Could a Human Rights Worker Ever Become a Military Chaplain?

Could a former human rights worker ever become a military chaplain?


Those of you who know me know that I am an entering M.Div. student at Chicago Theological Seminary. After returning from Iraq, I received my MA in Christian- Muslim relations, and I hope to build an interfaith team-based human rights organization. Tom Fox, who was one of the four CPT hostages in Iraq, and who was killed this spring, replaced me on the Christian Peacemaker Team there when I returned to the US to begin seminary studies.


So it was with great interest that I attended CTS' spring Ministerial Institute on "Democracy, Patriotism, Faith: What Is Faithful Witness in a Time of War?" which featured an active military chaplain explaining the appropriateness of his chosen path for leaders in a progressive church body.


I have to say that our speaker had me won over on several valid points:
--that we must be in ministry to the real world, even when it conflicts with who we are;
--that the same people whom we taught as children that God is gracious and merciful need representation of that same God even when they join a military and go to war; and
--that we can't afford to say the military isn't a good place to do ministry because while we liberals are looking down our noses at it, plenty of conservative chaplains are there in our places--and we can't do anything about it unless we become part of it.


So I began to think that even I, as a peacenik and human rights worker, who spent four years in the Middle East (Israel, Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan), and even spent most of a year in Baghdad investigating prisoner abuses prior to the Abu Ghraib scandal, might do well to consider military chaplaincy. In fact, it wouldn't be so incongruent. In my time with Christian Peacemaker Teams, I found myself providing occasions of pastoral presence to young and frightened soldiers standing at checkpoints. All of us did. I am also reminded that even Reinhold Niebuhr considered doing the same for World War I. And perhaps working from within is the best way to work for peace in these times.


And still, I realized that I myself could not. Not anymore for the reason of disagreeing with this war or disagreeing with military force altogether, but because so much of my life is still dedicated, in present and future years, to the efforts of interfaith and international peacemaking. And that necessitates not just working from within but reaching out in order to build trust where trust is shattered. I realized that were I to engage in roles associated with the U.S. military, even as a chaplain, it would present such a conflict of interest (even if only perceived) that I would not be trusted again in these communities and these roles. At least not in this generation.


So, I can now affirm the worthiness of the call to military chaplaincy and I would no longer discourage a colleague from doing so. I do still see and am deeply concerned for the human and spiritual needs of our soldiers in the field and at home. Perhaps the best way for me to aid those needs is to focus on soldiers returning, using my own first-hand experience of living in war to be a more empathetic ear. And to continue traveling to these countries in my human rights capacity; working in search of a time when I will not have to choose.