It’s not that atheism is a religion, it is that a religious belief is not necessary for the position.
Other nations have ‘humanist’ chaplains, apparently without too much fuss.
If the person is there to serve the needs of the soldiers, and can do the job, I myself don’t see any concerns.
To my mind, a chaplain has to be able to be open to soldiers of whatever religious background. A person who is too fanatically committed to any position, so much so as to be unwilling to (as it were) suspend disbelief in order to serve a soldier who was of a different faith (or lack of faith), would not be able to do the job effectively. That goes for religious and athiest alike. The last thing a Jewish soldier facing death wants to hear is a Christian chaplain trying to convert him or her to Christianity; by the same token, a religious Jewish soldier does not want a lecture from an athiest about how Judaism is superstitious nonsense.
A good chaplain could be either Christian (or any other religion) or athiest or humanist; the requirement is that they not allow their personal beliefs, or lack of beliefs, deflect them from doing what they are there for - seving the needs of the soldiers. If they can achieve that, their personal beliefs, or lack of beliefs, should be irrelevant.
A visit with a chaplain does not go on your record. A visit with a therapist would go on your medical record if you used a military psychiatrist.
The reason that atheists need chaplains is for non-judgemental, consequence-free counseling.
And even a visit to the chaplain doesn’t necessarily dodge that, depending upon who knows.
I had a battalion Sgt. Major once who used to carry around a huge wooden mallet, the kind used for driving large tent pegs. One time he pasted a picture of the chaplain on one face of it. Wanna see the chaplain?? Sgt. Major was a major dick.
As far as I can see, what he ‘went and did’ is apply for a government job (one for which he is qualified) while being honest about his religious views. This is something you’re unhappy that he’s done?
I’m unhappy that he’s being barred from that job based on his religious views (which sounds like a clear violation of the 1st Amendment), and it’s a shame that our country is so backward that we have to make a huge fuss over atheists wanting equality with theists, but I fail to see how that’s his fault. He’s clearly the victim here.
Given that military chaplains are expected to be able to counsel service members of all faiths (or none), I see no reason to suggest than an atheist is any more or less inherently qualified for the position than a Catholic, a Hindu, a Wiccan, or a Pastafarian. Someone who has trouble tolerating other belief systems might well be bad at the job, but if you think that religious intolerance is exclusively or even especially found among atheists, you haven’t been paying attention.
This bothers me more than it should. So here, in a nutshell, is why I think this is a good idea.
Say I’m a soldier in the war. I’m fighting, I’m killing, I put my life on the line. I’m also an atheist. I’m troubled by my daily life.
I go to my chaplain. He says “God has a plan for you.” I roll my eyes so hard I nearly snap them out of my head.
What I want is for him to say, “Your country needs you to serve. You are helping the greater good and your society needs you.” Something like that anyway. (Please note - whether it’s true or not doesn’t matter at this junction).
I want him to support me in a secular humanist way. Help me see my way to the end of what I am doing and where I am, and why killing is morally justified in this instance, when normally my society says killing is a jailable offense.
What I don’t want to hear about, at all, is religion.
I believe, as an atheist. I don’t believe in your God or any God. But I believe in us, as humans, I believe that there is a future for the human race, and I presume if I am a soldier, I would like to believe in the moral rightness of what I am doing.
Look, there are two things a chaplain can do for a member of the military: he can either perform rituals of the serviceman’s faith, or he can offer counseling and advice.
To a serviceman who is an atheist, the former duty is completely unnecessary.
As for the latter… if an atheist sailor is having marital problems, or an atheist Marine is suffering from post-combat stress, or an atheist Air Force pilot is suffering from depression, an atheist soldier is deeply grieving after seeing comrades killed in action, guess what? The Defense Department already provides ALL of those guys plenty of access to secular counselors, doctors, psychologists, counselors and support groups.
Giving a secular counselor the title of “chaplain” makes little to no sense.
There are plenty of humanists who enjoy getting together on a weekly basis in an environment that feels much like a church service. They can and are led by a person who serves in the same capacity as a pastor, and though the sermons are lacking in any supernatural woo, they’re sermons just the same.
Atheists and humanists can tend towards the philosophical, and a fellow non-believer will be able to ‘pastor’ them in a way that a believing couselor wouldn’t, secular practice or no.
ETA - In a combat environment, those ‘secular counselors’ aren’t going to be available. Chaplains follow troops in to war zones and combat situation. An atheist may be left with no resources other than religious chaplains; the possibility that he could turn to a humanist chaplain would be encouraging.
