What about “No Atheists in Foxholes”?
Father William Cummings was teaching school in Manila when the Japanese invaded the Philippines in 1942. When his school was destroyed, he hitched a boat ride across Manila Bay to join the American and Filipino soldiers fighting on the Bataan Peninsula. All through the siege of Bataan and the final days of Corregidor he ministered to the beleaguered troops around him and became a source of comfort and inspiration to many.
He felt that spiritual support was more critical than ever in a combat situation, articulating to a war correspondent his belief that, “There are no atheists in foxholes.” [1] This now famous comment took on a life of its own when the correspondent flashed the quote across the seas to America and the rest of the world. Father Cummings was captured with the fall of Corregidor and spent years in a Japanese prison camp. His last days were spent on a prison ship where he died in the arms of one of his soldiers reciting the Lord’s Prayer. He is memorialized on Chaplains Hill in Arlington National Cemetery. [2]
Having seen combat in Vietnam I have often been asked: “Is it true? Are there really no atheists in foxholes?” My answer, based on my own experience, has always been in the affirmative. The first time I came under mortar attack, with death falling randomly from above, even as a religious skeptic I prayed earnestly for God’s protection. However, I have gone on to point out that this was usually a very superficial form of faith. In my case, I didn’t think to thank God when I survived those life-or-death situations, and my experience did not lead me then to any lasting commitment to religion.
However (again), I have more recently been reconsidering my answer to this question. After Vietnam, I spent almost three decades as a wandering skeptic, seeking answers to the big questions of life in philosophy, science, and comparative religion. ‘Something’ compelled me to be such a seeker. Maybe I should give more credit to those moments when stark fear took precedence over my linear way of thinking. Maybe my instinctive actions in those moments exposed a deeper truth that served to keep me asking questions all those years after. I am of course happy to report that my wandering eventually led me Jesus Christ, who, among the many truths he gave us, said, “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him.”[3] That may be the essence of the “foxhole” experience.
[1] Costello, Gerald M., ed. Our Sunday Visitors Treasury of Catholic Stories. Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitors Publishing, 1999, p. 354.
[2] www.arlingtoncemetery.com, “Chaplains Hill and Three Monuments.”
[3] John 6:44.