Religion News Service
USA, September 29, 2005: HPI note: The following is excerpted from a commentary by Rabbi A. James Rudin.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s errors and blunders are by now well known, including those I personally witnessed in an early September visit to hurricane Katrina evacuees in Houston’s Astrodome. But Newsweek magazine recently reported another, more hidden, problem, that FEMA requires chaplains to recite a blessing over the bodies of hurricane victims. The requirement also extends to civilian contractors involved in recovering the dead following Katrina and Rita. Such a government policy is a clear violation of the historical American principle of church-state separation and represents a serious breach in the wall of separation between religion and state. Even though FEMA’s blessing requirement comes at a tragic and vulnerable moment in our national life, it is no excuse to impose an uncalled-for “one prayer covers all” policy upon the dead and their grieving families.
A troubled Rabbi David Saperstein, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, based in Washington, immediately shot off a letter to R. David Paulison, FEMA’s acting director, seeking “clarification.” In his letter, Saperstein correctly notes that FEMA is currently facing “unparalleled challenges” in its recovery and reconstruction efforts, but he is concerned about the agency’s reported policy of “blessing” recovered bodies. The rabbi wants to know if it is indeed FEMA policy to require a chaplain’s prayer before a body can be removed and returned to the victim’s family. Saperstein also inquires whether the family’s wishes are considered, and he wants Paulison’s view of the serious “constitutional issues involved” when the government requires its contractors to perform a religious ritual.
When I served in the United States Air Force in Japan, I was often “the on-duty chaplain” at our air base, and in that capacity I was sometimes the first religious responder to reach an airplane crash, auto accident or other death scene. It was always clear USAF policy NOT to invoke any prayers — Jewish, Christian, or any other — over the body unless the deceased was clearly identified as a member of the chaplain’s specific faith community. The effort by FEMA to automatically bless hurricane victims flies in the face of demographic facts. The United States is increasingly multi-religious, multi-cultural, and multi-ethnic in its rapidly growing population that is nearing the 300 million mark.