A chaplain holds services for soldiers in an operating base in Ramadi, Iraq. (army.mil)

So there are atheists in foxholes after all.

Last week, on the eve of Veterans Day, the Secular Coalition for America and the Military Assn. of Atheists and Freethinkers held a news conference in Washington to present an open letter to President-elect Barack Obama. Citing a report that found 21 percent of those in the armed forces identifying themselves as atheists or having “no religion,” the groups called on the new administration to pursue a military policy more open to nonbelievers.

The action follows on the heels of a much-publicized legal case involving atheism and the military. Jeremy Hall, 23, a U.S. Army specialist, grew up a Bible-reading Baptist in rural North Carolina. But his faith in God did not survive the battlefields of Iraq. Since disclosing his atheism, Hall claims he has become a target of insult and scorn — labeled “immoral,” “devil worshiper” and, curiously enough, gay — by fellow GIs and superior officers. But the pith of his complaint runs deeper than personal insult.

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

In his lawsuit, filed in Kansas last year, Hall and his co-plaintiff, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, accuse the military establishment not only of prejudice against nonbelievers but of blatant favoritism toward Christianity. As the suit challenging the place of religion in the armed forces lumbers toward a constitutional showdown, Hall and the Secular Coalition for America have sparked a national conversation about one of the military’s least discussed shibboleths.

The battle lines are already drawn. Critics depict Hall’s complaint as a campaign to destroy the spiritual foundation that the nation’s military has depended on for centuries. (“His right to spew his lying hot air cannot be allowed to decrease the morale of soldiers in combat,” writes one Christian blogger.) Meanwhile, the latest crop of best-selling atheists grant Hall some form of secular sainthood.

U.S. martial leaders have long prayed before and after battle: George Washington at the close of the Revolutionary War; George Dewey after his victory against the Spanish fleet at Manila; and Dwight D. Eisenhower on the eve of D-Day. Chaplains have also been key components of U.S. fighting forces, from the ragtag colonial militias to the highly professional units of today.

So when Americans learn that soldiers are being evangelized on military bases, that religious materials are often circulated among troops and that depictions of Washington kneeling in prayer are ubiquitous in military circles, they might likely see all this as an organic part of a venerable tradition.

But these incidents are anything but organic — and not nearly as deeply rooted as one might imagine. In fact, they are largely the residue of a forgotten footnote to U.S. military history during the late 1940s and 1950s — a time when civilian and military leaders attempted to imbue the armed forces with religious zeal and purpose.

At issue today, however, is not the place of religion in the military. Rather, it is the official sanction that government gives it. While this matter is given special weight by those who see America in the midst of a modern holy war against terrorism, it has precedent in the nation’s last great quasi-religious crusade — the battle against atheistic communism.

More than 60 years ago, when the Cold War was menacing but still unnamed, U.S. leaders faced the luckless dilemma of picking their own poison. If they demobilized the military after World War II, as their predecessors had done after previous wars, the Soviet threat might become unmanageable. But maintaining a large standing military would betray a national principle. It was considered profoundly un-American to maintain a powerful armed force in a time of peace. According to a long line of patriots, from Samuel Adams on down, standing armies threatened liberty and smothered virtue.

Added to this dilemma was a spiritual wild card. While Americans today would probably define communism as a political or economic philosophy, decision-makers in the 1940s and 1950s viewed it as a quasi-religion. It had prophets and prophecy, missionaries and martyrs, and a belief in the ultimate perfectibility of mankind through inevitable historical process.

National-security analysts fretted over the almost “messianic” devotion of Soviet citizens. Military leaders worried that physical force alone might be insufficient in the emerging Cold War. “Over and over again, gigantic concentrations of physical power have gone down in defeat before a lesser strength propelled by conviction,” warned one brigadier general in 1949. “The Goliaths have perished at the hands of the Davids.”

President Harry S. Truman decided to run the risk of America maintaining a sizable standing military. But to many, his cure looked worse than the disease. In 1938, only one in five servicemen was younger than 21. Ten years later, soldiers under 21 made up more than half the military and accounted for 70 percent of all enlistments. America’s new standing army was regarded as puerile, impressionable and naïve.

Military leaders wondered if they stood on the verge of creating a potential Frankenstein’s monster. Their plan needed a fail-safe. So they decided not to pull the plug on their monster — but to give it a soul instead. To this end, religion became indispensable.

