Military Missionary Messages

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/08/03/air-force-bible-and-nukes-dont-mix/

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/08/09/air-forces-use-of-christian-messages-extends-to-rotc/

The U.S. military has gotten itself into some trouble recently concerning favoring Christianity over other religions; though this has come up more times over the last few years anyway with other events as well, from what I remember. Both a video educating soldiers about the ethics of using nuclear weapons and a ROTC training video explaining military virtues have overtly Christian tones to them. It’s not that the military shouldn’t teach soldiers about why they should use restraint in relation to nuclear weapons. Just war theory in any form, Christian or otherwise, is a good start, though it seems like there is more favoring of the use of nuclear weapons, which doesn’t bode well if people take that advice to heart. The more explicitly Christian nature of the ROTC training as described by an anonymous instructor, who was troubled by them, is a larger concern to me in terms of church and state separation. The government’s explicit endorsement of Christianity in this and the context of nuclear weapon usage as relates to just war theory are both problems of government secularism that apparently persisted for as long as 20 years.

Nuclear weapons are the most dangerous weapon any military possesses, since with improper use, they cause more harm than good, and in the worst case scenario, would raze the world to the ground on the oft referenced principle of mutually assured destruction. What that means is that if China (for example) launches a nuclear missile at the U.S., we have nuclear capacity to launch responses that would guarantee that both sides of the conflict would suffer losses of a nuclear scale. This is part of general military ethics in terms of the use of weapons of mass destruction, but a slide show recently pulled by the military due to objections from members of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation seemed to focus solely on Christian just war theory instead of considering the original Roman context it arose from and no doubt influenced theologians such as Augustine of Hippo. This shows a problematic endorsement of religion by a government entity that is explicitly forbidden from proselytizing. The existence of military chaplains might be argued to counter this claim, but they are merely there to counsel members of their religion on various psychological or ethical issues, not to spread their religions as they might feel they are called to do. In terms of teaching so called “nuclear ethics” the military is responsible not only to present a variety of views on justifications of nuclear force, but also contrasting views that either advocate disarmament on some level or a stronger level of restraint than is usually put forward by many just war theorists. One of the first things done is to determine whether the cause of the war itself is just and determining that can be somewhat vague even with the standards still being adjusted to this day. Many might say a war is just when it advances the cause of justice and this can defend the practices of interventionism in foreign policy and associated threats of nuclear force to pacify one’s enemies. This particular form of pacifism is a majority position, since it doesn’t pacify by anything more than a mutual truce or threat of attack. Pacifism as restraint or forms of non resistance have always been a minority in history, mostly because, as many would observe, those who try to pacify without the use of military force are commonly the first to lose their lives and thus do not remain in history for very long. But even if people commonly disagree with just war pacifism or nonresistance/nonviolence ethics in terms of military engagements, these positions should be presented alongside the more popular and oft defended practices in politics of the use of military force where there may be no need.

In ROTC training, short for Reserve Officer’s Training Corps, aspiring students can take classes through the military for college credit and other future benefits. It’s commonly a way for students who want to enlist in the military in the future, but also want to get a college education so as to bolster their background after they leave their tour of duty. But even in a context with young, impressionable minds still learning about the world, the military apparently was trying to inject Christian overtones into their courses. This lies primarily with the Air Force, though it may be possible that other branches of the military are using similar slide shows as the one found that references 7 of the 10 Commandments and Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.  The intent was to showcase the virtues of the Air Force, but I wonder why there is insistence here as with the briefings for officers launching nuclear missiles to preach exclusively Christian messages about why you can launch nuclear missiles or be a good ethical soldier. The preceding standards in Roman philosophy for just war theory and equivalent virtues found in the 10 Commandments that exist in systems that far predate Christianity make favoring Christianity not only unfair, but unnecessary. Presenting a variety of perspectives can be done and not grant undue merit to one system over another. Christianity’s defense of use of nuclear missiles could be balanced by other Christian perspectives on why use of nuclear weapons is un-Christian and other religions and philosophies that support or decry nuclear force. In this way, the adolescents and young adults aspiring to aid their country would not only get a presentation of virtues they should aspire to in their military practice and everyday lives, but also begin to understand that there are shared beliefs and ideals across the world. When you start to not separate and bisect everything into static categories, you begin to appreciate things all the more. In a military context, this could be a stronger motivator to use military force not as an end in itself, but a means to the end of peace, as it has been commonly advocated through history many times, though certainly 

not always so explicitly.

Apparently with both the slide show advising officers authorized to launch nuclear missiles and the ROTC training, the air force either purposefully ignored the other perspectives that would’ve supported their ideas or just weren’t aware of them to begin with. Either way, it’s troubling to me and many others, since the military is an aspect of our country we should be proud of in some sense, and yet there is such blatant ignorance of the diversity of positions and shared ideas across the world. It doesn’t make me want to “support our troops” or the wars they fight in if they are educated in this myopic fashion that not only favors Christianity, but endorses it through a government entity, which poses serious First Amendment establishment clause violations. I’m not surprised, but I think we should still press on to broaden the perspectives of the military officials who sponsor and officiate these things. Simply put, get out of the last 2 generations and try to take on things in a post WW2 paradigm. Until next time, Namaste and aloha.

