Six California firefighters have gone to federal court in an attempt to have the chaplain program ended at the state agency for which they work, reports the New York Times.
The government employees say the chaplains’ corps of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Prevention violates the Constitution by mixing church and state.
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According to the Times report, the mid-level officers brought the suit earlier this year, saying the corps is made up of almost exclusively Christians and that the clergy had improperly tainted the government agency with religion.
The chaplains’ corps is just 2 years old, having replaced a peer-counseling program. Of over 50 chaplains, reports the Times, less than 10 percent are from faiths other than Christianity.
The plaintiffs, who refer to themselves as the Satanic Six, include a Baptist, an Episcopalian, a Christian Scientist, a Jew and a self-described “rationalist agnostic.”
“This program has given a de facto acceptance of religion in the workplace,” one of the officers, Robert Lewin, a battalion commander and the group’s spokesman, told the Times.
The six want the program disbanded and replaced with a nonuniformed volunteer group. They want no taxpayer dollars to be spent on the new counseling program.
Lewin told the Times he doesn’t doubt the sincerity of the chaplains, but objects to the use of religious language at department functions.
“I know it comes from their hearts,” said Lewin, who is Jewish. “But it’s not my heart. It’s not my religion.”
Lewin says he and his co-plaintiffs tried for two years to try to negotiate changes in the program, but had no success. That’s when they decided to take legal action.
According to the Times report, the officers involved all have at least 19 years of experience with the California Department of Forestry and Fire Prevention.
Norman Hill, the chief counsel for the agency, defended the program as constitutional.
“This is designed to provide an additional dimension to the counseling people receive when they have a need for these services,” Hill told the Times. “There is very minimal involvement of religion in the workplace.”
The California Department of Forestry and Fire Prevention employs roughly 4,000 full-time firefighters and administrators, the Times reports.
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