This Week in God

July 12, 2008

First up from the God machine this week is an update on a report from April on the uncomfortable intersection of religion and the U.S. military. One soldier who is not religious has faced considerable pressure from those who are. And now, he has no choice but to go to court.

Army Spc. Jeremy Hall was raised Baptist. Like many Christians, he said grace before dinner and read the Bible before bed. Four years ago when he was deployed to Iraq, he packed his Bible so he would feel closer to God.

He served two tours of duty in Iraq and has a near perfect record. But somewhere between the tours, something changed. Hall, now 23, said he no longer believes in God, fate, luck or anything supernatural. […]

His sudden lack of faith, he said, cost him his military career and put his life at risk. Hall said his life was threatened by other troops and the military assigned a full-time bodyguard to protect him out of fear for his safety.

In March, Hall filed a federal lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Defense and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, among others. In the suit, Hall claims his rights to religious freedom under the First Amendment were violated and suggests that the United States military has become a Christian organization.

“I think it’s utterly and totally wrong. Unconstitutional,” Hall said.

At Camp Speicher in Iraq, an officer threatened to bring unspecified charges against Hall because of his lack of faith. Hall’s fellow soldiers wouldn’t let him sit with them at a Thanksgiving meal, and he was denied a promotion because of his atheism.

CNN added, “Hall isn’t seeking compensation in his lawsuit — just the guarantee of religious freedom in the military.” Good idea — now would be a good time for the Pentagon to revisit its religion guidelines.

As for Hall personally, he’s now completing his tour of duty in Junction City, Kansas — because his superiors decided he was no longer welcome (among fellow U.S. soldiers) to serve in Iraq.

Also from The God Machine this week, you’ve probably heard about the various aspects of Living Liberally — Drinking Liberally, Eating Liberally, Screening Liberally, Reading Liberally, and Laughing Liberally. There are chapters in all 50 states.

Now, we have a new one for the mix: Praying Liberally.

Through these happy hours, comedy shows, film screenings, book clubs and meals, we fulfill our key mission of bringing politics into places where we gather, socialize, learn, love and live. One of these places to which we have yet to reach out is the liberal religious community, one that, unfortunately, has found few spaces to gather and organize in person, in public, loud and proud.

For this reason we are developing a brand new Living Liberally network: Praying Liberally!

Like our other chapters, Praying Liberally chapters will have weekly, semi-monthly or monthly meetings of local liberals from a wide range of faiths including, as pastordan so excellently phrases it, “those whose deepest faith is in the conviction that there is no God.” At these meetings, faithfully-minded liberals could talk politics, say a collective prayer for “the least of these” in our community, our country and our world, and build community to organize around our common causes

Also like our other chapters, Praying Liberally chapters will receive a web site, chapter blog, listserv and other online organizing tools and support features from the Living Liberally national network.

Hosting a chapter is fun and EASY! All you have to do is decide on a time and location, anywhere from a local religious space to the neighborhood cafe, and send out a quick e-mail reminder before you meet – that’s it. Overall, it’s no more difficult than meeting with your spiritually progressive friends to hang out and talk politics.

Good idea.

We hate us for our freedoms.

  • It will be nice when the word “liberal” regains its former status and is no longer used by Republicans as an epithet. My most vivid mental picture of Ronald Reagan is his sneering remark that his political opponents were “liberal, liberal, liberal.”
    .

    The story about the military gives a whole new meaning to the song “Onward Christian Soldiers,” doesn’t it? Or maybe the same old meaning.

    Silly me, I always thought that Jesus’ message was one of love and acceptance, not belligerence, persecution, and self-righteousness. Obviously I was mistaken.

  • Gee, I thought everyone HERE was collectively “god” – after all, the arrogance and self-righteousness would put a tv evanglical to shame/

  • Mr Marv, were you looking in the mirror when you wrote your last comment? ..please dont cry…

  • Gee, why would Iraqis ever get the idea that our ‘liberating’ them was some kind of a modern day crusade by Christians?

    hmmmm….

  • Can you expect a presidential candidate who says he will strengthen the office of faith-based programs to stand up for religious freedom in the military? Can you expect a candidate to mealy-mouthed to condemn a menopause-joke at his own fundraiser to stand up for anything in any context?

    I don’t want liberal religion. I want freedom to be non-religious. I want a secular government and a secular army, with guarantees of civil liberties. I have no faith in Obama’s ability to deliver these important freedoms, supposedly already guaranteed by our constitution, if our supposedly liberal leader had the guts to support and defend it.

  • Mary @8 said: I don’t want liberal religion. I want freedom to be non-religious. I want a secular government and a secular army, with guarantees of civil liberties.

    i totally agree. I might amplify, con su permiso? I don’t want MY US Military–in which I served 40 years ago without benefit of clergy–calling themselves “soldiers for Christ.” NO! You’re NOT farking soldiers for tongue-laving Christ. If anything beyond being merely soldiers for the USofA, which oughta be enough, frankly, you’re soldiers for ‘freedom,’ and ‘dignity,’ and ‘liberty,’ and ‘civil rights,’ which are the rhetorical goods and values for which the Nation supposedly stands, too.

    the military is fertile ground for these parasites and maggots, because there is always the sense and the presence of death on the wind, and it’s that which their cult of crucifixion feeds…

  • Woody said: the military is fertile ground for these parasites and maggots,

    Hey, who else but morons dumb enough to pass the IQ test low enough to be fundies would additionally be stupid enough to voluntarily go invade Poland and think of it as promoting freedom??

  • A military that thinks it’s fighting for Jesus, or some political-religious ideology instead of liberty and the most sacred document we have, the Constitution, is ready made to overthrow a nominally secular government. Couple the military with the 200,000 evangelical, born-again, churches, many of whose ministers serve as precinct captains (the current equivelant of a Nazi Gauleiter) for the neocon dogma of belligerence and militarism, and the infrastructure for an authoritarian, “Christian” based theocracy is in place. At the right moment it will pounce.

    How the military has become an extension of the evangelical ideology is something we should all know more about.

  • Reading the NYT article’s comments, the story doesn’t really make as much sense. The picture Spc. Hall paints is awful, and it’s not hard to see how it would be unbearable being in the military if treated the same way he is.

    But there are a lot of comments from servicemen and women suggesting that even their experiences of discrimination never rise to the level of Spc Hall’s treatment. I also know at least one atheist who’s ex-military who I can’t imagine having the positive view of the latter he does if he’d endured anything like this. Perhaps it’s all to do with the part of the Army you’re stuck in. There are some pretty sick people around, and some of them end up there as they would anywhere else. Unlike a 9-5 job, it’s not something you can easily escape from when it happens to you. This does not mean that the entire military has turned into a branch of the evangelist movement. At least, I hope it doesn’t.

  • “I think it’s utterly and totally wrong. Unconstitutional,” Hall said.

    Your point being…???

    As for Hall personally, he’s now completing his tour of duty in Junction City, Kansas — because his superiors decided he was no longer welcome (among fellow U.S. soldiers) to serve in Iraq.

    Nice tip now that being gay isn’t enough to get you out.

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