Walter B. Jones: “America was built on Judeo- Christian values. No one who knows the history of our nation can deny that freedom of…”

“America was built on Judeo- Christian values. No one who knows the history of our nation can deny that freedom of religion played a critical part in its development. Yet there are those in our society who wish to threaten America's long history of religious freedom by limiting public expressions of religion by people of faith. In 2001, the Virginia Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union sued the Virginia Military Institute on behalf of two former cadets who opposed the school's nondenominational pre-supper prayer. In 2003, a three-judge panel of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals decided in favor of the ACLU and stripped VMI of its right to prayer, a tradition dating back to the school's founding in 1839. After the ACLU eliminated prayer at this State-supported school, the group expressed interest in locating Naval Academy graduates to file a suit similar against lunchtime prayer at Annapolis. In response to this threat, I introduced the Military Academy First Amendment Protection Act, legislation to protect the ability of our military service academies to include the offering of a voluntary, nondenominational prayer as an element of their activities. With the support of other Members of Congress, this legislation was included as a provision of the fiscal year 2006 National Defense Authorization Act which was signed by the President and became law on January 6, 2006.…”