Chaplains Wanted For Atheists In Foxholes

Chaplains Wanted For Atheists In Foxholes
by NPR STAFF

Soldiers pray with a chaplain in Afghanistan. Jason Torpy says military chaplains are assigned many secular advising duties that atheist service members need, too.

December 4, 2011
Retired Army captain and Iraqi war veteran Jason Torpy says the chaplains employed by the U.S. military can't relate to people like him. He's an atheist.

He's also the president of a group that's trying to get the armed forces to become more inclusive by hiring atheist chaplains. The Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers wants the military to provide for the estimated 40,000 atheists, agnostics and humanists who serve in U.S. forces.

Military chaplains, most of whom are Protestant Christians, are assigned many secular advising duties, including marriage, family and suicide counseling, Torpy tells weekends on All Things Considered guest host Rachel Martin. They touch so many parts of service members' lives, he says, they can help improve what he sees as an environment of exclusion.

"That lack of connection to atheist and humanist communities, the lack of recognition or support for atheists and humanists — that implication can be solved primarily through the chaplains' corps," he says.

Torpy says he has felt excluded in the military because of his beliefs. Once, before his unit deployed on a mission, the commander gathered everyone together for a Christian prayer.
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Atheists in military want their own Chaplains?

This makes no sense at all. We all know how I feel about Chaplains forgetting they are supposed to help everyone and not convert anyone, especially in the military. This article addresses how some Chaplains "view atheists as people to be converted or dismissed" as well as talking about how Chaplains have responsibility in a lot of aspects of a soldier's life. That said, how on earth would they ever come up with the requirements to have an Atheist Chaplain?

Many consider themselves spiritual with a belief in God or a "higher power" while not having any religious ties. At least they can pray to God but who or what does an atheist pray to?

Military Atheists Seek Benefits Given to Religious Groups
August 24, 2011
Stars and Stripes
by Chris Carroll

The ultimate goal would be the appointment of atheists as military chaplains in each service.

WASHINGTON -- In early August, a small group of soldiers, airmen and their spouses gathered at a Panera Bread restaurant near Fort Meade, Md., to talk about the meaning of faith and how to share their convictions about life's deepest questions.

As they sipped coffee and nibbled pastries, the scene might have passed for a low-key Wednesday night Bible study except for one thing -- the members of the newly formed ATOM, or Atheists of Meade group, didn't have any Bibles. Their belief system, they say, stops at the boundaries of the natural world.

It's this rejection of supernatural belief that pushes the group off base instead of having the dedicated meeting space that religious groups get, said Army Capt. Ryan Jean, one of group's organizers. That's not fair, he said, because ATOM mostly does what religions do -- provide fellowship and a chance for ethical and moral development.

"If there's a reason to support religion in the military, it's the ethics and values that come out of it, not the supernatural claims," he said. "We also have constructive ethics and values, but we rally around humanism rather than the supernatural."
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Polls show atheists on the rise in America

I think the biggest reason is that too many people have been turned away or pushed away from churches for far too long. Not just here in America but around the world.

Here in Central Florida, I went to over 20 churches looking for help for our veterans with PTSD. One responded, he was a Chaplain and a minister. The others, well they just couldn't be bothered. I kept trying. I would talk to this one and that one at a church highly recommended by a parishioner. Offered a polite conversation and a promise I would be contacted by the person I needed to talk to, but never heard back from them. There is too much talking about being Christian and too little actions to go with it.

People have basic needs and each searching for what they need to be "happy" in this life. Food, shelter, clothing and someone to share their life with, but they also look for what they feel is missing inside of them. If they looked for it in churches before and didn't find it, do you really expect them to believe there is a God up there loving them when they couldn't find anyone acting like Him down here?

If people are turning away from the churches, we have only ourselves to blame.

Polls show atheists on the rise in America


By Agence France-Presse

Published: August 26, 2009


DAVIE, Florida — When South Florida atheists held their first meeting, they were just five friends, having a beer at a bar.

Four years later, they’ve moved to a bigger place — still a bar — to hold their weekly meet-and-greets. Membership is up to almost 500, Darwin Day is in the planning stages and bumper stickers are on sale.

“There is no God, but ice-cream is great,” reads one. “What schools need is a moment of science,” reads another.

Atheist groups are growing all over the United States, challenging stereotypes and confronting what they consider a big backslide in the separation of church and state.

