Atheist soldier sues Army for 'unconstitutional' discrimination

Atheist soldier sues Army for 'unconstitutional' discrimination
Story Highlights
Army Spc. Jeremy Hall was raised Baptist but is now an atheist

His sudden lack of faith cost him his military career and put his life at risk, he says

Hall sued the Defense Department; claims military is a Christian organization

Pentagon official: Complaints about evangelizing are "relatively rare"


By Randi Kaye
AC360° Correspondent


KANSAS CITY, Kansas (CNN) -- Army Spc. Jeremy Hall was raised Baptist.


Like many Christians, he said grace before dinner and read the Bible before bed. Four years ago when he was deployed to Iraq, he packed his Bible so he would feel closer to God.

He served two tours of duty in Iraq and has a near perfect record. But somewhere between the tours, something changed. Hall, now 23, said he no longer believes in God, fate, luck or anything supernatural.

Hall said he met some atheists who suggested he read the Bible again. After doing so, he said he had so many unanswered questions that he decided to become an atheist.

His sudden lack of faith, he said, cost him his military career and put his life at risk. Hall said his life was threatened by other troops and the military assigned a full-time bodyguard to protect him out of fear for his safety.
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Should the military support the faiths of the troops? Absolutely. That's why there are Chaplains in different faiths to meet the spiritual needs of the troops. Notice the plural? There are Muslim Chaplains as well as Christian ones. Whatever the faith they have, they should be equally served. Should they face a crisis of faith, then they should be served if, and only if, they seek it. Sometimes they have to work through it on their own. Faith is a personal issue. The troops are just like the rest of us with different beliefs and should be treated like the rest of us, with the ability to choose of our own free will.

Hall became an atheist while deployed into the horrors of combat. How did this change the job he was willing to do, the fact he was willing to risk his life for the sake of this nation formed for religious freedom?

If you need any more evidence that forcing someone to believe was not what God wanted, then you have not read the Bible lately or skipped over the parts you didn't like.

I am a Chaplain, not in the military but in the service of God. I am required to serve all people with the love of Christ within me and meet the needs of people where they are and what they are. After all, that is what Christ did. When the Roman Centurion went to Christ to have his servant healed, Christ did not ask him to renounce his pagan Gods first. He did not ask the Roman to do anything more than what he did. He went to Christ with the firm belief Christ could heal his servant.

It was not my practice to pray in public and I still have a hard time doing it, but there are times when I have to do it. Faith to me has been so sacred that I feel too inadequate to verbalize it. My family did not pray at meal times on a daily basis, yet we felt blessed with what we had and prayed for what we lacked. I still pray in the morning, throughout the day and at night, but I pray silently communicating with God thru my spirit. Even at that, I cannot count the times when my faith was so challenged that I wondered what was the point of praying. My faith has been challenged, tested and tried my entire life. While I have not renounced God or Christ, I can understand how others can be brought to that point in their own lives. You cannot force faith back into them.

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Mother Teresa had many times when she doubted God. When looking back at her life, what she witnessed and lived through, it's not hard to see how this could happen. What was truly remarkable about her was that she did not stop doing the work she felt called to do.

Hall did not stop wanting to do the job he felt called to do when he enlisted. Trying to force faith back into him was not the job of the military. If anything it may have prevented him from finding his way back on his own.

Trying to force atheists to believe in God or accept Christ will not work. Christ did not try to force anyone. You cannot guilt them into love. You cannot make their lives so miserable they want to seek what you claim to have. It does not work. What it does do is push people who may be leaning toward accepting God away from doing it. When was the last time you heard Billy Graham tell his volunteers to drag someone up to the front to accept Christ into their lives?


So how can it be that this nation, the safe haven for Pilgrims seeking a place where they could worship God according to their own calling, has become a place where anyone who does not worship a certain way, is treated like this?