Sermon: Religion in the Military

Delivered by Col Claudia Ziebis, USAFR, Retired, June 22, 2008
At the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, New Bern, NC

There’s a kind of philosophical war going on in your military today with battles fought on many fronts – most publicly with a series of lawsuits brought against the Department of Defense by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, http://www.militaryreligiousfreedom.org . A foundation led by a retired Air Force judge advocate named Mikey Weinstein.

A current, ongoing, lawsuit involves Jeremy Hall, an enlisted soldier and member of the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers, http://maaf.info . Jeremy was improperly pressured to participate in prayer rituals and to become a Christian while in Iraq . This pressure was applied not only by his fellow soldiers but by ranking officers. A key point in the case is that an Army major clearly communicated to Jeremy that unless he used theism he would not be promoted. This is a clear violation of military regulations but a violation that is far too often condoned.

A prior lawsuit brought by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation involved Mikey’s son, an Air Force Academy cadet who was the target of Christian evangelism carried too far. Cadets who did not attend church were made to march to meals in separate flights dubbed “heathen” flights; Jewish cadets were told their families were going to hell and were labeled Christ killers by senior cadets.

That first lawsuit, dismissed for lack of standing, focused on the delicate balance between the Constitution’s Establishment Clause, which prohibits the government from establishing a state religion, and the Free Exercise Clause, which prohibits the government from interfering with the right to practice the religion of one’s choice. When practicing your religion requires you to actively persuade others to convert – there is always the danger that people in authority will go too far. But I’ll leave the legal questions to the lawyers.

Instead, I’d like to ask the question “is this need to sell Christianity, that some Christians have, detrimental to your military over time.” I say that it is. It is if it drives out of the military those people who do not use Christianity. It is if it causes non-religious people and people of minority religions to take off the uniform earlier than they would have if they didn’t feel alienated because of religion.

I think that alienation is happening. And it’s happening just when you need us most. You need Moslems and Buddhists, pantheists and deists, and even atheists like me.

And to illustrate why you need us, I’ll give you three points to think about. First, I’d like to point out that religious and cultural diversity is a strength. It is the ability to marshal a wide range of perspectives that is the strength of an immigrant nation.

This was the great strength of your military in the last century. It was not just firepower that gave you the most powerful military on the planet – it was the marshalling of a wide variety of perspectives. It’s no accident that in the past century you had the world’s foremost military at the same time that that military was integrating women, African Americans, and millions of immigrants from practically every culture on the planet.

In order to meet the challenges we face in this century, your military must have an increasing range of diversity, including religious diversity.

For more than 20 years, I often sat at or near the table where senior officers thrashed out solutions to difficult challenges. The breadth of perspectives, opinions and analysis around that table amazed me. Few militaries in the world had such breadth and depth of cultural perspective – and religion is certainly part of culture.

Now, just as we face the challenges of this new century, your military is losing perspectives instead of gaining perspectives.

If the corporate culture of the Air Force sends the message that if you don’t use Western monotheism you shouldn’t wear the uniform – then very, very few people who don’t use that philosophy will be sitting around those tables with the Generals and Colonels guiding your Air Force through the 21^st century. And if the message is that only Christianity must be used to examine the world and make decisions with – then the range of perspectives around that table will narrow even further and it will be all but impossible to get a clear picture of the challenges facing us all.

It is sent consistently in a myriad of ways. I’m sure many of you have experienced how corporate culture works – how “in” groups and “out” groups are defined, how people are made to feel part of a team or excluded from a team – whether on the playground or in the workplace. That dynamic is not always easy to describe. But I’ll relate just a few incidents from my own experience to help paint the picture.

In 2005, General Richardson, then deputy chief of chaplains now Chief Chaplain of the Air Force was quoted in the New York Times saying “We [Chaplains] will not proselytize, but we reserve the right to evangelize the unchurched.” (Now to me that sounds like everyone else gets to put their names on a “do not call list” but those of us who don’t go to churches must accept the chaplain’s marketing calls selling Christianity… a marketing effort paid for by our tax dollars. I realize this characterization may sound harsh to many of you -- but just put yourself in the shoes of the “unchurched by choice” and you may be able to empathize.)

In 2003, at a seminar for 120 reservists, a three-star general told us that when we swore to support and defend the Constitution we swore to support and defend the Creator with a “capital C.” I assure you, I never took such an oath – nor would I.

In 2002 I had a general officer refuse to lower the flag to half staff for a crewmember who committed suicide because suicide was a “sin” and not to be honored.

In 2000, while walking down a crowded hallway outside a Wing Commander’s Office I clearly heard a senior leader, the Wing Chief of Staff, say clearly and loudly “Atheists and liberals? We don’t tolerate atheists and liberals around here!”

