Group: Army symbol is religious, should be changed

AP ^ | 4/29/2010 | Dan Elliott

[markomalley]

A religious watchdog group says a cross and motto on the emblem of an Army hospital in Colorado violate the constitutional requirement for separation of church and state and should be removed.

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation asked the Army this week to change the emblem of Evans Army Community Hospital at Fort Carson, outside Colorado Springs.

The emblem says "Pro deo et humanitate" or "For God and humanity."

Fort Carson commanders will review the complaint, Lt. Col. Steve Wollman said.

He said the emblem had been approved by the Army Institute of Heraldry and has been in use since 1969.

Wollman said references to doctors serving God and humanity date to the time of Hippocrates, a pre-Christianity Greek physician.

Wollman said the cross, which has a pointed base, is both an emblem of mercy and a symbol dating to the Middle Ages, when pilgrims carried a cross with a spiked base to mark the site of a camp.

[Bellflower]

Atheism has become a religion. Atheism is the religion of an absence of the belief in God. To leave God out of state is to embrace the religion of Atheism. Atheism is being perpetrated though a resounding absence.

[Cindy]

Thanks for updating this thread Piasa.

[muawiyah]

Interesting dilemma. Since the Constitution itself prohibits the military from determining what is or is not legitimately religious, the complaint should be tossed in the garbage.

[muawiyah]

This is that Mickey Weinstein (sp?). Guy is a heartless batarde.

We know where he's going fur shur.