In my military branch, the Army, the chaplaincy is dominated by Baptists, Pentecostals, and assorted evangelicals. There are some outside this category – a handful of Roman Catholics, a few Jews, a sprinkling of liberal Protestants, and fewest of all – Orthodox.

But such non-conformists are merely there for window dressing, barely tolerated by the majority fundamentalists in order to give Congress and the courts the impression that the chaplaincy is diverse. (I understand from colleagues in the Navy that their chaplaincy is much more balanced. I have no idea of the situation in the Air Force.)

In my estimation, the dominant brand of Army chaplains is rarely troubled by the morality of war and chaplains' role in it. I know I was not so troubled for the decade that I was a Protestant Army chaplain. (I definitely sense the tension now that I am Orthodox.) They tend to see America as good in all that it does. So if the President of the United States of America starts a war, and America is good, then that war must be just - especially if the President starting the war is a fellow evangelical, and earnestly prayed about his decision. That may sound naive and simplistic to OPF readers, but that is precisely how they see it.

I have heard of a few cases where evangelical Army chaplains became ridiculously nationalistic and de-sensitized. I understand that, during the Vietnam war, a chaplain in an infantry battalion in the 101st Airborne had his picture taken with an M-16, wearing ammunition belts criss-crossed over his chest like Poncho Villa, and a helmet that said, "Kill A Commie For Christ." When that picture wound up on the cover of Life magazine, the senior chaplains at the Pentagon tried to have him court-martialed. But the infantry chain-of-command loved him because he was apparently extremely brave, and they gave him a Silver Star medal instead. I knew some chaplains who took much greater pride in the airborne wings on their chests, and the ranger tabs on their shoulders, than they did pondering the cross on their collars. Those chaplains are probably the type that one OPF contributor saw blessing atrocities in Serbia.

But chaplains like that are the exception. Most chaplains, including the fundamentalists, are actually there to minister to the spiritual needs of soldiers. I spent the vast majority of my time doing marriage counseling. This is not surprising since the Army has a horrendous divorce rate. I also visited the sick and dying, intervened in a couple of suicides, prayed with those who had lost loved ones, did a lot of funerals, and attended to mundane administrative duties. There wasn't much war-mongering going on.

Even in the current war, chaplains weren't exactly beating the drums. One of my most poignant memories was just hours before the beginning of Operation Desert Storm. I met with a large group of chaplains in my area. We all expected chemical weapons to be unleashed on us, and heavy casualties to result. So we coordinated what we would do, where we would go, who we could get help from, etc. But in our final prayer before adjourning the meeting, the senior chaplain pointed out that, just as we expected to sustain heavily casualties that night, there were hundreds of thousands of Iraqi soldiers who were also preparing to die in the coming days. Most of them were draftees, probably hungry and thirsty, with little choice of being where they were, most of them somebody's husband or son, who probably hated Saddam. The chaplain pointed out that Jesus commanded us to pray for our enemies, and so that's what we were going to do right now. At the end of his eloquent prayer for our fellow human beings in Iraqi uniforms, nearly all of us were sobbing. Nobody in that room was blessing the killing.

The historic reason that the U.S. government has always had chaplains in the armed forces is to ensure that soldiers have the opportunity to freely exercise their chosen religious faith while in combat, the same way they have a right to three meals a day and adequate medical care. For the first hundred years or so, chaplains were not paid by the government, but were allowed to "tag along" like embedded reporters today. The U.S. government has seriously entertained the idea of abolishing the chaplaincy. There was a court challenge to the military chaplaincy in the ‘80s, based on the separation of church and state. The chaplaincy won that case, but not by much.

From my 20 years' experience as an Army chaplain, I think the chaplaincy is having a harder and harder time justifying its existence to anybody. Through World War II, the overwhelming majority of generals and average soldiers were regular church-goers, so the chaplaincy had a strong case to exist. But, just as American society is rapidly becoming secularized, so is the Army. By the time I retired, I noticed that most of the soldiers attending services were older. It was increasingly rare for a soldier in his teens or 20's to attend services. The leaders of the Army chaplaincy see this and are always looking for new ways to seem more relevant in a rapidly secularizing Army, focusing more and more on counseling (which is in huge demand, unlike religious services). But I think it will be an uphill struggle in the long run.

The Army's fondness for the chaplaincy is cooling. About ten years ago, the Army's Engineer branch redesigned their organizational structure, deciding how many bulldozer operators and demolitions experts they needed in their line battalions. Without telling the Chaplains branch, the Engineer branch eliminated the chaplain slot from their battalion organizational chart, replacing the chaplain with a chemical officer. After this change was put in place, the Chaplain branch found out, went crazy, and successfully lobbied to have the chaplain slot restored. But the underlying message from the rationalistic engineers to the chaplains was: we don't value what you do.

Someday, those secular officers now in their 20s will be in their 50s and in charge of the Army. If current trends continue, those generals are as likely to be atheists or Muslims or Wiccans as Christians. They may decide that these quaint Christian chaplains can easily be replaced by counseling social workers.

Fr. John Brown is priest-in-charge of Holy Apostles of Bloomington-Normal, IL, OCA. He was interviewed by Come Receive the Light on August 9, 2003. This article appears courtesy of the Orthodox Peace Fellowship.