Christian Nationalists Continue to Push Christianity at Service Academies

We have seen lots of reports and evidence of inappropriate behavior at the Air Force Academy where religion — specifically Christianity — has been promoted and pushed by officers and leaders towards cadets. Now there is growing evidence that similarly inappropriate behavior is occurring at other military service academies as well. So it looks like it's not just a problem with or at the Air Force, but instead a more widespread problem with the military and with Christians in the military.

At the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., nine midshipmen recently asked the American Civil Liberties Union to petition the school to abolish daily prayer at weekday lunch, where attendance is mandatory. The midshipmen and the A.C.L.U. assert that the practice is unconstitutional, based in large part on a 2004 appellate court ruling against a similar prayer at the Virginia Military Institute. The civil liberties group has threatened legal action if the policy is not changed.

But the academy is not persuaded. “The academy does not intend to change its practice of offering midshipmen an opportunity for prayer or devotional thought during noon meal announcements,” Cmdr. Ed Austin, an academy spokesman, said in an e-mail message.

Source: The New York Times

In what world do such Christians live in where they think the have the authority to force everyone else to attend Christian religious rituals? I suspect that no one is allowed to just start eating and talking while the prayer is being said, so this means that others are effectively forced to participate on some level in a Christian religious ritual — and as far as the Naval Academy is concerned, that's just fine. I wonder if Cmdr. Ed Austin would be just as fine if it were Muslim prayers that Christians were forced to sit through every day at lunch.

Why does Ed Austin pretend that the academy's policy here is simply a matter of offering midshipmen an opportunity for prayer? Clearly they are denying all midshipmen an opportunity to eat lunch without prayer because the reality of the situation is that prayer is being forced on everyone. This is similar to saying that the IRS offers me an "opportunity" to pay my taxes — as if it were really my choice in the first place.

In interviews at West Point, seven cadets, two officers and a former chaplain said that religion, especially evangelical Christianity, was a constant at the academy. They said that until recently, cadets who did not attend religious services during basic training were sometimes referred to as “heathens.” They said mandatory banquets begin with prayer, including a reading from the Bible at a recent gala.

But most of their complaints center on Maj. Gen. Robert L. Caslen, until recently the academy’s top military leader and, since early May, the commander of the 25th Infantry Division in Hawaii. The cadets and staff said General Caslen, as commandant of cadets at West Point, routinely brought up God in speeches at events cadets were required to attend.

In his farewell speech to the cadet corps this spring, General Caslen told them: “Draw your strength in the days ahead from your faith in God. Let it be the moral compass that guides you in the decisions you make.”

Conservative evangelical Christians regularly complain about a lack of "respect" for them in society and "persecution" by secularists, but where is the respect for people who don't share their beliefs and aren't interested in their religious rituals? Where are the conservative evangelicals who should be forcefully arguing against the persecution of people who don't want to be Christian? Where is the effort to treat all religions the same, instead of privileging one religion and one set of religious views through official channels?

In reality, efforts to treat all religions the same can be met with open hostility from some quarters. Some Christian Nationalists sincerely believe that not privileging Christianity is the same as anti-Christian discrimination and bigotry. One recent example of this comes to us from a military context, this time the Department of Veteran Affairs. When the VA Hospital in Fayetteville, North Carolina, was instructed to remove Christian items and symbols from a chapel, North Carolina Congressman Robin Hayes cried foul:

"This is the very basic and crux and core of our religious faith and of who we are in this country. And it has certainly offended me, as I know it has a number of other people, to see these articles of faith removed that our veterans have fought, bled, and died in order to preserve," Hayes explains. ...In a speech on the House floor, Hayes noted that many Christian veterans "are complaining that they are being religiously disenfranchised by the VA's effort to neutralize services, chapels, and memorials."

According to Hayes, people need to pray for the restoration of America's Christian heritage. "Because if we go to the Lord with a humble heart and ask for his guidance on how we should respond, that's a lot better guidance than if you got it from your local congressman, chaplain, or anybody else," Hayes contends. ...

"I think it's critically important, particularly if you're an elected leader, to maintain and protect the principles upon which this country was founded that make us special, that provide for the goodness and greatness that a number of people have referred to throughout the history. So as we look forward, we've been working to solve a problem that is adversely affecting our veterans, their families, and others," Hayes adds.

Source: The Path

So apparently, military veterans "fought, bled, and died" for Christianity, not religious freedom for all and religious equality for all. Apparently, Christian veterans are complaining that a chapel which is supposed to exist for veterans of all faiths is actually starting to be religiously neutral, instead of just privileging one religion over others. Apparently, America's "Christian heritage" includes Christianity being officially privileged and promoted by the American government.

Apparently, it's part of the job of elected political officials like Robin Hayes to protect and preserve not just Christianity, but the official privileging of Christianity over all other religions — even if that means "religiously disenfranchising" non-Christian veterans who might imagine that they should be treated as equals next to Christians. What were they thinking? Just because they volunteered to fight and possibly die to protect this nation doesn't entitle them to be treated as full equals, does it?

Although the two military academies mentioned in first article are separated, the complaints of cadets sound awfully similar: military leaders are pushing their religious beliefs and views through mandatory attendance at daily prayers, repeated references to their god, and social pressures that denigrate cadets who fail to conform to expected, traditional religious practices followed by evangelical Christians.

“Nowhere does it say that you have to be a good Christian officer or Jewish officer or Muslim officer: You need to be an officer dedicated to the Constitution of the United States,” said Steven Warner, who graduated from West Point last month. “They tell us as an officer you have to put everything aside, all your personal stuff. But religion is the one thing they encourage you to wear on your sleeve.”

Cynthia Lindenmeyer, a 1990 West Point graduate who was a civilian chaplain at the school from 2000 to 2007, offered a similar view. “As a cadet, you are at a very vulnerable place in your spiritual development,” she said, “and you want to be like the people who mentor you.”

I think they want cadets and officers to wear their religion on their sleeves because they expect that religion to be evangelical Christianity — and they hope that this will encourage more to convert precisely because the military is an environment which endorses such thinking. Lost in all this is precisely what Steven Warner brings up: the ideal that an officer is supposed to set aside personal beliefs, ideologies, and agendas when serving as part of the military.

This is especially true in the academies where officers have even more responsibility to avoid anything which might even be perceived as the promotion or endorsement of one's religion. As Cynthia Lindenmeyer notes, cadets are in an even more vulnerable position than most subordinates are in the rest of the military. Unfortunately, this runs counter to the beliefs of so many evangelical Christians about how they are supposed to bring their religion into every facet of their lives and use the rest of their lives to proselytize.

So if they follow the traditions and expectations of the military, they would be violating what their brand of evangelical Christianity teaches; if they follow what they think is required of them as Christians, they will be violating basic expectations and standards of officers in the military. It's a no-win situation, except that these evangelical Christians are working hard to change the expectations of the military so that it's acceptable for them to wear their religion on their sleeves — but only them and only their religion so they can completely Christianize the military as part of their effort to Christianize American society as a whole.