Ready … or Not?: Equipping the U.S. Military Chaplain for Inter-Religious Liaison
Chris Seiple Wednesday, 16 December 2009
In August of 2000, I had the opportunity to speak at a U.S. Army Civil Affairs conference at the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island.[1] My topic was the military, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and religious freedom.[2] Being in Rhode Island, I could not resist using the state's founding as an illustration. I recounted how Roger Williams fled the theocracy of Massachusetts to establish a state where religious freedom was protected and promoted as a function of its inherent relationship to security. As the Rhode Island charter elegantly acknowledges, when people are free to practice their faith, their society tends to flourish and they become more loyal to the state and less likely to rebel.
After my presentation, an Army officer came up to me and said, "I love the history and the concepts, but tell me how this fits into my five paragraph order." I was crushed. As a former Marine infantry officer, I knew well the five paragraph order—Situation, Mission, Execution, Administration/Logistics, and Command/Signal. The order provides a practical process through which everyone in the unit can understand their respective roles in the context of the bigger picture. In other words, if something does not fit into the five paragraph order format, it is irrelevant. And I didn't have an answer for how religion/religious freedom fits into the five paragraph order. I was irrelevant.
Last year, I was again speaking at the Naval War College, on the same issues, but this time based on my practical experiences of engaging Islamist leaders in Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province. One of the military students—all of them hand-selected and of senior rank—expressed that he did not feel comfortable discussing, let alone engaging, religious issues/leaders overseas. Before I could respond, a Marine colonel with three combat tours in Iraq said that failure to consider religion would be the equivalent of issuing a five paragraph order without considering the weather. It would be nonsensical and morally irresponsible.
What a difference 9/11 and two wars in Muslim-majority countries make. While the "place" for considering religion in U.S. foreign policy, including military policy, remains ambiguous, reality has intervened on the ground. American forces—who know their success depends on grappling realistically with the world as they find it, not as they wish it would be—have had to engage religion. Still, most U.S. commanders are not conceptually or practically equipped—that is, educated and trained—to think about or engage religious issues. It has only been natural for such commanders to look to their chaplains for assistance in the field.[3] After all, shouldn't it be their responsibility to "do" or "know about" religion?
The question then becomes whether the military is in fact equipping chaplains to meet these increasing demands. Based in part on my own teaching experience in military settings, I believe that although some progress has been made, much still remains to be done. It has been my privilege to teach three pilot programs in the last three years to U.S. military chaplains: at the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare School (March 2007); the U.S. Air Force Chaplain Service Institute (April 2008); and the Army's Central Command (July 2009).[4] Each of these programs specifically addressed religion and security with an emphasis on cross-cultural engagement.[5] In the process of teaching these courses, the following observations have come to light, providing the structure of this article.
First, for cultural and conceptual reasons many American continue to find it difficult to talk candidly about religion and policy generally, or religion and security particularly. Second, there is no group within the military better positioned than the chaplains to serve as inter-religious liaisons and advisers on religious issues. Third, chaplains are not yet fully equipped to perform these roles. Finally, there is nevertheless a strong case for utilizing chaplains, and a number of specific recommendations that, if implemented, would better educate and train chaplains for today's challenges.
Americans, National Security, Grand Strategy, and Religious Reality
Regrettably, the discomfort with the topic of religion that the military student expressed to me at the Naval War College last year still reflects the norm in American society and in policy-making and policy-implementing circles. Americans are still not comfortable discussing "religion and politics" in polite company—simply because that is how they were raised. Indeed, it sometimes seems that to even raise such issues is to somehow threaten the First Amendment of the Constitution. Unfortunately, many Americans continue to wear cultural and religious blinders as they engage the world.
