Charles Kingsley from Three Mile Bay objects to removing the cross from military chapels, and he wrote: “This nation was founded on Christian beliefs.”

I disagree. Values, perhaps, but the leading founders seem to have been Deists, not Christians. The Declaration of Independence refers to “Nature and Nature’s God,” language from Enlightenment Deism.

And as for our “demonstrating to the world how a civilization works,” that’s fine if you overlook a couple of centuries of slavery and a hundred more years of segregation and suppression, plus slaughters of Native Americans from Georgia to Wounded Knee.

Military post chapels serve Jews and, presumably, Muslims as well as Christians, which is one reason for removing the cross. I write as a believing Christian, but we can’t shut our eyes to uncomfortable truths. More humility and less pride would befit a “Christian” people.

Arthur L. Johnson

Potsdam

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