Yep. Unless you can convince me that he had no idea this was going to land him some nice news coverage and give the usual suspects grist for their mill, while offering little to no hope of his actually ever being awarded the position, then this is in the same basket as suing to get “In God We Trust” off the currency and “under God” out of the Pledge of Allegiance. While I quite want IGWT off the currency and will occasionally mark it off such banknotes that fall into my hands, and I always personally omit “under God” from any recitation of the Pledge I might take part in, and I feel that both are contrary to the First Amendment as it should be interpreted, though not as it has been, suing over them is a silly little attention-seeking publicity stunt that will reap for atheists writ large nothing but bad press. Trying to become the first openly atheist chaplain is the same thing, more or less.
(More or less because I’m inclined to think that the notion of an atheist chaplain is silly, rather like an atheist minister. The position is defined as religious. If pressed, I suppose I’d say there ought to be a separate but analogous position for atheists, but the truth is that I don’t find religious chaplains all that troubling, so long as they’re strictly forbidden from proselytizing. In fact, I don’t even know that they’d violate my personal, strict reading of the First Amendment establishment clause, though imposing an actual religious requirement raises an interesting question re: the No Religious Test clause…)
May I also add that I belive the military should have NO chaplains at all?
I’m an atheist in the military and I disagree with you completely.
As a former member of the Army and a person with no faith, I stayed away from chaplains. If there had been an atheist chaplain, I would have avoided him too.
Bully for you. Why?
ETA: I was and atheist in the military.
Unless there is truth to the fact mentioned above that a visit to a chaplain is off the record while a visit to a counselor or support group is not. I would be interested if an active or former member of the military could comment on this.
Because in my current posting, I’m working for chaplains as their driver and they are a consistently friendly and helpful lot who’ve helped many soldiers and sailors who were clearly in serious distress. Given the demands put on military personnel and the stresses extended to their families, I think is it both stupid and inefficient to get rid of the chaplain role in the name of some idealized seperation of church and state.
If you have other reasons, feel free to elaborate, but they would have to pretty good to over-ride evidence I’ve personally witnessed.
My minister has a PhD in Divinity from Yale. She is hands down one of the most intelligent people I know, well read, and thinks. She is also hands down one of the most compassionate people I know. She’s agnostic.
I don’t see any reason why you can’t have an atheist chaplain. Chaplains counsel. They provide religious services - which my UU minister does very well (I haven’t seen the count on how many people she married yesterday yet, but I suspect a dozen or more - it was the first day for gay marriage in Minnesota - and the first day in 12 years she would sign a marriage license for anyone). My atheist husband and my agnostic minister spent some time together when my husband’s brother was dying. The nice thing about having a UU agnostic minister is that if you need a little Torah or Koran or Eight Fold Path or Wiccan Rede in your ceremony - she can work it in with the same respect she works in anything.
Now, she self describes as agnostic, this guy self describes as atheist. If his the disrespectful sort of atheist, I can’t see it working - if he is atheist in the agnostic sense - and respectful - I’d rather have him as a chaplain than a Christian who thinks all non-Christians are going to hell.
The solution is very simple. Replace them with a corps of counselors who have spend their time schooling learning nothing but how to perform counseling, instead of religion.
Atheists don’t get married? They don’t have memorials when someone dies?
That’s a surprise to me, married to one and having just had a funeral for one.
Maybe when you, as an atheist, don’t need an officiant at these things, or are fine with a judge when you get married. But others want the ritual (and maybe a little more romance than standing in chambers - which is what I had).
And I disagree. As long as for a significant percentage of the society (including the cohort that makes up its military) religion remains important, I see no value in dropping access to religious counseling, especially given the right-and-wrong, life-and-death issues involved in keeping a soldier effective in his duty, if he sees these issues in a religious light. Similarly, if the sight of cartoon bunnies kept soldiers from derailing, it is logical to make cartoon bunny pictures available to them.
When we start making agnosticism or atheism a condition of military service, fine, drop the chaplains. In the meantime, they can and do perfom counseling roles that may or may not be religious in nature.
I’m not Bryan Ekers, but I’ll hazard a guess that all those religious guys need someone to keep them in line, or there’s no telling WHAT wacky crap they’d get up to…
It’s all academic, anyway. Religion is firmly, firmly entrenched in the military, and of course the chaplain service isn’t going away. Ever. As long as they keeping adding more and more silly religions, though, they should also add humanist chaplains.