They are chatting online, picking up trash along “adopted” highways, and advertising on buses and billboards. In South Florida, they recently picketed a prayer meeting in a public safety building paid for with tax dollars.
read more here
http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/08/26/polls-show-atheists/

linked from RawStory

Military atheists want new rules on prayer

The Four Chaplains Memorial Foundation
The Four Chaplains Memorial Foundation exists to further the cause of 'unity without uniformity' by encouraging goodwill and cooperation among all people.

Mission Statement
The Four Chaplains Memorial Foundation exists to further the cause of “unity without uniformity” by encouraging goodwill and cooperation among all people. The organization achieves its mission by advocating for and honoring people whose deeds symbolize the legacy of the Four Chaplains aboard the U.S.A.T. Dorchester in 1943.


Vision
The Four Chaplains Memorial Foundation's vision is to impart the principles of selfless service to humanity without regard to race, creed, ethnicity, or religious beliefs.


Overview
The Reverend Daniel Poling, in honor of his son Chaplain Poling's heroism, began the movement to celebrate the Four Chaplains acts of courage. The organization was dedicated on February 3, 1951 by President Harry S. Truman. In his dedication speech, the President said, “This interfaith shrine... will stand through long generations to teach Americans that as men can die heroically as brothers so should they live together in mutual faith and goodwill.”

http://www.fourchaplains.org/

This is what Chaplains were supposed to be doing.

Military atheists want new rules on prayer
Coalition complains of religious discrimination in the services
By Leo Shane III, Stars and Stripes
Mideast edition, Wednesday, November 12, 2008

WASHINGTON — A coalition of atheists and agnostics wants the new White House to protect young military members from what they see as rampant religious discrimination in the services.

The Secular Coalition for America held a news conference Monday urging new rules against proselytizing and more training for chaplains on how to handle nonreligious troops.

"When they say ‘there are no atheists in foxholes’ it’s slanderous," said Wayne Adkins, a former Army first lieutenant who served in Iraq in 2004 and 2005. "To deny their existence is to deny that they serve."

The coalition also wants President-elect Obama to develop a new directive for all chaplains and commanders that eliminates public prayers from any mandatory-attendance events for troops and ensures the Defense Department will not endorse any single religion, or even the idea of religion over nonreligion.

Jason Torpy, a retired soldier and president of the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers, said his group isn’t opposed to Christianity or any other organized religion.
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But the problems for the men and women in the military are happening, not because there are some who do not believe in God, but because the Chaplains decided that they were going to be evangelists instead of Chaplains, mostly with the blessing of the brass.

If you are a Christian and find nothing wrong with this, then please consider how many other Christians from different branches of Christianity you agree with. Even Christians can't agree among themselves, so think about that because that is what's happening. Now think how you would feel to not be a member of the Christian faith and then put thru hell because you are Jewish, of Muslim, or an atheist. What if it was your son or your daughter being made to feel as if their own faith was not up to military standards?

That's why this bothers me. I'm Greek Orthodox. (I am also a civilian Chaplain working with veterans) I have yet to meet or read about a Greek Orthodox Chaplain, so it's very unlikely that if I were in the military I would be able to speak to one. Let's say that I had to see a Chaplain who did not believe the same way I did, which is usually the case since some Christians don't believe in the saints, blessing themselves three times for the Holy Trinity or kneeling when they pray. I would end up talking to someone who did not value my faith as I do.

There are many differences and not understanding what they are causes a lot of harm. I worked for a Presbyterian Church as the Administrator of Christian Education for two years. They respected my faith because I did not try to force it on them and I respected their's enough to honor it and learn it. Problems happen when there is no respect for what God put into all of us. The freewill to believe as we do or not. He didn't force us to worship Him so why is it that some in the military consider it their right to force their own faith on anyone? kc

Military accused of pushing Christian faith again

I have two videos that talk about God. One is I Grieve and the other is PTSD Not God's Judgment. I did not talk about being a Christian in any of the videos I've done. In PTSD Not God's Judgment, I did include a picture of Christ because He addressed that there is no great love than being willing to lay down your life for your friends. Other than that, I try very hard to keep my branch of Christianity, as well as Christianity itself out of the videos I do. While I am a Christian, a Greek Orthodox Christian, I fully understand that there are many branches of Christianity itself along with other faiths. While they Bible is used by the major religions of the world, each group has their own ideas of what to believe.

For those who still find no problem with what the military is doing pushing one particular branch of Christianity, you need to be wondering what happens to your own views and your own choices? There are Christian sects who do not believe in the Holy Trinity or the Divinity of Christ. Some do not believe in the Saints. What do you think happens if a commander is allowed to enforce his theology upon his command? Still find this kind of pushing faith harmless? What is you have a commander who believes that you have to speak in tongues to be true but no one under his command can even pretend to? What if the commander does not believe in any of this but his men do? Do you see how damaging this all can be?

