Faith on the Carrier
This past week featured Carrier, a ten hour PBS miniseries that followed the men and women aboard the U.S.S. Nimitz during a cruise to the Persian Gulf in 2005. It was well worth watching. Fortunately, if you missed any episode, you can still watch entire episodes on the PBS website here.
Of particular interest to readers of The Lead is Episode 8, ("True Believers"), which focused on faith onboard the carrier:
This episode explores the many expressions of faith onboard the USS Nimitz: faith in self, faith in one’s shipmates, faith in the mission of the ship and the president’s call to arms. The major religious groups on board are Catholic and Protestant, but there also is a coven of Wiccans, as well as a Pentecostal group whose newest member is challenged by the duality of his beliefs and the temptations of liberty as the ship drops anchor in Perth, Australia.
(This editor was particularly fascinated by the coven of Wiccans on board. When I was up for Senate confirmation as General Counsel of the Army, Senator Strom Thurman indicated that he might hold up my nomination unless the Army ceased allowing a coven of Wiccans at Ft. Hood. Fortunately, the good Senator backed off, I was confrmed, and the First Amendment rights of the Wiccan soldiers at Fort Hood were respected).
When I was working as a lawyer at an Air Force base in Texas about 15 years ago, a Wiccan group wanted to use a chapel meeting room. Interestingly, the chaplains had less problems with the request than one of our lawyers who had strong religious problems with it. (We recommended that the request be approved and it was.)
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May 4, 2008 8:24 PM