403. Military Chaplaincy, Pt. 21 (Barstad, pt. 1; Christian Century)

I went out this afternoon and got my hair cut.  It was sort of a big deal for me since I've had so many ailments I never get out and it's hard enough for me just to keep up with my basic things (health, finances, housework, etc.), so I hadn't had my hair done in quite a while.  The place I was going before was sort of far, although they were good enough, but I decided to find a place closer.  So I went to the mall near me.  The mall is upscale so the place I went was on the expensive side but she did a good job, so that was nice.  It's hard for me to walk much though with my legs so bad from the lumbar problems and I had to tell them to not have the water too hot because of the migraine.  I'm fortunate that using the brush and scrubbing don't bother the migraine because they didn't seem very sensitive to that, whereas the other place I went to were a lot more sensitive to my health issues as needed.  I think most people with migraine are sensitive to tactile things.

Now I just have to find time to have the car air conditioner fixed... again.  About a year ago when I had a major tune up they fixed the air conditioner and now it's not working again.  I think it's a lemon that way and the people who sold the car to me probably had had problems with it too, I think.  Since I live in a hot climate and with my health I have to have the air conditioner working. 

It's really hard for me to figure out how to fit these things into my schedule though.  It's such a major issue because I'm just not well and can't do much in a day.

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 This next text is:

Barstad, Stuart E. (1986, Spring). The church and the ideology of national security. Military Chaplains' Review. 15(2), 12-30.

"Out of this tension between the Church and the state, three types of relationships have emerged.  In the first, the Church is dominated by the state; in the second, the state is dominated by the Church; and in the third, therre is an accepted and legal separation of the Church and state.  As an American Lutheran, the tradition out of which I come is that of the separation of the Church and state.  However,, in 1787 when the United States Constitution was framed, the prevailing arrangement in Europe was the domination of the Church by the state.  Nowhere had the principle of mutual independence of religion and government been adoped as the basis of the church-state relationship.  The ideals of the 18th century enlightenment, and the heterogenous religious situation in the emerging sate, combined to produce the first amendment to our Constitution which declares that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereov.  It is in this context that the Church's relationship to American national security must be discussed." (p. 13-14)

I'm not sure where to begin with this, so I'll start by discussing where I'm coming from on this subject, although I've already hinted elsewhere a bit at about this.  Other than wanting to understand the context of Europe and Eastern Europe in particular, I wasn't political before arriving in Vienna.  I wasn't motivated by the red scare and I didn't have a lot of respect for those who seemed especially drawn by that.  (My particular interest in that part of the world started because part of my ethnic heritage is Ukrainian.)

I wasn't particularly comfortable with a lot of church and politics mixing, but a class in Bible school on current issues in Protestantism had a unit on the Moral Majority and the professor was against the church and state mixing like that.  So I think that had an influence on me later on.  When I was living in Russia I actually joined Americans United for the Separation of Church and State and I was a member for several years of that organization and I still think they're a good organization, but I just can't keep up with everything so I couldn't keep the membership.  But I still agree with their work, at least what I knew of it when I was a member and reading everything festiduously.  My opinion, basically, is that the state waters down the Church and the Church doesn't let the state do it's work (serve everyone equally in a heterogeneous society).

Back to the text.  It was clear that the Vienna mission did NOT believe in the separation of church and state because it had the two chaplains there and also we had our annual retreat at Hitler's Crow's Nest, which was - at that time - owned by the US military as a conference center.  It was one of the chaplains that had gotten us in there.  It seems that if the mission had believed in the separation of church and state they would not have agreed to that location.  Also, if they had believed in the separation of church and state then I don't think my father's position would have been such an issue because they wouldn't have had the ties with government to have known about my father in the first place, but also they would have been more interested in God's work anyway and would have seen to it that there would have been a way for me to serve if they thought I was truly called of God to the ministry.

I'm not sure I want to go into this any more because I do have a file on this subject too.

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Okay, that's all I want to take from that article, because the rest is just a treatise in support of having a military and security system and I don't really want to go into that.  So the next article, a shorty, is:

Air Force chaplain loses case. (1994, Dec. 7). Christian Century, 111(35), 1153-1154

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"Garland Robertson, a Southern Baptist chaplain with the U.S. Air Force who publicly criticized the morality of the 1991 war in the Persian Gulf, has been forced to retire from the armed services. Air Force Secretary Sheila Widnall rejected Robertson's appeal of a reprimand handed down by a military tribunal that found that the chaplain improperly took part in political activities and flouted the authority of the U.S. president.  The chaplain's retirement is effective next month.

Robertson. a lieutenant colonel and decorated Vietnam War combat pilot, left the Air Force in 1976 to pursue theological studies and returned to the military as a chaplain... wrote a letter to the editor in which he questioned the necessity of using force against the Iraqis.

Robertson's public dissent from the war policy prompted numerous clashes with his superiors and his being forces to undergo a series of psychological evaluations.  In September 1993 an Air Force Board of Inquiry recommended that the chaplain be honorably discharged from the service but denied his pension and other benefits.  It was that ruling that Robertson appealed from Widnall.

"I thought we [chaplains] were here to represent the faith traditions," Robertson told Ecumentical News International, "and I thought we were contributing to that goal.  But the real issue that's brought out is that the chaplain is here to serve the [military] institution.  And that's sad." (p. 1153-1154)

It was hard not to quote the whole article (it wasn't all that long).  I'm sure glad I got enlightened about the Vienna mission quicker than this chaplain did about the militairy chaplaincy.  At least he got some medals and a pension out of it, I guess. 

But did you notice that they made him go through counseling just because he wrote an editorial?  Can you just believe that?  Is that something you'd think maybe the Soviet Union would be more likely to do?  Well, the Vienna mission did that kind of thing too, remember?  I've only mentioned it a million times, or close to it.  If it looks like you're not going to be socialized in the Vienna mission and you're a woman then they might send you for counseling to help you make it over the hump so you'll decide to get socialized a little quicker maybe.  And the other day I was thinking about it being women only, that it's women, the "weaker" sex, but I wasn't quite weak enough and I came out stronger from it and learned from it to hide my true feelings and thoughts.  Some men just don't really understand the weaker sex, I guess.  Or maybe we're not really weaker after all.  At least not all of us.  Or maybe it depends on the crieria you use.

Anyway, this chaplain was a guy, but it's the military and the vast majority in the military are men.  Among Southern Baptist chaplains I think the ratio of men to women is even greater in favor of men.

The way this chaplain was treated is the type of thing that the two military chaplains/H.R. staff might have learned from and taken with them to the Vienna mission.  I don't know for sure that that happened, but it's very possible that they could have known about these kinds of things from their military experience.

It's absolutely horrible to think that that chaplain was crazy just because he disagreed with something.  He may have used poor judgement in doing what he did though.  My first librarian job was with a federal library in Washington, D.C. but it was contract (like half the city is).  There is a law called the Hatch Act that limits political activities of federal employees.  So I wasn't supposed to go to protests or things like that.  Bummer.  I wasn't a federal employee, since I was contract but we went by the it anyway.

So what the army did by having the chaplain go to counseling is to discredit him, I think, so that none of the people in the Air Force would take his words seriously.  The Air Force felt it had to act decisively against him to quelch any possible following, and so that's what it did.  At least that's how I read it.  So counseling was used not for health reasons but for individual disciplinary and social control reasons.

That's not completely unlike what happened in my case.  However, in my case other steps had to be taken for the social control to try to tighten the noose in that area, and the counseling was intended to be disciplinary and instructional.

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That's all for tonight.  I'm tired.