In 1999 I saw a missileer accommodated and supported by senior leadership when he refused to serve in a silo with a female officer because of his “Christian religion.” In the same year, I saw a Wiccan airman denied permission to light a single prayer candle in her quarters once a week -- yet she had to watch a Christian prayer ritual performed every morning during staff meetings.*

There are so many examples of this “thoughtless theism” that it would take me all day to describe them to you. To date, Mikey Weinstein has received almost 8,000 complaints to investigate for future lawsuits – ranging from such minor harassments such as what I’ve described to death threats.**

When I listen to the experiences of atheists in today’s military, I am shocked at the behavior of so many who identify themselves as Christians and I am astounded at how fast the situation for Freethinkers has deteriorated. And do not assume that the 8,000 complaints all come from atheists, Freethinkers, Jews, Jains and Buddhists – increasingly, those complaints come from Christians who are simply not “Christian” enough.

I applaud the fact that so many non-theist, non-religious, non-christian Americans actually do continue to serve and rise through the ranks – but I have to wonder how many more would be promoted if it weren’t for the constant drip of such incidents. Military life is hard enough without receiving the message that you are not “tolerated.”

I want to give you a second point to think about: I think it is vital that the American military reflect America’s religious diversity.

Most of you have been taught that it’s your State Department that represents you and your country to the world and engages in diplomacy, while it is Defense that fights your wars. But this is not an accurate picture. There are far more DOD employees on any given continent than there are State Department employees. Foreign nationals are more likely to actually meet and interact with American military personnel than State Department people. A foreign national’s life is more likely to be directly impacted by the decision of a senior US military commander than the decision of a diplomat.

So military members are not only your warriors, they are your ambassadors. I’ve heard Christians argue that because the majority of US citizens identify themselves as Christians, this is a Christian nation. If you label this country as a Christian nation, then it’s logical to say that the US military should also be “Christian” -- and a Christian face is the one you would want the world to see.

But that’s not the America I know. I know the immigrant America. The America that teems with people using all sorts of philosophies from around the world. People who have shown the world how to live together, how to work together, how to harness the skills, talents and perspectives of individuals and cultures from all over the world. A society that pragmatically, and often painfully, learned how to forge subcultures into a nation.

The America I know is not a Christian nation. It is a vibrant, religiously pluralistic nation – reflecting the ideals of its founders who were deists as well as theists and very much men of the European Enlightenment. And I would argue that it is that America that the world has so long admired.

And this brings me to my third and last point. It has to do with the concepts of integrity and honor. Like many atheists, I’m a fan of that eloquent revolutionary deist, Tom Paine. More than 200 years ago he wrote, “Infidelity does not consist in believing or in disbelieving, it consists in professing to believe what one does not believe.”

There is an assumption in your military, and in your society, that you cannot be a good moral person unless you use the concept of the supernatural to understand the world around you and make decisions with. And there’s a pecking order: Western monotheism is the preferred moral compass with Christianity the best version of it – and pantheism, polytheism, deism and all the other ‘isms are way down the list somewhere.

Well, I’ve known and loved too many young, middle-aged, and elderly atheists to remain silent at that false assumption. I’d stack up their honesty and integrity against any theists’ any day. I was taught that my sense of right and wrong comes from my innate human instinct for empathy -- which is nurtured, developed, and honed by my family, my culture and my intellect. Nothing supernatural required.

Unfortunately this linkage between Christianity and morality causes well-meaning people to use religion as a team building tool and which blinds them to the recognition that using religion to define who is “in” and who is “out” corrodes the personal integrity and honesty crucial to military command.

Which is preferable? To have military people pretend to use theism in order to serve their country – or to have them value an integrity that lets them stand up and honestly say, “I don’t understand theism and so I don’t use it.”

I realize that there are Christians who value freedom of conscience just as much as I do. But there are also too many who sincerely believe that if only people would go through the motions of belief – then eventually, magically, they will believe privately what they pretend publicly. And so airmen and soldiers are compelled to watch prayer rituals at staff meetings, at social functions, before deployments, after deployments; and in some training programs they have the choice of going to church on Sunday or cleaning.

This emphasis on the pretense of belief sends a disastrous message – the message that it is more important to pretend and focus on image that it is to be honest and focus on substance. This is corrosive.

The assumption that Western theism, and Christianity in particular, is always beneficial in building unit cohesion is false. The assumption that religion is necessary for morality is false. We are a religiously pluralistic nation facing the challenges of a religiously diverse world. We need a military that reflects that. False assumptions about a particular religion or religion in general are detrimental.