The contemporary security imperative to better understand and liaise with other cultures and religions should not be conceived as the chaplains' "problem" exclusively. Indeed the haste with which many Americans want to delegate the "religion portfolio" to the nearest available clergyperson is a reflection of American culture and its reluctance to discuss—let alone analyze—religion and politics. The discussion is imperative, however, for American security exists at their intersection—as does the grand strategy necessary to preserving that security.[6]
As Liddell Hart has cogently argued:
It is essential to conduct war with constant regard to the peace you desire ... [F]ighting power is but one of the instruments of grand strategy—which should take account of and apply the power of financial pressure, of diplomatic pressure, of commercial pressure, and, not least of ethical pressure to weaken the opponent's will.[7]
Sustainable security cannot be achieved without engaging societies' own internal ethics. This in turn requires a deep understanding of the local context—a context that very frequently is suffused with religion. Most of the world's ethics are rooted in religion. Indeed, 80 percent of the world believes in something greater than themselves.[8] Religion is relevant to them because it provides a narrative framework for understanding the basics of the human condition, especially life and death.
This deep-rooted combination of religion and ethics is particularly true of the Muslim-majority world, where faith is the prism through which all of life is understood. As T.E. Lawrence wrote of his experience with the Bedouin Arabs during World War I:
Islam is so all-pervading an element that there is little religiosity, little fervor, and no regard for externals. Do not think from their conduct that they are careless. Their conviction of the truth of their faith, and its share in every act and thought and principle of their daily life is so intimate and intense as to be unconscious, unless roused by opposition. Their religion is as much a part of nature to them as is sleep or food.[9]
Put differently, understanding how the local population understands life and ethics creates the opportunity for a foreigner to frame his/her service there in the context of—and consistent with—those ethics. It is the sine qua non of sustainable impact. Understanding religion therefore is the most important force protection and force-multiplier that an overseas military commander can create and utilize.[10] It is not easily done.
The State of the Chaplaincy
Military chaplains are a special breed. They come from all walks of life, all parts of America. After seminary and a brief basic course, they serve in the military as commissioned officers. They provide religious services and advice to the commander and those in his/her charge. In order to protect their spiritual stature overseas, chaplains are strictly forbidden from serving in combat and/or collecting intelligence.[11]
In general, chaplains are people of deep personal faith. Similarly, presumably as a function of their deeply held belief, chaplains promote a pluralistic and respectful attitude and approach toward those in the command who profess no religious faith or profess a faith other than their own. They understand that there can be respectful cooperation without compromising one's faith or theology.
Above all else, and in keeping with their caring and nurturing nature, chaplains understand their role to be "prophetic and pastoral,"[12] encouraging all in the command to be "agents of compassion and hope" and providing voice "for those without voice."[13] Furthermore, they have been intentionally trained in a "systems" approach to counseling, which encourages issues to be engaged not as the function of one personality, but as an interrelated reality in which that personality is a part of a command, a family, and a culture.
The chaplaincy is as old as the United States, enabling American troops to practice their religion while serving anywhere in the world. However, in addition to this ministry the chaplaincy has (often as a secondary duty) provided advice to commanders about the impact of local religious conditions on military operations, and/or liaised with local cultural and religious leaders for various purposes. This secondary duty had become so ingrained by the end of the Cold War that the Army's 1989 Field Manual 16-1, The Chaplain and the Chaplain Assistant, explicitly stated that the chaplain:
- "provides information to the command concerning the religious and faith practices of the local population";
- "may assist the civil-military operations officer in analyzing religious and cultural factors"; and,
- "trains military personnel to respect religious beliefs, [and] promotes peace and harmony."[14]
This Cold War acknowledgement has only been confirmed by the post-9/11 security environment—so much so that the U.S. Army Chief of Chaplains recently issued a directive that the chaplain and his/her unit ministry team (UMT) "must understand how religion and religious traditions influence the center of gravity ... [T]he UMT must integrate into the unit staff effort in order to plan for liaison with religious or secular leaders if ordered to do so by their command."[15] In fact, when ordered by the commander, a UMT should "build relationships of mutual trust and respect, promote human rights, and deepen cultural understanding between unit personnel and host nation citizens."[16]
Indeed, it is only natural for commanders to look to their chaplains—as the "religious person" on staff—to help them interpret the religious kaleidoscope through which reality is received by the local population. As a long-time advocate of chaplains in this role, Doug Johnston anticipated in 2003 that the chaplaincy could be a "resource-in-being":
[W]ith appropriate training, the role of military chaplains could be expanded to include peacemaking and conflict prevention. Through their personal interactions with local religious communities and selected NGOs with which they come in contact, they would be able to develop a grass-roots understanding of the religious and cultural nuances at play in any given setting and, at times, possibly provide a reconciling influence in addressing misunderstandings or differences with these communities. Perhaps more importantly, they could advise their commanders on the religious and cultural implications of command decisions that are either being taken or that should be taken.[17]
What warrants repeating, however, is the conditional phrase with which Johnston opened the above argument: "with appropriate training."
