An atheist soldier is told to bow head and fold hands, refuses.
Yesterday morning, at a rehearsal for their AIT graduation at Fort Jackson, which was being held in a chapel, the graduating soldiers were ordered to bow their heads and clasp their hands in front of them while an invocation was being given. One soldier refused to do this, and immediately shot off an email from his iPhone to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) while the rehearsal was still going on.
Brave. Good luck.
Later in the day, the soldier wrote out the whole story in an email to MRFF, excerpts of which appeared in a post on the CNN blog, “Military backs off threat to pull atheist from ceremony.” The CNN post now has hundreds of comments, mostly supportive of what this soldier did.
Well, no doubt Fox News will put an end to that situation…but good while it lasts.
I see that both CNN and Chris Rodda identified the soldier as an atheist… but is there any publicly available evidence that that’s the case? Nowhere in the soldier’s e-mail message (which Rodda posted in full) does the soldier identify him/herself as an atheist.
CNN says (s)he’s a “proclaimed atheist,” which sounds rather concrete. Do we know it’s correct? Maybe (s)he provided information to CNN besides that e-mail?
Rieux, the soldier says they were “raised” as a Southern Baptist, not that they “are” one. I’m not sure it would occur to many non-atheists to e-mail FFRF immediately, especially (as it appears) on their cell phone from the actual event. It would be pretty unlikely for a Southern Baptist to catch flack from their peers and superiors for refusing to bow their head and clasp their hands, and even more unlikely for them to say that that refusal was due to them standing up for their “beliefs” and “rights”.
Really, this is not that difficult. Why are you trying to make it difficult?
America and its claims to secularism – just so much bullshit. I couldnt stand living in such a country.
Mirax, please do decent, sane Americans who are losing the secular freedom battle a favor, would you? Two favors, actually.
First, wherever it is that you live, if it’s as decent and sane as we and you wish America was, would you kindly drop by your Immigration office and let the people in charge know that we would like to move there legally without being treated like criminals, thank you very much? Because it’s totally weird to have people like you sniff, “Why don’t you just leave” like clueless, dismissive morons who tell battered wives to leave everything behind and just run away from the battering spouse.
Second, next time you feel the urge to pull back your lip and sneer, could you pull your head out of your ass so we can see your expression better? Thanks ever so.
Actually I live a quasi-dictatorship but it is a secular country and the godbotherers dont get to twist the public space to their satisfaction.
I didnt ask any of you to leave. I simply said that it would be an intolerable place for me to live in. I’ve been reading (on pharyngula)about how some people in certain parts of the US cant even come out of the closet as atheists and that to do so is to risk social death, unemployment and even personal injury. One’s children will be ostracised and bullied at school. And so on. that is a fucking lot of civl liberty to lose to the god botherers. I cant understand why you are so defensive about that.
sorry about the italics screw up.
@Mirax:
Did you even read the second paragraph?
I would love to immigrate to another country. I would drop all I have here and jump ship to Sweden in an instant if I could. The problem is manifold:
1) Money, 2) Immigration laws, 3) Jobs, 4) Support structure, 5) Money – oh did I mention that already?
The US is shit, and it’s seriously in need of some great change, but simply packing up and leaving is not an option so we have no choice but to fight the overwhelming majority opinion of corporate wankers.
Speedwell @2:
Indeed. Which is a rather substantial reason I did not declare him/her a Southern Baptist, nor even mention the denomination in my comment.
As you can see from the chart Dale McGowan linked to here, huge numbers of people who leave evangelical Christianity end up in categories besides atheism. The mystery raised-Southern-Baptist soldier could currently be, among a host of other things, a Methodist, a Lutheran, a Catholic, a (religiously observant) Jew, or an agnostic-and-don’t-you-dare-call-me-atheist. Certainly nothing in the soldier’s e-mail, the CNN article, or Rodda’s post indicates otherwise.
I see: you have fundamentally misunderstood one of the basic facts of this matter. The soldier in question did not call the Freedom From Religion Foundation. (S)he called the MRFF—the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. Different organization. Different focus. Different demographic makeup.
The MRFF’s clientele (and its Advisory Board, too) is replete with religious believers. MRFF has advocated on behalf of service members of numerous (ir)religious perspectives, including Catholics, Muslims, Wiccans, and theistic Jews. (And very likely some of those agnostic-and-don’t-you-dare-call-me-atheists as well.) So where exactly are you pulling this “I’m not sure it would occur to many non-atheists” stuff from? Did you infer it because you thought it was the FFRF that the soldier contacted? Or do you seriously think that the only people who are familiar with the MRFF and willing to turn to it for help are atheists?
It’s “flak” (a “flack” is a P.R. professional)—but again, who said this person is a Southern Baptist? I certainly didn’t.
