One of the darkest developments of many dark developments in the Bush years has been the slow ascent of Christianism as a core value of the military. The promotion of Christianists throughout the armed services, the insistence by the president that no public institution be regarded as a place where religion should be silent, clear discrimination against Jews and atheists in military educational institutions: the possibility of a secular military dedicated to defending all Americans regardless of their faith or lack of it has been called into question under the current administration. The resilience of the ban on gays - while the military has granted a record number of waivers to criminals - can only be understood if one sees the US military as an increasingly religious institution at this point, and not a rational secular one. The latest story of an atheist soldier being threatened by superiors is believable in this context. Volokh has details from the complaint.

Many people don’t realize just how serious the Christianists are in this respect. If America is a Christianist nation, its military, drawn disproportionately from regions where Christianism holds sway, must be also. It follows that non-Christianists can be a threat to unit cohesion and morale. The first commenter on Volokh’s post spells out the emerging Republican consensus:  Read More…