c. 2008 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) It’s bad enough that America’s armed forces are sloughing through two unconventional wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with no satisfactory end in sight. To compound the problem, recent reports have exposed disgraceful physical conditions at Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington and at Fort Bragg, N.C. Sadly, financial, physical and emotional problems are widespread and growing among returning veterans.

The coverup of Army Ranger Pat Tillman’s 2004 death in Afghanistan has also tarnished the military’s carefully burnished image. First, we were told Tillman, a National Football League star, was a decorated hero killed by enemy fire; then the truth eventually emerged that his death was caused by “friendly fire.”

A few weeks ago, Defense Secretary Robert Gates charged the Air Force was not fulfilling its mission in Iraq and Afghanistan. When was the last time we heard such public criticism from a Pentagon chief?

And now charges of religious bigotry and prejudice have been added to the mounting list of abuses and errors of the armed services.

All this is personally painful because my father was an Army lieutenant colonel _ a member of Tom Brokaw’s “Greatest Generation” of World War II _ who with my mother is buried in Arlington National Cemetery. In later years, my brother was an Army officer at Fort Bragg, and I served as an Air Force chaplain in Japan and Korea. Much of my childhood was spent at Fort Belvoir, Va.

The latest charges center on the case of Army Spc. Jeremy Hall, who last year (during his second deployment to Iraq) established a chapter of the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers at his overseas base.

Hall, a 23-year-old North Carolina native, was raised a Baptist. But in Iraq he began to question his faith and became an atheist _ giving lie to the cliche there are “no atheists in foxholes.”

The New York Times reported that Maj. Freddy J. Welborn attended one of Hall’s meetings in Iraq, where he verbally assailed Hall: “People like you are not holding up the Constitution and are going against what the Founding Fathers, who were Christians, wanted for America.”

Millions of Americans would disagree, believing instead it was Hall who was “holding up the Constitution” and Welborn who turned history on its head.

Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and other founders made certain the Constitution guaranteed both freedom of religion and freedom from religion. Madison praised the Baptists of his era for “ … standing firm by their avowed principle of the complete separation of church and state, declaring it to be repugnant that the Legislature … proceed in matters of religion, that no human laws ought to be established for that purpose.”

Last November, Hall was sent back early from Iraq because of alleged threats from his fellow soldiers. “They don’t trust you because they think you are unreliable … since you don’t have God to rely on,” he said. “The message is, `It’s a Christian nation and you need to recognize that.”’

Once Hall was back at Fort Riley, Kan., the harassment continued, including physical threats and the patently false assertion that the traditional American freedom of religion does not apply to him because he is an atheist.

Last March, a suit was filed in a Kansas federal court charging that Hall’s right to be free from official state endorsement of religion was violated. The suit also charges Hall has been the victim of threats and retaliation for his religious views. The case is pending.

This case follows the religious scandal that rocked the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs a few years ago, when cadets and faculty members charged they were threatened by evangelicals who equated military service with their particular brand of Christianity.

An official Air Force report promised changes at the Academy, but it denied there was any religious “discrimination.”

The report admitted, however, there was a prevalent “insensitivity” directed toward non-evangelicals; it’s yet another euphemism that can not conceal the military’s many serious problems.

(Rabbi Rudin, the American Jewish Committee’s senior interreligious adviser, is the author of the recently published book “The Baptizing of America: The Religious Right’s Plans for the Rest of Us.”)

KRE/LF END RUDIN

A photo of Rabbi Rudin is available via https://religionnews.com<