I served in USAF 2005-2006, (entry level discharge, technical issues arose and I decided to go back to civilian life when my guaranteed job contract became obsolete), It was explicitly and overtly Christian. There were lots of group prayers, bible study, etc. I managed to weasel out of all it, but it was there heavily.
I have an appalling chaplain story:
1989, I was living in the BEQ on SUBASE, Pearl Harbor. One Sunday evening, I was about to sit down to a solitary meal in the mess hall, when this LT. (j.g.) wearing a chaplain’s cross sat down at the table with me, and started chatting me up. I was uncomfortable to be dining with an officer (and a chaplain), but I was too polite to object. He told me that he and his wife were looking to buy a house in the area, and that they had found one that they liked a lot.
I’ll never forget the phrase he used to describe how he intended to negotiate with the owner: “I’m going to try to Jew him down.”
:eek:
I finished my dessert double-quick-time, and went to Beeman Center to wash the taste of the encounter out of my mouth.
It seems like this is an issue within the USAF. I never encountered any of what some of you are describing when I served in the Army from 1988-1993, and I was at Ft Knox, Ft Sill, in Germany and in Riyadh, so I had a pretty decent sampling of various units/commanders.
Combat can change things though. In some respects I suppose it’s the same phenomenon that occurs in prisons. Somehow facing dire conditions makes some people "turn"to God and suddenly “find” religion.
I was in the USAF from 1985-1989, and it was the same deal, only our sergeant didn’t bother to enforce it. Could be anomalous.
Like most budding atheists (apathetic agnostic), I had the sense to simply keep my mouth shut or lie most of my career. When I want to Saudi Arabia, I marked ‘Methodist’ down when the Saudis asked. No fun being sent back on the plane and miss out on all the nice TDY pay.
The USAF academy is said to be a seething hot-pit of evangelicals. If you’re not Christian enough there, they’ll make sure you quit or find some excuse to eject you.
Anyways, this singling out of atheists sounds like baby steps to singling out any other given religious/irreligious group, and ultimately they’ll start working on various Christian groups that aren’t aligned the same way.
I wonder how they feel about Unitarians?
I don’t know about back then, but going to church (I’m a Catholic) did nothing for getting me out of duty at Basic. The people who didn’t go to church got 2 hours of time to work on their personal stuff, write letters, fixing their uniforms and wall lockers for inspection. The mass details started when we got back from church.
All church did was put me behind on my inspection items, and I had to make that time up somehow. I would even assert that church made me fail an inspection once.
Times have apparently changed, or maybe it was just my squadron that was different. Who can say?
I think it’s a bunch of overstated bullshit. This is not the miltary I grew up with as the son of a 36-year retired general, nor is it the one I encountered upon personal experience by serving myself for five years, nor is it the one described to me from both my cousins, both of whom have/are serving in Iraq.
Question is… are you a Christian?
Because Christians are often pretty well inured to their own prejudices.
Unlike everyone else?
If you have a particular point, make the point, don’t just make snide remarks that will derail the discussion.
[ /Modding ]
I wasn’t being snide, it seems rather perinent to the discussion. If you’re a Christian in an allegedly Christian Military, then it’s kind of like being a fish in water, is it not? What Christian bias would you notice? None, because you are informed by your experience as a Christian… it’s status quo.
I said that making the point was adcceptable (as you have somewhat attempted in this post), but that your initial expression was snide and unhelpful.
If someone posted that the opinions of non-religious participants to this thread could be dismissed as hypersensitivity, I am pretty sure that you would take offense.
I understand what you are saying, and yes, I hold vague Christian beliefs (was raised Catholic), but I don’t practice my religion and I have serious questions about Christianity.
That said, I am not someone that wouldn’t take notice if something like this was happening, because I am quite against forcing religion or any set of beliefs on anyone for any reason.
All I’m saying is having a lifetime of exposure to the US Army, it’s culture and traditions, I have never experienced such a thing. I never went to church on Sundays while in basic training, and I did the same shit details everyone else did.
Maybe it is an USAF thing, as I keep reading anecdotes about it on here. It wasn’t prevalent in my neck of the woods in the Army, but then again, there’s hundreds of thousands of people in the Army, so anything is possible.
You keep forgetting…this is a christian nation, damn it. 
Speaking as a Brit when I was due to take the oath I mentioned that I was actually not a Christian but an agnostic.
This particulary pissed off people at the time,not because of religious reasons but because they had to go and look up the appropriate oath that I had to swear,we all do silly things when we’re young.
Surprisingly enough a Yank LRRP soldier that I was doing a course with at the school in Weingarten mentioned that if you get captured by Muslims you will get a REALLY hard time before they murder you if you say that you’re an atheist.
I always thought that if I got caught then I would use my agnosticism as an open ender as to being open to conversion to Islam after it got to beyond endurance level when they chatted to me.
Under international law you wear dog tags stating your name,rank,number, date of birth,religion and frequently blood group,but as usually we weren’t actually operating after a declaration of war and as such had no rights under the Geneva Convention we mostly didn’t bother.
