Editor’s note: As reported in the Washington Times, the
U.S. Air Force last Wednesday “released revised guidelines on
religious observance that say chaplains need not recite prayers
incompatible with their beliefs… The move won tepid praise from
evangelicals, who see the move as progress but not close to a
guarantee that they can pray ‘in Jesus’ name.’” This action follows
in the wake of strong critical reaction to guidelines issued by the
Pentagon last summer, as described in this article from our
February issue.
Arguably the worst, most gratuitous, most ominous act inflicted on
America in living memory was Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s
August 29, 2005 promulgation of guidelines for religious expression
in the U.S. Air Force — intended as a model for the rest of the
armed forces. Their essence is to forbid anyone in uniform from
giving “the reasonable perception that [the Armed Forces, and hence
the U.S. government] support any religion over other religions or
the idea of religion over the choice of no religious affiliation.”
However, they place no restriction on anyone who might advocate
atheism, or mock, or restrict, or cause discomfort to, the
religiously observant in any setting. Indeed they are all about
placing the U.S. government’s weight against talking about the
presence, or praying for the guidance or protection, of God.
Meanwhile, the Air Force and other services require their members
to take instruction in “sensitive” thought and behavior amounting
to a secular religion.
Marginalizing religion among people likely to be shot at is
always a bad idea. But discouraging religion in forces once headed
by George Washington, whose current members come from the most
devout sectors of the modern world’s most devout country, at the
behest of people scarcely present in those forces, shows
incompetence more than evil. Stalin’s rules for the Red Army in
World War II were more God-friendly than Rumsfeld’s.
Until recently, traditions and the habits of servicemen combined
with common sense to exempt the Armed Forces from the U.S.
government’s longstanding Kulturkampf against religion in
America. Anyone going up to the Secretary of the Air Force’s
Pentagon office would pass by a huge mural of an Air Force family
going to church, with the words, “Here I am Lord, send me.” Cadets
at the Naval Academy still pray collectively before common meals.
Young men away from home for the first time — at least those who
do not simply drink and whore — find religious practice a lifeline
that keeps them connected to normal human life. The advent of the
“All Volunteer Force” in the 1970s increased the proportion of
practicing Christians among both officers and enlisted. Since 9/11,
the “foxhole factor” has come into play: The number of atheists is
inversely proportional to that of bullets flying. In short, there
have been the very opposite of popular pressures for
secularization.
THE EXCUSE THAT THE MOST recent restrictions on religion are being
forced by the courts is insincere. Yes, one Mikey Weinstein filed a
suit alleging that the longstanding patterns of behavior at the Air
Force Academy amounted to “severe, systemic and pervasive”
religious discrimination. But no ruling of the Supreme Court has
invalidated them. Nor has any law done so. Yet a few officers
wanted to have less Christianity there, and key officials in the
Rumsfeld Pentagon agreed. Nor does the excuse wash that the
restrictions are necessary for the maintenance of good military
order. The pragmatic way to ensure unit cohesion is surely not to
displease the many for the sake of the few.
The guidelines are more radical than they seem. “Public prayer,”
they direct, “should not normally be included” — read, is banned
— except in “extraordinary circumstances.” The only ones they cite
are “mass casualties, preparation for imminent combat, and
natural disasters” (emphasis mine). In essence, the Bush Pentagon
lets the name of God be invoked only when absolutely necessary to
provide the equivalent of a shot of booze, or of a mood-altering
drug. Practically, it treats religion as Marx described it: “the
opiate of the masses.” Prima faciae, even opening a
routine meeting with the Pledge of Allegiance flouts the
guidelines, because it affirms that America is anything but
indifferent to God.
Worse, the guidelines also permit prayer where, “consistent with
longstanding military tradition,” there are “change of command,
promotion ceremonies, or significant celebrations…” — but only
if such “prayer” is emptied of “specific beliefs” and intended “to
add a heightened sense of seriousness or solemnity.” How patent
unseriousness may add seriousness is part of the Bush White House’s
closely guarded formula for success. It may not have realized that
it outdid the judges who had tried to outlaw the Pledge of
Allegiance.
THE GUIDELINES PLACE special restrictions and responsibilities on
chaplains. Heretofore they had been allowed, even encouraged, to
shepherd men of their own denomination, urge members of other
denominations to be faithful to them, and to try to bring the
godless to God. Now they are to help restrict their flock’s own
urges to proselytize, to restrict their own and their flock’s
religious practices to the guidelines, and above all to give no one
the impression that God exists and that it matters. To chaplains
who wear the uniform, these are orders. But these orders raise the
most fundamental questions of all: What is the chaplain doing in
uniform? For whom is he working? To what end?
A chaplain’s job has always been inherently problematic. On the
one hand he must do nothing to impair his flock’s ability to do
their military jobs. On the other, he cannot simply be yet another
voice urging people to do what they’re told regardless of what they
might think. His authority comes from God, on whose behalf he cares
for the things that are most important to each individual. For
Christian chaplains, Jesus’ words “render unto Caesar the things
that are Caesar’s and unto God the things that are God’s” have
offered a practical solution to this conflict. In America, a nation
explicitly “under God,” the chaplains could counsel people to
follow the faith’s dictates fully, while obeying orders
wholeheartedly because the two did not conflict.
But what can a Christian chaplain under the guidelines say when
he reads, or someone asks him about, the Gospel’s charge to “go out
among all nations, baptizing them in the name of the father…”? Or
what can a Jewish one say when several of his flock are disciplined
for gathering together in prayer at the times prescribed by the
Law? The free exercise of religion involves speaking and acting in
public. Clergymen’s stock in trade must be to urge religious
practice in everyday life. What can they say, what can serious
Christians or Jews think, about an organization in which they risk
their lives while demanding that they behave in ways that they
believe endanger their immortal souls? It becomes difficult for
them to say, I belong here.
It is inherently difficult to believe that one is serving God by
working in an organization that will penalize you for speaking his
name. But does not one serve God by serving His America? Not if
America insists that those who love God shut up about it while
those who mock him may do so at will. Whose America is it anyway?
It cannot belong equally to people whose views of it are
incompatible with one another. The Air Force cadets who charged
that a critical mass of evangelicals at the Academy had created an
environment they could not stand, and the captain featured in the
New York Times article that supported them, had every
right to tell themselves and the world something like “this isn’t
me, and this is not my idea of America.” And, because their views
of America coincided with those of powerful people in Washington,
the Bush administration promulgated guidelines congenial to them.
But, by the very same token, these guidelines frame an environment
unacceptable to serious Christians and Jews.
THE ALL VOLUNTEER FORCE lives by attracting people. Its character,
and its size, depend on who finds military service attractive.
There may exist a pool of young people big enough to fill America’s
military who combine appetite for physical challenges, tolerance
for danger, a spirit of self- sacrifice, discipline, and
patriotism, but who don’t really care whether America is “under
God” or not, who get along just fine without the Ten Commandments,
are more bothered by piety than by homosexuality, and are inspired
by “sensitivity” training. And perhaps the social changes forced
upon the U.S. military in recent years will bring such people out
of the woodwork and into uniform. Maybe America will end up with
atheist foxholes. But surely these changes tell the families who
now actually fill the Armed Forces that maybe the kinds of people
who are making the rules should also be doing the fighting.
