Over the summer, a conservative legal group sparked a controversy about Bibles in the chapel at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, New York. Judicial Watch, which started in the 1990s as an anti-Clinton group, has a record of pushing election denialism and other conspiracies in their legal advocacy against Democratic politicians. In July, they announced the filing of a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit to uncover an allegedly sinister Biden-era change regarding Bibles at the academy that educates commissioned officers in the U.S. Army.
But, no, the Bibles had not been removed. They had just been put in the chapel without the West Point crest on the cover.
“It appears the Biden administration and its leftist accomplices were determined to sever all connections between West Point and traditional values,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton as the group announced their filing. “They removed the West Point crest from Bibles in the West Point Chapel. It’s a wonder they didn’t remove the Bibles.”
He was so close to figuring it out. If only he sat with that last line a bit longer. Fitton has so bought into the claims that Joe Biden and other Democrats are anti-faith that he, with no sense of irony, noted they didn’t live up to his caricature. But then he didn’t wonder if there might be a faithful reason (as opposed to an anti-faith motive) to remove a military symbol from the cover of Bibles.
Convinced this move was anti-Christian, Judicial Watch sought all emails and documents about the decision-making process that apparently led to the simpler covers in December 2024. Gone was the crest that features an American eagle sitting above a knight’s helmet and the West Point motto, “Duty, Honor, Country.”
Judicial Watch learned about the crestless Bibles from a group of West Point graduates who were organizing against Critical Race Theory and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion content in curriculum. According to Judicial Watch, the military crest had been printed on the Bibles in the academy’s chapel since 1984. They didn’t clarify if West Point was completely godless without Bibles before then or just had “woke” Bibles without the crest.
Fitton didn’t have to wait long for his prayer of a more militaristic Bible to be answered. Just three days after announcing the lawsuit, the controversy, well, crested as Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll (a friend of Vice President J.D. Vance and who was named for the position earlier this year by President Donald Trump) announced he would restore the West Point symbol to the chapel Bibles.
“Since the founding of West Point and before, generations of cadets, officers, and soldiers have drawn strength and inspiration from God’s word,” Driscoll told Fox News. “The decision to remove the Academy’s historic crest from the Bibles in the Cadet Chapel is yet another example of the previous administration pushing far-left politics into our military institutions.”
Fitton quickly praised the move: “The U.S. Army and West Point can’t go wrong in honoring God.” Though, again, the Bible never left the chapel, it just got a cleaner cover. The remark raises the question, though, of whether he thinks a Bible without a military crest on it dishonors God. More recent moves by the U.S. Department of Defense War also raise questions about whether they’re actually honoring the Bible or instead just branding it to claim authority over it. So this issue of A Public Witness looks at four recent promotional videos created by the DoW that co-opt Bible verses to glorify the U.S. military.
War on the Bible
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