Veterans Affairs Secretary Robert Wilkie feels confident about the directive he issued this month allowing the public display of religious content at the agency’s 100-plus facilities.
Part of that confidence stems from the Supreme Court’s recent 7-2 ruling in American Legion v. American Humanist Association, which affirmed the constitutionality of a 94-year-old Christian cross commemorating Maryland residents killed in World War I. Wilkie’s confidence comes also from the Trump administration’s overall efforts to defend religious liberty.
“When I came to VA, I was told that the previous administration had issued directives that said you could not have a Bible in the chapels unless you brought it yourself and that simple religious courtesies like Christmas carols during that season were prohibited,” Wilkie told the Washington Examiner.
He added, “I said, ‘Enough is enough.’ Because, like the people I grew up with, when you are in the business of healing people, the spiritual and emotional foundation is just as important as the competence of the medical professionals.”
The VA announced a directive this month permitting the display of religious symbols and literature at its facilities, undoing years of confusion and inconsistently applied guidelines. The goal, Wilkie said, is to ensure veterans can exercise and express their faith without fear of legal challenges from the usual anti-religious groups.
“It is offensive to me,” Wilkie told the Washington Examiner, “that we send our troops into the most godforsaken places on the planet, and yet we have people suing us because they’re offended by the presence of a bible at a table memorializing missing soldiers.”
“That makes no sense to me. It hides another agenda, which is to completely secularize the country,” he added. “That doesn’t work in the military world.”
Wilkie, who has been in and around the military his entire life, told the Washington Examiner that he has seen firsthand the comfort that veterans get from practicing and expressing their faith. It came as something of a shock, then, when he learned as undersecretary of Defense that access to religious content at VA facilities had become a hotly contested issue.
“I came into the Pentagon, and I think [Gen. James Mattis] was probably of the same mindset, that previous leadership had taken a great deal of power, authority away from the chaplains and we set about restoring that,” Wilkie said.
In 2007, there were 633 VA chaplains (including full-time, part-time, and intermittent), according to figures provided to the Washington Examiner by the VA. Today, there are 704 full-time, part-time, and intermittent VA chaplains.
For years, the agency’s guidelines on religious displays and pastoral care have been hazy and inconsistently enforced, sometimes with absurd results. It is Wilkie’s intention to make the rules clearer than in previous years and to apply them evenly across the agency’s facilities, ensuring that the men and women it serves can practice and observe as they so desire. The directive is meant also to create an environment that is inclusive and nondiscriminatory. The new VA guidelines allow for three things specifically, according to a statement provided by the agency:
– Allow patients and their guests to request and be provided religious literature, symbols and sacred texts during visits to VA chapels and during their treatment at VA.
– Allow VA to accept donations of religious literature, cards and symbols at its facilities and distribute them to VA patrons under appropriate circumstances or to a patron who requests them.
“Our people will not be buttressed by this kind of nonsensical activity,” Wilkie told the Washington Examiner. “And I want the people to know that if they are confronted with protest, that the secretariat will support them and I think I can speak for the president on that.”
“There is nothing like [VA] culture. This culture, in order to survive, depends on a lot of things,” he added. “It depends on simple things like belief in a mission, belief in your service. But it also depends on having a very strong foundation that includes the family and faith community within the military.”
