Valentine Pontifex
October 20, 2006, 09:50 PM
I am currently reading Herman Melville's White-Jacket which is about life in an American frigate published in 1851. This book's influence was largely responsible for Congress's outlawing of flogging in the United States Navy. Melville had served in on a Navy ship and while characters and names are fiction, his description of what life on the ship was like, the customs of the Navy, the Articles of War, etc. are factual.
There is a chapter in it that describes chapel and religious life on the U.S.S. Neversink, the fictional ship in the story. Melville makes the charge, that the Articles of War (laws that govern the navy) are in violation of the First Amendment. He was correct. (In other chapters he also legal and moral problems with other aspects of the Articles of War and naval custom.)
The narrator is "White-Jacket" named after his white jacket. Though it is the 38th chapter, I don't see anything that I would consider a spoiler. The book is really made up of essays about various things and individual incidents.
Project Gutenberg's copy of White-Jacket (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/10712/10712.txt); Use your browser's find feature (usually control-f) and search for CHAPTER XXXVIII.
(Mods might think this should be in M&PC. If they wish to move it, I will not complain. This is one of those cases where one could argue for more than forum. As a historical context of church-state separation is important I will post in CSS.)
There is a chapter in it that describes chapel and religious life on the U.S.S. Neversink, the fictional ship in the story. Melville makes the charge, that the Articles of War (laws that govern the navy) are in violation of the First Amendment. He was correct. (In other chapters he also legal and moral problems with other aspects of the Articles of War and naval custom.)
The narrator is "White-Jacket" named after his white jacket. Though it is the 38th chapter, I don't see anything that I would consider a spoiler. The book is really made up of essays about various things and individual incidents.
Project Gutenberg's copy of White-Jacket (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/10712/10712.txt); Use your browser's find feature (usually control-f) and search for CHAPTER XXXVIII.
(Mods might think this should be in M&PC. If they wish to move it, I will not complain. This is one of those cases where one could argue for more than forum. As a historical context of church-state separation is important I will post in CSS.)