Republican lawmakers are urging the Department of Defense to protect religious liberty of U.S. service members during the coronavirus pandemic.

Republican Reps. Doug Collins of Georgia and Doug Lamborn of Colorado led 18 other lawmakers in sending a letter Thursday asking Secretary of Defense Mark Esper to protect religious liberties within the armed services, which have been targeted by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), according to the lawmakers.

“Despite these Federal mandates and guidance from the Army Chaplain Corps, commands have taken action that restrict the religious freedoms of military chaplains and service members,” the letter says. “This pattern of behavior must be addressed.”

The MRFF is an organization “solely dedicated to fighting for the constitutionally guaranteed separation of church and state for our U.S. military service members,” founder and president of the MRFF Mikey Weinstein told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Collins said the MRFF is “anti-religious group with a reputation for preying on military chaplains,” and told the Daily Caller News Foundation in an interview that the organization has “actively exploited the current pandemic to attack our nation’s service members” in recent weeks.

“These attacks are deeply concerning and threaten the very freedoms our service members fight to protect,” Collins said. “I’m calling on the Department of Defense to take action to ensure our military is protecting the religious liberty of its members.”

Weinstein slammed both the letter and the lawmakers in an interview with the DCNF, saying Thursday that the letter is signed by “extreme, right-wing, conservative congressmen.”

“This is nothing more than red meat being thrown to the bigoted and prejudiced bullies who support these people in an election year,” Weinstein said.

MRFF does not go looking for cases violating the separation of church and state, Weinstein said. “They come to us,” he said.

The lawmakers’ letter lists multiple instances where MRFF allegedly compromised religious freedoms of service members.

In one case, the MRFF demanded that Esper initiate a review into the actions of a garrison chaplain at Camp Humphreys in South Korea, Col. Moon H. Kim, because Kim “authored an email to his chaplain colleagues including a PDF of a faith-based book he thought may help them and the families they serve.”

In another incident that the lawmakers cited, the MRFF sent demand letters that resulted in the removal of Facebook videos posted by Capt. Amy Smith and Maj. Scott Ingram from the Army’s 10th Mountain Division Sustainment Brigade in Fort Drum, New York, as well as a Maj. Christian Goza from Redstone Arsenal in Alabama.

Those Facebook videos included “protected religious expression,” according to the letter.