Separation of Church and State Loyalty

http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2011/06/26/my-faith-why-i-dont-sing-the-star-spangled-banner/

When I talk about the separation of church and state, it’s usually from a more atheistic position, emphasizing the political problems of overlapping religion and policy in a religiously diverse country such as our own. But there is another side to this position in the form of Christians who insist that there cannot be a Christian nation in any form where Christianity is made like the state religion or given undue favor. Instead, they say that the church, particularly in the form of all believers, should function as the Church (capitalization intended) and the state should function as the state. This is controversial on its face to a majority of Christians who take what seems to be a more modern development in contrast to classical Christianity, which I reflected on in “Classical Versus Conservative Christianity”. The notion that the U.S. is blessed by God only gained significant popularity in the 50s, if I understand it right. When we changed our national motto to “In God We Trust” in 1956, printing it on our currency and altering the Pledge of Allegiance to include the words “Under God” in 1954, this reflected an ideology that persists today. The ideology I speak of is something like Christian historical revisionism; a practice of trying to make the U.S. appear to be not only a nation that has had a Christian majority for centuries, but was intended to be a Christian nation in terms of favoring Christianity as the basis for its form of government. This idea is at the core of the debate of whether a Christian can be equally loyal to both their country and God. And the minority group of Christians who believe one should be loyal first to God and then to their country is that of the Anabaptists, manifest popularly today as Mennonites, who commonly do not fly the American flag in their churches or sing the national anthem, both of which are a source of pride for many Christians.

Many people born in my parent’s generation hardly even had a chance to experience a society where religion wasn’t made to be a focus of the United States’ identity as a whole, let alone my own generation where it was the default position. There’s an excuse that is thrown around by Christian nation supporters that religious freedom does not exclude other beliefs or lack thereof, but merely recognizes that Christianity is where the values of the Constitution came from. But this doesn’t sit with reality at all, since it only tries to favor Christianity in one way and then justify favoring it in other ways, such as the incidents with school sponsored prayer being defended on the basis of school traditions of having Christian-centered prayers. This doesn’t serve as any real justification for the exclusion of every other person who doesn’t believe as they do. It gives a sense of entitlement that is not only arrogant, but unfair in recognizing the efforts to advance the American way that have come from Jews, Muslims, and other groups, including atheists. One might also observe that the principles of this country are not exclusively Christian in nature, nor does their theistic history in terms of, say, the Declaration of Independence’s reference to a Creator, mean that atheists are not citizens or possess the same rights as theists. In that sense, the Christian nation thesis is not only difficult to defend historically, but also logically, since the mere presence of Christian beliefs in the founding fathers’ values doesn’t mean that they wanted to enforce those Christian values as normative on everyone else. They wanted the general value of religious freedom, which is something any religion tends to value, even Islam, contrary to many people’s preconceptions of it. Any Christian values observed could easily be found in other religions across the world in one form or another. And even if they couldn’t, it doesn’t mean Christianity should be given any sort of favor in terms of the development of the country, since those values can be agreed upon without believing in any of the Christian faith’s tenets in, say, the Apostle’s Creed.

Returning to the Mennonites and the Christian thesis of separation of church and state; many Christians would say that this kind of thought is tantamount to treason and contempt for the country they live in. But, the Mennonites respond, they are not being disloyal to their country; they merely see a need to separate their loyalty to a country that commonly espouses beliefs that do not sync with their pacifist beliefs, such as the military theme in the Star Spangled Banner, our national anthem, or the military implications of flying the American flag, a symbol used to mark victory in many wars through history. It’s the pacifist tendencies of Mennonites that strongly urge them to not support certain aspects of the U.S., as well as a belief shared in part with Jehovah’s Witnesses that you shouldn’t pledge your allegiance to any other power besides God and Jesus. Of course there’s a response that the pledge of allegiance and the national anthem are not compelling the sort of loyalty that is involved with religious belief. But every Christian group has their own perspective on it. My own home church I apostatized from had both the Christian flag and the American flag in the sanctuary, so clearly Presbyterians don’t have reservations about saying they support both their country and their church in the grander scheme of the term. But there are churches along with the Mennonites that don’t feel they are being true to their faith if they sing an anthem that can be said to glorify war as a means to advance freedom or fly a flag that has been used in those wars for freedom.

This sort of disagreement is more difficult to settle, because pacifism in Christianity has always been a significant minority, even in the early church, excluding martyrs of course. Many Christian thinkers, including Aquinas, Augustine and Luther, argued that you could be loyal to both a country and the Church (emphasis on capitalization here) without being hypocritical. Aquinas and Augustine brought up the ideas of just war theory and the cities of man and God respectively. Just war theory is a Christian philosophical theory that says war can be justified if it brings about justice. There are limitations of course, but some of them have been ignored with the advancements in military technology, especially the one against killing noncombatants. Augustine believed, similar to Luther much later on, that we can be loyal to a city of man and its laws as long as they do not conflict with the law of the city of God. In this way, Christians have had a long tradition of a truce of sorts between church and state loyalty. But Mennonites and others reject this, saying that freedom comes from God, not from human actions and to say otherwise is to betray the message of Jesus. I can’t speak myself on these sorts of things, but it makes me happy to find that there is this sort of perspective from a Christian viewpoint, when one finds more often than not Christians supporting the exact opposite: that Christianity is able to be resolved with violence and force even in contrast to many things Jesus himself said in the Gospels. There’s an unlikely ally in terms of secularism to be found in these Christians who want the Church to be the Church and not have involvement with the state. So until next time, Namaste and aloha.