Did you hear about the decision made
last month at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado? Air Force Academy cadets will no longer say “so
help me God” at the end of the Honor Oath.
School officials said the words will be optional.
What would provoke this course of
action? – a complaint from the Military Religious
Freedom Foundation. This
watchdog/advocacy group was established by Mickey Weinstein to ensure that U.S.
Armed Forces members have freedom from religion.
Academy Superintendent Lt. Gen.
Michelle Johnson says the change was made to respect cadets' freedom of
religion. The oath states, “We will not
lie, steal or cheat, nor tolerate among us anyone who does. Furthermore, I resolve to do my duty and to
live honorably, so help me God.”
The academy says cadets are required
to take the oath once, when they formally enter the school after boot camp. The school, outside Colorado Springs, has
about 4,000 cadets. When they graduate,
they are commissioned as second lieutenants.
U.S. Army Chaplain (Colonel-Retired)
Ron Crews, Executive Director of Chaplain
Alliance for Religious Liberty, says, “We want to respect religious liberty
– and that means that we can respect those who don't come from a position of
faith. But we don't want to remove faith
from the Air Force Academy by forcing all to no longer say ‘so help me God.’”
The 1st Amendment of the U.S. Constitution was never intended to
guarantee that government should be free from religion or religious
influence. The only freedom of
religion that was envisioned by the Founders was freedom from government
sponsorship of one particular religion or denomination. In fact, the “exclude religion from politics”
view would invalidate the very reasoning of the Declaration of Independence. The first two sentences mentioned God twice
in order to say that God's laws authorize this independence from Great Britain
in 1776, and that God is the One who gives human beings the rights that
governments seek to protect. In other
words, the 56-signers of the Declaration of Independence proclaimed that
both the “laws of nature and of nature’s God” and the “Creator” Himself gave
our country the right to become an independent nation. They are claiming divine authorization
for the very existence of the United States of America, and conclude by
pledging their lives, fortunes, and “sacred honor.”
Our Founders never envisioned that the
1st Amendment would become a weapon to excise Christian or traditional
religious expressions from the public arena.
Today’s judicial activism has absurdly interpreted civic free exercise
of religion as an unconstitutional establishment of religion … thus causing the
1st Amendment to violate itself.
Rev.
Dr. Kenneth L. Beale, Jr.
Chaplain
(Colonel-Ret), U.S. Army
Pastor,
Ft. Snelling Memorial Chapel
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