Ethics

Will Obama Reduce Military Proselytization?

By Ed Brayton

Jason Leopold has an article at the Public Record that strikes me as unduly pessimistic. He writes:

Barack Obama's decision to have the evangelical megachurch leader Rick Warren conduct the invocation at next month's presidential inauguration proves that fundamentalist Christians still wield enormous power within the federal government and will likely continue to be a dominating force under an Obama administration.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in the U.S. military where, for the past several years, in apparent violation of the Establishment Clause of the U.S. Constitution, chaplains have openly proselytized to thousands of active-duty soldiers and, in some cases, have tried to convert Iraqis and Afghans to Christianity.

Full post as published by Dispatches from the Culture Wars on January 01, 2009 (boomark / email).