On a Wing, But Not On a Prayer
Air Force Academy makes homage to God optional
While there may be no atheists in foxholes, the Air Force Academy has decided there will be no mandatory God in the heavens.
The academy — at 7,258 feet above sea level, the closest of all the nation’s military schools to God’s realm — has long had a reputation as the most Christian of the nation’s military learning institutions.
But the Colorado Springs, Colo., academy has decided to make the “so help me God” coda to its cadet oath optional after a complaint from the Military Religious Freedom Foundation.
The academy’s original honor code dates to 1959 and reads:
We will not lie, steal or cheat, nor tolerate among us anyone who does.
But it was modified following a 1984 cheating scandal to read:
We will not lie, steal or cheat, nor tolerate among us anyone who does. Furthermore, I resolve to do my duty and to live honorably, so help me God.
The phrase “so help me God” was tacked on “to add more seriousness to the oath,” according to a former faculty member. Apparently, there was a subset of Air Force cadets who would cheat absent God as a wingman.
“Here at the Academy, we work to build a culture of dignity and respect, and that respect includes the ability of our cadets, airmen and civilian airmen to freely practice and exercise their religious preference – or not,” academy superintendent Lieut. General Michelle D. Johnson, said in a statement. “So, in the spirit of respect, cadets may or may not choose to finish the Honor Oath with ‘So help me God.’”
Cadets take the oath at the end of their basic training, and annually thereafter before graduating as Air Force 2nd lieutenants after four years. Similar oaths at the Army’s West Point and Navy’s academy at Annapolis have no such religious component.
Opinions were mixed among posters over at the independent Air Force Times newspaper.
“About time,” poster Eric Taylor noted. “Pledging to some mythological being is so 2000 years ago.”
Not so fast, countered Paul Hartnagel. “I guarantee that when they flame out and start going to ground at mach 1,” he said, “they WILL be calling on God.”
Read more: http://swampland.time.com/2013/10/28/on-a-wing-but-not-on-a-prayer/#ixzz2llbg2YF6
VA Sued for Harassing Christian Chaplains
Military pastors ordered to stop quoting Bible, leave Jesus at home
WND Faith
by DREW ZAHN
Two military chaplains are suing Eric Shinseki, secretary of the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs, or VA, for allegedly being harassed and drummed out of a training and placement program because of their Christian faith.
Chaplains Major Steven Firtko, U.S. Army (Retired) and Lieutenant Commander Dan Klender, U.S. Navy, claim they were mocked, scolded and threatened for their faith while enrolled in the San Diego VA-DOD Clinical Pastoral Education Center program, which trains and distributes chaplains to military and VA medical centers in the San Diego area.
According to their lawsuit, Firtko and Klender allege the Center’s supervisor, Ms. Nancy Dietsch, a VA employee, derided them in classrooms and even had one of them dismissed for failing to renounce his Christian beliefs.
For example, on Sept. 24, 2012, the lawsuit claims, during a classroom discussion, Dietsch asked Firtko what he “believed faith was.”
Firtko responded by quoting Hebrews 11:1 – “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”
Dietsch told Firtko, on the first of several such instances according to the lawsuit, that he was not to quote the Bible in the chaplaincy program classroom.
On another incident in October, Dietsch allegedly shouted at Firtko for quoting Scripture again, banging her fist on the table and stating “it made her feel like she had been pounded over her head with a sledge hammer.”
The lawsuit also claims Dietsch told her students that the VA in general and she in particular do not allow chaplains to pray “in Jesus’ name” in public ceremonies.
Dietsch is also accused of allowing other students to deride Firtko and Klender, mocking them in front of the class and telling Firtko if he held to his beliefs on such things as evolution, salvation and homosexuality, he “did not belong in this program.” Eventually, the lawsuit states, she threatened to dismiss Firtko for refusing to recant his Christian doctrine and ordered he serve a six-week probation.
The lawsuit claims Chaplain Klender’s superior even encouraged him to challenge Dietsch for her “bias against evangelicals.”
Klender later left the program voluntarily, citing Dietsch’s alleged abuse.
Firtko, however, according to the lawsuit, was ejected from the program through a letter, signed by Dietsch, which stated his probation period was not “yielding the results” desired.
In July, Firtko, Klender and their sponsoring organization, the Conservative Baptist Association of America, filed formal complaint against Dietsch and the VA.
