Wheaton College Under Fire for Requiring ROTC Leaders to Sign Statement of Faith

Russ Jones | Christian Press | Updated: Nov 26, 2014

Wheaton College Under Fire for Requiring ROTC Leaders to Sign Statement of Faith

A Christian school has come under fire for making its ROTC leaders sign a statement of faith. ROTC leaders are appointed and paid by the US Army and a military watchdog group is crying foul.

According to Christianity Today, Wheaton College recently advertised for a Reserve Officers' Training Corps position requiring the candidate to “be of Christian faith.”

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation maintains the suburban Chicago’s faith statement is a violation of the constitutional requirement that “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."

Fox News reports the U.S. Army has since launched an investigation of all its ROTC programs across the nation.

“While Wheaton is a private Christian college, and can impose a religious test on its own faculty members, it cannot impose that same religious test on the faculty members provided by the U.S. Army for its ROTC program, and the U.S. Army unequivocally cannot require a religious test for any ROTC assignment, regardless of the religious preference of the college at which that ROTC assignment exists,” MRFF founder Mikey Weinstein wrote in a letter sent in November to Secretary of the Army John McHugh.

Wheaton spokesperson LaTonya Taylor told Todd Starnes, host of Fox News & Commentary, said the schools ROTC leader must adhere to the same policies of other faculty members. 

“We have historically required that the lead professor of military science meet the same basic religious standards as the rest of our faculty, as this person is fully a member of our faculty and serves as the interface of the ROTC program with the rest of the Wheaton College academic program,” Wheaton spokesperson LaTonya Taylor told me.

Publication date: November 26, 2014



Wheaton College Under Fire for Requiring ROTC Leaders to Sign Statement of Faith