Military leaders vigorously blended the martial with the sacred to foster virtue and create spiritual warriors immune to the siren songs of communism. In the Fort Knox Experiment of 1947, the army toyed with the idea of simultaneously running new recruits through a physical and religious boot camp. Though this proved too blatantly unconstitutional for Army-wide adoption, the “Fort Knox methods” lived on in the Army’s commitment to develop the spiritual side of its troops.

Truman thought so highly of this mission that, one year later, he created the President’s Committee on Religion and Welfare in the Armed Forces, the first presidential commission devoted to religion. Its members designed campaigns to encourage soldiers to attend church; to urge local religious groups to invite servicemen to their congregations; and to revitalize the military chaplaincy.

While the military brass had no stomach for mandatory religious services, it did authorize, beginning in the late 1940s, various “character guidance” programs run by the reorganized chaplaincy. New recruits attended a minimum of six hours of chaplain lectures on such topics as the sacredness of marriage, the relationship between democracy and religion, and the dangerous faith of communism. All other personnel had to attend similar lectures once a month.

Among other things, soldiers learned that in the Cold War, the United States, a “covenant nation” due to its reliance on God, confronted the “demonic nation” of the Soviet Union. In a contest between God and Satan, military leaders bet on the home team.

This was tame compared to the religious programs of the newly independent Air Force. Under Maj. Gen. Charles I. Carpenter, the Air Force project consisted of lay retreats, on-base preaching missions by religious groups and the confiscation of obscene materials.

Carpenter also believed in the power of religion to solve the personal problems of Air Force personnel. Consider one case cited by a U.S. Air Force report. A military surgeon reported treating an airman suffering from a nervous breakdown. The diagnosis: neurosis stemming from religious confusion. The prescription: a session with the base chaplain, who set up a “systematic plan” of religious treatment.

Nor did Carpenter stop there. In late 1948, he struck a deal with the Moody Bible Institute of Science, an evangelical organization devoted to repairing the damage done to religion by Darwinism. Soon, airmen across America and throughout the world were watching films like “God of Creation” and “Duty or Destiny.” The Air Force even provided the representatives of the Moody Institute with a fully crewed B-25. By 1951, nearly 200,000 Air Force personnel were watching Moody films each year.

Nonbelievers like Hall must have existed in the 1950s, or, at the very least, troops uncomfortable with the idea of religious training. But few spoke up. It took a 1962 decision by the U.S. Supreme Court to end the 15-year period of officially sanctioned military sacralization.

In the wake of Engel vs. Vitale, the Supreme Court ruling that deemed prayer in public schools unconstitutional, the Washington director of the American Civil Liberties Union brought grievances of “religious indoctrination” directly to Army Sec. Cyrus R. Vance. Vance responded quickly. In March 1963, he ordered Army chaplains to create a new, secular version of character guidance — outside chapels and without sermonizing. The other services did the same.

As long as the United States remains a religious country, there will be religion in the military. And while the outcome of Hall’s lawsuit is uncertain, it has sparked a worthwhile conversation about faith and the uniform.

Understanding why the military was allowed to craft its own religious imprimatur 60 years ago takes no large stretch of the imagination. During an era when the truly religious could not be communists, the truly irreligious could not be Americans. This axiom rang particularly true for those on the front lines of the Cold War.

Those lamenting Hall’s lawsuit today should consider this slice of military history. From Puritan dreams to evangelical rallies, religion has remained a constant force in our national journey — the military’s in particular.

But the official sanctions afforded it have been anything but constant. Few today realize just how much of the military’s current positions toward religion, far from being longtime American attitudes, are merely vestiges from the Cold War era.

Those cheering Hall’s case should appreciate the extent to which the military has grown more secular over the past few decades. Where once the U.S. Air Force supplied airplanes to evangelists, it now officially insists that commanders “not take it upon themselves to change or coercively influence the religious views of subordinates.”

During the struggle against atheistic communism, comments like those of the Army’s Lt. Gen. William Boykin — who in 2004 called the war on terror a battle against “Satan” — were not only common but celebrated. Today, they are decried by the command structure, including President George W. Bush.

Throughout history, the Davids have sometimes slain the Goliaths. But more often, the stronger, better-equipped force prevailed — with or without the blessings of the Almighty.

