Military Chaplains, Yes! Prayers at Meals, NO!

I fail to see what prayer at meals has to do with a “magical” approach to religion ... I hope our society prays more not less. Let us not offend God by not talking to him because we fear what other's might think. And you are a professor at a Seminary?

TTWS's screed is a great example of why we need to keep religion and government completely separated. Otherwise, people like TTWS will be more than happy to use the power of government to force their religious opinions on everybody else!

"PRAYER IN THE PUBLIC SQUARE"

A nation that does not recognize God is a nation that has a very unfortunate dim future in store for its people.

Many atheists and agnostics have tried to create regimes without God, who gave man the Ten Commandments to guide man in his odyssey to his final destination.

Nations who have ignored the Commandments have been embodied in such social disasters as the USSR, North Korea, China, the Congo, and the Sudan.

Consequently, these regimes have bred totalitarian dictators. These dictators have been personified by such luminaries as Idi Amin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, bin Laden, Arafat, Pol Pot, Saddam, and the like. Their legacy was and is the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, famine, war, pestilence and death.

Moreover, there is only one true God; get it wrong and you get everything else wrong.

Much to the angst of the troglodytes agnostics, and atheists this country was founded on our Judeo-Christian heritage. The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution does not speak of a “Wall of Separation." It speaks of freedom of religion. That freedom is under continuous assault from the Communist ideological ACLU, whose founder was a Communist, and who vowed to overturn the Constitution.

The "Wall" was another example of liberals writing laws into the Constitution.

Notwithstanding, the ACLU is succeeding with five ACLU oriented justices on the Supreme Court. These Justices have transmogrified the Constitution into a Constitution that defies God and they have creatively invented Constitutional rights to immorality.

Banning the Ten Commandments from the public square, while Moses and the Commandments decorate the East Pediment of the Supreme Court building and the doors to the entrance of the Court is the height of arrogance.

In the Supreme Court decision of “Lawrence v. Texas,” Justice Kennedy trumpeted the ignominy of the left-wing troglodyte Justice Stephens. Kennedy said Stephens was right in “Bowers” and is right in “Lawrence,” viz. that traditional "morality serves no legitimate State interest."

That irrationality is that law is not based on traditional moral values. On the contrary, traditional morality is the basis for all Civil Law. Any law that contradicts the Natural Moral Law (NML) is not licit. It is a contradiction of human nature and is an open profession of illegitimacy.

Thus, the witless Court inadvertently proscribed the legitimacy of all laws based on morality. Absurdity begets absurdity.

Laws against stealing, murder, and lying are all laws based on traditional morality. Moreover, “Lawrence,” was based on the traditional moral value “privacy" that the Court claimed served no legitimate State purpose.

Because the Court usurped the powers of God, over 48 million unborn have died by abortion, and by their decision, they ushered in the Sexual Revolution and the Culture of Death. These base cultural detestations are a revolt against the moral standards that are essentially necessary for the vitality of an ordered social order. Such profane revolutions are a prescription for social suicide.

“Roe v. Wade was fallacious and contemptuous rebuke of our Judeo-Christian heritage. The Bill of Rights in the Fourth and Fifth Amendments unequivocally guarantee that a person has a right to life and the right to be secure in his own person. Blackmun’s farcical ludicrous Trimester Theory (TT) that the conceived is a “thing” and not human is a travesty of the Natural Law.

Knowing that the Constitution protected all persons, Blackmun usurped the authority of God and redefined “person” to circumscribe the Constitution. Blackmun and company had no more authority to redefine the nature of man than they had to claim it was illegal for the Sun to shine.

Under the auspices of Blackmun's theory, a woman was never pregnant with a child. TT sustained partial birth abortion. It took the Court three attempts to admit it was a child being born and you can’t suck out its brains.

The Natural Law is not the providence of the Court but God's domain, a God who endowed man with certain inalienable rights, based on the NML that the Court had just proscribed in “Lawrence.”

Religion should not and cannot legitimately be forced on anyone, but the recognition of God can and should be forced on anyone who chooses to live in a nation that succors to the inalienable rights of all humanity. Not to give honor to our Creator is a direct insult to the purpose that our Founding Fathers founded this nation on and the historical moral legacy that America embraces.

“America the Beautiful,” echoes the words that preface our nations heritage, “O beautiful for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain for purple mountain majesties, above the fruited plain, America, America, God shed his grace on thee, and crowned thy hood with brotherhood from sea to shining sea.”

Yes, prayer should be said in the public square to acknowledge the gifts God has given this wonderful nation that he has not given to any other nation in history, and we should thank God every day for it. If our money acknowledges God, so should we.

