rel pref 'cause none were right. It's ridiculous.

Asch wrote:Yeah same happened to me when I was in. I didn't want to pick a Chrisitan religion but I saw the list they had and just picked no rel pref 'cause none were right. It's ridiculous.

You'd think with it asatru being a warrior's religion, it'd be there.

Yeah you'd think Pagan would be as well but nope. I mean at least Pagan is better than nothing.

I had the same issue when I was in the Navy. It's a shame things haven't changed at all since then. :/

I would welcome any of you to research every religion in the world, past and present, check their validity and membership requirements, make contact with members and then input that data, correctly formatted into a database. It will only be several thousand entries with description, special considerations, membership requirements, external recognition, name, title, type, category etc... for each one.

If you can have that data in my SQL database by the morning that would be great, cheers bye!!




Where is that data i asked for? Ohhhh no-one wanted to do it, that explains it...

Nuff said? Probably, but i digress.

Would any of you like to join my religion? It's call bellendia and all you have to be to become a member is say "i want to be a bellend" and then you can be member, cheers yoo guise!

"Hello, is that the army office? I would like to enroll. My religion? Im a bellend. Yes, bellend, of the religion bellendia. What, you dont have that?! HOW DARE JOO!!" *rage quit phone call*

How do you define a genuine religion? Number of members? Then you discriminate the minorities. Does that mean in christian and muslim countries pagans should be ignored and discriminated against?

What about age? Well wicca is only 60 years old or so, i have no objection to striking it off the face of the earth but the new age kiddies might.

Prove to me your religion is valid. You cannot.

So long as there is an "other" or "none" option i feel that is fine. Somewhat surprised that pagan isnt an option but then paganism isnt a religion nor does being pagan make you religious. I am not religious but i consider myself somewhat pagan.

Shadow, are you a vet? I ask because at times your religion is all you have when you're in the service and having no rel pref on your dogtags just isn't enough. That said having a catch-all category 'Pagan' or adding a religion like Asatru that is widely accepted overseas and gaining traction stateside simply isn't that hard, there are probably over a dozen christian denominations available. Personally I think it's a bigoted system that consciously or otherwise discriminates against non-abrahamic religions. Then again, maybe they just discriminate against non-christian as they didn't have Messianic Judaism listed either when I was in. Point is, it matters and it's not hard to address.

FenrisComes, you can order dog tags that specify Asatru. Many heathen soldiers do this to replace their issued ones.


Off-topic, you might like this vid of an officer in the Norwegian Army giving out a 'Til Valhall!' war cry before combat in Afghanistan.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5uQcU92x2o

Edited: because a link would be helpful. D'oh.

You could have put Wicca/Witchcraft. As for the in processing lady putting "No Preference" you should talk to the Chaplin. The Chaplin, while being mainly Christian, is there to help people of all faiths. When my husband was in basic they were required to let him have Sunday for religious practice, (as with all religions as long as it does not interfere with Mission). He was allowed to have an hour or so in the woods. It did help that one of the Drill Sgts. was Native American and practiced Shamanism.

As for what JuniperBerry said, I found this site that makes custom id tags, so you can add Asatru rather than opting for 'none' or 'other'.

http://www.id-ideas.com/people.html

Here is a chaplain's guide for Asatru. If you provide your base chaplain with the info and show that the Asatru Folk Assembly is a recognized religious organization in the US, he should be able to provide you with help and worship. (As JBRaven said.)

I always had very good experiences with Chaplain while I was in. Even the catholic chaplain at my permanent station was very open minded.

As for the custom dog tags, do not try to wear them in lieu of your issued tags to formation. Doing so will get you smoked, for you are considered out of uniform. The AR for religious jewlery can be found here http://www.aele.org/law/2005FPAPR/ar-670-1.pdf

Afaik, you get them made from the PX. Dog tags gets lost/stolen/damaged and so one can purchase a new set (Either out of pocket or with clothing allowance). Apparently, when purchasing, you can have Asatru stamped on there. You may need the chaplains ok, so be sure to show him the Chaplain's guide and info if it becomes an issue. Anyhow, it does seem possible to have Army-approved Asatru dogtags as there are many soldiers that seem to. And dog tags aren't religious jewelry. ??

I went with Christian while I was in the army, so never ran into the problem myself.

Edit: Here's one instance, in case you need to show a precedent. http://voiceofthevalkyrie.blogspot.com/ ... -tags.html

Dog tags are considered part of your uniform as they're required because they contain vital statistics info such as name, rank, SS# and Rel Pref - basically so someone can ID you and bury you according to your wishes. Technically wearing non-issued tags might be a no-no but as long as they look like they're regulation, are the same size and metallic content and contain the required information you will be okay, while in basic and any training school following you'll probably want to stick to your issued tags to avoid getting your ass chewed by some die hard trainer.