Chaplains’ Role under New Scrutiny

God may delegate to the state the right to take life, but “it is obvious that he does not give that right to the motorist. If, then, we recognize the moral imperative behind the commandment [not to kill], we will drive as responsible, decent human beings, conscious of our obligations to our creator.” Thus said the manual in the Army’s character-guidance program.

That is, it said something about a moral obligation to act as though there might be a God until representatives of the American Civil Liberties Union went to work. By late last year, references to God and religion had been deleted. The word was slow in getting around, but when a couple of congressmen got hold of it this month there was righteous indignation aplenty. Newscaster Paul Harvey fanned the flame and the fire was burning. Soon “What’s-this-country-coming-to” letters were piling up on congressmen’s desks, at a rate almost akin to that reached when Madalyn Murray (now O’Hair) was knocking devotions out of public schools.

Defense Secretary Melvin Laird found a full-blown peace move expected of him. He said Army orders for chaplains to stop referring to God were news to him, then called for a departmental review. Within a week he took even more forceful steps, and God was “redrafted,” as the Toledo Times put it.

Laird, a Presbyterian elder who has one of his children attending a Christian school, overruled Army brass: “With regard to the character guidance programs within the military departments, I want to state that there will be no prohibition against the use of ‘God,’ ‘Supreme Being,’ ‘Creator,’ ‘faith,’ ‘spiritual values,’ or similar words.” He did admonish chaplains, however, not to promote their own religious dogmas or sectarian beliefs in teaching the men how to behave properly.

The proposed policy would not actually have affected chaplains in their official ministries in the chapels—only as they taught the mandatory courses in character, a task they share with other specialists such as attorneys and hygienists. There were seldom any objections from men about the religious aspects of the character-guidance training.

The Army said the order expunging God from the program had not yet been passed down. But as Dr. A. Ray Appelquist of the General Commission on Chaplains and Armed Forces Personnel put it, “it was a pretty forceful hint.” Appelquist, the man most on top of the issue from a civilian point of view, thought Harvey’s newscast had thrown more misunderstanding into the issue than there should have been.

Appelquist’s group serves as the umbrella for some 1,800 of the nearly 4,100 chaplains.Last month, the 176,000-member Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, with headquarters in Independence, Missouri, aligned with the General Commission. The commission also represents the Church of Christ, Scientist, estimated at 500,000. “We could have told them they were facing a hopeless task,” he said. “Taking God out of morals is like teaching mathematics without the timetable. There’s often a lot of unnecessary flak coming from the Pentagon on religious questions. We could have saved them a lot of trouble if they’d only let us in on it.”

Appelquist, an American Baptist who served seven years as an Army chaplain and is the author of a new book, Church, State and Chaplaincy, says a simple answer for the Pentagon would be to set up a permanent advisory body to inform the military of what the probable feeling of the churches on touchy religious questions would be. “We definitely should be structured in instead of serving in a reactory role,” Appelquist said.

The General Commission serves as a “pipeline” to 70 per cent of all chaplains, including sixty Jewish and 1,000 Catholic chaplains, though no formal ties are maintained with either of these groups. This, he feels, justifies a more effective liaison.

Though Appelquist was appalled at the contemplated delete-God instructions, he seemed to think nothing much would come of them. In his seven years as a get-things-done man in Washington (all the member and contributing denominations chipped in to buy a headquarters building across from the Supreme Court), many tempests have come and gone.

The chaplaincy was set up by a special act of Congress near the country’s beginning and during World War II had as many as 10,000 men. By its very nature it is prone to generate misunderstanding and controversy. First of all, the men are designated and qualified by their own denominations for the job. But they are military, receiving their pay and rank designations from the armed forces. This could easily raise more church-state questions than it has. Some churchmen feel that chaplains should be civilians.

The chaplaincy has its roots in a sweeping provision of the Constitution that the armed forces can provide for their men those things they deem profitable for their welfare. Primarily for this reason, it has never had a really serious challenge in the courts. The ACLU is toying with the idea, however, now that Laird has dealt the deathblow to its nearly successful maneuver.

The National Association of Evangelicals reacted quickly and strongly to news of the proposed policy. General Director Clyde W. Taylor said, “For the government to tell a chaplain, who is an ordained clergyman, what he may or may not say with reference to God in any lecture is to make a farce of the First Amendment.” He said Congress is obligated to conduct a full investigation.

The NAE’s Chaplaincy Commission, headed by retired Navy Commander Floyd Robertson, has staged a running controversy with the military for years over directives that Protestant chaplains teach from standardized Sunday-school material which the NAE feels may be theologically heretical. Even though such regulations have been issued in the past, chaplains exercise the option to present the suggested material from their own theological stance.

