Congressmen Plead for Chaplains

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Congressmen Plead for Chaplains

Letter calls on the president to protect religious freedom through executive order.

Focus on the Family, December 15, 2005

More than 70 members of Congress delivered a letter to President Bush on Wednesday that called on him to "protect by executive order the constitutional right of military chaplains to pray according to their faith."

Rep. Walter Jones, R-N.C., drafted the letter and will be convening hearings in the spring on the rights of military chaplains.

"The president, who is a man of God, is the commander in chief," he said. "He can order this through a telephone call if he doesn't want to issue an executive order."

Jones said he's talked to about 200 chaplains who have faced discrimination. He told the story of an Air Force major who spoke with tears.

"He said, 'Every time that I'm asked to speak an official sermon on base when I leave that sermon I go back to my knees and ask God to forgive me that I did not pray in the name of His Son,' " Jones recalled.

Although the Air Force is at the forefront of the tumult, George Baugham of the International Conference of Evangelical Chaplain Endorsers said the problem spans all the branches.

"First of all, the evidence is pandemic," he said. "It was existing well before the Air Force Academy issue. The Academy was sort of the volcano that erupted and brought all this to attention."

Colby May, an attorney for the American Center for Law and Justice, told Family News in Focus that the military is bowing to the same threats many people face in the civilian world.

"That's never been the case before," he said, "and the idea that now, all of a sudden, we've got to be so sensitive of that, I think is emblematic of what's going on generally in society."

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