While it potentially raises more questions than it provides answers, a Wall Street Journal opinion piece does a reasonable job of trying to present a balanced portrait of religion in the US military as it pertains to the requirements of the Constitution.

Isn’t it a First Amendment-violating “establishment of religion” for the military to appoint religious officials? No, it isn’t…The chaplains exist not for the military or the government generally, but to give military men and women access to their religion.

The problem is how to achieve this objective without creating an environment that seems to associate the military with particular religious views…

Although military personnel can’t be forced to muffle their religious beliefs, courts have long given the military more flexibility than other employers to regulate freedom of expression. The military can therefore discourage officers from expressing their faith in ways that create pressure on their subordinates…

Author David Skeel, a University of Pennsylvania Law School professor, even grants the military might be a model for society in its handling of religious freedom: 

If history is a guide, the military’s handling of its recent religious challenges may put the rest of us to shame.

Commenting on that piece, law professor Kenneth Anderson — a self-described “non-believer” — generally seems to agree with Skeel’s theme, and he makes an astute observation of his own:

there is an additional reason why religion is an important matter for believers in the military that is not present in most other institutions of government: military service in both concept and practical fact puts these people in harm’s way…[I]t might well order them to do violence…People commit themselves in advance to the possibility of being commanded both to lay down their lives and to extinguish the lives of others. For believers, the justifications, consolations, rituals, and rites of faith are important, both with respect to the loss of one’s own life and the loss of life one might bring about.  There’s a reason why chaplains accompany troops in the field. 

He makes the valid point that there is not necessarily a direct civilian equivalent to the relationship between religion and the government within the military.  He also notes his own experience with military chaplains, who do an

admirable job of ministering to those in need of spiritual or religious assistance, both respecting religious differences and the beliefs of the non-believers, while not standing back from their affirmations as ministers of religion and of particular religions…

Anderson concludes by saying the military is not “done in the debate” over where to draw the lines about religiosity in the ranks.

The two law professors — one a Christian, the other a non-believer — seem to have a generally positive and balanced, if nuanced, view of religion in the military.

ADVERTISEMENT