Military makes mincemeat of church-state separation
http://www.sltrib.com/opinion/ci_9154638
Article Last Updated: 05/04/2008 11:36:27 PM MDT
Maybe the reason the misperception persists that there are no atheists in
foxholes is that nonbelievers must either shut up about their views or be
hounded out of the military.
Just ask Army Spc. Jeremy Hall, who is making a splash in the news
because of the way his atheism was attacked by superiors and fellow
soldiers while he was risking his life in service to his country.
Hall, 23, served two combat tours in Iraq, winning the Combat Action
Badge. But he's now stationed at Fort Riley, Kan., having been returned
stateside early because the Army couldn't ensure his safety.
There is something deeply amiss when we send soldiers on a mission to
engender peaceful coexistence between Sunni and ****ite Muslims, yet our
military doesn't seem able to offer religious tolerance to its own.
Hall recounts the events that led to his marginalization in a federal
lawsuit he filed in Kansas in March. He is joined by the Military
Religious
Freedom Foundation, a group devoted to assisting members of the military
who object to the pervasive and coercive Christian proselytizing in our
armed forces.
Hall's atheism became an issue soon after it became known. On
Thanksgiving 2006 while stationed outside Tikrit, Hall politely declined
to
join in a Christian prayer before the holiday meal. The result was a
dressing down by a staff sergeant who told him that as an atheist he
needed
to sit somewhere else.
In another episode, after Hall's gun turret took a bullet that almost
found an opening, the first thing a superior wanted to know was whether
Hall believed in Jesus now, not whether he was OK.
Then, in July, while still in Iraq, Hall organized a meeting of the
Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers. According to Hall,
after
things began, Maj. Freddy Welborn disrupted the meeting with threats,
saying he might bring charges against Hall for conduct detrimental to good
order and discipline, and that Hall was disgracing the Constitution. (Er,
I
think the major has that backward.)
Welborn has denied the allegations, but The New York Times re****ts
that
another soldier at the meeting said that Hall's account was accurate.
Hall claims that he was denied a promotion in part because he wouldn't
be able to ''pray with his troops.'' And of course he was returned from
overseas due to physical threats from fellow soldiers and superiors.
Things
became so bad that he was assigned a full-time bodyguard.
This is nothing new to Mikey Weinstein, founder of the Military
Religious Freedom Foundation and a former Air Force judge advocate general
who also served in the Rea-gan administration. Weinstein says that he has
collected nearly 8,000 complaints, mostly from Christian members of the
military tired of being force-fed a narrow brand of evangelical
fundamentalism.
Weinstein, who co-wrote the book With God on Our Side: One Man's War
Against an Evangelical Coup in America's Military, has do***ented how the
ranks of our military have been infiltrated by members of the Officers'
Christian Fellow****p and other similar organizations. On its Web site, the
OCF makes no secret of its mission, which is to ''raise up a godly
military'' by enlisting ''ambassadors for Christ in uniform.''
Weinstein says OCF recruitment is easy in a strict command-subordinate
military where the implied message is: If you don't pray the right way,
your career might stall.
Beyond the mincemeat being made of church-state separation and
religious liberty, it seems particularly combustible for our armed forces
to be combining ''end-times'' Christian theology with military might.
That's no way to placate Muslim populations around the world.
But there's no will for change. The military's virulent religious
intolerance could be eradicated tomorrow with swift sanctions against
transgressors. Instead, it's winked at, and those caught proselytizing
suffer no consequence.
It appears that brave men like Hall who simply wish to follow the
dictates of their own conscience will be needing bodyguards for a long
time
to come.
---
ROBYN BLUMNER
***************************************************************
You are invited to check out the following:
The Rise of the Theocratic States of America
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/theocracy.htm
American Theocrats - Past and Present
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/theocrats.htm
The Constitutional Principle: Separation of Church and State
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/index.html
[and to join the discussion group for the above site and/or Separation of
Church and State in general, listed below]
HRSepCnS · Historical Reality SepChurch&State
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HRSepCnS/
***************************************************************
.. . . You can't understand a phrase such as "Congress shall make no law
respecting an establishment of religion" by syllogistic reasoning. Words
take their meaning from social as well as textual contexts, which is why
"a
page of history is worth a volume of logic." New York Trust Co. v.
Eisner,
256 U.S. 345, 349, 41 S.Ct. 506, 507, 65 L.Ed. 963 (1921) (Holmes, J.).
Sherman v. Community Consol. Dist. 21, 980 F.2d 437, 445 (7th Cir. 1992)
.. . .
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USAF LT. COL (Ret) Buffman (Glen P. Goffin) wrote
"You pilot always into an unknown future;
facts are your only clue. Get the facts!"
That philosophy 'snipit' helped to get me, and my crew, through a good
many combat missions and far too many scary, inflight, emergencies.
It has also played a significant role in helping me to expose the
plethora of radical Christian propaganda and lies that we find at
almost every media turn.
*****************************************************************
THE CONSTITUTIONAL PRINCIPLE:
SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE
http://members.tripod.com/~candst/index.html
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