Reflection Paper: Chaplains, the Constitution, and Pluralism

Introduction1

Discussion1

Conclusion4

End Notes6

Reflection Paper: Chaplains, the Constitution, and Pluralism

Introduction

The paper provides reflective paper on the role of evangelical chaplains in the current pluralistic military environment. The paper analysis different challenges and issues faced by chaplains in practicing their constitutional authority and freedom in a military pluralistic environment. In the light of authentic sources, the paper centers analysis on the thesis statement i.e. military pluralist environment challenges evangelical chaplains to maintain balance between their moral and ethical responsibilities.

Discussion

Since 20th century, military chaplains have played a primary role of contact between foreign civilians and American military. Over all these years, chaplains have been well positioned to assume the authority of bridging cultural divides between American military and foreign civilians via creating critical connections in these networks. Since then chaplains' interaction with various communities of faith has emphasized on their potential importance in operational and tactical decision making. In the light of First Amendment of the Bill of Rights, they hold constitutional authority to evangelize foreign civilians and military. However, recent trends have threatened their conventional role as a pastoral leader for informal cultural mediators with overseas population and the US military service personnel. In case of prioritizing chaplains' role as a liaison leader, their authority to counsel and provide pastoral care to US military servicemen might diminish. Additionally, analysis identifies certain circumstance where evangelical chaplains' authority to act as an official spiritual liaison might haze the distinction line between state and military responsibilities while threatening evangelical chaplain's pacificist status.

In a pluralistic setting, evangelical chaplains are faced with certain challenges due to differing assumptions and authority constraints. For example, commander of a military group might intentionally guard resources and time of the chaplain in order to secure adequate amount of spiritual and religious support for his service members. Such act driven by feelings of jealousy or desire might blockade chaplain's willingness to act as a religious liaison. The American pluralistic environment might not facilitate basic requirements and needs of all chaplains to fit in the working environment of American military. Hence, commanders' hesitance to enlarge formal role of the chaplain might create problems for chaplains to autonomously serve the military service members. Unlike American pluralistic environment, interaction with foreign population enables evangelical chaplains to emphasize on their prime role of providing spiritual care and support to American servicemen.

The basic constitutional roots of American military services identify religious service as a voluntary act by individual; whereas, forced devotion is strictly prohibited in the military constitution. Given so, legal and constitutional emphasis is set on promoting individual will and freedom to perform religious activities, even in the pluralistic environment. As mentioned earlier, evangelical chaplains serve as a role model to promote spiritual care of individuals; however, violation of such legal clauses by military commandants might pose threat to service freedom of chaplains. For example, commander's failure to stand behind the American legislation on DOMA throws signals regarding the fact that evangelical chaplain's freedom of religious expression is ...