After court-martial, this Marine cites religious freedom in her continued legal fight [View all]

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Monifa Sterling was convicted of disobeying a direct order and other charges in part because she hung this religious message at her work station on her Marine Corps base. (Photo by Wynona Benson Photography/ Released by the Liberty Institute)

By Dan Lamothe
May 21

A court case working its way through the military justice system raises a basic question: Should a member of the military be allowed to post a religious passage in her place of work?

The case involves Monifa J. Sterling, a Marine veteran who was convicted in a court-martial at Camp Lejeune, N.C., of failing to go to an appointed place of duty, disrespecting a superior commissioned officer and four specifications of disobeying a lawful order. She was sentenced last year to a reduction in rank from lance corporal to private and given a bad-conduct discharge, a status that will stay on her military record and prohibits her from receiving benefits as a veteran.

It is a specific portion of Sterling’s past that is still in dispute, however. Sterling was found guilty of disobeying a lawful order in part because she refused to take down three signs in her workspace with the message: “No weapon formed against me shall prosper.” It’s a derivation of the biblical passage Isaiah 54:17, a motivational message that says that “no weapon that is formed against you shall prosper.”

Sterling, a Christian, had the message posted in three places around her computer – one for each part of the Holy Trinity, she said, according to court documents. Her boss, a staff sergeant, told her to take the signs down repeatedly, and did so herself when Sterling refused to do so. The senior Marine found their tone combative.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2015/05/21/after-court-martial-marine-cites-religious-freedom-in-continued-legal-fight/