RGJ.com: Crowd joins widow to seek memorial for Wiccan soldier
RGJ.com: Crowd joins widow to seek memorial for Wiccan soldier:
In a park in rural Northern Nevada, bells chimed Monday in memory of Sgt. Patrick Stewart, who died last September in Afghanistan but who has been denied a veteran's memorial plaque that recognizes his religion.
The bells, his widow Roberta Stewart said, are part of the Wiccan faith. It's a belief in the divine in nature, but it's a religion not among the 38 -- including atheism -- recognized by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
Stewart said that in the nine months since her husband died fighting for freedom, the Veterans Affairs department has continued to deny him the freedom of religion guaranteed under this country's Bill of Rights.
"Today, we have honored his memory and the freedom of all faiths in the manner in which he would have wanted," Roberta Stewart told the group of about 300 people gathered in the Out of Town Park in Fernley for the Sgt. Patrick Stewart Freedom for All Faiths Memorial Service.
"In that spirit, we call for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs to end its discrimination and be held accountable for upholding the freedom of religion ... (that has) been granted to all of us as unalienable by the rights of the United States' Constitution."
The Rev. Maj. Bill Chrystal, a retired U.S. Army chaplain, said Sgt. Stewart took seriously his right to worship as he chose, and that Stewart and other soldiers have died to protect that right for all Americans.