Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
Jeremy Hall is the Army specialist who has filed suit against the Pentagon claiming that a superior officer violated his rights by threatening him with retaliation for forming a group of atheists in his unit (with permission from the chaplain, one might add). CNN has a story about Hall that has some new details, including some about the harassment he faced after this incident took place:
Hall was in Qatar when the lawsuit was filed on September 18 in federal court in Kansas City, Kansas. Other soldiers learned of it and he feared for his own safety. Once, Hall said, a group of soldiers followed him, harassing him, but no one did anything to make it stop.
Which means every one of the soldiers who harassed him and the superior officers who refused to do anything about it ought to be up on charges as well. And here's the most disturbing part to me:
The Army told him it couldn't protect him and sent him back to Fort Riley. He resumed duties with a military police battalion.
So the Army brass says they can't protect him. That means they know that there was harassment and possible retaliation going on within his unit. But rather than deal with those within the unit, they transferred Hall. Are you seriously going to tell me that a direct order from the unit commander that Hall is to be left alone would not solve the problem? If that's the case, the army has serious problems.
You bring down the ranking colonel in the chain of command and he issues an order that says if this crap continues he's gonna start throwing guys into the brig and that problem would be fixed in a heartbeat. And if that wouldn't fix it, then it's time to blow up that unit and start from scratch because those assholes don't belong in the military.
The New York Times also has an article about it that contains some specific quotes from the complaint. Like this:
When Specialist Jeremy Hall held a meeting last July for atheists and freethinkers at Camp Speicher in Iraq, he was excited, he said, to see an officer attending.But minutes into the talk, the officer, Maj. Freddy J. Welborn, began to berate Specialist Hall and another soldier about atheism, Specialist Hall wrote in a sworn statement. "People like you are not holding up the Constitution and are going against what the founding fathers, who were Christians, wanted for America!" Major Welborn said, according to the statement.
Major Welborn told the soldiers he might bar them from re-enlistment and bring charges against them, according to the statement.
Welborn denies the charges, but since there was more one soldier present to hear him say this it shouldn't be difficult to convince a jury that he did. A brief look at Welborn's Myspace page doesn't contain anything that would cast doubt on it.
Comments
Command's response is in some ways eerily similar to the movie "A Few Good Men".
Posted by: Michael Heath | April 28, 2008 10:01 AM
This story didn't much surprise me when I first read about it, and it still doesn't surprise me. It strikes me as merely another example of how religionists often take atheism and atheists' existence as a personal affront. Psychologically, it's not hard to understand, inasmuch as devout religionists' sense of self is completely wrapped up in their belief, and because they can't imagine going through life (and death) without their belief, it sometimes becomes a personal insult to come across people who are perfectly happy facing life (and death) without relying on an imaginary deity. It goes to their very core.
They need to get over it, of course--and Ed is absolutely right in that the military's claim of being able to respond to this harassment is pure bullshit. But then, who's better at dishing out bullshit than the military? Well, maybe the current White House...
Posted by: gary l. day | April 28, 2008 10:02 AM
Yeah, I'm not a military man but my understanding is that soldiers are generally expected to do what they're told by superior officers. Of course, I'm getting my info from Hollywood movies so it could be wildly innaccurate.
Posted by: philbert | April 28, 2008 10:05 AM
But they are atheist "soldiers", and what jury is going to believe their testimony, especially when they refuse to swear on a Bible before our Lord Jesus Christ who died for our sins?
Posted by: jpf | April 28, 2008 10:26 AM
How many chapels should be constructed in the offices of the IRS? How many chaplains are needed at the NIH? At the Social Security headquarters?
Why does the U.S. military, of all governmental entities, have exemption from the establishment clause? Soldiers have the same rights as civilians to nondenominational worship, except they get to do it on Government property? Since when do soldiers have any rights except what the military gives them?
Let soldiers pray in their bunks. Let them have as many chapels as they want off base. Join the forces, expect some discomfort, no?
Just asking ;D
Posted by: Gingerbaker | April 28, 2008 10:34 AM
Does this remind anyone else of that movie "A Few Good Men"? "People always follow orders or they die." "He was in grave danger and needed to be transfered".
Posted by: Nick | April 28, 2008 10:37 AM
Realistically the commanding officer could give the order that no one should touch him/bother him, and you'd still have some idiots take that order as a "nudge nudge, wink wink." I'm not saying that the CO is or isn't part of the problem, odds are good he is, but I don't have enough information to decide either way. You have people who are willing to believe that the "CO doesn't really mean it, he wants us to teach him a lesson." Whether he does or not.
Gingerbaker,
The problem for the military is that they've been doing it so long it's now a "tradition." Also you had (and in some cases still have) military personnel stationed in areas where churches would not be available. The combination gives the military legitimate reasons for having the practice in place and the advocates an illegitimate reason for pushing their religion on others.
