"It seems like my destiny is all messed up and that I am unfit to serve in the United States Army, if you believe the results of this test," said Griffith, who has served in the Army for five years. "When I think of the word spirituality I go to the root of the word: spirit. I don't believe in that."
Lt. Greg Bowling agreed, acccording to a comment he posted on an official Army website last April, that the test "asks rather intrusive questions about soldiers' spirituality - coming perilously close to violating the 1st Amendment."
"There was no option to avoid the questions, leaving our atheist soldiers to wonder if their beliefs are tolerated in today's increasingly religious Army," he said.
According to a copy of the test, the Army maintains that the "spiritual dimension questions ... pertain to the domain of the human spirit: they are not 'religious' in nature. The Comprehensive Fitness Program defines spiritual fitness as strengthening a set of beliefs, principles, or values that sustain a person beyond family, institutional and societal sources of support."
Brig. Gen. Rhonda Cornum, a nurtritionist and urologist who directs the CSF program, has said, "The spiritual strength domain is not related to religiosity, at least not in terms of how we measure it."
"It measures a person's core values and beliefs concerning their meaning and purpose in life," she said. "It's not religious, although a person's religion can still affect those things. Spiritual training is entirely optional, unlike the other domains. Every time you say the S-P-I-R word you're going to get sued. So that part is not mandatory. The assessment is mandatory though and junior soldiers will be required to take exercises to strengthen their other four domains."
But despite the verbal gymnastics Cornum, who was captured by Iraqi forces during the Persian Gulf War, seems to engage in over the meaning of "spiritual" and "religious," it has been established that the spiritual component of CSF is deeply rooted in religious doctrine.
A press release issued by Bowling Green State University (BGSU) in January 2010 said renowned "Psychology of Religion" expert Dr. Kenneth Pargament was tapped to develop the spiritual portion of the test in consultation with Army chaplains, BGSU ROTC cadets, graduate students and officials at West Point.
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.
Moreover, Cornum's attempts to replace the word "religious" with "spiritual" as a way to avoid a lawsuit was not lost on one civil rights organization.
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. (Full disclosure: MRFF founder and President, Mikey Weinstein, is a member of Truthout's board of advisers.)
"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.'"
"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 letter further states. "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."
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."
Weinstein said MRFF currently represents more than 200 Army soldiers who are "vehemently objecting to this clearly transparent 'religious test', the majority of them practicing Christians themselves."
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