The Mpls Star Tribune was a no-brainer. Those of us stuck here in Minnesota have nothing good to say about that rag. It's no shock that their headline is one of the suggestive ones of wrong doing.

If I recall correctly, the Wilkins case was where he was objecting to being asked to send Navy personnel to attend services at a local Church. Mind you his disagreement wasn't that they were forcing Navy seamen to attend church in the first place, but rather it was because it was a church that also welcomed gays and lesbians into its congregation. Given that it was during Fleet Week in San Francisco, I don't know how you would find a church that wouldn't have gay or lesbian people in it but he was determined to find one.

And considering that the vast majority of Americans are Protestant or affiliated, I think it pretty unlikely that Roman Catholics dominate the military chaplaincies. I would be more likely to believe in a reverse case. Or of discrimination toward members of LDS.

The Air Force case is highlighted because of the political activism of the Colorado Springs Evangelical community. That particular brand of Evangelical Christianity has a great deal of political clout in DC at the moment. And they are not shy about exercising that clout as we have seen over the last year, such as regarding Terry Schiavo, Arlen Spector, etc. It's not that surprising that some people are over-reacting to a few incidents and that the media is focusing in on it. This is just what happens when religion and politics are mixed together. Expect a lot more of the same.

The thing to remember is that in actual fact, atheists and true secularists make up an extremely tiny minority in this country. These complaints are not Secular vs. Faith. These are disagreements between different groups of Believers, not between those who believe in God and those who don't. Have not the majority of complaints been given by religious individuals rather than atheists?

Last I'd heard, American soldiers were not Soldiers for God, they were soldiers for the Republic, and arguably in combat, just for each other. While I think that military chaplains are a good thing to have, not everybody agrees. Even among the Founding Fathers of our country there was disagreement about this. James Madison for one did not believe that it was a good idea for the military or Congress to have chaplains. His concern was not the removal of Religion from the public sphere, but rather it's protection.

Chaplain Wilkins' single-handed battle with the Navy Chaplain Corps is spot-on. The chaplain services of all three services are controlled by a "political" alliance of Roman Catholic and mainline (read: LIBERAL) Protestant Chaplains, with the result that the smaller group evangelical chaplains are largely given the short end of the stick. Case in point, in the latest Air Force Academy religion flap, the chaplain who generated the most heat in the charges being levied was Chaplain, Major, Warren Watties, a former enlisted Marine, and representing a smaller, charismatic group, who was accused of (imagine!) telling cadets in a sermon that failure to believe in Christ might land someone in the fires of hell. (Why, we can't have chaplains preaching actual Bible truths to our precious little USAFA cadets, can we?) I have met Chaplain Watties (years ago), and he is one of the finest human beings I have ever met. For him to be attacked, even falsely, or indirectly (even without actually being named), as he was by the Yale Divinity school team whose report largely fueled this entire phony USAFA religion controversy is, to my thinking, another example of what the Bible calls
"calling good evil and evil good." No one is saying that Roman Catholics and mainline Protestant groups should not have their chaplains.
What I am saying is that it is time that the chaplain services removed the "glass ceiling" that so often prevents evangelical chaplains from moving up the ranks of the chaplain services at a rate proportional to their numbers. No one minds evangelical soldiers and Marines putting their butts on the line in the military as enlisted grunts, but somehow people seem to really get upset when their chaplains have an increased influence in the chaplain services. This is the height of injustice, and Chaplain Wilkins (and other chaplains fighting the same kind of legal battles) are right to make their cause known. If you believe in justice, you should lend Chaplain Wilkins your moral support.