While the Purpose Driven Life is a good book for those who are exploring their faith, I cannot recommend it for people who are dealing with PTSD because it is not helpful for that. I've read it but you also have to consider that I've been reading religious based books all my life and was the head of Christian Education for a church. There are many books I've read that would be more appropriate in helping Christian soldiers and veterans heal but I would not recommend any of them be suggested by the military and certainly not enforced reading.

If I can draw the line when I am invested in the spiritual health of people as a Chaplain, why can't the military do the same?

Soldier alleges religious bias at Lakenheath

By Sam LaGrone - Staff writer
Posted : Wednesday Oct 1, 2008 13:08:22 EDT

An atheist serviceman has filed a federal lawsuit accusing the Defense Department of several counts of religious discrimination, including at least one instance on an Air Force base.

Army Spc. Dustin Chalker and the Military Religious Freedom Foundation are accusing DoD of a laundry list of violations of separation of church and state.

Chalker and the MRFF cite more than a dozen violations, from military installations around the world, that promote the “practice of constitutionally impermissible promotions of religious beliefs within the Department of Defense and the United States Army,” according to the suit.

Among the violations, the suit complains about a mandatory suicide-prevention briefing from an Air Force chaplain that borrowed heavily from a wildly popular Christian self-help book.

Chalker alleges that at a commander’s call at RAF Lakenheath, England, last March, an Air Force chaplain gave a talk on suicide prevention that heavily referenced concepts from “The Purpose-Driven Life,” a self-help book based on evangelical Christian theology.
go here for more
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/09/airforce_lakenheath_suit_093008/

Atheist soldier sues Army for 'unconstitutional' discrimination

Atheist soldier sues Army for 'unconstitutional' discrimination
Story Highlights
Army Spc. Jeremy Hall was raised Baptist but is now an atheist

His sudden lack of faith cost him his military career and put his life at risk, he says

Hall sued the Defense Department; claims military is a Christian organization

Pentagon official: Complaints about evangelizing are "relatively rare"


By Randi Kaye
AC360° Correspondent


KANSAS CITY, Kansas (CNN) -- Army Spc. Jeremy Hall was raised Baptist.


Like many Christians, he said grace before dinner and read the Bible before bed. Four years ago when he was deployed to Iraq, he packed his Bible so he would feel closer to God.

He served two tours of duty in Iraq and has a near perfect record. But somewhere between the tours, something changed. Hall, now 23, said he no longer believes in God, fate, luck or anything supernatural.

Hall said he met some atheists who suggested he read the Bible again. After doing so, he said he had so many unanswered questions that he decided to become an atheist.

His sudden lack of faith, he said, cost him his military career and put his life at risk. Hall said his life was threatened by other troops and the military assigned a full-time bodyguard to protect him out of fear for his safety.
click post title for more

Should the military support the faiths of the troops? Absolutely. That's why there are Chaplains in different faiths to meet the spiritual needs of the troops. Notice the plural? There are Muslim Chaplains as well as Christian ones. Whatever the faith they have, they should be equally served. Should they face a crisis of faith, then they should be served if, and only if, they seek it. Sometimes they have to work through it on their own. Faith is a personal issue. The troops are just like the rest of us with different beliefs and should be treated like the rest of us, with the ability to choose of our own free will.

Hall became an atheist while deployed into the horrors of combat. How did this change the job he was willing to do, the fact he was willing to risk his life for the sake of this nation formed for religious freedom?

If you need any more evidence that forcing someone to believe was not what God wanted, then you have not read the Bible lately or skipped over the parts you didn't like.

I am a Chaplain, not in the military but in the service of God. I am required to serve all people with the love of Christ within me and meet the needs of people where they are and what they are. After all, that is what Christ did. When the Roman Centurion went to Christ to have his servant healed, Christ did not ask him to renounce his pagan Gods first. He did not ask the Roman to do anything more than what he did. He went to Christ with the firm belief Christ could heal his servant.

It was not my practice to pray in public and I still have a hard time doing it, but there are times when I have to do it. Faith to me has been so sacred that I feel too inadequate to verbalize it. My family did not pray at meal times on a daily basis, yet we felt blessed with what we had and prayed for what we lacked. I still pray in the morning, throughout the day and at night, but I pray silently communicating with God thru my spirit. Even at that, I cannot count the times when my faith was so challenged that I wondered what was the point of praying. My faith has been challenged, tested and tried my entire life. While I have not renounced God or Christ, I can understand how others can be brought to that point in their own lives. You cannot force faith back into them.