Wanted: Doctrine and Leadership Development
As military interest in the chaplaincy's secondary purpose has continued to come to the fore, an identity crisis of sorts has resulted among the chaplains serving in the Army, Navy, and Air Force. They are wrestling with fundamental questions, such as:
- Should a chaplain serve the spiritual needs of the troops, and act as a subject matter expert for the commander, providing assessments of the local religious situation and liaising with local religious leaders? Doesn't the latter distract from or even degrade the former?
- Can a chaplain perform both of these services, given the amount of time each takes?
- Are chaplains equipped—educated and trained—for this second role? Could they make matters worse rather than better?
As of this writing, the U.S. military has still not issued a Joint Publication (i.e., a definitive doctrine accepted by all services) that provides clear guidance for both the commander and the chaplain regarding the inter-religious liaison role of the chaplain in overseas operations. As Bradford Ableson summarized in 2002:
[P]oorly formulated joint doctrine virtually ensures joint commanders will have little authoritative guidance on what to expect from Unified Command Chaplains in terms of religious advisory support. The problem is exacerbated by the tendency of all Service chaplaincies to produce senior officers more attuned to meeting the religious free exercise/accommodation needs of U.S. personnel than to advising senior joint commanders on religious issues.[18]
Fortunately, the military has been aware of this issue, and efforts are currently under way to revise the 2004 Joint Publication 1-05, "Religious Support in Joint Operations." Nevertheless, once official, the new version of Joint Publication 1-05 will be merely the first step. A broader task still remains: to define and implement the supporting curricula (education) and the tactics, techniques, and procedures (training) that enable chaplains to be better inter-religious liaisons.
R. Scott Appleby has aptly described the challenges/opportunities for religion vis-à-vis peace and security:
If religions are to play a significant peacebuilding role in the twenty-first century, their leaders must pursue three interrelated goals. First, religious communities must be engaged, consistently and substantively, in the international discourse of rights and responsibilities. This engagement should include active and vigorous participation in efforts to build local cultures of religious and other human rights that correspond to international standards. Second, religious traditions with strong missionary outreach must promote missiologies, or theologies of mission, that foster respect for universal human rights norms, including the right to religious freedom. All religious traditions, in turn, must encourage the practice of civic tolerance of religious outsiders, including the revivalists and proselytizers among them. Finally, religious leaders must give priority to establishing and supporting ecumenical and interreligious dialogues and cooperative ventures designed to prevent or transform conflicts that are based on religious or cultural disputes.[19]
If chaplains are anything, they are intra-military "peacebuilders" in their ministry to military personnel of all faiths and none (especially through their "systems" approach to counseling). Whether those peacebuilding skills can and should be applied outside of the military community—that is, "outside the wire" or base, liaising with local religious leaders during the conduct of military operations overseas—is a question of honest and ongoing debate within and outside of the chaplaincy.
In particular, given the education chaplains receive before becoming officers—namely, education at seminaries generally designed to produce a domestic pastor—there are strong concerns about whether the chaplaincy is up to the task. Because the nature of chaplain expertise varies so greatly, commanders simply do not know what to expect professionally from their chaplains.
The 2002 comments of Captain M.R. Ferguson, then the senior Chaplain on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, illustrate these longstanding concerns:
I've talked with numerous line officers who have commanded troops in the last four to five years, from all branches of Service. There is a common thread among their debriefs: chaplains are unpredictable. They are all different with a wide range of capabilities. You never know what you're going to get. [Line commanders] tell me they hold their breath as the new chaplain reports aboard. This is also indicative of the moral/morale impact a chaplain can have on a command, which is for better or worse. This helps explain why [commanders] will often insert themselves into the assignment process with firm, by-name requests. Because they perceive the quality base so uneven and unpredictable, they're not sure what they're going to get.[20]
While these questions will continue, it is beyond question that chaplains will be overseas, and that their advice and assistance in religious liaison will be sought. As a practical matter, because they are physically present in the theatre of operations, chaplains are positioned to provide "religious expertise."