What? Making up facts to fit your preconceptions? No indeed, that’s all too easy. I wouldn’t say it’s a good idea, though.
Because I think evidence and accuracy are important. It makes me a little sad that it appears you don’t.
.
At this point, I think the strongest suggestion that the service member is an atheist comes from the dog that didn’t bark—the silence in response to the statements by Rodda and (especially) CNN that (s)he’s an atheist. If that were inaccurate, presumably someone with direct knowledge of the situation would say so… but then who knows? Maybe providing the anonymous complainant’s real religious perspective would, in and of itself, out him or her. Maybe CNN and the MRFF have jumped to the same unfounded conclusion that Speedwell has. Or maybe they have a direct statement from the soldier that (s)he is an atheist. Regardless, it appears we don’t, and all of the armchair theorizing in the world won’t change that.
Actually I live a quasi-dictatorship but it is a secular country and the godbotherers dont get to twist the public space to their satisfaction.
I didnt ask any of you to leave. I simply said that it would be an intolerable place for me to live in
But you’re still sneering.
Let me give you a hint, cupcake: What have you done to get this crap to stop? Have you put pressure on your government to put pressure on America about this? Have you tried leading a boycott of American goods? Have you formed human rights groups that go to America to protect atheists who come out–since, you know, you don’t have so much to lose from it as they do?
I know I said over there that atheists not coming out is why they don’t come out, the classic catch-22. But I also said I understand why they don’t. It can be very dangerous to do that in some places.
Wow, Rieux, you sure seem emotionally invested. So I said FFRF instead of MRFF. Five in the morning, before coffee. Big deal. You knew what I meant. And “making up facts”? I wish you’d point to a fact I made up. I was pointing out evidence from the letter. Preponderance of the evidence, you know. Not hard. I think it’s pretty obvious what you hope the truth is. You’re protesting far, far too much, sweetie.
Oh, and Mirax, here’s the idea for you in baby language: Putting your sweet little nose in the air and announcing that a place is “bullshit” and “you wouldn’t live there” is the same as saying that anyone who does live there is an idiot who can’t see bullshit, or else a crazy person who prefers to live in craziness. Either way, they don’t meet your standards and you look down on them. That’s why we’re defensive, cupcake. Because you’re offensive.
Ha!
Glad to see someone call their CO’s Article 134 bluff. Makes me heart sing. Off-tune and poorly but sing none the less.
In honesty and accuracy, sure. Nice try with the pointless sneer, though.
No, actually, it seemed very possible that you really had screwed up and decided that the soldier in question had called the Freedom From Religion Foundation. Your comment made a whole lot more sense in that case—it really is a little implausible that a Jewish or Muslim soldier would call Dan Barker and Annie Laurie Gaylor for help. Now we’re just back to you jumping to unfounded conclusions, rather than falling victim to a simple misreading.
Gee, how about this one?
That is, as it happens, a non-fact that you made up.
Perhaps more to the point, you implied that my comment had something to do with the soldier in question being a Southern Baptist:
The relevance of the Southern Baptist Convention to my comment was another fact you made up, in aid of your false bifurcation between the soldier either being (1) a Southern Baptist or (2) an atheist.
Except that, as I just showed you, there is no corroborating evidence, much less a “preponderance” of same, that the soldier in question is not a theistic Jew, a Muslim, a Wiccan, a Catholic, or an agnostic-but-don’t-you-dare-call-me-atheist. You “pointed out” no “evidence from the letter” to that effect, because there is none. (Instead you tilted at an irrelevant windmill notion about the soldier not being a Southern Baptist, which demonstrates nothing about his or her atheism.)
Oh, do tell! Apparently you think both of us can read minds—so what, pray tell, do I “hope the truth is” in this case?
Rieux:
Yes, but is it really very likely that s/he a Methodist, a Lutheran or a Catholic and object to the benediction? And is it really very likely that he’d converted to Judaism? It’s true that we don’t know for sure, but it seems likely s/he’s an atheist (perhaps prefers the term agnostic). And even if s/he’s not, it’s an honest mistake, an assupmtion s/he hasn’t bothered to correct. Why do you think it so significant?
I’m guessing, based on what I’ve seen of him elsewhere as well as here, that Rieux is of the opinion that precision and accuracy matter when attempting to draw conclusions, and that it’s generally better to match the level of our belief to the amount of evidence in support of that belief.
If I’m right, then I gotta say: I’m with him.
Well, so am I. At least in general I guess. But there are issues that are very important to get right and issues that are not worth more than a mention. I think this is the latter.
