Heaven and Hall

Last week, Pfc. Jeremy Hall opted to discontinue his lawsuit against U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Army Major Freddy Welborn and the Defense Department, choosing instead to simply discontinue his military service next spring. Hall's is a tale that fits neatly, and just as disturbingly, in the midst of the ramped up discussions of pro- and anti-American individuals and ideals. And, not surprisingly, one that hasn't received the attention it deserves.

Hall is an Army Specialist on active duty in Iraq who declined to participate in a Christian prayer ceremony commemorating the Thanksgiving Holiday at Combat Operations Base Speicher in 2006. It's what occurred next that captured the attention of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, best described in the lawsuit they helped Hall file: "Immediately after (Hall) made it known he would decline to join hands and pray, he was confronted, in the presence of other military personnel, by the senior ranking staff sergeant who asked plaintiff why he did not want to pray, whereupon plaintiff explained because he is an atheist. The staff sergeant asked plaintiff what an atheist is and plaintiff responded it meant that he (plaintiff) did not believe in God. This response so infuriated the staff sergeant he told plaintiff that he would have to sit elsewhere for the Thanksgiving dinner. Nonetheless, plaintiff sat at the table in silence and finished his meal."

Over the course of the next several months, Hall endured retaliation and harassment by fellow 'evangelized' soldiers, told he might be blocked from re-enlistment, threatened with potential military charges, and, after successfully setting up a group meeting for fellow atheists and free thinkers, was told by Army Major Welborn, "People like you are not holding up the Constitution and are going against what the founding fathers, who were Christians, wanted for America!”

In September 2007, Hall, with the assistance of MRFF, filed a federal suit alleging that his First Amendment right to be "free from state endorsement of religion" had been violated. As first reported by the AP, "the lawsuit cited examples of the military's religious discrimination by fundamentalist Christians, including programs for soldiers, presentations by 'anti-Muslim activists' and a 'spiritual handbook' for soldiers endorsed by Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East."

Hall's decision to discontinue the suit is entirely informed by his decision to leave the armed forces, and MRFF has vowed to continue Hall's fight for religious freedom. They are to be applauded. Make no mistake: within the armed forces, an apparently unimpeachable 'Pro-American' institution amongst those with the most-famously narrow definitions, something fundamentally anti-American is occurring. America was not founded as a Christian nation. This lie has been propagated by those on the far right for far too long.

The Founders specified that "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States." (Article 6, section 3) The goal was to ensure that there would be no single, official, national religion - like the one, in England, they fled. The Declaration of Independence was written to clearly state that the power of the government is derived from the governed, a radical idea upon which a new nation was born, making it the first not to claim ruling authority granted specific men by God. And, in the 1796 treaty with Tripoli, signed by President John Adams, it just as clearly states that the United States was "in no sense founded on the Christian religion."

The truth of our nation's founding does not lie in the lie that Americans sought freedom to build a Christian state; rather, it lies in the bedrock principle that all men, believers and non-believers alike, have the unalienable right to pursue faith as they see fit, without interference of the state. Yet, there does remain a religious test within this country. Some will not vote for Barack Obama for fear that he's a Muslim, since such a faith would most obviously make him Anti-American in their view (as shamefully suggested in a recent "Hardball" interview by congresswoman Michele Bachmann, who subsequently called for a McCarthy-esque "expose" on the 435 members of Congress to root out the anti-Americans). My sense is that a candidate's Muslim faith would give the Founding Fathers less pause than the inescapable fact that in order to become a serious contender for the presidency one needs to declare a "personal relationship with Jesus Christ."

We've many demons to overcome in our national transition from adolescence to adulthood, many of which have been on full-display this election cycle, but none that threatens the very backbone of our national identity like the one bravely fought against by Pfc. Hall. He demanded, rightly, that the country he fought to protect, fight just as hard to protect the constitution upon which it was founded. Tell me, Ms. Bachmann, what's more Pro-American than that?