| | Interesting article. I'd guess, from it and what I'm about to quote, that the US military could be a little more neutral w.r.t. religions; there ought at least to be neutral space available for non-chaplained contemplation or discussion. In any case, the current situation as portrayed in the article is both amusing and instructive, and doesn't fall too far short of its Constitutional obligations.
Let's make something clear: The US Constitution says nothing about a separation of church and state, of religion and government. It says, in its first amendment: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...."
Among the amendments recommended in New Hampshire's ratification of the original Constitution was: "Congress shall make no Laws touching Religion, or to infringe the rights of Conscience[.]"
Virginia's ratification, which ought to be required reading in civics classes, asserted that "the liberty of Conscience ... cannot be cancelled abridged restrained or modified by any authority of the United States". It further recommended that there be a "Declaration or Bill of Rights asserting and ensuring from encroachment the essential and unalienable Rights of the People in some such manner as the following; ... [conscientious objectors provision] ... Twentieth, That religion or the duty [(love that wording!)] which we owe to our Creator, and the manner of discharging it can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence, and therefore all men have an equal, natural and unalienable right to the free exercise of religion according to the dictates of conscience, and that no particular religious sect ought to be favored or established by Law in preference to others."
New York's ratification, equally worthy, North Carolina's, and Rhode Island's essentially echoed Virginia's w.r.t. religion.
BTW, several of the ratifications have interesting things to say on the right to keep and bear arms, and on transfer payments.
While it can be argued that religion is unnecessary, it was important to Washington and for the greater part of the other men fighting in the Revolution -- and apparently remains so, in the US military, to this day -- despite the diversity of religion then and now. Whatever means people find useful in promoting both their short-term survival and their long-term well-being, and thus the effectiveness of the military, ought to be treated, if not as sacrosanct, at least in view of its utility, and of the difficulty, expense, or infeasibility -- not to mention unconstitutionality -- of officially displacing it.
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