We all know that by 1791 religious freedom was enshrined into our Constitution. Article VI of the original Constitution of 1787 provides that “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States,” and the First Amendment, adopted four years later, states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” These first two clauses of the First Amendment were based on Virginia’s Statute for Religious Freedom, authored by Thomas Jefferson, and enacted on January 16, 1786. Jefferson would later write that the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, whose anniversary we celebrate this week, was intended to cover, “within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohametan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination.”
But as I pointed out in last year's diary for Religious Freedom Day, the struggle for religious freedom did not end in 1791. What’s written in ink on parchment did not necessarily equate to actual practice. This diary looks into the struggle for religious equality in the military’s chaplaincy during the early part of the Civil War, and its lessons for today.
The Fight For Religious Equality in the Chaplaincy:
In 1775 the Continental Congress authorized military chaplains to serve as commissioned officers in the army, but all chaplains had to be Protestants. In 1791, the same year the Bill of Rights was adopted, Congress authorized the Army to employ a chaplain, thereby starting the Chaplain Service.
When the Civil War began, the Confederate Congress created a chaplaincy and mandated only that chaplains be clergymen — meaning that rabbis and Catholic priests could serve as well as Protestant ministers. Catholic priests did serve as chaplains in the Confederate Army, but there is no record of a rabbi having served.
In July of 1861, a bill was introduced in the United States Congress to provide for army chaplains. Each regiment was to elect a chaplain by a vote of the officers of each regiment, and each chaplain had to be a “regularly ordained minister of some Christian denomination.” This bill was an improvement over the chaplaincy created by the Continental Congress during the Revolution, because Catholic priests were now eligible to serve as chaplains in the Union army, but no rabbis could serve.
On July 12, 1861, Congressman Clement Vallandigham rose on the floor of the House of Representatives to offer an amendment — he moved to strike out the words “Christian denomination” and substitute the words “religious society.” Congressman Vallandigham made this proposal so that rabbis could serve as chaplains. He denounced the idea that the United States was a Christian country, and denounced the proposed law as unjust and a violation of the U.S. Constitution. His amendment was defeated.
Anyone who knows anything about the Civil War is familiar with Vallandigham. Even though he represented a northern city, Dayton Ohio, he became a one man cheering section for the Confederacy, gloating on the floor of the House after every Confederate victory. He would later be arrested, tried by court-martial, convicted of treason, and deported to the Confederacy. So the Jews of America in 1861 could have had no worse champion — he was so hated nothing he proposed could have passed. Whether Vallandigham was genuinely motivated to secure equal rights for Jewish Americans, or wanted to drive a wedge between Jews and the Union cause, is anyone’s guess.
Meanwhile, under the new law, the officers of the 65th regiment of the 5th Pennsylvania cavalry, which had a sizable minority of Jews, including the regiment’s commander Colonel Max Friedman, from Philadelphia, elected a Jewish soldier, Michael Allen, also of Philadelphia, to be their chaplain. Allen may have been elected because he was a liquor salesman, and the men of the 65th Pennsylvania may have thought Allen would keep them supplied with drink. But Allen was very knowledgeable about Judaism and had studied in New York City with one of the most respected American rabbis of that day. After completing his studies, Allen returned to Philadelphia and became the cantor for his synagogue.
During his time when he served as chaplain, the 65th Pennsylvania was stationed in Virginia just across the Potomac from Washington, D.C.; their mission was to defend the capital in case of Confederate attack. (Many of the fortifications and trenches survive.) Every Friday, and on the day before Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot) Allen hopped onto a train home to Philadelphia, did his cantor gig in his synagogue on Shabbat morning, and on Saturday night, after Shabbat, returned to his regiment in the trenches of northern Virginia. Every Sunday morning at 8 a.m., Allen would hold an interfaith service for Christians and Jews with readings from the Jewish Bible, hymns that didn’t mention Jesus, and a sermon. Apparently, he was quite popular with the men of the 65th Pennsylvania.
But one day a delegation from the YMCA (unlike today, it was then a pretty obnoxious fundamentalist group dedicated to converting “heathens”) visited the regiment. When they found that a guy who was not a priest or minister, and not even Christian, and a liquor salesman to boot, was the regimental chaplain, they raised a big stink and demanded that Allen be fired. Private Allen resigned from the Army,
Colonel Max Friedman and his men were very upset about what the YMCA had done to Allen, so they proceeded to elect an ordained rabbi, Rabbi Arnold Fishel, of New York City, to be their chaplain. Colonel Friedman then wrote to Secretary of War Simon Cameron asking him to commission Rabbi Fishel an officer so Fishel could serve as chaplain. Cameron wrote back denying the request, noting that the law, which he denounced in his letter as unjust, required that chaplains be Christian ministers. Cameron then released his letter to the press, and newspapers all over the North reprinted it; many newspapers also published editorials demanding that the law be amended so that rabbis could serve as chaplains. Petitions were circulated signed by both Jews and Christians and submitted to Congress. One petition from Baltimore was signed by 700 people, with every signer identifying himself or herself as a Christian.
On December 11, 1861, Rabbi Fishel met with President Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln (who had signed the previous law) agreed the law was unjust and promised to try to get the law changed. A few days later, Lincoln wrote to the House of Representative requesting the amendment, and a few days later the House of Representatives voted to allow rabbis to serve as chaplains. The Senate followed suit, but it took until July of 1862 for the two houses of Congress to iron out differences in the bills and get the bill enacted into law.
A number of rabbis served during the Civil War as chaplains in military hospitals, most in their home city, but it’s not certain that any served in combat (one rabbi may have served in the ranks, not as a chaplain, at Gettysburg — there’s a question about whether he was really a rabbi).
Fast Forward to Today:
American Muslims and American Jews share at least two things in common. We have always been small minorities in this country, and, beginning with the Revolution, we have served in every one of this country’s wars. However, there was no provision for Muslim chaplains until 1993, and the first Muslim chaplain was appointed in 1994.
With this anti-Muslim hysteria being whipped up today, will Muslim clergy still be allowed to serve as chaplains in the U.S. military? I concede this may not be a major concern — national registries, surveillance and closure of mosques, refusal to grant zoning and construction permits for mosques, and religious bans, including against American citizens, from entering or re-entering the country, may supersede this concern. But this battle was fought and supposedly won at the outset of the Civil War, and it may be re-fought under a President Trump.