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Pluralism Gaining Ground
The US Air Force announced they now have a “worship circle” so Wiccan members can worship the earth…in a circle. Key paragraph from the article:
Wiccan cadets and officers on the Colorado Springs base have been convening for over a decade, but the school will officially dedicate a newly built circle of stones on about March 10, putting the outdoor sanctuary on an equal footing with the Protestant, Catholic, Jewish and Buddhist chapels on the base (emphasis mine).
I’d be interested to hear reactions from military people. The military obviously tries to accommodate everyone religiously. I wonder how this works in practice.
I have long held the view that as far as the government is concerned everyone should be allowed to choose whatever religion they like. Don’t get me wrong. I have definite convictions about the truth of Christianity but will still fiercely fight for your right to follow whatever religion you choose. You could put Jedi on your census form this year, if you want to. I’ll think you a little silly, but you can do it.
The principle is important because if the religious freedom of one group can be infringed then so can that of Christ-followers. As a Christian, I want to see all people place their faith in Christ. Just keep the government out of it. They have no business telling you what religion to follow.
So here is the question: What is this headed toward? Is Christianity a dominate religion the needs to be balanced by elevating other religions? Or is this another step away from our roots toward religious pluralism?
Disregard, for a moment, that when the Framers wrote the 1st Ammendment the only “religion” they had on their radar was the Christian religion, and that when they used the term “religion” in the vernacular of the day it meant something more akin to “denomination” in ours. Forget about that for a moment, because our culture has.
In a military context, accomodating everyone’s religion is something that they strive for very diligently, but due to the constraints of mission requirements, the military is very clear that religious accomodation can’t be guaranteed in every case.
In practice, religious accomodation looks like this: We give them a place, time, and needed supplies to engage in their worship. I, as a Protestant Christian chaplain, do not conduct Roman Catholic worship, nor do I do Jewish worship, nor do I do pagan or Muslim or anything else. So I am neither asked nor required to be something I’m not.
Of course, in my opinion this represents radical relativism gone wild. We as a culture have literally lost the ability to recognize that ideas have consequences, and specifically, that religions have attendant worldviews… and not all those worldviews are compatible with our culture – in the morals the Founders believed necessary for maintaining the form of government they created, in the American “way” of doing things. Further, beyond losing the ability to recognize that ideas have consequences, thanks to relativism in the guise of liberal “diversity” and “tolerance,” we’ve literally given up the epistemological ability as a culture to say, “This is not in accord with our cultural identity.”
The majority have not stopped to ask themselves, “In all this rush to promote and defend the cultural heritage of others… isn’t our own culture worth defending and promoting?”
My contention, though not mine alone, is that our own values in this area will be the means that we lose ourselves.
But of course, I’m a fear mongering hater to point it out.