Bowing to religious pressure, West Point will rebrand bibles with academy's crest
Adding the military academy’s crest to chapel bibles raises serious concerns about religious neutrality
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The West Point Cadet Chapel, where students at the military academy can meet to worship, has announced that the bibles there will once again be emblazoned with the academy’s crest, creating yet another unnecessary and unwanted connection between the Army and Christianity.
The U.S. military is supposed to be non-partisan and secular for obvious reasons. When you have a volunteer army that brings together people from different walks of life, cohesion is key. The last thing you want is to create more division—or send a message to other countries that our military has a religious mission. That’s why it’s been disturbing watching Trump administration officials promote Christian Nationalism in their official capacities, whether it’s Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy delivering a Jesus-packed commencement address to the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy or Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth praising the Crusades.
So while there’s nothing wrong with creating space at West Point for Christians who want to pray together, just as they have spaces for non-Christians, the Army shouldn’t be promoting any of those religions.
Sometime last year, presumably under the direction of the Biden administration, the bibles in the West Point Cadet Chapel were redesigned to remove the academy’s insignia. The books still said “The United States Military Academy, West Point, New York” on them but that’s a far cry from having the crest on them.
The right-wing legal group Judicial Watch filed a FOIA request last December to get more information on why this change was made, but they never heard back, so in June, they filed a lawsuit demanding details on why the West Point Crest was no longer on the books.
Now the Army has responded.
They could have said that the bibles are available for anyone who wants them, so who gives a shit what’s on the cover. But they didn’t do that. Instead, they immediately caved under the slightest of pressure and announced that the West Point Crest will appear on all future printings of the book
"Since the founding of West Point and before, generations of cadets, officers, and Soldiers have drawn strength and inspiration from God’s word," Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll said in a Friday statement to Fox News Digital. "The decision to remove the Academy’s historic crest from the Bibles in the Cadet Chapel is yet another example of the previous administration pushing far-left politics into our military institutions. I am directing West Point to reverse this decision immediately and restore this important symbol of Duty, Honor, Country.".
This is how deranged right-wing discourse is in this country. It’s not “far-left politics” when the bibles available in the military chapel that already say they’re property of the U.S. Military Academy remove West Point’s crest from the cover. The Army went from catering to Christians 100% of the time to catering to them 99.9% of the time. But when Christians expect to be treated better than all other religions, even that kind of symbolic change is seen as persecution.
If your life is better because West Point’s crest is now on the cover of a book you already can access for free and probably already have a copy of, you have very little to complain about.
(As far as I can tell, the crest does not appear on copies of any other holy book at West Point.)
The group that filed the lawsuit is taking a victory lap despite accomplishing nothing of value, but you’d never know what the argument was even about listening to the group’s leader:
"Judicial Watch's heavy lifting gets results," Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a Friday statement to Fox News Digital. "Goes to show again how our lawsuits exposing corruption can fix corruption. The US Army and West Point can't go wrong in honoring God."
There was no “corruption.” And there’s no reason that the Army or West Point should be “honoring God” given that many of the cadets there believe in different gods or no gods. Yes, there are atheists in foxholes. To act like the Army is de facto Christian is a massive mistake and arguably bad for morale. But Republicans today are eager to impose Christian Nationalism any way they can, and if that means turning the military into a vessel to spread the Gospel, they’ll gladly do it.
You may recall a similar controversy occurred in 2019 when a private company sold replica dog tags that had the military branches’ logos on one side and a Bible verse on the other. The Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) filed complaints saying Pentagon policy prohibited trademarked logos from being used to promote religious (or non-religious) beliefs, and the company was forced to stop selling the merch. (They later filed a lawsuit over that.)
The point is that the military shouldn’t be aligning itself—or allowing itself to be aligned—with any one religious or political group. That kind of unity is what makes the military stronger and allows it to be inclusive of as many Americans as possible. That’s why you don’t want to see the West Point crest on a Bible either. It’s fine to offer the book to those who want it; it’s unwise to do anything more than that. After all, there are many implications of a religious military and none of them are good.
As MRFF’s Mikey Weinstein told me in a statement, “This is an abhorrent, wretched decision that only buttresses fundamentalist, Christian Nationalist, triumphalism, and unconstitutional brutality.”
The motto of West Point is “Duty, Honor, Country.” None of those things have a Christian prerequisite. It should remain that way. But the Trump administration has no problem imposing their preferred religion everywhere they can because they don’t give a shit about unifying the country, much less military cohesion.
So, I'd prefer none of my tax dollars be used to add extra labels to published bibles. Or any of the West Point books for that matter. The 'library' solution is sufficient for all them: stamp the inside cover to deter theft and help folks recognize this is academy property.
However if this is the way they want to go, then the obvious next step is for folks to donate copies of the Qu'ran, Satanic Bible, etc. for the cadet's use, and demand West Point put it's official crest on them.
Though I could see the theft issue going way up. Satanic bible with West Point crest is a much cooler collector's item than a regular bible with it. So...better donate 100 of them. Just to be sure.
During their time at West Point, cadets take three oaths. The first is the Oath of Allegiance, taken at the time of arrival. In it, they swear a commitment to support of the national government, all legal orders and, most important of all, the Constitution.
Not a president, not a party, not an ideology and certainly NOT a religion. The Constitution, along with LEGAL orders and our secular government. Seems the academy has made a glaring error here.