Last week, a number of religious freedom activists, bloggers and organizations were alerted by Sgt. Justin Griffith, a soldier at Fort Bragg, N.C., to a mandatory U.S. Army survey called the "Soldier Fitness Tracker." One of the areas included in this survey, which measures a soldier's fitness in a number of areas, is "spiritual" fitness. According to his survey results, Sgt. Griffith is unfit to serve.
A little background: I've been working with Sgt. Griffith for the past few months on an event he's organizing in response to the Billy Graham Evangelical Association's "Rock The Fort" event, which was held on the parade field at Fort Bragg in September. Although a number of organizations objected to a military installation officially sponsoring this Billy Graham event, which was clearly designed to make converts of soldiers at the post, the event went on as planned. In defense of the event, the post commander issued a statement saying that any other group that wanted to hold a similar event would be given the same approval and support that "Rock The Fort" had been given. I immediately called Mikey Weinstein, my boss at the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), and said that we needed to take Fort Bragg up on its offer and tell them we want to hold a comparable event for non-theists. Just as we were discussing the feasibility of putting on an event on the same scale as the Billy Graham event, we got an email from Sgt. Griffith, who had had exactly the same idea. And, thus, a beautiful partnership was born. From my very first phone conversation with Sgt. Griffith a few days later, I knew we had a soldier with the brains, guts, and determination to pull this off. Other organizations quickly got on board -- the Freedom from Religion Foundation, Americans United, the Military Association of Athiests and Freethinkers, American Atheists, and the Stiefel Freethought Foundation -- as did a bunch of great entertainers and speakers, including the illustrious Ed Brayton, who has agreed to emcee the event. The event, tentatively scheduled to take place in April, is called Rock Beyond Belief.
Now, getting back to the Army's "Soldier Fitness Tracker" survey ...
After taking the survey, and finding out that, as a non-believer, the Army considers him unfit to serve, Sgt. Griffith sent out an email to all the organizations and individuals involved in Rock Beyond Belief, and people sprang into action. MRFF has a prominent law firm on it, and several of the bloggers among the recipients of the email immediately posted about this jaw-droppingly outrageous "religious test."
One of these blog posts, written by Al Stefanelli, has now gone viral. Al's post, which begins, "Did you know that the United States Army is concerned with the spiritual well-being of their soldiers? Did you know that if you choose not to believe in the supernatural that the United States Army can consider you unfit to serve?," can be found here, and a follow-up post here.
Over the past few years, I've written quite a bit about "Spiritual Fitness," as the Army calls it, and included a section about it in a chapter I wrote for the recently released book Attitudes Aren't Free: Thinking Deeply about Diversity in the US Armed Forces, published by Air University Press, the publishing arm of the Air Force's Air University at Maxwell Air Force Base. Here's what I wrote about it in the book:
Spiritual Fitness"Spiritual fitness" is the military's new code phrase for promoting religion, and the religion being promoted is Christianity. There are spiritual fitness centers, spiritual fitness programs, spiritual fitness concerts, spiritual fitness runs and walks, and so forth.
This year, for example, Fort Eustis, Virginia, and Fort Lee, Virginia, have been holding a spiritual fitness concert series. At Fort Eustis, it's actually called the "Commanding General's Spiritual Fitness Concert Series." This is a Christian concert series. All of the performers are Christian recording artists. Photos from one of the Fort Lee concerts show crosses everywhere, and one photo's caption even says that the performer "took a moment to read a Bible passage" during her set. In some cases, attendance at Christian concerts held at basic training installations has been mandatory for the Soldiers in training.
In March 2008, a program was presented at a commander's call at RAF Lakenheath, England. This commander's call was mandatory for an estimated 1,000 service members, and the PowerPoint version of the presentation was e-mailed to an additional 4,000-5,000 members. The "spiritual fitness" segment of this presentation was titled "A New Approach to Suicide Prevention: Developing Purpose-Driven Airmen," a takeoff on Rick Warren's The Purpose Driven Life. The presentation also incorporated creationism into suicide prevention. One slide, titled "Contrasting Theories of Hope, 2 Ultimate Theories Explaining Our Existence," has two columns, the first titled "Chance," and the second "Design," comparing Charles Darwin and "Random/Chaos" to God and "Purpose/Design." Darwin, creationism and religion are also part of a chart comparing the former Soviet Union to the United States, which concludes that "Naturalism/Evolution/Atheism" lead to people being "in bondage" and having "no hope," while theism leads to "People of Freedom" and "People of Hope/Destiny."
(My entire chapter, "Against All Enemies, Foreign and Domestic," can be downloaded here.)