Why not? There are thousands if not millions of Methodists, Lutherans, and (especially, in this context of aggressive Protestant evangelicalism) Catholics who certainly do object to violations of separation like this one. Quite possibly a majority of Methodists and Lutherans wouldn’t object (as for Catholics, I suppose it depends upon the theological content of the prayer—anti-Catholic rhetoric from right-wingy Protestant clergy can get pretty nasty), but clearly for a story like this it only takes one. And there are many thousands of individual Christians who would object in a situation like this one; in a nation with about 175 million Christians, it doesn’t take a large percentage of Christians-who-are-objectors at all to yield a significant possibility that this soldier is one of them.
Why not? Thousands of American Christians do that every year, frequently for the purposes of getting hitched. Again, it’s not rare at all.
Other than the bare statements from CNN and Rodda, I just don’t see where you’re getting that. Plus, that parenthetical of yours rather gives away the store, I’d say. An agnostic-and-don’t-you-dare-call-me-atheist is certainly not (as CNN put it) a “proclaimed atheist.”
Who, the soldier? I’m not aware that he or she made any mistake in this respect at all; at most, it’s the reporters’ mistake.
Well, to start with, I’d say accuracy is pretty much per se important. Besides that, it seems to me valuable to recognize that atheists aren’t the only ones who care about the separation of church and state; thankfully, religious minorities of various theistic kinds have filed most of the most important Establishment Clause litigation in American judicial history—and good for them. Atheists aren’t the only supporters or clients of the MRFF, either.
It’s worth pointing out that not everyone who gets gay-bashed is in fact gay. It’s worth pointing out that not everyone who objects to Establishment Clause violations, whether inside the U.S. Armed Forces or outside, is an atheist.
Possibly CNN and Rodda called this soldier an atheist because they have some information showing that that they haven’t shared with us. On the other hand, possibly one or both of them have jumped to that conclusion simply because (1) the soldier objected to the prayer and (2) atheists have been in the news a lot lately. If the latter is the case, the record deserves to be corrected—doesn’t it?
You tell ’em, Nathan.
Hertta, both CNN and Rodda put the A-word in the titles of their articles. Ophelia made it the second word of this post. Isn’t that an important spot to make sure one’s words are accurate?
(Ophelia is obviously just relying on what Rodda reported. Quite possibly Rodda is relying on CNN in the same way, though given Rodda’s position with the MRFF that’s not entirely clear. If there’s a mistake here, it may well have trickled up from one messenger to another. And again, maybe there’s no mistake at all, and CNN and/or Rodda have established the complainant’s atheism via some evidence that neither has directly mentioned. It’s just not clear.)
Rieux, I’m sure that if CNN made an unfounded assumption an got wrong the soldiers religious affiliation, we’ll get a correction.
Now, do we really know the phone s/he used was actually an iPhone and not a Samsung or a Nokia?
Hey everybody … I can clear this up. This soldier is an atheist. They also talked to Mikey Weinstein on the phone, so MRFF knows more about them than what was in the email. CNN talked to Mikey, so they got that the soldier was an atheist from him.
@ Hertta … Oh yeah, and it was absolutely an iPhone the soldier was using. Their emails sent to MRFF during the actual graduation rehearsal said “Sent from my iPhone” at the bottom of them. 😉
So we now have confirmation that the soldier in question was, in fact, an atheist, but this case nonetheless points out the ridiculous hypocrisy of those who cleave to the ‘Judeo-Christian’ heritage of the US, since Jews are not much into the bow+clasp posture for prayer. I have been at a few events over the past couple of years when Christian prayers have been said (eg a friend’s Catholic wedding, and also the Canadian National Prayer Breakfast), and my practice is to stand quietly with my head up and eyes open and look around to see who else is doing the same. If any Christians object, I would have to ask them 1) what harm it was doing to them for me not to bow my head and 2) what they were doing looking at me when they should have been paying attention to talking to their deity. Some atheists of my acquaintance think they should ignore the prayer and go about eating or whatever activity was to be up next, but I am more inclined to put this under the category of social politeness – eg one does not start eating before everyone else, even if what is delaying them is the completion of a one-sided conversation with an imaginary friend.
@ theobromine … There’s a big difference between waiting to start eating if people want to pray first and being forced to participate in a religious exercise by a government authority. One is just being respectful of other people’s beliefs; the other is giving up your constitutional right to not be forced by the government to engage in a religious practice that violates your beliefs. These things are totally apples and oranges.
@Chris: I agree with you 100%. Sorry if my comment implied otherwise. I was not suggesting that this soldier’s actions were in any way unreasonable or unwarranted.
Thanks Chris.
And peeps: you’ve got mirax all wrong. She’s a terrific (and impassioned) informant on theocratic politics in Malaysia and India and the rest of SE Asia. She’s not an enemy.
@mirax: In truth, there are times I can barely stand living in the US myself. The wife and I have occasionally toyed with just what country to move to if the US heads too far down the rabbit hole.