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Role of religion questioned in US military

Three years after a scandal at the US Air Force Academy over the evangelizing of cadets by Christian staff and faculty members, students and staff at West Point and the Naval Academy are complaining that their schools, too, have pushed religion on cadets and midshipmen.

The controversy led the Air Force to adopt guidelines that discourage public prayers at official events or meetings. And while those rules do not apply to other branches of the service, critics say the new complaints raise questions about the military’s commitment to policies against imposing religion on its members.

Religion in the military has come under increasing scrutiny in recent years, especially because the close confines of military life often put two larger societal trends — the rise of evangelicals and the rise of people of no organized faith — onto a collision course.

At the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, nine midshipmen recently asked the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to petition the school to abolish daily prayer at weekday lunch, where attendance is mandatory. The midshipmen and the ACLU assert that the practice is unconstitutional, based in large part on a 2004 appellate court ruling against a similar prayer at the Virginia Military Institute. The civil liberties group has threatened legal action if the policy is not changed.

But the academy is not persuaded.

“The academy does not intend to change its practice of offering midshipmen an opportunity for prayer or devotional thought during noon meal announcements,” Commander Ed Austin, an academy spokesman, said in an e-mail message.

In interviews at West Point, seven cadets, two officers and a former chaplain said that religion, especially evangelical Christianity, was a constant at the academy. They said that until recently, cadets who did not attend religious services during basic training were sometimes referred to as “heathens.” They said mandatory banquets begin with prayer, including a reading from the Bible at a recent gala.

But most of their complaints center on Major General Robert Caslen, until recently the academy’s top military leader and, since early last month, the commander of the 25th Infantry Division in Hawaii. The cadets and staff said Caslen, as commandant at West Point, often brought up God in speeches at events cadets were required to attend.

In his farewell speech to the cadet corps this spring, Caslen said: “Draw your strength in the days ahead from your faith in God. Let it be the moral compass that guides you in the decisions you make.”

The cadets and midshipmen echo the same view: That by emphasizing religion, and especially Christianity, at events that students are required to attend, the military sends the message that to be considered successful officers they have to believe in God.

“Nowhere does it say that you have to be a good Christian officer or Jewish officer or Muslim officer: You need to be an officer dedicated to the Constitution of the United States,” said Steven Warner, who graduated from West Point last month. “They tell us as an officer you have to put everything aside, all your personal stuff. But religion is the one thing they encourage you to wear on your sleeve.”
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