Maybe you should say how available you think Chaplains are in the field. A quick wiki look shows there’s a total of 2900 chaplains in the military, including National Guard. Doesn’t sound particularly “available”.
I hate to be the one to break it to you, but when the going gets rough out in the field you don’t have a wide variety of chaplains to pick and choose from, so there’s a good chance you’re going to get one from a religion different from the one you believe in. The “random dude who got the atheist chaplain gig” will have the same training to deal with other religions that those other chaplains did-would you find them as useless as the atheist chaplain with the same training?
That’s the easy question in this thread. Say the word. The e and the i aren’t even in the same syllable. The last syllable is ist just like in chemist, physicist, etc.
Yeah, but I say it “ath - i - est”
If I was a Christian, the odds would be pretty good actually that I’d get a chaplain who believed in Jesus as my saviour. I doubt the esoteric nature of the Communion would come up much.
But regardless, “the same training” means what? He also did the fabulous military course on comparitive religions? He took Psych 101? Whoopdidoo. A chaplain is there to attend to religious needs. An atheist, by definition, does not have religious needs. We might as well make up a position of “male gynecologists” so men can talk about their lady problems. Just to be fair.
Except that there are atheists in the military who want an atheist perspective from a chaplain. And there are atheists who want to do the job of chaplain.
Your opinion (and the others in this thread) would be relevant in an IMHO thread about whether you would find an atheist chaplain helpful, but in this thread, it seems there is a very simple and basic Constitutional principle that answers the question, “Should the U.S. Military allow Humanist/Secularist/Atheist chaplains?”
It says “There must be Atheist chaplains” in the Constitution?
I was under the impression that equivalent services must be provided for all religions, not exact naming conventions. Is that not so?
It is true. If they would like to create a new billet specifically for counselors who are endorsed by atheist or humanist organizations and have a special calling and ability to address the personal, spiritual, and emotional needs of atheists in a non-clinical framework, host gatherings and perform weddings and funerals for the atheist community, and receive training in meeting the similar needs of other servicemembers when their prefered chaplain is not available, then, even though it would smack a little of “separate but equal,” I promise not to complain.
The simple answer is no, there is not a basic Constitutional principle that requires atheist chaplains. They allow chaplains of any religion so there is no intent to establish a specific religion as the military’s official one nor do they require military personnel to hold a religion. The only argument against this is if you think atheism is in fact a religion.
Whether all religions are served equally and whether chaplains are qualified(or even required) to counsel atheists are among several controversies currently going on in the U.S. Military.
This probably doesn’t really answer your question but its just one anecdotal experience I had in the Army. I was sent to see an oral surgeon that was a lieutenant colonel for my chronic TMJ pain and he had been in something like 30 years or close to it and he told me that he had practically begged to be deployed during the entire Iraq/Afghanistan wars and he told me they refused to deploy him because they felt he was needed more at the army hospital he worked at in the states. So it seems medical personnel have to mostly go where they are deemed to be needed, whoever exactly decides that.
If I had to hazard a guess they are not as psychiatrists and such are probably not as readily available as chaplains because soldiers that are deploying go through a process called SRP or Soldier Readiness Processing, which is supposed to root out any medical, dental issues stuff like that before deployment and if I remember includes some review or at least questions about mental health status, the soldier must be medically cleared so theoretically there should not be as many problems once they go downrange.
I know the Army changed some things after reports of large numbers of soldier suicides but I have a feeling access is pretty limited. I found this article from around the time of the Fort Hood shooting so the numbers are out of date but maybe it provides at least a clue:
In the same sense that bald is a hairstyle, yes. If hairstyle (or even hair color) were a constitutionally protected class, I would expect bald people to receive the same protections. And indeed, the courts have routinely ruled that the nonreligious are entitled to exactly the same rights and protections as religious people.
Also according to Wikipedia anyhow:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_chaplains
Not sure how many are/were deployed at any given time, but the numbers make me think there is probably more access to a chaplain depending where you are stationed/deployed.
Of course, the begged question of this entire discussion is are chaplains particularly useful outside of performing religious ceremonies? I know they get to sign certain forms and all but that’s a function they’ve been assigned not a measure of their usefulness.
I do not hold any opinion, through lack of information and experience, as to whether chaplains in the US military have any legitimate function. So I’ll consider both possibilities:
If chaplains in the military do serve any legitimate purpose, then that legitimate purpose can be served just as well by atheists as by theists.
And if chaplains in the military do not serve any legitimate purpose, then they should be eliminated.
Or, to put it another way, any purpose that a theist chaplain can serve which an atheist chaplain could not is not a legitimate purpose for an officer of the US military.
Now, if a religious group wishes to recruit missionaries to accompany American troops, at the religious group’s expense, who would provide religious services to the troops, they should be allowed to do so. But not on the government’s dime, or under the government’s auspices or authority.
Which is why I’m trying to find out which would be easier to find out in the field, near the front line.
Likewise, if they want to eliminate all paid religious support staff (i.e., no more chaplaincy), I will not complain. In fact, I’ll cheer. (Though I would also ask for increased mental health support for servicemembers to make up for it.)
You have got to be fucking joking.
Look, they introduced chaplains to serve what leaders at the time thought was a religious need among members of the military. Maybe that time is past or it was wrong all along. Regardless, I don’t see how pretending there’s a religious need for atheists to have one of their own chaplaining for them has any validity. I see nothing right in having someone who thinks religion is bullshit conducting religious services.
That’s nice, but if atheists serving want it, and atheist chaplains are willing to provide it, then the Constitutional principles of freedom of religion and equal protection mandate it.
If a Christian wants to complain that the only chaplain available happens to be atheist (unlikely) they can get in line behind the Christian complaining that the only available chaplain for them happens to be Buddhist or Hindu. And behind the many Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, Mormons, Catholics, and atheists complaining that the only chaplains available are conservative evangelical Christians (a real problem, from what I understand, although the chaplains themselves are trained to serve those people anyway, as has been mentioned.)
No, it’s not “nice”, it’s reality. And you can tell me it’s “mandated” once someone wins a court case. In the mean time, the religionists get a randomly assigned priest and the atheist muddle along somehow without a priest. Unless they want to talk to the priest which they are totally allowed to do.