Rev. Danny Fisher

On May 11th, the House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved (by a 396-31 vote) House Resolution 5122, a defense appropriations bill that includes a provision allowing military chaplains to lead prayers “according to the dictates of the chaplain’s own conscience, except as must be limited by military necessity, with any such limitation being imposed in the least restrictive manner feasible.”

The bill, sponsored by Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-California, comes in the wake of last year’s highly-publicized scandal at the United States Air Force Academy, which saw charges of harrassment levelled at the school’s evangelical Christian community by non-evangelical cadets and officers there.

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The trouble started in the summer of 2004, when a team from Yale University’s Divinity School, led by professor Kristen Leslie and a group of graduate students, visited the academy to assess the quality of pastoral care on campus. In their subsequent report, the Yale team offered the following:

[The Yale team] clearly articulated a concern that such stridently Evangelical themes challenged the necessarily pluralistic environment of [basic training]. [The Yale team] expressed a concern that the overwhelmingly Evangelical tone of general protestant worship encouraged religious divisions rather than fostering spiritual understanding among Basic Cadets. [The Yale team] suggested that the USAFA Chaplain Service reconsider the worship dynamics and Chaplain/Basic Cadet interaction during [basic training for cadets]. [The Yale team] suggested focusing on aspects of ecumenical teamwork and developing an appreciation of spiritual diversity.

The report of the Yale team seemed to confirm what many, including the very vocal Michael L. “Mikey” Weinstein, a 1977 USAFA graduate and attorney for the Reagan White House, had been saying for years: that the USAFA’s leadership was failing to protect cadets from unwanted proselytizing. The report documented stories such as these:

[The Yale team] observed consistent specific articulations of Evangelical Christian themes during general protestant services…Protestant Cadets were encouraged to chant the phrase, “This is our Chapel and the Lord is our God.” Protestant Basic Cadets were encouraged to pray for the salvation of fellow [cadets in basic training] who chose not to attend worship. During general protestant worship in Jack’s Valley, attending Basic Cadets were encouraged to return to tents, proselytize fellow [cadets in basic training], and remind them of the consequences of apostasy. (Protestant Basic Cadets were reminded that those not “born again will burn in the fires of hell.”) Protestant Basic Cadets were regularly encouraged to “witness” to fellow Basic Cadets. Protestant Basic Cadets were commonly told that Jesus had “called” them to the Academy and military life. Protestant Basic Cadets were informed that God’s plan for their life included attending USAFA.

In May of 2005, the Air Force launched an investigation into religious intolerance at the USAFA just as Capt. MeLinda Morton, a Lutheran minister and one of the USAFA’s 16 chaplains, was removed from her administrative duties. Capt. Morton claimed to have been fired because she made no secret of the fact that she agreed with the Yale team’s findings.

The Air Force investigation team, led by Lt. Gen. Roger A. Brady, ultimately concluded that they perceived a “religious bias” based on their interviews with over 300 USAFA cadets, faculty members, and administrators. Furthermore, the investigation concluded that the USAFA had failed “to fully accommodate all members’ needs and [also lacked an awareness of] where the line is drawn between permissible and impermissible expression of beliefs.”

Brady’s team came to these conclusions after investigating incidents at the USAFA such as the head football coach’s hanging of a “Team Jesus” banner in the team’s locker room in November 2004; the regular harrassment of cadets for not taking part in voluntary prayer meetings during basic training; the commandant’s encouragement of certain behaviors such as the use of the “J for Jesus” hand signal; and the February 2004 promotion of a cadet-sponsored screening of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ, during which fliers were put at more than 4,000 place settings in the cadet dining facility.

In August 2005, shortly after Brady’s team presented their findings, the Air Force established a new set of professional guidelines discouraging chaplains from offering sectarian prayers and commanding officers from speaking about their faith. In addition, following a suit filed by Weinstein in October 2005, the Air Force Chaplain School discontinued their use of the National Conference on Ministry to the Armed Forces’ “code of ethics,” effectively forbidding both proselytizing from specific religious bodies and evangelizing to unaffiliated members of the Air Force.

