With most orthodox mainstream Christians I am with Reinhold Niebuhr who said we should not be concerned with "the furniture or the temperature of hell." Heaven as a "place" has been out for a long time. Heaven as a way of picturing and imaging and providing a means of expressing hope remains "in;" whatever else that hope means, it envisions that "nothing shall separate us from the love of God," including death. I believe that about death and God, and know that to say more takes us into the realms of the unimaginable and indescribable. . .

As for hell: some years ago U.S. Catholic magazine asked its readers who they pictured for sure would be in hell, and they only found two--Hitler and Stalin. No doubt most of us could picture more. Or maybe not. I gave the Ingersoll Lecture at Harvard some years ago: "Hell Disappeared--No one Noticed. A civic argument." 19th-Century public school readers from the "good olds days," as they are known, told children that if they would lie and not repent they would go to hell; and their parents would look at them from heaven and see them in flames, and know they had it coming. I'd like to think that such pedagogy and envisioning is not around.

While I believe that God is a judge, I don't think God ratifies all our decisions. . . Frankly, I almost never believe a believer in literal hell. I'll be at dinner with one, and ask him or her to hold a finger over the candle for ten seconds. No way. Now picture it all over you, forever. No way. If you believe that, why are you spending two hours with me when you could be rescuing them?

One does not hear much hellfire preaching even from hellfire preachers these days; they attract more with the "prosperity gospel" than with fright.

Hell is separation from God, from Love; it's a self-chosen situation.

To the second question: would I vote for a pagan?
[I doubt if one will rise to candidacy for president, but as for other offices:'
Would I vote for a pagan? I probably already have.
They come in many informal forms.

To the first question, about chaplaincy:
Some years ago I spoke to the chaplains' committee on endorsement, or whatever it is called: they check the credentials of the religious groups that want to be represented in chaplaincy. I've studied American religion for decades, but those two days I heard testimony from any number of groups that want to be in on the act.
Curiously, while Catholics, Jews, mainline Protestants are not producing enough chaplains--in part because their religious bodies have more dissesnters against recent wars, the less familiar, small, and, to others, "exotic" groups were ready to go. In some senses, it seemed that they welcomed this credentialing.
So it may be with Pagans.
since Chaplains are supposed to serve people of many faiths, and most do, it may be hard to picture many non-pagans welcoming services by pagan priests.
Still, on church-state grounds it's hard to know on what principle to rule them out: one does not want the government being the determiner of what is a legitimate religion and what isn't.
Some folks on both sides of this issue will get emotional about it, and most of the rest of the military and civilian citizenry will go about its business the same way, whether or not . . . .

First, does anyone care? Yes, millions do, with differing degrees of intensity.

Catholics, first. One faction cheers, because they are anti-ecumenical, consider Orthodox and Protestant members to be buzzing insects that distract Catholics who must swat them. Or, more charitably, because they fear that ecumenism portends relativism, and Catholic truth too easily gets given away. Another faction has begun to speak up in criticism, seeing it as an abrasive, arrogant, mistimed, and itself distracting word at a time when people of faith ought to pull together against common enemies. No doubt between them are most Catholics who more or less have always taken for granted what the Pope said of the Church and Everybody Else, but will not be stirred or alienated: they know Christian neighbors who seem to be doing far more than "playing at church" in ecclesial communities. I'd add a fourth element: those who are enraged by such expressions and think that "it's the same old Ratzinger," the old Inquisitor speaking up, but who hold their fire, in charity and so as not to alienate Rome.

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