Recommendations
Ideally, the forthcoming Joint Publication will establish a baseline for commanders and chaplains alike, creating common expectations about performance and deliverables. Those common expectations must be institutionalized through the establishment of education and training standards that enable compliance. With the right education and training, chaplains could play an integral role—through their advising and religious leader liaison—in creating enough stability in overseas contexts such that the military can return home. Chaplains, as properly equipped "prophetic" voices, must strive to ensure that their actions, and those of their commanders, build peace in an ethical manner that is consistent with the local culture and religion.[21]
Below are some recommendations for the U.S. military to consider as chaplains take on the role of inter-religious liaison.
- Create a joint "Center of Excellence" (COE) for the chaplaincy at Ft. Jackson, South Carolina, where the Army, Navy, and Air Force chaplaincy schools will be collocated by 2010;
- Establish a board of advisors to the COE, which would help:
- ensure that military curricula coordination, consistent with Joint Publication 1-05, takes place as an integral part of the chaplaincy school consolidation at Ft. Jackson;
- develop specific syllabi on religion and security and the chaplaincy role in advising and liaison;
- establish a standing pool of experts that could teach, advise, collect lessons learned, and even deploy as mobile training teams;
- standardize religious-cultural assessments and reporting;
- provide advice on the collection/distribution of lessons learned, articles being written in and outside the chaplain community, religious assessments, ongoing reports, etc.;
- meet with seminary presidents to discuss how they prepare chaplains; and,
- make recommendations about post-seminary certificate programs—training and education—that would provide particular preparation for peacebuilding and conflict transformation (relating these programs, perhaps, to the "systems" approach used in counseling).
- Incorporate select chaplains into the "Foreign Area Officer" program, providing requisite travel and education;
- Develop a report with recommendations about whether inter-religious liaison should be intentionally designated as a career path for chaplains (and/or other service members);
- Include more inter-religious awareness in basic courses for new chaplains;
- Publish more books like Operational Culture for Deploying Personnel: Afghanistan (May 2009), written by the Center for Advanced Operational Culture Learning at Quantico, Virginia; and,
- Conduct research on critical security issues, including:
- how "justice" is conceived/received in different cultural and regional contexts in the Muslim-majority world, relating the findings to governance programs run for counterinsurgency/development processes; and,
- Christian-Muslim relations in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Conclusion
There will be those inside and outside the chaplain community who find fault with some or all of the above recommendations. That debate will continue, as it should. The real question, however, is simply this: what if there is no intentional development of inter-religious liaison and advisory capacity among U.S. government personnel, military or civilian?
What we do know is that there currently is not adequate inter-religious education and training for those Americans responsible for formulating and implementing U.S. foreign and military policy. America can do no worse than to begin with the chaplaincy, a community that is physically present on the front lines and spiritually pre-positioned to serve as peacebuilders across religions and cultures.
[1] I am grateful to all the chaplains I have been privileged to meet in the classroom—especially for their candor and insight—as well as to Dr. Pauletta Otis who has been indefatigable in her encouragement of this issue. I believe that most people worldwide root their culture in religion (in part because of its capacity to explain, encourage, and comfort its adherents). Thus I use the term "inter-religious" as inclusive of culture. I also use this term in this way because that's how religion is understood in much of the non-NATO world where U.S. troops deploy.
[2] I had previously written a book on how humanitarian NGOs relate to the military through its Civil-Military Operations Center (CMOC): The U.S. Military-NGO Relationship in Humanitarian Interventions (Carlisle, PA: The U.S. Army Peacekeeping Institute, 1996). Also, my family was about to found the Institute for Global Engagement, a faith-based "think-and-do" tank that specializes in issues of religion, religious freedom, and international affairs.
