US Army vs. Atheists: Part 3 – Washington, we have a problem…

A loose thread...

Whenever you pull on a loose thread, there exists the chance that the whole garment can unravel. The loose thread in question began with an email I received from a friend of mine, US Army Sgt. Justin Griffith, about discrimination against Atheists by the US Army regarding an official survey called the “Soldier Fitness Tracker”

I initially reported this on December 23rd, 2010, with a follow-up on December 29th. Since then, this issue has unraveled into a powderkeg involving an International law firm, an alliance of five Atheist civil rights organizations, some high-profile activists and the CSF being connected with people involved in the development of the Bush administration torture policies.

As reported, the purpose of this test was to allegedly measure a soldier’s competency in the Emotional, Social, Family and Spiritual areas.  Justin is an atheist and a very dedicated soldier, but according to the SFT, he can be judged as “unfit” to serve, specifically because he is a non-believer. 

To quickly recap, soldiers are directed to answer spiritual questions on a scale of one through five.  Some of the questions include, “I am a spiritual person,” “My life has lasting meaning,” “I believe that in some way my life is closely connected to all humanity and all the world,” “I believe there is purpose in my life,” etc.  As a result of his atheism and answering the questions honestly, Justin was “Red Barred” in the Spiritual Competency area, and according to the results, the Army feels that he faces significant challenges because it deems his Spiritual Fitness as an area of difficulty.  Thus, the Army believes that Justin may lack a sense of meaning and purpose in his life and, at times, make it hard for him to make sense of what is happening to him and others around him. 

The main issue that offended Sgt. Griffith was the Army’s belief that because he is not a spiritual person, he may question his beliefs, principles, and values, and that becoming more spiritual should be an important goal.   The US Army has outwardly taken the position that an unspiritual soldier is an incomplete person, and that a lack of spirituality will somehow compromise their principles and values. 

The situation was immediately brought to the attention of the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers (MAAF), Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), American Atheists  (AA), the Freedom From Religion Foundation  (FFRF), the Foundation Beyond Belief, the United Atheist Front (UAF) and Americans United for the Separation of Church and State (AU). Along with myself, several high-profile individuals have also become personally involved, such as Hement Mehta, Ed Brayton, Mikey Weinstein (MRFF), Annie Laurie Gaylor (FFRF), Chris Rodda, Todd Stiefel, David Silverman and Kathleen Johnson (AA). 

The thread was tugged…

First Sgt. Kathleen Johnson (Ret.), Vice President and Military Director of American Atheists and the founder of the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers, sent a cease and desist letter via Federal Express on behalf of American Atheists to the Secretary of the Army, alleging the discriminatory nature of the SFT, after it was verified that the survey is mandatory. She cited AR 600-20 as the reason why its use must be ceased immediately.  As of press time of this article, she still has not received a reply. 

The thread was pulled a little harder…

An investigation by the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers revealed that within this training is a module on prayer, with a suggestion that prayer is for everyone.  This is a blatant redefinition of a word that is clearly religious in meaning, intent and nature. Further investigation by the MAAF revealed the existence of two testimonials included in the training module, both also blatantly religious.  One provides a solution that involves church, and the other invokes a “higher power”. 

The CSF defines spiritual fitness as“strengthening a set of beliefs, principles or values that sustain a person beyond family, institutional and societal sources of support” and “provides a person a sense of purpose, meaning, and the strength to persevere and prevail when faced with significant challenges and responsibilities. It promotes general well-being, enhances self-confidence, and increases personal effectiveness."  As stated by MAAF, these questions are out of bounds because they relate to whether a soldier is a "spiritual person."   The MAAF website has a link to the full text of the Spiritual Remediation Training in the form of a thirteen-page transcript of a short multimedia training program.

The training also included the Christian Flag Folding Ceremony, which is not the tradition that it is perceived to be.  Part of the ceremony includes the twelfth fold, “for in the eyes of a Christian citizen, this represents an emblem of eternity and glorifies in their eyes God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost” As Chris Rodda points out, the flag folds mean nothing more than simple geometry. 

