The internet is alive with stories that the Air Force in its mandatory training sessions has been teaching those who would launch missles about the "right" Christian position on the morality of doing so. In doing so, the Air Force has been mixing the just war doctrine with passages from Revelation and the Old Testament. Let us pass over the assumption that the just war doctrine is proper Christian doctrine (an assumption not obvious when one reads the Sermon on the Mount), and let us note that the possible existence of a "just war" does not easily justify nuclear war (with its horrendous capacity for civilian casualities). Indeed, many Christian ethicists doubt that the conditions for a just war do not exist under modern conditions. It is hard, for example, under just war doctrine to justify our presence in Iraq or Afghanistan particular given the impact of those wars on innocent civilians. Thus many Catholc Bishops, for example, have condemned modern warfare under such conditions. Whatever the Christian ethics of modern conventional warfare, I would think one would have to search far and wide to find a Christian theologian who would tell an Air Force recruit that Christ sanctions the launching of nuclear missles.
From another important vantage, this is all beside the point. Just what was the Air Force thinking when it required soldiers (of pluralistic religious or non-religious backgrounds) to submit to its version of Christian exegesis? Apart from the Free Exercise issues associated with requiring soldiers to attend compulsory religious lecture, if the Establishment Clause has a central meaning, it must be that the government cannot take official theological positions. As this case demonstrates, the government is incompetent to do so.
Patrick, the AIr Force has been involving in a number of controversies
including a Prayer breakfast and an edict that allows their officers to
speak about their faith to subordinates. See
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/09/AR2006020902211.html.
Given the latter, although I was not aware of such anecdotes, they make
sense.
Posted by: Steve Shiffrin | 08/02/2011 at 03:34 AM
Conversations (and by way of anecdotal evidence) with some ex-mililatry personnel suggests that Christian indoctrination of one kind or another is not uncommon in the military, at least among new recruits and the common soldier. Too little attention has been accorded such things.
Posted by: Patrick S. O'Donnell | 08/01/2011 at 11:45 PM