Posted by: dogmeatIB | April 28, 2008 10:49 AM
"Why does the U.S. military, of all governmental entities, have exemption from the establishment clause? Soldiers have the same rights as civilians to nondenominational worship, except they get to do it on Government property?"
Except that soldiers are stationed in places where there are no houses of worship. By not allowing the soldiers to gather for worship at a location on a base or ship, the government would be in danger of violating the fee exercise clause.
Posted by: tonyl | April 28, 2008 11:23 AM
Are you seriously going to tell me that a direct order from the unit commander that Hall is to be left alone would not solve the problem?
Well, actually, yes. If there is enough resentment against him by members of the unit, and the commander isn't willing to be very very draconian about it (which there are good reasons for him not to be), it's very likely that the effectiveness of such an order will be minimal.
Posted by: Enigma | April 28, 2008 11:31 AM
Yeah, the military has some great traditions in place, don't they? Harassment of gays, segregation of blacks, nondisclosure of experimental drugs and poisons to unsuspecting soldiers. Imagine if they tried that stuff at a public university, or the U.S. Public Health Service ( snark re Tuskegee Institute syphilis study).
Not to mention that the military is the only place where you can kill hundreds of innocent people, or even one at a time up close and personal, and not be tried for murder.
As for legitimate reasons - sure they have had them. But, then again, if the commander in chief decided that there would no longer be religious accommodations, there wouldn't be much to stop him, would there? Soldiers sign a contract, and basically give up their citizen rights.
Now, if a private organization, say, the Boy Scouts of America (just to keep the uniform wearing theme going) was found to discriminate against, say, gays then I believe they would not be able to expect public government accommodations. Why should a private organization be penalized for discrimination, but a governmental body not be accountable?
Why should the Army discriminate without loss of governmental accommodation?
If it is not proper for the IRS to have chaplains by every computer station, can the Army tradition be justified? Granted it is more convenient for soldiers to have chapels on base, but soldiers are not necessarily entitled to convenience. Just ask any soldier denied the right to purchase his own body armor.
The public square can accommodate religious artifacts as long as they are pluralistic, ie non denominational overall. Why shouldn't the Army be under penalty to lose its discriminatory religious artifacts?
They blew it. They have shown that long-term institutional discrimination and prosylation is the result of their current policy. Perhaps they should be required to be secular, just like every other government agency? Like a school? Let soldiers pray at their desks as individuals, but get the services get out of the religion business?
If the unthinkable happened, and the Executive branch ordered the services to respect the separation of Church and State, and required the services to be secular, would there be a constitutional issue, so long as soldiers were free to worship as individuals?
Posted by: Gingerbaker | April 28, 2008 11:38 AM
CBS's "Sunday Morning" program had a segment on Hall and the military's attitudes yesterday:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/04/27/sunday/main4048492.shtml
Posted by: John Pieret | April 28, 2008 12:23 PM
Christianists in the military (in general, actually) object to atheists for the same reason that they object to gays. An atheist or an LGBT person challenges their schema for dealing with the world. It isn't so much that they don't follow the cultural taboos, but that they don't accept their validity and relevance. This sort of challenge to their schema/paradigm is difficult for fundamentalists to accept. That said, they should deal with it or go live in a compound somewhere in Texas. The rest of the world shouldn't be forced to accomodate their peculiar beliefs.
Unless the military has changed a lot since I was in the army, soldiers are pretty good at reading the chain of command. If the brass make it clear that they won't tolerate harassment, the soldiers won't engage in it. It's when the chain of command is indifferent, or provides tacit support, that prejudice and bad behavior runs rampant.
I have to disagree with the idea of getting rid of chaplains. Like it or not, the majority of Americans have some sort of belief in god. Stationing soldiers in a place where there aren't worship services available for them means that the military needs to supply them. It's necessary for morale. Furthermore, there's a security concern if soldiers must go off base to find a place to worship. How would Jewish soldiers in Iraq be able to find a safe synagogue (or any synagogue for that matter) in the local community.
The knee-jerk reaction against all things religious is most disconcerting. It reminds me of the attitude the fundamentalists hold towards atheists. I guess there are unthinking idealogues on all sides. I happen to think that free-thinkers should be just a little bit better than fundamentalists. Maybe I expect too much.
Posted by: Kenneth New | April 28, 2008 1:25 PM
Gingerbaker:
"Why does the U.S. military, of all governmental entities, have exemption from the establishment clause? Soldiers have the same rights as civilians to nondenominational worship, except they get to do it on Government property? Since when do soldiers have any rights except what the military gives them?"