Since the publication of the book, MRFF has found out that not only were the "Spiritual Fitness" concerts at Fort Eustis exclusively Christian, but that soldiers were actually punished for choosing not to attend them. We have also received many more complaints about a plethora of other ways in which Christianity is being pushed on our service men and women under the guise of "Spiritual Fitness," such as the new "Spiritual Fitness Center" at Fort Hood, which, while claimed by the Army to not only be non-Christian but completely non-religious, is chock full of crosses and other displays promoting evangelical Christianity. Check out this video tour, filmed by a soldier at Fort Hood for MRFF.
Make no mistake: "Spiritual Fitness" is just a clever term concocted by the military to flagrantly violate the Constitution and promote religion.
Follow Chris Rodda on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ChrisRodda1
Are U.S. troops being force-fed Christianity? / The Christian ...
Military Evangelism Deeper, Wider Than First Thought
Mandatory U.S. Army Survey Says: Non-Believers Unfit To Serve ...
Thanks for your work and support on this very important issue.
As a retired military officer, I can tell you that the Air Force
was tacit Christian as well.
Our military needs to get out of the business of endorsing religion in any form.
Ironies about these programs abound. 1) The military seeks Christians, the first pacifists, even if the 4th century made it less attractive. 2) The Purpose-Driven Life derives from Calvinist theology, which leads to the view that evangelism is useless. If God has already chosen those who will be saved and the rest are out of luck, no choice or activity will change anyone's belief or behavior.
That said, cramming religion down the throats of subordinate military personnel is not only immoral, it's counterproductive. Speaking from my Christian background, the essence of the message of Jesus and Jehovah God is about free choice, choosing for oneself. I never read any account of Jesus taking a sword or Army of God promotion clipboard and saying, "Follow me or you're gonna get it." Yes, Jesus did preach about consequences of making bad choices, such as turning away from God and ending up in bad situations. But when did Jesus Christ force people against their will to go to Bible camp or spiritual counselors? In fact, Jesus allowed people to go their own way if they did not believe.
Note to the Pentagon: this forced spiritual test won't help in overcoming the "American Crusader" stigma plaguing our troops with hostility and needless risks throughout the Middle East.
In my opinion, let people be who they are. If they choose to go to church, temple, mosque, sacred site, or no place at all, let the individual choose. No test needed.
Welcome to the American Taliban.
Changes the entire meaning of the song.
How does that really change the meaning?
http://www.army.mil/-news/2010/12/15/49467-spiritual-fitness-can-lighten-load-for-troops-families/
If there are issues of structural or defacto discrimination against non believers or of any religious minority that needs to be addressed. The fact that the military has chosen to explore the issue of spiritual fitness does not seem to me to be in itself a reason to suggest that the military is seeking to promote Christianity at all. I would like to see some evidence of Christians who fail the spirituality test. I am guessing there would be some, just like there would be examples of Christians failing any other type of psychological test. You would expect to find some atheists passing with flying colors and others failing as well.
It might be worthwhile to challenge the President on whether he plans to put a stop to religious extremism and cronyism in the military.
However, the article raises so many questions in my mind about what is going on, and what can be done to fight it.
If Sgt. Griffith has been declared 'unfit to serve,' then has he been discharged, and will other be discharged based on the same criteria? How can service members fight back to preserve their right to religeous freedom?
I look forward to updates on this.
The more important point here, is that Sgt. Griffith has not only stood for his beliefs, but has taken action, within the limits of his post, to try to solve this problem, and help others with the same problem. Isn't that exactly what we want in our Non-Commissioned Officers? The same drive, and pride, and organizational skills that he is using here, he will (and likely has) use in a theater of opperations, to plan and prepair his soldiers for missions. To help them with their problems. To implement solutions to any and all contingencies that come his way. And then, not to keep the solution to himself, but to share it with others so that they won't suffer from the same problems. This is exactly what we want in our leaders. To call him (or me) unfit to serve, seems contrary to the character he has demonstrated. He seems pretty "Army Strong" to me.
Thanks for your reply.
I find it very alarming that any one relgious group should have pre-eminence over any others in the military, and equally as alarming that any religious leaders or group should attain such authority as is described in Rodda's article. I find infringement on anyone's relgious freedom particularly dangerous because it is just a step away from a group attaining such power as it might demand that soldiers owe their allegience first to God, and only secondly to the defense of our country. That leaves the door open for justification of actions which go against the service of our country.
The same is true in our government or in our society as a whole.
I intend to follow this story.
What criteria are used to determine that non-believers are "unfit" for military service. Are non-believers more or less capable of properly functioning in society than their believing counterparts? Are non-believers subject to a greater frequency of divorce? Greater instances of drug abuse? Are there larger percentages of non-believers in prison as compared to the religious faithful?
As a group, are non-believers plagued by systemic child sexual abuse? Are there scores of non-believers blowing themselves up because some newspaper published an image of one of its leading non-believing spokesman?
Just trying to understand this in the proper context. So if I, as an adult, suggest I have an invisible friend whom I talk to and believe we live in the "end-times" I get to drive a tank and have a gun?