CNN - Mother Teresa: Angel of Mercy
Mother Teresa: Angel of Mercy. A tribute to the "Saint of the Gutters". Mother Teresa 1910-1997, From Macedonia to Calcutta

Mother Teresa had many times when she doubted God. When looking back at her life, what she witnessed and lived through, it's not hard to see how this could happen. What was truly remarkable about her was that she did not stop doing the work she felt called to do.

Hall did not stop wanting to do the job he felt called to do when he enlisted. Trying to force faith back into him was not the job of the military. If anything it may have prevented him from finding his way back on his own.

Trying to force atheists to believe in God or accept Christ will not work. Christ did not try to force anyone. You cannot guilt them into love. You cannot make their lives so miserable they want to seek what you claim to have. It does not work. What it does do is push people who may be leaning toward accepting God away from doing it. When was the last time you heard Billy Graham tell his volunteers to drag someone up to the front to accept Christ into their lives?


So how can it be that this nation, the safe haven for Pilgrims seeking a place where they could worship God according to their own calling, has become a place where anyone who does not worship a certain way, is treated like this?

Army Enforces Christianity?

Army Enforces Christianity? Soldier Sues Army After Recieving Threats for His Atheism
Neela Banerjee


The New York Times

Apr 28, 2008

April 26, 2008 - Fort Riley, Kan -- When Specialist Jeremy Hall held a meeting last July for atheists and freethinkers at Camp Speicher in Iraq, he was excited, he said, to see an officer attending.

But minutes into the talk, the officer, Maj. Freddy J. Welborn, began to berate Specialist Hall and another soldier about atheism, Specialist Hall wrote in a sworn statement. “People like you are not holding up the Constitution and are going against what the founding fathers, who were Christians, wanted for America!” Major Welborn said, according to the statement.

Major Welborn told the soldiers he might bar them from re-enlistment and bring charges against them, according to the statement.

Last month, Specialist Hall and the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, an advocacy group, filed suit in federal court in Kansas, alleging that Specialist Hall’s right to be free from state endorsement of religion under the First Amendment had been violated and that he had faced retaliation for his views. In November, he was sent home early from Iraq because of threats from fellow soldiers.

Eileen Lainez, a spokeswoman for the Defense Department, declined to comment on the case, saying, “The department does not discuss pending litigation.”
http://www.veteransforcommonsense.org/ArticleID/9950

"This inter-faith shrine...will stand through long generations to teach Americans that as men can die heroically as brothers, so they should live together in mutual faith and good will."
President Harry S Truman

Rabbi Alexander Goode
Reverend George L. Fox
Reverend Clark V. Polling
Father John P. Washington
During World War II some 8,000 Army chaplains dedicated their lives and service to the fighting men of The Greatest Generation. Though these chaplains earned 2,453 high military awards for their valor, none received the Medal of Honor. Four of the seventy-seven who gave their lives in service received one of the most unusual and distinct medals in history. Ordered by special Congressional action, its intent was to carry the same weight and prestige as the Medal of Honor.
It is known simply as The Four Chaplains Medal, and calls to memory four men of God, one Jewish, one Catholic, and two Protestant, who overcame the boundaries of denomination to become brothers serving the same Father.

Today they would have to add a Muslim Chaplain to the picture of those serving.

This whole thing is very troubling. I am working on a new video for Point Man Ministries and rediscovered some history of Chaplains in the military. They came from every faith in every war. The role of the Chaplains was to take care of the spiritual needs of people, not just the ones who practiced the same faith or people they wanted to covert.

I am a Christian and I am a Chaplain. I will help no one if I ask them to show me their baptism certificate before I help them. I will help no one if I only take care of Christians or if I only take care of people of faith. Christ didn't pick and choose people out of a crowd and He didn't tell any of His followers to do it either. He said to take care of them all.

Admittedly I don't understand atheists, but they still have a spirit and they still have needs as any other human does. To do this to a soldier who does not believe in God under any banner of faith is an assault against the soldiers who have no faith but have lives, hearts, minds and risk their lives serving in the military. What is happening in the military by a handful of people is appalling.

If I drive down the road and come up on an accident, I am required to help if I can do it without getting in the way. If I do my job correctly, the victims will feel calmer and know someone cares about them as a human. The same must be done in times of war as well.

Chaplain Kathie Costos