Ministers and ministerial students exempted from draft?

[NAO]

I was reading an article on http://www.fromthewilderness.com/ about the draft, and the author said that Ministers and ministerial students were exempted from the draft.

That seems to me like a clear case of discrimination. To exempt Radical (and moderate) Clerics from military conscription seems like a blatant case of violation separation of church and state. Besides, it opens a can of worms in that the government might have to decide who is a "legitimate" minister or student.

If someone said they were the Supreme Warlock at their local Witches Coven, would that exempt them from conscription? If I am in a book club that is reading Heinlein's "Stranger in a Strange Land", does that make me a ministerial student in the Church of All Worlds? (Share Water. Drink Deeply. You grok?)

Finally, I myself am an ordained minister. I sent $10 to the Universal Life Church back in 1989, and they sent me an official "Certificate of Ordination", along with an "Ordained Ministers Orientation Pamphlet". So, (if I weren't too old) would I be exempted from the draft?

Universal Life Church
http://www.ulc.net/

Become Ordained at the Universal Life Church
http://www.ulc.net/ordain.php?PHPSESSID=30557c2445fe726c55c27b529722425e

[Nay]

1. An excellent comment. The Christian religion should hardly be able

to exempt itself because of its peaceful nature -- not with all the TV preachers, Baptist Churches, etc., howling for blood in Iraq and egging on the politicians to go to war for their little rapture-gasm. So why not specifically send ministers, unless they are from a historically non-violent church(Quakers, Buddhists, etc.). You'd think they would all WANT to go, wouldn't you???

[JVS]

2. Don't teachers and education majors get an exemption too?

[purduejake]

5. Probably, but they are busy running the country.

They are essential workers.

[pnorman]

3. ME TOO, fellow reverend!

I "signed up" about 3 years back, but I never applied (paid for) for the "special", so I never got the full kit, complete with fancy certificate. AllI got was a .jpg image of the certificate. But I still get occasional emails from them. They're mainly "feel good" chatty, with surprisingly very little "salesmanship", so maybe they're on the up & up. (I'm no longer willing to give most of the "legit" religions that much benefit of the doubt).

pnorman

[pnorman]

4. I just received the below,

and THIS is what I meant about the"legit" religions:

Suspect in '64 Civil Rights Killings Pleads Not Guilty
By Robert D. Mcfadden
The New York Times

Friday 07 January 2005

The most infamous unresolved case from America's civil rights struggle four decades ago - the 1964 abduction and killing of three voter-registration volunteers by nightriders on a lonely rural road in Mississippi - was revived Thursday night with the arrest of a longtime leader of the Ku Klux Klan, Edgar Ray Killen, the authorities in Mississippi announced.

Mr. Killen pleaded not guilty today and was ordered held without bond, The Associated Press reported from Philadelphia, Miss.

Mr. Killen, a 79-year-old preacher who, investigators say, organized and led two carloads of Klansmen on the night of the killings, was arrested at his home in Philadelphia, and charged with the murders of Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney, Sheriff Larry Myers of Neshoba County said.
>
>
http://www.truthout.org/docs_05/010905X.shtml

pnorman