{"id":11261,"date":"2011-05-27T03:21:49","date_gmt":"2011-05-27T08:21:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=11261"},"modified":"2011-05-27T03:22:13","modified_gmt":"2011-05-27T08:22:13","slug":"naval-academy-noon-meal-prayer-at-issue-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2011\/05\/27\/naval-academy-noon-meal-prayer-at-issue-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Naval Academy Noon Meal Prayer at Issue. Again."},"content":{"rendered":"

The US Naval Academy practice of conducting a noon-meal prayer is making its near-annual trek through the media.\u00a0 This time, Talbot Manvel, an “adjunct instructor” at Annapolis, wrote an article in the Baltimore Sun <\/em>saying the USNA puts “tradition ahead of the Constitution<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

So how is the academy defying the Constitution? It has established a religious practice: prayer at its mandatory noon meal for its midshipmen (students). They are marched into the mess hall, called to attention to listen to announcements, and then to prayer by a chaplain before sitting to eat. They are not permitted to leave, and thus they are forced to listen.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Manvel becomes the latest Naval Academy instructor to publicly malign his employer<\/a>.)\u00a0 Manvel’s article is rife with error.\u00a0 He cites Mellen v. Bunting<\/em>, in which the 4th District Court held mealtime prayers at VMI were unConstitutional — a ruling the Supreme Court declined to review.\u00a0 However, he ignores the ruling’s own qualifier:\u00a0 <\/p>\n

We are not called upon to address whether, or to what extent, the military may incorporate religious practices into its ceremonies. The Virginia General Assembly, not the Department of Defense, controls VMI.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Baltimore Sun <\/em>printed an opposing viewpoint from another Annapolis graduate.\u00a0 While less eloquent, the author made the point clearly<\/a>:<\/p>\n

It is utterly preposterous to maintain that the school, by having a non-denominational prayer at mealtime, is in any way shape or form “establishing” a religion at the school.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Both of these are important points.\u00a0 The US Constitution does not prohibit the association of religion or prayer with government functions, nor does any such association constitute\u00a0Congress making a law respecting an\u00a0“establishment”\u00a0of religion, as addressed in the First Amendment.\u00a0 (For those that don’t understand, the US military (the Department of Defense) is part of the Executive branch, while Congress is\u00a0the Legislative branch, a distinction the 4th Circuit appeared to notice.)<\/p>\n

In an apparent attempt to make the USNA appear as the Academy “not like the others,” Manvel also claims<\/p>\n

As a result of that ruling [Mellen v. Bunting], the U.S. Military Academy and U.S. Air Force Academy stopped their prayers.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But that’s patently false. The US Air Force Academy hadn’t had noon-meal prayers for years prior to that ruling, making any association with the 4th Circuit’s ruling fiction.<\/p>\n

In addition, contrary to Manvel’s dire warning about midshipmen being “forced to listen,” the dissent to the 4th Circuit’s ruling noted<\/p>\n

An adult possessing the disciplined willpower demonstrated by the cadets at VMI, standing in silence while a short prayer is read, is not forced to engage in any act of worship contrary to his or her beliefs. Listening to a prayer in that passive posture is no more intrusive than being exposed to the broad array of daily messages involuntarily heard or read to every citizen as the result of legitimate exercises of free speech.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Three years ago, during the annual controversy-raising over this same issue<\/a>, an Academy graduate who complained of the prayers to the ACLU actually undermined her own cause when she admitted the same thing<\/a>:<\/p>\n

She said she stopped bowing her head during prayer in her junior and senior years. No one ever remarked about her refusal to bow her head and clasp her hands in front of her during prayer, she said.<\/p>\n

“They always say, ‘If you will, please join me in prayer.’ It’s obviously optional, but the fact that everyone around you is doing it makes it a peer influence,” the academy graduate said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

She stopped because she didn’t want to do it.\u00a0 No one said anything.\u00a0 “It’s obviously optional.”\u00a0 Her entire complaint is predicated on her own perceptions<\/em>, not any actual act or military policy.\u00a0 The new military officer was complaining of nothing more than hypothetical peer pressure.\u00a0 She’ll probably face a few more difficult challenges than that in her military career.\u00a0 Hopefully she’ll have the courage to do the right thing.<\/p>\n

It is a tragic moral irony that the same group that feels the need to protect adult military members from being exposed to a prayer opposes the protection of school children from sexually-based internet sites.<\/p>\n

The moral outrage scale seems to have been reversed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The US Naval Academy practice of conducting a noon-meal prayer is making its near-annual trek through the media.\u00a0 This time, Talbot Manvel, an “adjunct instructor” at Annapolis, wrote an article in the Baltimore Sun saying the USNA puts “tradition ahead of the Constitution.” So how is the academy defying the Constitution? It has established a religious practice: prayer at its […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[12,133,4,78,82,1775,2,36,1774,11,17,10,171,1773,40,473,1776],"class_list":["post-11261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government-and-religion","tag-aclu","tag-annapolis","tag-churchandstate","tag-congress","tag-constitution","tag-mellen-v-bunting","tag-military","tag-navy","tag-noon-meal","tag-prayer","tag-religious-expression","tag-religion","tag-religious-freedom","tag-talbot-manvel","tag-tradition","tag-usna","tag-vmi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11261\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}