By Sen. Roger Wicker, Fox News
Our military men and women are asked to make many sacrifices, but they have always had the right to worship freely. In fact, our service members have been able to turn to military chaplains for spiritual counsel since our nation’s fight for independence.
Nearly two-and-a-half centuries later, the role that our military chaplains fulfill could look drastically different than what Gen. George Washington envisioned when he created the Chaplain Corps. It has come to my attention that the Navy could soon appoint an atheist chaplain, directly defying the religious foundation upon which the Chaplain Corps is built.
I oppose the appointment of a “secular-humanist” chaplain, and I have formally requestedthat the secretary of the Navy and the chief of naval operations reject this application. I am not alone in my request. Twenty-two of my colleagues in the Senate have joined me in this effort.
The appointment of an atheist to an undeniably religious position is fundamentally incompatible with atheism’s secularism. Our military chaplains serve under the motto “for God and country.” Atheism is defined by the absence of a belief in the existence of God.
No one is arguing that atheists do not have the same First Amendment rights of free expression as their neighbors of Christian, Jewish, Muslim or other faiths. This is not the subject of scrutiny. The central question here is how an atheist chaplain can be expected to fulfill a role that, by its very nature, is supposed to serve the religious needs of our service members.
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