However, by February 2006, responding to criticism from evangelical Christians and politicians, the Air Force radically revised the new standards, permitting superior officers to discuss their faith with cadets and excusing chaplains from the responsibility of offering nonsectarian or interfaith prayers.

Bringing it all back home, H.R. 5122 represents a similar attempt to lessen the responsibilities of military chaplains across the board when it comes to prayer specifically.

Weinstein puts it very well when he says: “There is an inescapable irony here, that this bill, which purports to be a ‘defense authorization,’ not only flagrantly disregards military rules, but also strikes a serious blow to the constitutional oath that every soldier, airman, sailor and marine has sworn to uphold with their lives.”

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As you have probably deduced by now, there are a number of things that give me pause about H.R. 5122′s provision regarding military chaplains and prayer. First and foremost, I think the provision fails to appreciate the spiritual, religious, cultural, and psychological diversity of twenty-first century America. I believe, as the Yale team suggested in the case of the USAFA, a “necessarily pluralistic environment” requires an appreciation of such diversity.

The enormous importance of developing an appreciation for such diversity is perhaps not fully understood until one grasps just how spiritually, religiously, culturally, and psychologically diverse the necessarily pluralistic environment of twenty-first century America has become. I would refer readers to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Statistical Abstract of the United States, specifically Table 69, as well as the work of Diana L. Eck, who has written:

In the past thirty years [following the Immigration Act of 1965] massive movements of people both as migrants and refugees have reshaped the demography of our world. Immigrants around the world number over 130 million, with about 30 million in the United States, a million arriving each year. The dynamic global image of our times is not the so-called clash of civilizations but the marbling of civilizations and peoples. Just as the end of the Cold War brought about a new geopolitical situation, the global movements of people have brought about a new georeligious reality…The new era of immigration is different from previous eras not only in magnitude and complexity but also in its very dynamics. Many of the migrants who come to the United States today maintain strong ties with their homelands, linked by travel and transnational communications networks, e-mails and faxes, satellite phone lines and cable television news. They manage to live both here and there in all the ways that modern communications and telecommunications have made possible…“We the people of the United States” now form the most profusely religious nation on earth. [1]

This diversity increases exponentially as this profusion of faith traditions takes root in the North America: not only have these traditions flourished in vast and varied forms, but they have also grown and changed considerably, sometimes birthing entirely new and uniquely American ways of practicing the traditions. Robert G. Anderson considers the example of Islam in America, pointing out that “the constellation of diverse faith communities with Muslim beliefs and practices [in North America] is as complex as that of Protestantism, leading to countless variety.” [2]

In my view, H.R. 5122′s provision regarding military chaplains and prayer, at its best, does nothing to foster an appreciation in military chaplains for America’s spiritual, religious, cultural, and psychological diversity. At its worst, the provision creates a standard by which chaplains could absolve themselves of developing such an appreciation. It effectively gives military chaplains permission to disregard the religious, spiritual, cultural, and psychological diversity of the armed forces when leading prayer.

Furthermore, the provision sets a dangerous precedent: if a military chaplain can eschew nonsectarian or interfaith prayer as long as it squares with his or her conscience, why stop there? Why shouldn’t he or she proselytize or evangelize if those activities are similarly deemed conscionable?

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To find out if your congressperson voted “aye” on H.R. 5122, go here. My former congressperson, Rep. Mark Udall, D-Colorado, did, and so did my current one, Rep. Steve Buyer, R-Indiana. They’ll both be hearing from me. If your district’s representative voted for the bill and you would like to share feelings or concerns, I encourage you to do so. Find out how to contact your district’s representative here.

Expressing ourselves to the House of Representatives is not the only action left for us to take, though: H.R. 5122 must be approved by the Senate before it takes effect. In other words, it is not too late for the provision to get dropped from the bill. If you are troubled by what the resolution allows regarding military chaplains and prayer, I strongly urge you to write/call/fax/e-mail your state senator and ask them not to support the bill until the provision is removed from it. Find out how to contact your state senator here.

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All of that said, I would like to take a moment to consider some nuance here. I would hate to see this argument reduced to a dualistic, “us” versus “them” thing–”them” being evangelical Christians, and “us” being everyone else. I don’t feel that this would be terribly productive, and I don’t believe it’s really that simple.

