Our Christian Daughters Potentially Subject to Selective Service Registration
An Open Letter to Independent Baptist Pastors
in the Indiana 9th Congressional District.
February 3, 2016 (Revised)
Our Christian Daughters Potentially Subject to Selective Service Registration
Dear Pastors:
At some point you will have to develop a genuine conviction from the Scriptures on issues related to (1) Christian women serving in the Armed Forces; (2) Christian women serving in combat roles; (3) Christian women being required by federal law to register for Selective Service (register for the draft).
American women have pushed their “rights” to serve in military functions alongside men, including in combat roles, to the point that now top Generals and others in Washington, DC are recommending that all American women be required to register for the draft at age 18 (draft age remains 18 to 25 years old).
Pastors, how will we counsel families who want to teach their daughters and granddaughters to be Titus Chapter 2 women? What about Christian families who have trained their children to build Biblical homes and families? The world and the devil want to destroy your church families, their children, and their children’s families.
The mind set of people in high places in Washington has obviously come to conclude, “Many women want to be deployed with men in combat, so all women must be made subject to it—this is equality.”
We provide for you here two current Internet web sites which give a good idea as to how many people in Washington and elsewhere are viewing this subject:
http://www.examiner.com/article/should-women-have-to-sign-up-for-the-draft-military-officials-think-so?cid=sm-ip-facebook-020216-7.30pm-WomenInTheDraft
http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/generals-women-register-draft-36665774
The Selective Service System exists to provide the U.S. Army with adequate numbers of combat troops when necessary in time of war. There has been no draft since 1973, but the Selective Service System has been left in place in case it is needed in future armed conflicts.
The Selective Service System does not exist to provide nurses or office workers, but only to provide ground combat troops (although even ground combat troops often must cook, do medical tasks, drive vehicles, etc.). Many American women have decided they want to be in combat duty with men, and some women’s organizations have also pushed for the rights of women to serve in foxholes alongside men. Military generals are now therefore saying, “Okay, women want to serve in combat, we should make it a requirement for women to also register for the draft—this is equal treatment.”
It is our firm belief from the Scriptures that all of this flies directly in the face of sound Biblical Christian teaching on the family, home, womanhood, and motherhood. We preachers must take a stand.
My wife and I have four daughters. Two of our daughters are still young enough to be subject to registering for the military draft if the Congress is soon pressured sufficiently to change the Selective Service laws to include females. We also have, thus far, four granddaughters. Three of them would be subject to having to register for the draft.
We have been following this issue for twenty years. We have on file responses from elected representatives who served up to twenty years ago and are out of office now, including U.S. Representatives Lee Hamilton, Baron Hill, and Mike Sodrel. None of these believed we would ever see women in combat, so they also scoffed at my suggestion that one day women could be required to register for the draft.
But now we are actually hearing top military generals recommending to Congress that women from 18 to 25 years of age be required to register for the draft. Congress must be the body to change the Selective Service law to require women to register. The Pentagon nor the Selective Service System can put this into practice without Congress.
But(!) Congress is required to change federal law to allow women to serve in combat roles, too, according our congressman’s military issues spokesman, but it is being done without any change in law. That’s right! It should actually be illegal still to deploy females in combat roles or on front lines. Are the Armed Services are breaking the law? They get around this in discussion by saying things like, “Women are just driving trucks for the soldiers, they are not actually in combat.” Of course, they are dressed for combat, equipped for combat, trained for combat, armed with the same weapons as the men for combat, in the same combat vehicles on the same battle field, some of them maimed or killed alongside male combat soldiers. Some have been taken prisoner by the enemy! But according to a Washington staffer for U.S. Rep. Todd Young (R-IN) named Andrew Terp, “The women are not classified as being in combat, they are just driving the trucks or the Humvees.” All reading this letter know that this is simply subterfuge! This is lying! This is a way to worm around law and decency for political correctness!
Pastors! What will you say when young women, including young mothers, tell you that they were forced to register for the draft? What will you preach about family, home, motherhood, and childrearing, when and if young women and young mothers in your church tell you that they have been drafted into the Army and will serve in the infantry? What will you say when you know that godly young women will be forced to hang up their modest clothing and don combat uniforms and gear just like men?
You don’t have to tell us that many young women from independent Baptist churches are already voluntarily enlisting in the Armed Forces, that many are already dressing in camouflage battle dress just like men and undergoing combat-related training. They are part of the reason that Generals have come to think this is normal and so women should also be subject to any potential draft. Thanks a lot, girls(!)—you set an incredibly good Christian example! No, you have not!
Yes, even professing Christian girls, even many from our independent Baptist churches, have enlisted in the modern, politically correct Armed Forces and have abandoned their Christian modesty, example, and discretion. For whatever reason—college money, financial income, a career—they have damaged the next generation already with their young lives by failure to live Biblically. They also damage the nation at large in its Christian heritage. Much of this has resulted from failure in pulpits to consistently teach the saints what the Bible says about family, home, womanhood, motherhood, childrearing and training, purity, personal Christian witness, and many other subjects. Some times good teaching and preaching is simply ignored by families or young people, or rebellion against the Scriptures and preaching occurs.
The many thousands of women now trying to be just like men in the Armed Forces are the impetus and force behind the politically correct attitudes in the Pentagon, and now my own daughters and granddaughters, and yours, could be in serious conflict and danger. Think of your calling and your pastoral office. You will have to preach the Bible to families and young people through this potential threat upon Christian families and young women.
We urge you, Pastors, to explain these dangers to your church. These are not political issues; these are BIBLE issues—Christian family issues. We also urge you to begin a writing campaign to your federal elected representatives and try to prevent any change to the Selective Service law(s) that require women to register for Selective Service (the draft). If you fear to write letters because of your church has 501(c)(3) status, you could request Christians in your church to organize a letter-writing effort separately from the church, officially.
If you or any members of your church would like to have model letters to elected representatives on this subject, we will be glad to provide some. If you or your people write letters of your own and would allow us to have copies, we could pass them along to others as models.
Pastors, let’s not allow Washington to further damage our society in this way, or make it all the more difficult to raise Christ-honoring families with children available for Christ’s service.
Feel free to contact us with regard to our continued research and communications with elected officials. My mobile phone number is 812-844-8019. Our email is baptistcommittee@nym.hush.com or bcoc@pamphleteernet.com
Thank you for your kind attention for the sake of our daughters, families, our posterity, and our nation
In the Surety of His Blood,
Robert E. Patenaude, Th.D.
Philippians 1:6; 2:13