Being quite honest its no big deal,there has been no declaration of war in Dhafur,Iraq,Afghanistan, and all the rest and being realistic I dont think that the treatment of us if we were caught,would be changed any by any international legislation.
It sounds melodramatic but we were told many years ago that if we were caught by the Russians that they would question us for three days and then execute us.
The reason being that our information would be out of date after three days and that we were considered too dangerous to keep alive.
Wow it really makes me feel like a man!
But I digress,the only people who want to kill me now are those who totally want to shut up the incredibly old boring bastard who keeps ON andON.
So I’ll get back to the point.
People in action dont fight for their country,their way of life or the people back home.
They fight to stay alive and for their mates .
So I think this blokes account may not be totally accurate.
And now I’ll shut the fuck up and let you all get some sleep.
I’m a dogtag Catholic. I haven’t been in a church since confirmation except for weddings and funerals. I still put Catholic on my dogtags because it coun’t hurt and what harm could come of throwing some oil on the forehead of my corpse.
I started basic training (Fort Knox) in 1989. I never went to church. And Sunday morning turned out to be pretty easy. We didn’t even have to do any shitty details. The Drills wanted the morning off too.
I spent 4 years active duty and have remained in the National Guard till now. I am now on my second deployment. I have never felt pressured to go to church or talk religion. I have never felt forced to be religious. Of those that go to church by far most are Christian. The largest number of those I knew in my 20 years don’t go to church regularly though they may actually believe. Just like real life.
Everywhere I have been there have been multiple services available for all faiths. Right now I am on Fort Bliss and and I pass by a chapel with signs for Jewish services. Of course most services are Christian or Catholic. There are simply the numbers to support this. As for chaplains, the army is always understaffed. They would love to get more from different faiths. There is no draft, they work with what comes through the door.
I am not making any apologies for the Army. It just has not been my experience and I have been doing this for more than most on this board. I am not religious and the invocation before ceremonies makes me uncomfortable but those invocations are about the extent of religion intruding into my military life. And almost all the chaplains I have dealt with have made those invocations reasonably vague and nondenominational.
In general Sunday is a day off in the military just like everywhere else (of course not in a warzone). No one cared what you did on your day off as long as you didn’t get arrested and showed up for work on monday.
The Soviet Army before during and after WW2 did an extremly good job of killing people and they were athiests.
The Japanese in China and during WW2 did an extremly good job of killing people and they were I believe mostly Buddhists and followers of Shinto.
During the Korean War the N.Koreans were pretty handy at killing and they were athiests.
Many sub Saharan Africans are Animists but this doesn’t seem to impede their abilities at slaughtering each other,ditto Muslims in Africa and the M.E.
Historically I dont believe that the Mongols,Aztecs,Incas and Vikings were Christians.
So I do believe that there may be one or two flaws in your theory.
But I’m curious,who exactly is it that you think AREN’T very good at killing people?
The only ones that I can think of are Quakers and Jehovahs witnesses but they of course are branches of Christianity.
Actually, Loach, my dogtags say No Preference, and like you, I’ve never had the experiences that I’ve seen some write about here…and I’ve been on active duty for 19 years now. Yeah, in Basic they gave us the option to go to church on Sunday or do the stupid mindless busy work details, but no one ever stressed that we should go or had to go. I went once, then decided I’d rather cut the grass or mop the floor.
Maybe I’ve been lucky. I’ve worked with and around people I would call a little too zealous about their religion, but hell, I’ve met people like that outside of the military. I had a boss that was super religious, and he used to ask me to join him and his family in church on sunday a lot, until I told him that I’d rather not, since sunday was my hangover recovery day. He left me alone about it after that. I’m not saying things like in the OP don’t happen, but they can’t be all that common. Its almost too easy to get the Inspector general and EO involved if they did anyway. But thats only my opinion from my experiences.
EDIT: Hey loach, we went to Basic at the same time, however I was in Alabama before they closed that base down.
Just felt like chiming in with my .02 as an Army reservist since '02.
My experiences have been most similar to those described by IntelSoldier. During Basic I attended no religious services and felt no pressure to attend any.
Christianity has been the default at memorial services I have attended, and ceremonial invocations I suppose are Christian although I imagine a Jewish or Muslim chaplain would probably give the same invocation.
As far as anti-atheism, I have not witnessed any myself. This may be my own blindness, I would describe myself as ‘culturally’ Christian and my dog tags indicate ‘non-denom Christian.’ However, beyond that I don’t think there’s any outward indication that would distinguish me from an atheist. I have never been encouraged/cajoled/threatened or even asked to attend a military bible study or prayer group.
I can see that an atheist might object to the ceremonial aspects I’ve mentioned (invocations before any ceremony, memorial services, blessings at formal dinings) but I’m having trouble generating empathy for those who can’t suck it up. SPC Hall’s complaints are far more serious and, if founded, certainly should be addressed. Based on my experience I am inclined to believe that this was the climate of his unit rather than the majority of the Army.
From other posters’ comments, it sounds like the religiosity of the Army may be on the decline, if we string up all our anecdotes chronologically, counter to the hypothesis in the OP.
I can guarantee that more people have been killed under Abraham than any other religion or lack of it.