As the debate over H.R. 5122′s provision continues, I think we do well to remember that evangelical Christians do not lend themselves to easy categorization any more than other communities of faith. The validity of popular characterization notwithstanding, Evangelicals express themselves in ways that are no less diverse and dynamic than any other religious denomination. Consider just a few public figures: Jerry Falwell and George W. Bush are evangelical Christians, but so are Jim Wallis and Jimmy Carter.

We also do well to remember that one of the hallmarks of evangelical Christianity is, of course, evangelizing. For many evangelical Christians, the practice of evangelism is no less important than the practice of mindfulness is for me as a Buddhist. (We could debate the merits of evangelism, sure, but it would still be a deeply important practice for an awful lot of people. It is what is.)

And yet, while there may be a place for evangelism, there is a professional consensus that it is not within the context of chaplaincy. In a white paper jointly drafted by the Association of Clinical Pastoral Education, the Association of Professional Chaplains, the Canadian Association for Pastoral Practice and Education, the National Association of Catholic Chaplains, and the National Association of Jewish Chaplains–the five largest professional chaplaincy organizations in North America representing over 10,000 members–editors Larry VandeCreek and Laurel Burton assert that professional chaplains working specifically in healthcare facilities “reach across faith group boundaries and do not proselytize. Acting on behalf of their institutions, they also seek to protect patients from being confronted by other, unwelcome, forms of spiritual intrusion.”

In other words, professionally speaking, proselytizing and evangelizing do not equal considerate spiritual care (at least not in the world of healthcare). As Buddhist chaplain Mikel Ryuho Monnett says so eloquently:

…The role of the professional chaplain is not to proselytize a particular dogma but to stand with the patient where they are and to help the patient utilize their own spiritual views and beliefs as a resource for their own healing. [3]

So what is an evangelical Christian chaplain of the same ilk as those discussed in the news stories surrounding H.R. 5122 to do? I don’t quite know, and what people in my position think probably won’t make much of a difference: it’s important that evangelical Christians find their own answers…beyond hugely problematic provisions like those in H.R. 5122, that is. As Anderson reminds us:

The challenge for caregivers is to be comfortable in their own cultural and religious identity and open to working with and understanding different cultural and religious worldviews. [4]

I can’t do this for evangelical Christian chaplains–the challenge is theirs. What I would offer, though, is the reminder that every chaplain has her own ethical territory to negotiate carefully, and that this is crucial work. As Mary A. Fukuyama and Todd D. Sevig write:

It is important to recognize value conflicts that may involve an ethical dilemma for the caregiver…caregivers need to be able to delineate boundaries that are consistent with their personal values as well as providing for respectful patient care.[5]

In the future, I see those chaplains who would support H.R. 5122′s provision finding ways to function in the military that honor their personal values and provide for respectful patient care. I see a future in which those individuals who would be professional chaplains look at the diversity of 21st North America and see it not as a threat, but as something that inspires feelings of community.

WORKS CITED:

1. Diana L. Eck, A New Religious America (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2001), 4-5.
   
2. Robert G. Anderson, “The Search for Spiritual/Cultural Competency in Chaplaincy Practice: Five Steps that Mark the Path” in Ministry in the Spiritual and Cultural Diversity of Health Care: Increasing Competency for Chaplains, ed. Robert G. Anderson and Mary A. Fukuyama, 1 (Binghamton, NY: The Haworth Pastoral Press, 2004).
   
3. Mikel Monnett, “Developing a Buddhist Approach to Pastoral Care: A Peacemaker’s View,” The Journal of Pastoral Care and Counseling vol. 59, nos. 1-2 (Spring-Summer 2005): 59.
   
4. Anderson, 6.
   
5. Mary A. Fukuyama and Todd D. Sevig, “Cultural Diversity in Pastoral Care” in Ministry in the Spiritual and Cultural Diversity of Health Care: Increasing the Competency of Chaplains, ed. Robert G. Anderson and Mary A. Fukuyama, 37-8 (Binghamton, NY: The Haworth Pastoral Press, 2004).