VA exhibits cowardice unbefitting agency dedicated to serving the brave

The more things change, the more they stay the same. In what has become a predictable pattern, the Department of Veterans Affairs responds to attacks on religion with capitulation borne of cowardice.

Thankfully, this cowardice has not gone unchallenged. Leaders in both houses of Congress joined in a letter Thursday requesting an explanation as to why the VA removed Bibles from a POW/MIA table inside a number of VA clinics.

{mosads}The letter’s signers note that the Bible is displayed at such tables to “represent the strength gained through faith to sustain us and those lost from our country, founded as one nation under God.” Strength gained through faith is a principle that the sixth and final article of the Code of Conduct—developed for POWs—reiterates: “I will never forget that I am an American, fighting for freedom, responsible for my actions, and dedicated to the principles which made my country free. I will trust in my God and in the United States of America.”

The VA directly contradicts that article and its own mission statement, so proudly displayed at its headquarters: “To fulfill President Lincoln’s promise ‘To care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan’ by serving and honoring the men and women who are America’s veterans.” Here is the complete quote from Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, from which the VA derives its honorable mission:

“With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow, and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”

What message does the VA communicate to those who have “borne the battle” when it refuses to honor faith, so integral to survival that it is in the Code of Conduct? By removing Bibles from POW/MIA tables, the VA serves the narrow interests of few and honors no one.

Would Lincoln’s full statement even be allowed in the VA today? Would the VA yield to the usual critics, who decry such statements as “Christian triumphalism” or whatever other invective they hurl at every vestige of Christianity in the public square? Based on recent events, the answer is as clear as it is unsettling. The VA should realize that, as long as any facet of America’s Christian heritage remains anywhere in public life, those critics will make their routine demands under the baseless guise of “separation of church and state,” a slogan one appellate court called “an extra-constitutional construct [that] has grown tiresome. The First Amendment does not demand a wall of separation between church and state.”

This is not the first time the VA has faced conflict over religion. Just last Christmas, a VA clinic in Virginia attempted to shut down its employees’ expressions celebrating the federal holiday. Fortunately, a growing number of legislators are calling upon the VA to break this pattern of pandering to the perpetually offended.

To be sure, the VA is in an unenviable spot. Targeted by anti-religious activist groups, VA officials reflexively acquiesce to their demands, only to then be called to account for doing so. But they can avoid this by simply understanding and standing for what’s both right and constitutional in the first place.

The VA is an organization committed to care for those injured in our nation’s defense and the families of those killed in its service. One of its core values is to choose “the harder right instead of the easier wrong.” It is faced with precisely this choice here, and it must be faithful to this value. The right answer is undoubtedly harder, but that only means the VA must pursue it with that much more determination.

For hundreds of years, our service members have refused to shy away from making difficult choices in order to do what’s right. They and their loved ones deserve nothing less than for the VA to do the same.

Daniel Briggs is legal counsel and director of military affairs for Alliance Defending Freedom and served on active duty as an Air Force JAG officer in the U.S., Turkey, and Afghanistan. Briggs is currently serving in the Air Force Reserve.