ANNAPOLIS, Maryland, July 2, 2008 — This morning approximately 1,250 of America’s best and brightest young men and women arrived at Alumni Hall to begin Induction Day and their new lives as plebes—or midshipmen 4th Class (freshmen)—of the United States Naval Academy. Later in the day this Class of 2012 will take the Oath of Office by swearing:
I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.
As plebes and naval officers they will need God’s helping hand. Yet, a few midshipmen feel that enlisting the assistance of the American Civil Liberties Union is the better route.
Yes, the ACLU, encouraged by the anti-religion crowd at CBS News, is challenging what a handful of midshipmen are calling the Academy’s “pervasive fundamentalist Christian culture,” specifically the Academy’s tradition of chaplain-led prayer before meals at King Hall where all of the several thousand midshipmen gather at once for meals. The Academy responded, “The academy does not intend to change its practice of offering midshipmen an opportunity for prayer or devotional thought during noon-meal announcements.”
Brave words, but will these prayers go the way of mandatory chapel attendance struck down years ago by the federal courts?
Our nation has enormous challenges ahead of us, and I am sorry if the Academy has a few self-proclaimed agnostics who might feel uncomfortable having to listen to, much less sit through, a prayer that may be important to several thousand of their classmates. But the larger question is how far can the secular progressives go in undermining the very institutions that protect them? Our country’s future depends in no small part on naval officers who are willing to set aside their personal comfort levels to accomplish the task at hand. Is it America’s destiny that one of the foundations of our country—our faith and spirituality—be slowly eroded until we simply topple for lack of belief in anything beyond ourselves?
After reading a troubling story like this I sense that it’s time to re-read the forward to Whittaker Chambers’ “Witness,” and remember his salient warning:
… Human societies, like human beings, live by faith and die when faith dies… At issue … was the question whether this sick society, which we call Western civilization, could in its extremity still cast up a man whose faith in it was so great that he would voluntarily abandon those things which men hold good, including life, to defend it. At issue was the question whether this man’s faith could prevail against a man whose equal faith it was that this society is sick beyond saving, and that mercy itself pleads for its swift extinction and replacement by another.
Sure, every sailor, airman and soldier will faithfully declare a willingness to give his or her last full measure for the agnostic’s right to be faithless. But I pray that, as a rule, they will keep their faith in both God and country. We are blessed to have so many who are willing to devote themselves so fully to such distinctive and valiant service. In fact, I know one personally—my daughter—a member of the Class of ’02 who just returned from her first deployment with VFA-11 flying close air support in an F-18 Super Hornet for our troops on the ground in Iraq.
Perhaps there are a few plebes who can rise to the call of “honor, courage, commitment” without a faith in God, but most plebes will lay awake on the evening of the 4th of July pondering what God above has in store for them on their journey of faithfully defending our country. As the 4th of July crowd down the street enjoys a spectacular fireworks display on the Annapolis waterfront to the accompaniment of the United States Naval Academy Band, I pray they will keep the faith, too.
Happy 4th of July, and God bless America! |