I got this wonderful comment to my last post from Bill, and it has given me a lot of food for thought:
I found Chaplains doing all sorts of useful work in Iraq including reconciliation, conflict resolution, and peace making with Iraqis...teaching many concepts we teach in our Churches. The Iraqi Army has never had Chaplains although they're tightly modeling themselves after the US now and a Chaplain I spoke with thought that concept might be coming to them. I'm guessing most non-Western Armies today have Chaplains... I suspect they'd be better off with them.
I guess what I am thinking is that the spot chaplains fill in the services that have to do with work like this - the real work of rebuilding lives and nations, in my mind, does somehow belong with the people who are trained in compassion and peace, and for that, chaplains are ideal.
However, I also believe that there is an inherent problem with the association of that work with those same chaplains who are performing a dual role - a paid, sanctioned role - in the organization where they are performing religious services for troops. I can see them being there for counseling and pastoral care - but leading services and prayer? Even supposedly non-denomination services and prayer? Perhaps it is not in the nature of most people to realize that to the atheist - to most atheists anyway - that such actions are used by many people as a method of exclusion. What is intended by the chaplain to give succor to many gives pain to some. Is that just? Let the laypeople guide themselves... but don't pay a chaplain to lead the services. In the general population of the country, a pastor or priest is called by his or her congregation or settled by his or her diocese... but that is not the case in the military. Pastor is as pastor does... or doesn't.
Allow me to digress a moment. First of all, we called Rev. Bill to lead our congregation several years ago... it was a choice we made as an independent congregation, not part of a governmental or particularly strong organizational body (the UUA promotes and gives remarkably gentle guidance and guidelines - they are not a top-down organization as a general rule). Secondly, within that congregation, as a secular humanist, it does not usually bother me to be led in congregational meditation - I welcome the time to center - but that is me. Some others *do* chafe and find it hard to settle during that time - they say they find it too close to prayer, though we have all come together to be as a congregation - all of us, from all spectra of the rainbow. Interestingly, our minister, Rev Bill, usually opens the service with the invocation "Holy One"... and I have come to my own interpretation (for me it is the congregation - the one body meeting as the holy). However, many atheists may be unable, unwilling, or feel it an unnecessary burden to be asked to interpret, reinterpret or explain away, and will join a small group within the congregation or choose to form an alliance outside... just as many Christians would find Rev Bill's "Holy One" to be much, much too far from "God" or "Jesus", and will go elsewhere. That is part of the freedom of choice we have in our society to decide where and how we will worship - or respect the earth - or simply be. Soldiers rubbing shoulders do not have that sort of freedom or privacy.
Do you see the differences? Holy wars have been fought over more nuanced differences, and yet, we expect our men and women in uniform to toe the line and accept the status quo as one which *should* be the standard for the next 100 years. That is neither human nor humane to demand, especially not from people doing such physically and mentally demanding work as they are doing. Freedom of religion is one of the core freedoms they hold dear - so why is it that atheists must expect less? Atheists do not as a general rule hold what many would see as religious services, though they may hold discussions, or talks about common subjects that hold deep, essential truths for them. But to be ridiculed at the lunch table, denied promotion because superiors feel that their religion "separates" them from their soldiers, and to be thought of as less than an American soldier is just insane.
Why, in fact, is religion even an issue in the military? Why is it that anyone knows your personal religious preferences? I realize the symbol of your religion is inscribed on your dogtags... but why is it a proper matter for discussion in the workplace of war? Do your job and do it with honesty, integrity, and skill... and leave the rest to your conscience.
Finally, simply out of my own curiosity, why would most armed services be better off with chaplains? If it is for the secular work they are doing, I can understand that... but if it is for leading men and women in prayer and services, I must respectfully disagree. I *do* see that chaplains have always faced a certain moral duality in the armed forces - a tough one that I must admit I could never breach. They are men and women who, on the field of battle, must give solace to the soldier who has the potential to take human life. That is the inherent role of the soldier, and the inherent role of the chaplain as it stands in the private lives of the soldiers. I say, let them deal with that moral duality one on one with the soldiers, but let them use their unique roles - the ones Bill mentioned and I quoted at the beginning of this post - the secular work they are doing. Isn't that enough pastoral work for a serviceman or woman? Why lead services when there is a Constitutional question at stake? But better yet, why lead services when they fly in the face of the polity of the government, the DoD, and servicemen themselves?
It is a question that is sure to continue - and I will be interested in what the Pentagon has to say in its rebuttal tonight. It is due by midnight Eastern, and I suspect it will be a very interesting document, indeed.
I look forward to the continuing conversation.
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