This election season, having just witnessed the end of the war in Iraq, we would do well to remember a memorial sermon given by Rabbi Roland B. Gittelsohn, the first Jewish chaplain the Marine Corps ever appointed.

Of 70,000 American Marines on Iwo Jima, 1,500 were Jewish. Rabbi Gittelsohn was in the thick of the fray, ministering to Marines of all faiths in the combat zone. When the fighting was over, he was asked to deliver the memorial sermon at a combined religious service dedicating the Marine Cemetery.

Unfortunately, racial and religious prejudice led to problems with the ceremony. Division Chaplain Warren Cuthriell, a Protestant minister, originally asked Rabbi Gittelsohn to deliver the memorial sermon, wanting all the fallen Marines (black and white, Protestant, Catholic and Jewish) honored in a single, nondenominational ceremony. However, the majority of Christian chaplains objected to having a rabbi preach over predominantly Christian graves.

Cuthriell refused to alter his plans, but Gittelsohn, wanting to avoid further embarrassment, decided to comply, so three separate religious services were held. At the Jewish service, Rabbi Gittelsohn delivered the powerful eulogy he originally wrote for the combined service:

Here lie men who loved America because their ancestors, generations ago, helped in her founding. And other men who loved her with equal passion because they themselves, or their own fathers, escaped from oppression to her blessed shores. Here lie officers and men, Negroes and Whites, rich men and poor, together. Here are Protestants, Catholics, and Jews together. Here no man prefers another because of his faith or despises him because of his color. Here there are no quotas of how many from each group are admitted or allowed. 

Among these men there is no discrimination. No prejudices. No hatred. Theirs is the highest and purest democracy! Whosoever of us lifts his hand in hate against a brother, or who thinks himself superior to those who happen to be in the minority, makes of this ceremony and the bloody sacrifice it commemorates, an empty, hollow mockery. To this then, as our solemn sacred duty, do we, the living, now dedicate ourselves: To the right of Protestants, Catholics, and Jews, of White men and Negroes alike, to enjoy the democracy for which all of them have here paid the price. 

We here solemnly swear this shall not be in vain. Out of this, and from the suffering and sorrow of those who mourn this, will come, we promise, the birth of a new freedom for the sons of men everywhere. 

Rabbi Gittelsohn understood the promise of our country -- its goals of liberty and happiness for all, regardless of differences such as race or faith. Contrast that with the testimonials of Christian Evangelicalism evident in several of the current campaigns for the Presidential nomination. If one of these candidates wins, will their America have room for those of another faith? Or those with no faith at all? Could America become a Christian Theocracy, intent on establishing religious dominion, rather than a haven for religious freedom? 

In that scenario, America would no longer be the democracy for which those soldiers at Iwo Jima - and all the soldiers in other wars - have died.

What are We Voting For? By Jan Brazil appeared in Freethought Views between January 19, 2012 and January 26, 2012 with the quotation below.

“The government of the United States is not in any sense founded upon the Christian Religion.”

United States Treaty of Tripoli, Article 11, ratified by Congress and signed into law by John Adams, June 1797