Maybe this is what Hall means when he says that while he doesn’t believe in God, he does “believe in Plexiglas.” Whether he wanted to or not, Hall may have stumbled on the ultimate form of “coming out” in the military, and this may require the consideration of military leaders, an appreciation for the military’s religiously sanctioned past and perhaps even a decision from the next commander-in-chief.

If nothing else, it would give a new meaning to the policy of “Don’t ask, don’t tell.”

Jonathan Patrick Herzog is an acting assistant professor of history at Stanford University and a national fellow in the Hoover Institution there. He is working on a book, “The Hammer and the Cross,” exploring how U.S. leaders used religion as a weapon in the early Cold War.

This is not a description of Sen Hillary Rodham Clinton’s win in the West Virginia and Kentucky Democratic primaries, with all their anticlimactic jubilation, but instead an account of the Battle of New Orleans in 1815. Even so, advisers to both the Clinton and Obama campaigns should pick up a copy of Daniel Walker Howe’s "What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America 1815-1845," recently awarded the Pulitzer Prize for history.

Howe devotes his prologue to that long-celebrated winter slog in the swamps just outside the Big Easy. It was, by all measures, a crushing defeat for the British — they suffered a 40 percent casualty rate in their main attack alone — and a glorious victory for Gen. Andrew Jackson and his rag-tag Americans. It was the midwife to all the legends of Old Hickory, the many popular ballads and, most important, the notion that America actually won the War of 1812.

But at the risk of being labeled history’s biggest wet blanket, Howe points out the truth about the Battle of New Orleans: it had no impact on the war. The Treaty of Ghent, which officially ended the conflict, had been signed weeks earlier. In an age before the telegraph, news from Europe took weeks to arrive. Sadly for historical romantics, Jackson’s long-feted victory was meaningless in any real sense.

Clinton and her advisers no doubt hope her victories in West Virginia, Kentucky and possibly Puerto Rico will be judged turning points, but in truth they look more like the Battle of New Orleans—hollow triumphs if ever there were some. At least that’s what the pundit class is proclaiming. The Politico’s Roger Simon compares Clinton’s victory to a tree falling in a forest with no one around to hear it make a sound. The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank likens her to the dead parrot in a famous Monty Python sketch. Even unabashed Clinton stalwart James Carville has declared the nominating process all but over.

Yet there is hope for Clinton in such an historical parallel. The war may have been officially over in January 1815, but Jackson and his troops didn’t know it. Neither did the British. Had they never fought outside New Orleans, the War of 1812 would probably have ended anyway, as Howe carefully argues. Without that last battle, though, our collective national memory may have been quite different. In the least, it’s safe to say the career of Jackson, whose political star rose immeasurably as a result, would probably have taken a varied path.

Nor was the Battle of New Orleans entirely futile. It proved that perception can smother reality. In the haze of malleable recollection, an unnecessary triumph can morph into an exalted historical hinge.

Can Clinton accomplish the same? If she defies the odds and captures the nomination, the emergent narrative will cast West Virginia as a watershed victory—the sort of turning point that pundits will burn into America’s consciousness. Such a victory would be more the political equivalent of past American successes at Saratoga, San Jacinto or Midway — battles that turned the tide of war.

A scenario more analogous to the Battle of New Orleans would have Sen. Barack Obama winning the nomination but then perhaps losing the general election to Sen. John McCain. In this case, Clinton could point to West Virginia and Kentucky as the moments when Democratic superdelegates should have taken a second, long look at the front-runner. If Obama does indeed fail to connect to working-class voters, as Clinton’s advisers say, then the May primaries might become the rallying cry around which her 2012 presidential campaign is built. “Remember West Virginia!” they will shout.

Regardless of these possible outcomes, one fruit of Clinton’s defiant victories in Pennsylvania, Indiana and West Virginia has already ripened. She has transformed her image from inevitable conqueror to recalcitrant scrapper. She now resembles less the imperious redcoat than the back-country American rifleman.

No matter what the future holds, she will carry that perception of accumulated toil and an irascible fighting spirit into later contests. This may well prove to be Clinton’s Jacksonian moment.

Jonathan Herzog, a Ph.D. candidate in American history at Stanford University, will begin teaching there this fall.