The thread is pulled further…

An explosive investigative report by Jason Leopold, published yesterday on Truthout.org, revealed that Dr. Martin Seligman, a psychologist who’s work was influential in the development of the Bush administration’s torture program, is the same psychologist who was responsible for the design of the CSF. It should be noted that the Bush torture program is under fire by several civil rights groups and hundreds of soldiers, who’s complaints revolove around the requirement of enlistees to believe in God or a "higher power" to qualify as "spiritually fit" enough to serve in the Army. 

Dr. Seligman is a story unto himself.  He is a member of the Defense Health Board, a federal advisory committee to the secretary of defense, and chairman of the University of Pennsylvania's Positive Psychology Center.  According to the investigative report done by Jason Leopold of Truthout, Seligman is also the developer of “Learned Helplessness” and the author of the Penn Resiliency Program, upon which the Army's CSF is based. Refer to the "Dr. Happy" segment of the Truthout investigative report where the macabre story of Dr. Seligman is presented in alarming detail.

Initially developed in 2009, the purpose of the $125 million Comprehensive Soldier Fitness(CSF) program was to reduce the number of suicides and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) cases. According to Defense Department documents obtained by Truthout, the CSF is Army Chief of Staff George Casey's "third highest priority."  Within the CSF is the Soldier Fitness Tracker that Sgt. Griffith orignally wrote to me about.  There is another aspect of the CSF called a “Global Assessment Tool” or GAT.

As Sgt. Griffith initially relayed, if any one of the areas of the SFT result in being “red barred", the soldier is then directed to participate in classroom or online remedial training to strengthen resilience in the deficient area. Thus far, more than 800,000 Army soldiers have participated. This is no consolation to the countless number of atheists serving in the Army that will be all but guaranteed to fail in the spirituality area.  They will be unconstitutionally forced to participate in exercises that use religious imagery to bring them up to a satisfactory level of spirituality.

Griffith, who does not speak on behalf of the Army, said he was deeply offended by the spiritual questions he was forced to answer and felt that it was unfair to judge him as unfit to serve by the results of this test.  Like most of us, the word “spiritual” immediately brings to mind the word “spirit”, which is something that is not within the natural world view of an atheist.

From there it gets even more interesting.  Truthout revealed that Lt. Greg Bowling agreed the test asks intrusive questions and it comes perilously close to violating the First Amendment, particularly because there exists no option to avoid the questions.  However, Brigadier Gen. Rhonda Cornum, the director of the CSF program, claims that the spiritual remedial training part of the program is optional, even though the assessment is mandatory. According to Sgt. Griffith, as well as those of us who had opportunity to view and take the test, nowhere was it found that participation in the remedial training was optional.  In fact, Griffith and other soldiers told Truthout they feared disciplinary for non-compliance.

The thread is snatched…

Jason Torpy of the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers paid a visit to the CSF office and reported on the MAAF website that the officer responsible for the content of the GAT, LTC Henderson, was not willing to consider any changes in the current content.  LTC Henderson did suggest the possibility of adding an atheist module, but as Jason pointed out, it would only add atheist content to what is a biased and unconstitutional promotion of religion. Jason writes, “The military must reach out to the nontheist community and accept our input to reform this program. Otherwise, they are excluding an important part of the military team; one that is larger than Jews, Buddhists, Hindus and Muslims” 

Jason, myself and several others who are closely involved in this issue, agree that until the spiritually questions and training can be reviewed and rewritten, they should be removed from the GAT.  At the minimum, the GAT should specifically reference atheists, Secular Humanists, other nontheist groups and non-Christian religious groups in the Spiritual Support section.  The MAAF also states that an addition of a secular testimonial to the Spiritual Support section is needed to provide a nontheist perspective where it is most obviously excluded.  Finally, the MAAF requested the removal of the unqualified promotion of "Thanks" by Robert Emmons, which provides a biased religious perspective.

