Religion played an important role in John Newman’s Irish-Catholic family when he was a young boy growing up in Newfoundland, Canada, but he says it wasn’t until he faced combat in Vietnam that he fully realized his belief in God.
“Your most heavily involved combat veterans, they find a piece of faith in there somewhere, and they cry out to God one way or another. I know I did, when you think you’re going to get killed and the bullets are flying,” he said.
Newman recalled several close brushes with death during his service, including a harrowing rescue mission where he and his men went into enemy territory to find a U.S. aircraft that had wrecked. The pilot died when the plane went down, he said, but Newman and his men made it out alive.
Through the decades that followed the war, Newman’s faith grew. He is the pastor at Higher Ground Ministries in Barnstead, N.H., a church he established in 1986.
His identity as a veteran also has remained important. He attends reunions with other men from his battalion and plays bagpipes at memorial services at the Veteran Cemetery in Boscawen, N.H.
Newman has been receiving medical care at the Manchester VA ever since he returned home. When he learned that a group of veterans was calling for the removal of a Bible on display at the hospital, he grew frustrated and feared it could set a precedent to remove other religious symbols from veteran memorials.
In Newman’s opinion, the Bible in dispute over at the VA — which was carried by a prisoner of war in World War II — represents more than Christianity.
“That Bible is probably the best thing there because it represents all religions and so many different sects of religion,” he said in an interview at his Northwood, N.H., home tucked away on Lucas Pond. “I’m very disappointed in these guys.”
The display is called the Missing Man Table and honors missing veterans and prisoners of war. The table is stationed at the main entranceway to the hospital and is sponsored by Northeast POW/MIA Network.
A federal lawsuit was filed against the VA this week in Concord, demanding the Bible be removed immediately and permanently.
The plaintiff is James Chamberlain, an Air Force veteran and New Hampshire resident as well as a devout Christian.
The lawsuit, penned by Chamberlain’s attorney, Lawrence Vogelman, argues the inclusion of the Bible is unconstitutional.
The lawsuit said the government cannot “give favoritism to one religious belief at the expense of others.”
“We would all be outraged if the MVAMC only provided care to Christians, or denied care to non-believers, or those who worship their God in other ways,” the suit said. “The placement of a Christian Bible on this sacred table is just as objectionable.”
In January, 14 veterans who also receive care at the Manchester VA submitted complaints about the Bible display to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, a civil rights advocacy organization for active military members and veterans, according to the suit.
Shortly after the MRFF received the complaints, the organization’s president, Michael Weinstein, called the Manchester VA leadership and demanded the Bible be removed, according to the lawsuit.
Weinstein received an email later that day from the acting staff assistant to the director of the Manchester VA saying the Bible would be taken off the display.
Less than a month later, on Feb. 23, some of the veterans who called for the Bible’s removal reported to the MRFF that the Bible had returned to the display and was locked in a plexiglass box.
It was at this point, according to the court papers, that Chamberlain came forward as another complainant and was willing to be the named plaintiff in a lawsuit, despite also receiving care at the VA.
The press secretary for the Department of Veteran Affairs, Curt Cashour, issued a statement shortly after news broke that the Manchester VA was being sued, calling it an attempt to censor and bully the hospital.
When the Bible was removed, officials at the VA said they received “an outpouring of complaints from Veterans and other stakeholders,” many of whom dropped off Bibles in protest.