Newsweek & WaPo give columnist space for bigotry.

[elfs]

Chuck Colson is one of those men who writes weekly columns for God picked up by hundreds of mainstream newspapers around the country, apparently because God himself never writes. He's probably managed to make himself more famous for being to the right of Pat Robertson than he ever was for being one of the Watergate Seven and going to jail for Nixon.

Colson has written an apalling column which has appeared in Newsweek, the Washington Post and all his other outlets calling for the dismissal of chaplains from the military who serve Wiccan or other "pagan" religions, writing

It is debatable whether paganism is a religion, per say [sic]. It is generally defined as a pre-Christian state, but it takes a wide variety of forms-- all the way from relatively benign New Age-style nature worship, to pantheism, to witchcraft, and even human sacrifice.

Those who publicly identify themselves as pagans are at best a marginal number and are basically no different from dozens of other cults. I see no reason why Wiccans or pagans generally should have the services of taxpayer-paid chaplains. It is perfectly appropriate, if a group meets court tests for religion, that outside priest/ministers be allowed to come into federal facilities and minister.

By the way, that [sic] in there is mine; I have to believe that the editors of the column allowed it to go through only to show that Colson's writing barely reaches the level of a rabid D-list blogger and is not the work of an intellect firing on all cylinders.

You will probably be heartened by the comments section. They're overwhelmingly opposed to Colson's proposal that the courts should be the ones to determine whose religions get promulgated on federal property.