Looking into religion's place in Annapolis

Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war,

With the cross of Jesus going on before

America's foes, girded by radical religious interpretation, justify their enmity in myriad ways - by accusing us of being debased and debauched; of being culturally hegemonic; of waging a holy war against them.

It doesn't help when guards at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay spray urine on the Koran; or when a Marine in Iraq distributes coins with Bible verses on them; or when the president describes the war against terror as a "crusade."

And it doesn't help when an education at the nation's elite military academies involves religious indoctrination into a particular brand of evangelical Christianity.

It began years ago with a scandal at the Air Force Academy, where cadets were subjected to proselytizing by faculty, chaplains and even the football coach. Such behavior would be disturbing enough at a public college, where students could avoid pushy preachers and teachers; military cadets have no such freedom.

The academy acknowledged the damage done would take years to repair and altered policies and practices as a result.

Still, it is a measure of how embedded evangelical Christianity is in the military that a 2005 Pentagon investigation, while acknowledging repeated examples of religious intolerance, somehow concluded that there had been no discrimination.

So the students at West Point and the Naval Academy who are raising new concerns about practices at their own institutions are likely to face a similarly skeptical reaction.

Nine midshipman have asked the American Civil Liberties Union to petition the Navy to abolish the academy's mandatory lunchtime prayer. The ACLU says the practice is unconstitutional based on a lower court ruling about similar prayer at Virginia Military Institute.

The Navy is not persuaded: "The academy does not intend to change its practice of offering midshipmen an opportunity for prayer or devotional thought during noon meal announcements," Cmdr. Ed Austin, an academy spokesman, said in an e-mail to The New York Times.

Meantime, according to the same Times report, a group of cadets, officers and a chaplain argue that evangelical Christianity is a constant at West Point, that students who don't attend services are sometimes referred to as "heathens," and that prayer is even a part of nonreligious and compulsory events.

Nobody argues that conditions in West Point or Annapolis are anywhere near as egregious as at the Air Force Academy. But given the scandal in Colorado, it is curious that the nation's other military academies weren't more careful. And it raises questions about the Pentagon's indifference to religious tolerance.

That's especially important, given that America is neck deep in a conflict with profound religious overtones, one that is widely seen in the rest of the world as holy war.

But back to that familiar hymn at the top of the page. Songs are sometimes easy things to misapprehend and misconstrue.

That particular Christian hymn, despite appearances, isn't about soldiers. It isn't about fighting. It was written as a processional for kids carrying crosses and banners in 19th century England. War is used as a metaphor.

It's a song about dedication in the face of adversity and evil. The sentiment comes from II Timothy: "Thou therefore endure hardness, as a good soldier of Jesus Christ."

The hymn refers once and obliquely to an army, in a simile for the church. It never mentions the military.