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11/09/2005

Our Military Chaplains Need Our Support

ATLANTA, Georgia, Nov. 9 /Christian Wire Service/ -- Today, I am calling every concerned citizen who care about our First Amendment of the Constitution to contact their elected representative and ask them to sign on to Representative Walter B. Jones letter to the President to protect by Executive Order the constitutional right of military chaplains to pray according to their faith.

Throughout our nation's history, chaplains not only have remained an integral part of our military, but they also have always prayed according to their faith tradition. I believe that if chaplains are chosen to pray before a professional setting, they have a constitutional right to adhere to the religious expressions of their faith. For Christian chaplains, praying in the name of Jesus is a fundamental part of their belief and to suppress this form of expression would be a violation of religious freedom.

While some military members may find certain prayers to be offensive and wrongly claim that, they are not non-pluralistic. I believe these restrictions raise constitutional issues involving the Establishment, Free Exercise and Free Speech Clauses of the First Amendment (There are numerous other offensive provisions throughout the proposed guidelines, including the onerous provision that chaplains can only speak of their faith with officers--the "peer to peer" provision). Officially, inhibiting or defining what chaplains can and cannot say in effect establishes an official religion and burdens our military's chaplains' right of free speech.

The Georgia Christian Action League is requesting that you contact you Representative to add his/her name to Representative Jones letter to the President to protect by Executive Order the constitutional right of military chaplains to pray according to their faith.