As retired Navy Medical Service Corps officer and prior enlisted man with over 28 years service I have always had a mixed view of the military chaplaincy. I strongly support freedom of religion and all that that implies. However, over many, many years I experienced varied responses from chaplains...from complete regard for this freedom and willingness to minister to anyone without question to most chaplains, however, who felt that they had to preach that their faith was the right faith. I always respected the Jewish and Catholic chaplains over the protestant chaplains because the Jewish and Catholic chaplains seemed to have more empathy with the sailors and Marines that the protestant chaplains.

Also, I always have felt that chaplains being commissioned officers insulated them from the real life of the enlisted men and women. Most of the protestant chaplains seemed to have a great sense of their rank. Not the other chaplains though. Most of the Catholic and Jewish chaplains seemed to have no sense of rank or privilge and many didn't wear their rank devices at times. I have always felt that chaplains should have no rank. I have never served with a Muslim chaplain.

Overall, I feel that the majority of military chaplains did not deserve to have the honor of serving the sailors and Marines.

the difference between 250 billions of dollars and 300 billions of dollars is a news in the newspaper. the difference between prayer in the meals and in the chapel is a match in the matchbox.

the difference between a cheese of matchbox and man of archangels is a soldier in the army. what is a debt? a worth on a word?

Military chaplains are about the only thing related to religion that I don't mind having my tax dollars support, as long as they're serving more as multi/interfaith counselors and not as proseltyzers. I figure if someone is risking their life to defend my country then it's the least we can do. It's when I hear people like William Boykin conflating serving his country with fighting for Jesus that I get very uncomfortable.

See, now you've gone and done it, Free. You've awakened all those notions that if I *could* be a military chaplain, it'd be like spiritual MASH reruns. :)

Yeah, privately-funded 'embedded clergy.' That'd be great. "Sorry, no funerals: our God seeing the flag-draped coffins or soldiers with PTSD might undermine the holiness of our mission.."

"Paying for the chaplain, however, is not voluntary. And that's the problem with government chaplains. Citizens should never be forced to support other people's religions."

People never should be forced to support *only* certain other people's religions. I don't approve of the Evangelicals *using* the military for their personal pulpit, but someone over there wants a Catholic chaplain, I'll chip in *myself.*

"So while I agree with most of your essay, I think chaplains should be privately funded by churches and other religious organizations, just like the news media funds war zone correspondents."

Oh, great, let's have the war 'covered' by only the *big* sects with the money to front a jaunt to the exotic locales, and who *then* meet military approval.
Embedded clergy. That'll work.

"Seeing the chaplain, however, is voluntary."

Susan,

Paying for the chaplain, however, is not voluntary. And that's the problem with government chaplains. Citizens should never be forced to support other people's religions.

So while I agree with most of your essay, I think chaplains should be privately funded by churches and other religious organizations, just like the news media funds war zone correspondents.

I agree with PaganPlace (which I almost always do). This was an excellent essay. Susan once again displays why she's my favorite religious columnist at On Faith. She always has a balanced, reasonable, and fair-minded view.

Good column.

There's definitely a difference between mandatory displays of piety and having clergy services available. And given that the Religious Right have long been trying to use the military for their own personal recruiting ground/captive audience, it's singularly inappropriate to contribute to that polarized climate by forcing everyone to pray or expose themselves as non-that-sort-of Christian.

Particularly among the more right-wing Christians, but really any group, there are a lot of 'war' metaphors to the spirituality, ...everything is treated as some kind of 'war,' including the desires to convert everyone and suppress different sexualities. Which I think can't help but really confuse the issue about what the troops' missions are supposed to be: Gods know you hear it in some of the rhetoric out there.

This practice of 'prayer dinners' are potentially very polarizing, particularly in the atmosphere the right-wing Evangelicals have created in the military in recent decades.

SUSAN BROOKS THISTLETHWAITE

Very nice post. I am glad that the seminary that you are President of allows recruiters for military chaplaincy because they are needed.

I, personally, never went on my own to see a chaplain when I was in the military but I am glad that they were and are still there.

Sometimes, someone just needs someone to talk with and sometimes your fellow service man or woman just won't do.

There is plenty that chaplains do besides religious services.

Your story of the Quaker says a lot in the fact that he does not look at chaplaincy as some kind of magical amulet but that reality is reality and war can be a very tough reality.

War will be with us until the Kingdom arrives as you or anyone else that actually reads some of the comments on this blog should be able to see.

There is so much hatred being spewed out by so many people no matter what label they apply to themselves.

War comes in all sizes whether it is between two countries or two individuals, it is still war, only the size is different and doesn't it seem kind of strange that some can not see that.

War can even be on a smaller scale, at least in human perception, than between two individuals and that is the war that is going on within each and every human being.

Take care, be ready.

Sincerely, Thomas Paul Moses Baum.