Views of Military Chaplaincy

The purpose of this research is to examine the contrasting views of military chaplaincy of the Episcopal Suffragan Bishop for the Armed Forces and the Episcopal Peace Fellowship. The plan of the research will be to set forth the context in which the different views of each ministry have recently emerged, and then to discuss the history and position of the Episcopal Church on providing ministry to Episcopal military personnel and their families, the role and ministry of the Suffragan Bishop for the Armed Forces, and the role and ministry of the Episcopal Peace Fellowship and its view of military chaplains and chaplaincy.

When on March 24, 1990, Charles Keyser was consecrated as Suffragan Bishop for the Armed Forces, the ceremony, held at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., brought to the surface a controversy of religious values within the Episcopal ministries. Representatives of the Episcopal Peace Fellowship interrupted the consecration ceremony to stage a brief protest, in which EPF Chair Ann McElroy read a statement that urged the Presiding Bishop and the policymaking bodies of the Episcopal Church to not only stop the consecration but abolish the office of Suffragan Bishop for the armed Forces altogether. The protest was not unexpected, for the EPF's views of the office of Suffragan Bishop appear to have been common knowledge. Nor was it particularly disruptive, for written into the ritual of the ordination of a Bishop in the

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yping."18 Despite the acknowledged dangers of military parochialism in a highly specialized ministry on one hand and of diocesan conflicts of jurisdiction on the other, the office of Suffragan Bishop might have continued in force without a particularly energetic protest or controversy had it not been for the fact that the Vietnam War very much overtook or enlarged the issues associated with the BAF. Thus it was that such issues as officer status, religious freedom of speech within the military, security clearances, and government pay for chaplains, which might have been raised as abstractions, became in the Vietnam era flashpoints or symbols of a widespread secular and spiritual disaffection with the aims of the nation. And to the degree the mainstream Episcopalian institution was aligned with such aims, its integrity as a prophetic (i.e., challenging) voice and the issues relevant to its very existence became palpable and not abstract at all. One can see in the appeals to the benefits of compromise, cooperation, ecumenism, and the like, a hope that good will could overcome the moral separations of the civilian and military Episcopalian faithful. But any such benefits appear to have been lost in the moras

Category: Philosophy - V