Neela Banerjee reports on the New York Times:
On Sundays at the Naval Academy Chapel, at a few minutes past 11 a.m., the choir stops singing and a color guard carrying the academy flag and the American flag strides up the aisle.
Below a cobalt blue stained-glass window of Jesus, one midshipman dips the academy flag before the altar cross, and the other dips the American flag.
The dipping of the flag has begun this nondenominational Protestant service at the Naval Academy for 40 years. But in civilian life, the American flag is never to be dipped, and the Navy says, it is not dipped at any other worship service at the academy or at any other installation . . .
In October, after the academy’s superintendent, Vice Adm. Jeffrey L. Fowler, raised questions about the ritual with the academy chaplains, they suspended the flag-dipping . . .
Mikey Weinstein, a graduate of the Air Force Academy and president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, a watchdog group, criticized Admiral Fowler’s decision to allow the practice to resume.
