Wanted: ROTC Military Science Professor (No Non-Christians Need Apply) | Chris Rodda

"There's Army ROTC. Then There's Wheaton Army ROTC." That's the slogan used by Wheaton College, a well-known Christian college in Illinois, to promote its Army ROTC program. It turns out that the slogan couldn't be more true. Wheaton Army ROTC certainly is different -- in an egregiously unconstitutional way. As Army lieutenant and Wheaton graduate James Greene comes right out and says in a recruiting video shown at the school's freshman orientation: "Wheaton College ROTC is unique in that it is the only Christian run ROTC program in the entire nation." (See video below)

Before getting into just how blatantly Christian and incredibly unconstitutional this "Christian run ROTC program" is, I need to back up for a minute and explain why I was looking at Wheaton's ROTC program in the first place.

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Yes, the U.S. Army apparently allows Wheaton College to custom order Christian officers to teach in its ROTC program, not just by secretly excluding non-Christian officers from assignments at this school, but by very openly and unabashedly specifying Christian faith as a requirement on the official list of available assignments. What part of the Constitution's "no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States" does the Army not understand?

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According to MRFF founder and president Mikey Weinstein:

"Wheaton College and its ROTC program seem to earnestly believe that the acronym "ROTC" stands for "Religious Officer Training for Christ." Wheaton and its fundamentalist Christian ROTC unit are to the United States Constitution what a dog with a full bladder is to a curbside fire hydrant. In MRFF's nearly 10 years of fighting this precise, illicit version of Christian extremism in the U.S. military, this Wheaton College/ROTC travesty is one of the most disgustingly blatant, appallingly bold, and mercilessly atrocious attacks on the foundational principles of our U.S. Constitution that we have EVER witnessed!"

A point that Chris clarifies in comments:

,,,An ROTC professor is not "hired" by the college. An ROTC professor is an active duty military officer, and their assignment as an ROTC professor is a military assignment, just like an assignment as an instructor at one of the U.S. military service academies. This means that the college can't require a religious test for an ROTC professor like it does for its own faculty. And since there's not supposed to be any religious instruction in the Army's ROTC courses, whether at a religious college or a non-religious college, it shouldn't make any difference what religion the ROTC professors are unless the religious college is violating other regulations by integrating religious instruction and activities into its ROTC program, as Wheaton obviously is.

Wanted: ROTC Military Science Professor (No Non-Christians Need Apply) | Chris Rodda