RNS – How Not to Protect Religious Freedom in the Military
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- Last week, while I was enjoying a little R&R on the coast of Maine, we reported that religious freedom had come under attack in the military. To defend against the alleged assault, the Armed Services committees of both houses of Congress have approved language to the 2014 Defense Appropriations Act that instructs the Armed Forces to “accommodate the beliefs, actions, and speech” of service members “except in cases of military necessity.”
- What the language aims to do is expand the existing accommodation of beliefs to one form of action and speech above all: proselytizing other service members. This is simply the latest campaign of evangelical Protestantism, which has since the 1940s struggled against the military’s desire that religion in the ranks be as inclusive as possible. Not surprisingly, it is being waged by the Family Research Council (FRC) and a coalition all but exclusively composed of evangelical parachurch organizations.
- Evangelicals, of course, tend to regard evangelization — the Great Commission — as central to the practice of their faith. And a private soldier should be able to witness his or her faith to another private. But when the drill sergeant or commanding officer tells the private that she will be attending chapel at 0800 hours and hopes to see him there, that bears all the marks of religious coercion. And that’s only the beginning. Consider the complexities involved in providing pastoral counseling to a pregnant noncom who doesn’t want to carry her baby to term where the soldier who got her pregnant believes that abortion is a sin and has asked the chaplain to intervene.