"The academy chaplain, Capt. MeLinda Morton, said she had disagreed with her boss, the academy's chief chaplain, Col. Michael Whittington, after a critical report by a team from the Yale Divinity School was released to the news media in April. The report, dated July 2004 and which she helped write, found that some academy chaplains were insensitive to the religious diversity of the cadets."
When Morris Janowitz wrote his famous book, The Professional Soldier, the officer corps was still dominated by Episcopalians and Lutherans. In the ensuing half century evangelical protestants and Mormons, as well as Roman Catholics, have become displaced the old-line protestants. At West Point, while most cadets may not simply take a year off to "find themselves", arrangements are routinely made to permit Mormons to have a year break to fulfill missionary responsibilities in the Church of Latter Day Saints. The special treatment is so marked that it would seem to violate the First amendment.
Meantime, as the case of Chaplain Morton at the Air Force Academy reveals, there is good reason for concern that the First amendment protections against the establishment of a state religion are being flaunted.
These are serious matters that need to be viewed as part and parcel of the ideological drift of the U.S. officer corps not just to the right, but to the intolerant rightwing. I saw this first hand as a permanent professor at West Point in the 1980s and early 1990s.
The ideological shift is so pronounced that officers inclined to support the Democratic party usually make it a point to mask their politics, whereas as their Republican counterparts are often quite assertive in declaring their political preferences and biases.
This is one of the results of the all-volunteer force, which sooner rather than later is going to be a subject for national debate as it dawns on public officials that the military's failure to meet recruiting goals is not a short-term but a systemic problem.
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