Soldiers et al. have rights given to them by the Constitution, and specifically the Congress, empowered "To make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces" (Article I, section 7, US Constitution). My lack of religion was never a problem in the Navy. The dozen or so chaplains I knew always tried to be evenhanded (note that Hall's chaplain helped him organize the meeting), regardless of the religion of the service member; my favorite chess opponent and fairly close friend at one command was a Catholic chaplain.
I never encountered any command influence on religion, except that in boot camp the irreligious had to attend a non-denominational service or stand an extra watch, probably to minimize the effort of keeping track of where recruits were without their handlers for an hour or so--and one other event: a Marine commanding officer forced a Navy Christian Science chaplain to get his inoculations to strengthen the battalion's herd immunity.
The Army and Air Force seem to be different--and acting illegally--regarding command influence on religion.
Posted by: JakeR | April 28, 2008 2:12 PM
Gingerbaker,
You're being ridiculous. The armed services aren't like any other branch of the goverment. 'The IRS doesn't get free food, or housing, or get giant gas guzzling cars to drive; it's definately time we stopped wasting all that money on mess halls, bunk beds, and tanks.' It's a stupid comparison. The armed services is unique in that they need to set up their own mini-cities for their employees.
The public square can accommodate religious artifacts as long as they are pluralistic, ie non denominational overall. Why shouldn't the Army be under penalty to lose its discriminatory religious artifacts?
The army's pretty good about that actually. The chaplains exist to help soldiers with whatever spiritual needs they may have, and most of them seem to be doing just that. Even in this specific case, notice that chaplain is not the problem, its the random Major.
Posted by: Drekab | April 28, 2008 2:16 PM
Kenneth New said:
"The knee-jerk reaction against all things religious is most disconcerting. It reminds me of the attitude the fundamentalists hold towards atheists. I guess there are unthinking idealogues on all sides."
I'm not unthinking. I'm just not thinking like you. :D
Posted by: Gingerbaker | April 28, 2008 3:12 PM
It surprised me then and surprises me more the more I hear about it. I was openly atheist for 8 years in the AF and never even heard of anything remotely like this.
Ed, do you happen to know whether or not Hall filed a complaint with the Inspector General? I haven't seen it mentioned in any of the coverage. If he did and the IG didn't help him the DOD ought to punish his commanders, but they need to absolutely drop the hammer on the Army Inspector General. His command overstepped, but the reason the IG exists is to correct them if they do.
Posted by: SeanH | April 28, 2008 3:45 PM
I have to agree that the military (like prisons and government hospitals) are a special case when it comes to religion. This is because in these cases the prisoners, the patients, and the soldiers are 24x7 under the direct control of the government and their right to free exercise would be curtailed if provisions weren't made. However, I see no reason why chaplains have to be ordained ministers (also no reason why they can't be as long as they remember they are agents of the government). Chaplains should be coordinators to see that soldiers, patients, or prisoners are allowed to freely exercise their religion (not the chaplain's) to the best extent possible (and to not be forced to participate in religious activities). I personally think government chaplains should not try to convert people though the code of conduct for the largest group of military chaplains permits them to try to convert the non-affiliated. http://www.ncmaf.org/policies/codeofethics.htm
Note in Hall's case the chaplain gave permission to hold the meeting so the chaplain did what he should do.
Posted by: Erp | April 28, 2008 3:55 PM
I don't have a problem with having chaplains in the military. I don't even have a problem with the government paying for them (though I agree with James Madison that it would be better if they were paid for by the churches). I do have a problem with chaplains trying to convert people; that defeats the purpose for which they are there, which is to help comfort soldiers doing a terrible job under terrible circumstances. If I was in the military, I could see myself going to a chaplain and talking to them at times, just to have someone with an interest in more than the logistics of war to help me think things through. If they tried to convert me, though, they would ruin that relationship.
Posted by: Ed Brayton | April 28, 2008 4:20 PM
Surely the role of the perfect chaplain is shown by Deanna Troi. She is there to help the moral, she can advise how best to get access to whatever religious stuff you want but she doesnt convert you. And she has GREAT tits!
And Ed, as for having Chaplains paid for by churches, who then services the needs (not like THAT you pervs!) of the people who dont have a large enough church to pay, or people who arent members of a church. The function of the chaplain is to serve ALL the members of a unit, but if he was paid by the church, he would be justified in only serving the needs of HIS congregants.
Posted by: Donalbain | April 28, 2008 4:31 PM
Believe it or not, the Chaplain Corp (at least in the Army) isn't about religion so much as it is about counsel and support outside of the chain of command. Good chaplains do not proselytize and in 12 years in the Army only rarely did I come across one who did. They tend to police their own, but truth be told Christianity gets an incredibly free ride in the Army...
