On Veterans Day it's worth noting that the military has often been years ahead of the rest of the US when it comes to religious diversity. This was a recurring theme of my 2015 history One Nation Under Gods, so I thought I'd highlight some stories from the book...

Just over a century ago, Bhagat Singh Thind became the first Sikh to serve in the United States Army. He's pictured here at Camp Lewis WA in November 1918.

Thind arrived in the US a few years after violent anti-Sikh riots terrorized a growing immigrant community in the Northwest. Tensions remained high as he began a new life near Seattle. Yet when the war came he enlisted without hesitation.

“My commander told me that there was a law that no whiskers were allowed," Bhagat Singh Thind later wrote. "I told him ‘My people are Sikhs; they are fighters, the finest soldiers in the world... I don’t mind fighting for you but I must fight as a Sikh.'" An exception was made.

Thind sought US citizenship but was denied on racist grounds by the 1923 SCOTUS case Bhagat Singh vs. the United States. He was not naturalized until 1935's Nye-Lea Act allowed “certain resident alien World War veterans” to become citizens despite "racial limitations” of the law.

Following WWII the US military again advanced recognition of religious difference within the ranks before it took hold in the rest of the country. The driving force then were Japanese American Buddhist veterans returning from the battlefields of Europe.

As I wrote in the @TheAtlantic, their return brought the question of which faiths must be represented in military cemeteries before Congress in 1947. Before then only crosses & Stars of David had been allowed. But what about Buddhist dharma wheels? https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2015/02/the-barbed-wire-sutra/385563/

When a congressman warned of a slippery slope-- “Chances are within the very near future we are going to have Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Mohammedists, Confucianists, Taoists & Hindus mixed into this very picture"-- representatives of the Army replied only, "We anticipate that."

The Buddhist wheel became just the third religious symbol allowed on military graves. Now they number in the dozens. Though too many still consider the US a Christian nation, official recognition of diversity may be a harbinger of widespread understanding. https://www.cem.va.gov/cem/hmm/emblems.asp

As an ever small portion of the US population joins the military, it's important to remember its influence is not limited to what we usually think of as service. It also serves a broader cultural role for which it may not be intended, but we can be grateful for just the same./END