[3] I define "education" as teaching someone how to think with judgment and discernment; "training" is teaching someone what to think and providing a standard against which activities should be measured.
[4] These last two courses were team-taught with Dr. Pauletta Otis.
[5] For example, see Chris Seiple, "The Role of Religion in Winning the Long War," 6 March 2007. Available from: http://www.globalengage.org/pressroom/ftp/563-from-the-president-the-role-of-religion-in-winning-the-long-war.html.< /p>
[6] "Toward a World Safe for Religion & Politics," 21 February 2003. Available from: http://www.rfiaonline.org/extras/articles/281-world-safe-for-religion-politics; "Religion and the New Global Counterinsurgency," 2 September 2003. Available from: http://www.rfiaonline.org/extras/articles/284-religion-global-counterinsurgency; and, with Josh White, "Uzbekistan and the Central Asian Crucible of Religion and Security," in Robert A. Seiple and Dennis R. Hoover, eds., Religion and Security: The New Nexus in International Relations (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), 37-57.
[7] Liddell Hart, Strategy (New York: New American Library, 1974), 353, 322 [my italics].
[8] World Values Survey Association, "World Values Survey 2000."
[9] As quoted in Operational Culture for Deploying Personnel: Afghanistan (The Center for Advanced Operational Culture Learning, May 2009), 42.
[10] For example, see my, "Success in Afghanistan lies where religion and politics meet," The Christian Science Monitor, 4 August 2009. Available from: http://www.csmonitor.com/2009/0804/p09s04-coop.html.
[11] For a comprehensive discussion of the chaplain's legal standing as a non-combatant, see Jonathan G. Odom, "Beyond Arm Bands and Arms Banned: Chaplains, Armed Conflict, and the Law," 49 Naval Law Review 1 (2002).
[12] Mark R. Johnston, "Wage Peace: Faith-Based Diplomacy as a Critical Task for the Military Chaplaincy," paper delivered at the 2007 annual conference of the International Society of Military Ethics, 7.
[13] Steven A. Schalk, "Examining the Role of Chaplains as Non-Combatants While Involved in Religious Leader Engagement/Liaison," unpublished manuscript (Air University, 17 February 2009), 16, 25.
[14] John W. Brinsfield, "The Army Chaplaincy and World Religions: From Individual Ministries to Chaplain Corps Doctrine," The Army Chaplaincy (Winter-Spring 2009): 11-16.
[15] Douglas L. Carver, "Religious Leader Liaison Policy Letter," 30 September 2008, as recorded in The Army Chaplaincy (Winter-Spring 2009): 36-38.
[16] Ibid.
[17] Douglas Johnston and Brian Cox, "Faith-Based Diplomacy and Preventive Engagement," in Douglas Johnston, ed., Faith-Based Diplomacy (Oxford University Press, 2003), 25-26. See also Douglas Johnston, "We Ignore Religion at our Peril," Naval Institute Proceedings (January 2002): 50-52.
[18] Bradford E. Ableson, "Time for Conversion: Why Unified Commanders are Not Well Served by Their Chaplains and What Needs to Change," unpublished manuscript, (The Naval War College, 4 May 2002), 2.
[19] R. Scott Appleby, The Ambivalence of the Sacred (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2000), 245.
[20] Captain M.R. Ferguson, United States Navy, Staff Chaplain, Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff, 13 April 2002, as quoted by Bradford Ableson, "Time for Conversion: Why Unified Commanders are Not Well Served by Their Chaplains and What Needs to Change," unpublished manuscript (The Naval War College, 4 May 2002), 4. Also see Pauletta Otis, "Chaplains Advising Commanders in a Post 9/11 World and Beyond," The Army Chaplaincy (Winter-Spring 2009), 31. These reports are consistent with my own experience with chaplains during my nine years in the Marine Corps.
[21] For an in-depth discussion of this issue, see William Sean Lee, Christopher J. Burke, and Zonna M. Crayne, "Military Chaplains as Peace Builders: Embracing Indigenous Religions in Stability Operations," unpublished manuscript (Air University, April 2004).