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?