Putting aside debates on the definition of the word "chaplain" (for which Tony Perkins has a good theological point) and merely treating it as an military office, I would agree with this article that atheists and humanists can serve in the military as chaplains (in proportion, of course, to their demand). But as atheists and humanists start to exercise their First Amendment Free Exercise Rights in more and more places, will the First Amendment Establishment Clause Prohibitions catch up with them? Have we finally found a Constitutional faith-loophole that gets the benefits of one without the sanction of the other? For example, if atheism and humanism are given the protected status of "religion," what does that mean? We remove religious symbols from public places because that supposedly violates the Establishment Clause of the Constitution, but if humanism and atheism are protected as religions, is the absence of any religious symbol in a public place (and the lack of the chance to put any new ones up) a neutral solution any longer? If dropping all religions and all references to the divine and all prayers and all traditions of faith is the "neutral ground" to which all other faiths must come to and be measured against, what is the difference between that and an Established Church of secular humanism? Before when virtually all Americans held some sort of theistic religious faith, the removal of all religious symbols might have been a neutral meeting point (much like the language of English has been to the Indian Subcontinent). However, the changing landscape of religion is turning that practical arrangement on its head. It may be time to drop our old distinctions of where religion is allowed to be seen and practiced and instead concentrate our efforts on the non-coercion of individuals. religiondispatches.org/dispatches/guest_bloggers/7209/tony_perkins__atheists_can_t_be_chaplains/
Posted on: Fri, 26 Jul 2013 17:47:50 +0000
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