Now the lawsuit, filed with the help of Military-Veterans Advocacy, explains that Firtko and Klender have exhausted all administrative options and that the harassment the chaplains endured violates the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act, the Administrative Procedures Act and the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
“No American choosing to serve in the armed forces should be openly ridiculed for his Christian faith, and that is most obviously true for chaplains participating in a chaplain training program,” said Commander J.B. Wells, U. S. Navy (Ret.), executive director of Military-Veterans Advocacy. “Not only was the treatment these men received inappropriate, it was also a violation of federal law and the religious freedom guarantees of the First Amendment.”
The lawsuit, Conservative Baptist Association of America v. Shinseki, has been filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
http://www.wnd.com/2013/11/va-sued-for-harassing-christian-chaplains/#lskaOfja2K53CTjU.99
A Tale of Prayer and Survival – Part 3
In 2001, at the dedication of the Risner memorial at the AirForceAcademy, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff sent letters of congratulations, calling Risner a role model saying, “Now more than ever, we need to draw on the strength from those who have gone before.” Yet a short five years after the dedication of Risner’s statue on the Air Force grounds, a continual barrage of gloating media reports revealed the Air Force Academy’s and the U.S. Air Force’s openly hostile position to the prayers of leaders like Risner. Pitching out the source of the “strength” of Risner and his fellow POW’s, and in spite of the unbroken American history of leader-led unit prayer that reaches back 230 years in our military, the Air Force Academy, the Pentagon, and the White House, are surrendering to provocative attacks by organizations like the ACLU, B’nai B’rith, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the American Jewish Committee, and their allies, with guidelines which severely limit prayers. This disregard for the long battle-tested tenet of training and practice for military leadership, which includes prayer, will no doubt, if you ask men “who have gone before” have a “real, not hypothetical, adverse impact on military readiness, unit cohesion, standards, or discipline,” for those in the future who will go in harms way.
The value of prayer has been scientifically quantified. A major sociological study after World War II, confirmed the importance of prayer to those American fighting men who have gone in harms way: “The Studies in Social Psychology in World War II Series,” produced by the Social Science Research Council, was one of the largest social science research projects in history. Volume II, The American Soldier, Combat and Its Aftermath, Princeton University Press, (1949), reported data on the importance of prayer to officers and enlisted infantrymen. Prayer was selected most frequently as the soldier’s source of combat motivation. The motivation of prayer was selected over the next highest categories of “thinking that you couldn’t let the other men down,” and “thinking that you had to finish the job in order to get home again.” From the responses, “did not help at all,” “helped some,” and “helped a lot,” 70% of enlisted men in the Pacific Theatre (n = 4,734), and 83% in the Mediterranean theatre (n = 1,766) responded “helped a lot,” as did 60% of Infantry officers (n = 319). Prayer was the most frequently cited combat motivator “when the going was tough.” The majority of over 6,400 soldiers in both the Mediterranean and Pacific theatres responded that prayer “helped them a lot.” In their statistical analysis, the Social Science Research Council reports,
[T]he fact that such an overwhelming majority of combat men said that prayer helped them a lot certainly means that they almost universally had recourse to prayer and probably found relief, distraction, or consolation in the process.[1]
Virtue, honor, patriotism and leader-led prayer recall to all military and civilian leaders that, as John Adams said,
“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
Washington Times
Military units and personnel are being denied the essential training in leader-led unit prayer that will only be able to sustain them under the extreme challenges, deprivation, and death that accompany war. This is not the time to leave our fighting forces on the battlefield “without a prayer.”
Colonel Risner’s stand joined by other POWs against the North Vietnamese anti-prayer policy in 1971 caused them to be held in punishment and separate from other POWs until a few days before their final release. Risner’s memorial at the Air Force Academy stands like a mountain against all attempts to suppress prayer, and honors the American Military’s First Principles that sustain those called upon to go for us. Untested political experiments in wartime jeopardize the strength of future military leaders, who will someday need to draw upon “faith,” the same strength that sustained a courageous Command leadership through seven years at the Hanoi Hilton. The attempts to suppress prayer by the Air Force – especially in officer training – should be resisted with the same determination and force of will exemplified by Col. Risner and the other POWs in the prison system of communist North Vietnam, no matter what it may cost us.
[1] Social Science Research Council. The American Soldier, Combat and Its Aftermath. PrincetonUniversity Press, (1949), at 185.