U.S. Air Force RCO: Yes to Miracles, No to God

What next? 

It’s been a tough week for religion in public life.

• The Obama Administration’s attack on religious liberty via the EEOC (at least the Supreme Court gave them a handslapping in that case);
• the HHS Department’s insistence on forcing religious organizations to fund contraceptives; and now,
• the U.S. Air Force RCO has removed “God” from its official badge.

That consequences of that last one are not nearly as dire, because fewer people are affected.  As one of many recent evidences of our government’s hostility toward faith, though, it’s like one more small splash in the constant drip-drip-drip of institutional secularism.

The U.S. Air Force’s Rapid Capabilities Office (RCO) was activated in April 2003, for the purpose of assessing current and future security threats and developing systems for defending theU.S.against acts of terrorism.  The RCO’s official patch, like the patches of many other governmental agencies, contained a sort of “inside joke”:  The patch read,  

Opus Dei Cum Pecunia Alienum Efficemus

(Doing God’s Work with Other People’s Money).

Apparently, though, the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers can’t take a joke.  After several months of needling the government agency, they persuaded the RCO to omit the word “God” from their patch.  Instead, the agency’s logo now reads:

Miraculi Cum Pecunia Alienum Efficemus

(Doing Miracles with Other People’s Money)

The MAAF has described the change as “a victory, but certainly nothing to write home about.”

I agree.  And by the way, if–as the atheists and freethinkers assert–there is no God, then who, exactly, is going to be performing this “miracle”?