the ceremony itself wasn\u2019t very complicated. When the non-Jews were done with their blessing, they called up the two Jewish ensigns and I read a slightly modified version of the traveler\u2019s prayer and ended with the priestly blessing.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The proud lay leader — who also managed to instruct two student flights that day — concluded by saying<\/p>\n
By standing up as proud Jews, these two ensigns showed the world that us Jews continue to serve bravely in the protection of our nation, just as countless of our forefathers have. It made me proud as a Marine and proud as a Jew to be part of it. A heartfelt mazal tov to Ensign K, and Ensign P for holding the title as the Navy\u2019s newest Jewish aviators!<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Christians aren’t the only ones who integrate their faith and their profession.\u00a0 In fact, devoted followers of every religious belief likely do so, though they publicize it in varying degrees.<\/p>\n
This ceremony demonstrated two clear concepts:\u00a0 First, the US Navy recognized the importance of religious faith on the parts of the graduating students and facilitated the ceremonial application of their faith to their newest achievement.\u00a0 Second, the community was familiar with a Christian-based ceremony (the organ player related it was the first Jewish participation she’d seen in her 40 years), but, when notified of the students’ interest, the Navy chaplains went out of their way to ensure the full participation of two Jewish students in their own tradition.<\/p>\n
Notably, the chaplains cannot address something about which they are uninformed.\u00a0 In that regard, the two Ensigns and the supporting lay leader seemed to do everything right.\u00a0 The result was a positive experience for an entire class of newly-winged US Naval Aviators — and a positive story about the protection of religious liberty in the US military.<\/p>\n
Job well done.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A Naval flight training class graduation included a ceremony at their base chapel in which the chaplains performed a “blessing of the wings:” This is a completely voluntary program, but one that is rather popular among many of the new aviators. While it is billed as a non-denominational ceremony, it is clearly a Christian program that culminates in the Catholic […]<\/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":[54,38,5284,96,1424,39,2,36,32,11,17,10,171,40],"class_list":["post-16240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government-and-religion","tag-catholic","tag-chapel","tag-chaplain","tag-christian","tag-conspiracy","tag-jewish","tag-military","tag-navy","tag-pilot-training","tag-prayer","tag-religious-expression","tag-religion","tag-religious-freedom","tag-tradition"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16240","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=16240"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16240\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}