Posted by: Brando | April 28, 2008 5:09 PM
During the first week of Army Basic, our DI told us that the Army was not only interested in building strong soldiers, but also building strong moral soldiers as well.
We were told to form two lines...protestants here, and catholics there. Then the two groups would march off to the appropriate hut of worship.
I told the DI that I was an atheist. He was nice about it, but he told me that the General did not make any concessions about atheism, and that I had to be either protestant, or catholic..."and that's an order".
The "General" was the term used to describe the rules, or Army policy ("the General says that you have to do this").
I didn't object to this, and choose to be a catholic because Mass and such was much quieter, thus allowing me to grab a bit off sleep on Sunday mornings.
Posted by: BobbyEarle | April 28, 2008 7:12 PM
This incident merely underlines the absolute necessity for all non-religious persons to buy a firearm, learn how to use and maintain the firearm, and not be afraid to aim and fire when the christian, muslim, etc. enforcers come a calling to impose their filthy beliefs.
Posted by: varadosyo | April 28, 2008 7:32 PM
BobbyEarle, there are no DIs in the Army.
Posted by: Brando | April 28, 2008 8:37 PM
Some thoughts:
Army problem children go to the stockade, not the brig (that's nautical).
Thoe government doesn't give anyone any rights at all- neither does the Constitution. They're endowed, not granted.
You can't kill hundreds of innocent people and expect to get away with it. ROE is taken very seriously.
I'm also wondering why there's no mention of the IG. That's an odd omission.
No DIs in the Army? We called them TIs in the USAF...I rather thought the Army did call them Drill Instructors.
I spent years as an atheist in the Air Force, never once had a problem. Worked with the chaplains with some regularity as well. I mainly remember having them bring hot coffee and cookies out to us when training exercises kept us up all night. Big morale-booster guys, very popular.
Military chaplains aren't just preachers; they're all required to spend years in training as counselors. Every one I knew had at least a 4-year psychology degree (I knew one licensed psychiatrist, as well) and was trained as a clinical counselor.
That Major deserves to be charged, if the story's even mostly accurate; he's way out of line, legally speaking. He won't be, of course.
Posted by: DBC | April 29, 2008 5:11 AM
Judging by the myspace site, the officer is a psychotic.
Posted by: bernarda | April 29, 2008 6:44 AM
DIs are Marines; the Army has Drill Sergeants. Technicality, I know, but on more than one occasion online I've seen people try to pass themselves off as former soldiers critical of this and that and when they make simple mistakes like that it raises my BS flag.
Posted by: Brando | April 29, 2008 12:18 PM
We've spent some time kicking this question around on the Military.Com message boards, unsurprisingly. Most of my fellow atheists there agree with Ginger that the chaplains are a violation of the Establishment Clause, but I think Jake, Drekab, and Erp answered that well. Remember that the chaplains are not there for the benefit of the government, but for the benefit of the soldiers - to give them the support they need to practice their chosen religion.
Ed, Philbert, remember that no matter how clear the CO makes his order to leave SPC Hall alone, all it takes is one overzealous nutcase in an unguarded moment to literally blow that away - with a rifle or perhaps a hand grenade. Even ignoring the Army's duty to protect SPC Hall, a duty which I truly believe they take seriously...they can't afford to risk that political black eye. Or even for him to die honestly under enemy fire - who'd believe it? "Conspiracy Theorist" and "Atheist" are NOT a zero-intersection Venn diagram.
And no, we don't have DIs. We have Drill Sergeants. Drill Instructors are Marines.
Posted by: BobApril | April 29, 2008 12:22 PM
BobApril said:
"Remember that the chaplains are not there for the benefit of the government, but for the benefit of the soldiers - to give them the support they need to practice their chosen religion."
But the Gideon Bibles handed out in schools are for the benefit of the wee children. ;D
These encroachments are usually promoted by folks who mean well. Even the crazy officers going around setting up a military Theocracy likely think they are doing a good thing.
Over at Pharyngula, PZ has put up a link to a fellow who attended a high-pressure Christian weekend. He wrote about the spooky inculcation methods used, and the psychology of the macho types running the circus there. Seems very applicable to the military proselytization corps.
Posted by: Gingerbaker | April 29, 2008 2:29 PM
There is a difference between being there and encroachment. Note I oppose the government chaplains being allowed to proselytize. In fact I would go so far as to say that if a soldier approaches about being converted to the chaplain's religion, the chaplain should refer him or her to a non-government minister (just as a chaplain would refer a soldier interested in converting to a religion different from that of the chaplain). In several of these cases it has been the military chaplain who has pointed out the problems (IIRC in the Air Force Academy one got transferred away because she was a bit outspoken against the ongoing Christian emphasis).
Posted by: Erp | April 29, 2008 3:52 PM