Army's "Spiritual Fitness" Test Comes Under Fire

This blog has focused before on the pernicious influence that some far right Christianists exert within the U.S. military. These religious zealots seek to force others to buy into their often whacked out beliefs. Now another example of this perversion has been exposed in the so-called "Spiritual Fitness" test the U.S. Army has been administering as part of a "Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program. Apparently 800,000 soldiers have been subjected to the batshitery. Equally troubling is that the "test" was designed by psychologist who inspired CIA's torture program. Those not scoring well on the "spiritual test" have been led to believe they must take "remedial training" against their will in order to avoid adverse career consequences. The test and remedial training does nothing less than unconstitutionally require enlistees to believe in God or a "higher power" in order to be deemed "spiritually fit." Truth Out has coverage of this program and the efforts of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) to end the program. Here are some highlights:
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An experimental, Army mental-health, fitness initiative designed by the same psychologist whose work heavily influenced the psychological aspects of the Bush administration's torture program is under fire by civil rights groups and hundreds of active-duty soldiers. They say it unconstitutionally requires enlistees to believe in God or a "higher power" in order to be deemed "spiritually fit" to serve in the Army.
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Comprehensive Soldier Fitness (CSF) is a $125 million "holistic fitness program" unveiled in late 2009. . . . CSF is comprised of the Soldier Fitness Tracker and Global Assessment Tool, which measures soldiers' "resilience" in five core areas: emotional, physical, family, social and spiritual. Soldiers fill out an online survey made up of more than 100 questions, and if the results fall into a red area, they are required to participate in remedial courses in a classroom or online setting to strengthen their resilience in the disciplines in which they received low scores. The test is administered every two years. More than 800,000 Army soldiers have taken it thus far.
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[F]for the thousands of "Foxhole Atheists" like 27-year-old Sgt. Justin Griffith, the spiritual component of the test contains questions written predominantly for soldiers who believe in God or another deity, meaning nonbelievers are guaranteed to score poorly and will be forced to participate in exercises that use religious imagery to "train" soldiers up to a satisfactory level of spirituality.
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Brig. Gen. Rhonda Cornum's claims that soldiers are not required to participate in remedial training if they score poorly on the spiritual portion of the test were not articulated to Griffith and other soldiers, who told Truthout they feared they would be disciplined by their superior officers if they didn't act on the recommendations they received after taking the exam. In fact, nowhere on the test does it state that such training is voluntary.
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Last week, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) sent a letter to Secretary of the Army John McHugh and General Casey, the Army's chief of staff, demanding that the Army immediately cease and desist administering the "spiritual" portion of the CSF test.
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"The purpose of the [spiritual component of the test] though couched in general and vague language, is to strengthen a solder's religious conviction," says the December 30, 2010, letter signed by Caroline Mitchell, an attorney with the law firm Jones Day, who is representing MRFF. "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.'"
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Mitchell says the Establishment Clause of the Constitution prohibits such religious testing. "And it's not just the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment which is being blatantly violated here," Weinstein said. "Clause 3 of Article 6 of the body of our nation's Constitution specifically prohibits any type of 'religious test' being used in connection with any government service. Thus, this 'spirituality' portion of the Army's CSF test completely savages this bedrock Constitutional prohibition."
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It seems in my opinion if anyone is unfit for military service it is the religious nut cases who trample on the constitutional rights of others as they try to advance their theocratic agenda.