Chaplains Needed

Eight-thousand souls are deployed in a single carrier strike group. The multitude is spread across the aircraft carrier as well as its satellite submarines and destroyers. Every night afloat, the 1MC, the announcement system, sounds. These speakers — which would at other times call sailors to war or carry the captain’s instructions to his men when making ready to leave homeport for up to a year — at 2200 sound the voice of God. A prayer, theologically simple and universal but undoubtedly Christian, passes into the diesel enclosures, the reactor departments, and the ammunition storerooms.

While the prayers are rendered, it is expected that all hands halt in their transits and receive the benediction. Sinners, all — some saved, others agnostic, and a few militantly atheistic — still themselves. The only lights allowed in most parts of the ship at night are red in order to reduce the distance that the illumination travels; it is in this scarlet glow that a sailor can feel the smallness of his sleeping rack (which measures 6.5 feet by 2.25 feet by 2.5 feet) and easily imagine himself as either Ebenezer Scrooge in his grave or Jonah in the belly of a mechanical whale. These moments are a comforting, unsettling, and blessed interlude in a day that, in all other aspects, is a simulacrum of the one that preceded it. The ancient maritime tradition of the evening prayer connects those souls with the multitudes who did the same in those very racks. 

Our mariners need ministering, but men of the cloth are difficult to come by. This must change, for almost nowhere is there a more profound need for the spiritually palliative effects of God’s love. Like the country it protects, the military is spiritually adrift. But while civilian pastors must compete with seemingly endless distractions for their flock, the chaplaincy has the opportunity to reach out to servicemen who are away from many of those distractions (phones, freedom, etc.). 

While this may sound exploitative to the skeptic — “Ha ha, yes, get the troops Christianized through coercive, state-funded proselytizers” — it’s more true that deployments are a rare opportunity for a young man or woman to reflect on mortality. This was certainly true for me. Adolescence is frenetic, and kids operate off of preloaded scripts from parents or reject those scripts with just as much carelessness. In such instances, when the specter of death looms large, sailors or marines require a confidant outside the chain of command with whom to work through human emotions and existential dread. This is the good and proper role of the chaplain, who, unlike a psychologist, can do more than offer coping strategies — he can offer eternal perspective while occupying a nonmedical role in a serviceman’s life. Oftentimes, those who seek help through counseling are viewed by shipmates as broken or as a liability. The chaplain, while uniformed, occupies a liminal space between medicine, hierarchy, and fraternity. 

Unfortunately for our deployed forces, there simply are not enough chaplains to go around. The US military has fewer than 6,000 chaplains to serve its 1.4 million active-duty members, with the best ratios of chaplains to servicemen going to the Air Force, which has a chaplain for every 146 airmen, and the Army, which has a chaplain for every 162 soldiers. Meanwhile, the Marines and Navy, joint branches, share 800 chaplains between them for an unacceptable ratio of one chaplain for every 643 sailors and marines. The Navy recently announced an effort to get chaplains aboard every surface combatant — destroyers, cruisers, and the like — but, for now, the chaplains that are available to a carrier strike group are often exclusively on the carrier. With a crew of over 5,000 on an aircraft carrier, the chaplain has more than enough to occupy himself aboard that one vessel, so he may only visit the other ships a couple of times during a deployment.

Having not worked and eaten alongside the crews of those smaller vessels, the chaplain will find that the sailors have little reason to seek his counsel outside of moments of acute distress — and those who do sign up for the few available appointments will be scrutinized by their peers for weakness. While that scrutiny may seem uncharitable, the reality is that deployments introduce petty rivalries, frustrations, and dramaturgy that civilians — who only deal with their coworkers for 40 hours a week — cannot understand. 

Having a full-time chaplain on board offers organic interaction that can more naturally engender personal dialogue in a way a four-hour stop could never produce. A fleet chaplain, Captain Richard Ryan, put it this way in an interview with the military news service Defense Visual Information Distribution Service: “There’s an old saying that no one cares what you know until they know that you care. That saying is rooted in relationships. That’s chaplaincy care. Just being there and being available can mean the world to someone going through a difficult time. It’s those moments that I treasure the most.”

Such a change would be expensive in terms of manpower and would require serious recruiting efforts from Christian sects, especially the Catholic Church. The Catholic World Report writes: “In 1965, with U.S. Catholic population around 50 million, 95 percent of the country’s 36,467 diocesan priests were engaged in active ministry; last year, 73.5 million Catholics were being served by 66 percent of the 24,110 priests (most of the other 34 percent were retired). Ordinations dropped from 805 in 1970 to 451 last year.” Still, an increasing cultural unfamiliarity with Catholic rites and representation brought about an episode in which priests were barred from practicing at a VA hospital after a for-profit religious services group won the chaplaincy contract despite having no priests to conduct Roman Catholic services and sacraments. Catholic believers need their priests, and Rome, to fight for them.

 Protestants, especially low-church evangelicals, have picked up most of the slack for those who wish to be buried beneath a cross. However, the Protestants aren’t able to entirely fulfill demand either, which is worrisome for a couple of reasons. The first is that it increases the chances that other religious groups — Islam and pagans, foremost — may fill those positions. Call me bigoted, but I want Christian chaplains. Islam and paganism in their many forms are antithetical to American ideals, and we should tolerate them but do all we can to limit their influence in the armed services.

 To be sure, it has never been a more challenging time to serve as a chaplain, outside, of course, of war: chaplains now face demands that they preside over non-Christian ceremonies and questions about how to handle same-sex “marriages.” For instance, there was a controversy at Fort Bragg in North Carolina that involved a Baptist chaplain, Jerry Squires, who faced confinement in military prison because the Army alleged that he had engaged in discrimination by not allowing a same-sex couple to attend a marriage retreat he was leading. The chaplain testified that he had attempted to find another chaplain to take over the retreat, and, because he was endorsed by the Southern Baptist North American Mission Board, an organization that does not affirm same-sex marriage, he was within his rights to opt out.  

Persecution by protocol and peers is not new to the armed forces, of course, with the story of Desmond Doss, World War II’s pacifist-medic-turned-superman, standing out as a powerful example. Nevertheless, for those of principled faith, serving can be daunting, especially with the current administration’s prejudice against Christian teaching. Soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines need chaplains who teach the truth and can be turned to when on patrol in the valley of the shadow of death. It’s a heavy calling, but it will be fulfilled by lesser alternatives if Christian men do not answer it.

Luther Ray Abel is the Nights & Weekends Editor for National Review. He is a veteran of the Navy.

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