The thread is yanked hard…

Mikey Weinstein and the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) sent a letter  last week to Secretary of the Army John McHugh and Army chief of staff General Casey. The letter demanded that the Army immediately cease and desist administering the "spiritual" portion of the CSF test. 

Here are excerpts from the letter:

"The purpose of the [spiritual component of the test] though couched in general and vague language, is to strengthen a solder's religious conviction… …Soldiers who hold deep religious convictions routinely pass the spirituality component of this test while atheists and nontheists do not. The Army cannot avoid the conclusion that this test is an unconstitutional endorsement of religion by simply substituting the word 'spiritual' for 'religious.'”

“The majority of the spiritual statements soldiers are asked to rate are rooted in religious doctrine, premised on a common dogmatic belief regarding the meaning of life and the interconnectedness of living beings…  … The statements in the tests and remedial materials repeatedly promote the importance of being a believer of something over electing to be a nonbeliever. Moreover, the images that accompany portions of the CSF Training Modules make clear the religious aspects of the spirituality training."

This is clearly a religious test, which is in violation of the Constitution in both the First Amendment (Establishment Clause), as well as Clause 3 of Article 6 of the body of the Constitution, which specifically prohibits any type of religious test being used in connection with any government service.

Mikey Weinstein says the MRFF represents more than 200 Army soldiers who object to this test, and it should be noted that many of these soldiers are practicing Christians.  However, Weinstein states that he doesn’t expect the Army to honor the cease and desist, and he and his legal team intend to pursue it further.

Satirist Robert Crawford of the Blog “Give Us This Day Our Daily Dread”, writes in response to the Truthout article, “Weinstein is raising a big stink about the word of God being disseminated like semen in the Castro and is calling for a stop to this practice because, #1, it infringes on some vague rights also guaranteed in the First Amendment in the Constitution about freedom of religion and, #2 you know, the torture connection”

The fabric begins to unravel…

Last week, on behalf of Sgt. Justin Griffith and the MRFF, the law firm of Jones Day filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request . The purpose of this action is to obtain access to documents related to the development of the spiritual portion of CSF.  There are allegations here that simply cannot be ignored and the ramifications of which can have far reaching effects.

Amongst the questions that the FOIA request hopes to answer is, according to Truthout’s investigation, the circumstances surrounding the award to Seligman's Positive Psychology Center a three-year, $31 million, no-bid, sole-source Army contract to continue developing the CSF program. There was no competitive procedure, and in 2009 the Army also paid Seligman's Center $1 million to begin training hundreds of drill sergeants to become Master Resilience Trainers(MRTs).

In conclusion, for now…

Attempting to separate spirituality from religion is a challenge. Ben Dean, in an article published on the University of Pennsylvania's Authentic Happiness web site, agrees that "Mapping the conceptual distinctions between what we refer to as 'religion' and what we refer to as 'spirituality' can be difficult"

The Freedom From Religion Foundationand American Atheists have laid out issues in a letter calling for an end to the training.  Support groups such as the United Atheist Front have condemned the training in it’s current form as hostile to anyone who holds a naturalistic worldview, does not hold to the belief in a deity, and rejects the existence of a supernaturally spiritual aspect of life.

To be sure, this is far from over.  The loose thread that was pulled by Sgt. Justin Griffith is quickly unraveling and before the dust settles, what is left may amount to a handful of thread.  The purpose of the CSF program is to reduce suicides and PTSD cases within our brave men and women who serve in the Army. The motive is exemplary, but the ball was dropped on mode.  Fortunately, that unraveled thread can be rewoven into a comprehensive program that will benefit all of our soldiers, regardless of belief or unbelief.

Sgt. Justin Griffith might just have the answer when he said, "Scrap the spiritual aspect altogether."

Stay informed by bookmarking the following organizations: 

Military Religious Freedom Foundation (main site)

Military Religious Freedom Foundation (to follow this issue specifically)  

Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers (main site)

Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers (to follow this issue specifically)

American Atheists (main site)

American Atheists(to follow this issue specifically)

Rock Beyond Belief (main site - please support their planned secular festival)

Rock Beyond Belief (to follow this issue specifically)