This month the NAE group, which cooperates with Appelquist’s in many phases of its work, had the door opened to an expanded role. It presently serves as the umbrella for 122 chaplains. But it will be able to place as many as 40 per cent more now that the million-member Christian Churches and Churches of Christ have voted to align with it. The new affiliates, who refused to “denominationalize” with the larger, more liberal element that became a denomination earlier this year, complain that conservatives have a difficult time being accepted into the chaplaincy, and that liberals are favored. Now, with NAE, they will be entitled to place as many as forty-eight chaplains.

The military seeks to follow the religious makeup of the nation in allotting quotas for chaplains. Under the NAE commission, for instance, denominations ordinarily too small to place a chaplain, can do so if another denomination in the NAE group either does not want to supply one or else can’t find one.

There is considerable difficulty in obtaining Negro chaplains. Although Negroes make up about 22 per cent of the troops, only sixty-five of the chaplains, or less than 2 per cent of the total supply, are Negro. Chaplains must have seven years of academic training, and Negroes who have this are usually in such heavy demand for other church posts or secular jobs that the chaplaincy misses out.

Meanwhile, God is back in the Army. And chaplains are free to speak a word in his behalf.

Orthodoxy And Favoritism: Selective Service Dilemma

Violation of Selective Service laws is the third-ranking crime in the United States. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover said that out of 37.5 million men registered, 23,280 are considered delinquent. In February, 625 men were in jail for draft violations; of this number, only 161 were classed as violators on nonreligious grounds. Of the 464 jailed on religious grounds, 419 were Jehovah’s Witnesses; the rest were from other anti-war church groups or were of independent convictions. The witnesses, unlike most other religious objectors, refuse to opt for alternate, non-combatant service.

This month, in Boston, District Court Judge Charles W. Wyzanski, Jr., ruled that in denying Harvard graduate John Sisson, Jr., conscientious-objector status, “Congress unconstitutionally discriminated against atheists, agnostics and men … whether they be religious or not, who are motivated by profound moral beliefs which constitute the central convictions of their beings.” He gave his blessings to sending the case to the Supreme Court. Twenty-two-year-old Sisson is opposed to war, but not because of religious belief.

Taking yet a different stance, the National Council of Churches is supporting a case brought by eleven priests and two Catholic laymen, who contend that the historic peace churches, such as Quakers and Mennonites, are favored in application of the draft law. In McFadden v. Selective Service, pending in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco, the litigants argue that in allowing conscientious-objector status to persons opposing all wars but not those who oppose particular wars, the government violates the First Amendment.

The plethora of legal tests extant give the impression there is more resistance to the draft over the Viet Nam war than in other wars. But the number of jailed resisters still is only about 12.5 per cent of the 5,000 peak reached during World War II, when fewer men were registered.

Ike’S Faith

The late Dwight David Eisenhower, the only American president baptized while in office, was a model church member who longed for a more militantly spiritual America.

That is the assessment of the Rev. Edward L. R. Elson of National Presbyterian Church, where the Eisenhowers were received into membership on February 1, 1953: Mrs. Eisenhower, a lifelong Presbyterian, by transfer, and the President by confession of faith and baptism.

Eisenhower’s parents were devout River Brethren, a small group with German Pietist roots known originally for their proximity to the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania. Family sources said he became a Christian at an early age, and had an active prayer life.

Though not a churchgoer until he became President, Eisenhower had something of a reputation as a man of prayer. His most famous prayer, one he composed for his first inaugural, is engraved in a walnut tablet at his chapel tomb in Abilene, Kansas. Elson is preparing a book on Ike’s faith.

The Rev. Dean Miller of Palm Desert Community Church said Eisenhower fulfilled the divine requirements uttered by Micah “to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God.” The Rev. Robert H. MacAskill of Gettysburg said Eisenhower “had a firm reliance on divine guidance.”

“General Eisenhower is in heaven,” said Billy Graham. “I shall miss him as a personal friend and counselor, and because of our mutual faith in Christ I look forward to seeing him again.”

EDWARD E. PLOWMAN

Anti-Prayer Petition

A new test of public-school religious exercises may be in the making in Tennessee. With the aid of the American Civil Liberties Union, Mrs. Marcus Caldwell has asked a federal court to stop chapel programs in Wilson County schools. She also asks that she be reinstated as a teacher’s aide and that her son be put back in the school band. Mrs. Caldwell, wife of a Negro United Methodist minister, contends that the boy was dropped from the band because he refused to play “Dixie.”

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