But corporate culture can and does change. I’m old enough to remember a squadron commander who refused to call me by my rank or return my salute, not because I didn’t use theism but because I was a woman. Things change – but only with your support and your attention.

Military members like me need your help. The Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers needs your help. Jews, Jains, Hindus, Taoists serving in uniform need your help. We need you to break the false link between morality and Christianity in popular culture; we need you to make freedom of conscience and intellectual integrity values in American society; we need you to make our nation’s motto once again “E Pluribus Unum” and not “In God We Trust;” we need you to encourage liberal people of all philosophical traditions to serve in uniform. And for those of you who don’t use theism – we need you to stand up and say so.

And I’d like to leave you with just one more “old war story.” As a young lieutenant I took over my first Public Affairs Office and received a crash course in just how important religion was to people -- and just how divisive religion could be. The weekly newspaper my office produced had a section called the Chaplain’s Corner, and I didn’t read the Chaplain’s column before we went to press. I figured that the Chaplain, who was a Lt Col, knew what he was doing and, besides, I didn’t consider the contents of the column very important.

As I came to work early one morning, I found a Sgt waiting in the hall outside my office. He introduced himself as Sergeant “A” – and asked to talk with me.

I invited him in and learned that he was from Dearborn, Mich., an Arab American, a Moslem, the son of immigrants -- an articulate, intelligent man -- and something was obviously bothering him.

It took him a while to come to the point. But the point, unfortunately, was the Chaplain’s column which urged airmen deploying to Egypt to be good Christians and bring “light” to those “heathens.” I was faced with a 30-year-old man brought to the verge of tears by words on paper. I don’t know how many slights, insults or aspersions Sgt A had suffered before this, I’m sure this was just the latest in a long string, but I made that man a promise. I promised him that as long as I was his Public Affairs Officer he would never again open up his paper to that kind of command-sponsored thoughtlessness.

After Sgt A left, I called the Chaplain – and was astounded at the disrespect one theist can have for another. I went to my commander and was again astonished at his indifference. To keep my promise it took a visit to my JAG, a call to my higher headquarters and the threat of a letter to my New Jersey Senator, Frank Lautenberg – that’s what it took to accord Sergeant A the respect I had been taught by atheists to give every human being.

And I’d like to call your attention to something. I’d like you to realize that here was an ethnic German Freidenker calling on an ethnic Russian Jew to help an ethnic Arab Moslem thwart the machinations of an Anglo Saxon Protestant. As my father would say “only in America” because for people like my family and Sgt A’s family and Mikey Weinstein’s family: that civility is what made this country different. A unique, pragmatic American civility that forged a nation and became a beacon for the world.

The Officer's Christian Fellowship motto: Christian officers exercising Biblical leadership to raise up a godly military. The OCF has roughly 15,000 members in the officer corps of the US military, on around 200 US bases worldwide.

Christian Embassy evangelizes in the Pentagon, on Capital Hill, and among foreign diplomats. One top Pentagon official claims that there are more than 350 Christian Embassy affiliated Bible study classes, using Christian Embassy Bible study curriculum, held regularly among the 25 to 30 thousand members of the Pentagon.

Campus Crusade For Christ ministries are not the only fundamentalist, apocalyptic Christian ministries evangelizing in the United States military, and the yearly operating budgets of these nonprofit ministries may range, in aggregate, up to 100 million dollars or more. Some of these ministries also receive US government contracts and target the children of military families.

INFLUENCE OF THE FUNDAMENTALIST & APOCALYPTIC CHRISTIAN RIGHT IN THE US MILITARY – compiled by Chris Rodda

"OSU" scandal - that the Department of Defense and the Pentagon Chaplain's Office seemed to have endorsed a Christian fundamentalist evangelical ministry. "Operation Straight Up", that planned on sending both Christian evangelizing materials double printed in English and Arabic and also an apocalyptic video game based on the "Left Behind" book series, to US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. OSU also planned (and still, essentially, does) a "military crusade" in those two countries (OSU's "crusade" is actually a planned evangelizing tour).

In 2005, the Pentagon invited evangelist Dave Kistler into the Pentagon, along with ministry volunteers who brought Kistler's ministry PA system, to give two consecutive sermons in the Pentagon courtyard at lunch while Pentagon employees were eating their lunch. The Pentagon's head chaplain called this "cutting edge evangelism".

Christian nationalist public events held last summer, across the US which featured Pentagon endorsements of various kinds violating DoD regulations on the endorsement of religious groups.

* Wicca is now a DOD “recognized” religion / don’t know how her request would be handled today.

** Jeremy Hall