Wight, Roger D. (1983, Fall). The chaplain's allegiance to military: a response. Military Chaplains' Review, 12(4), 48-50.
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This first quote is from the section of the text concerned the dual external and internal nature of allegiance to the military.
"f we cannot well and faithfully discharge the duties of our office because of a conflict arising from our denomination's stance, then well most likely hav to leave military service. An example of this might be a stance which a denomination would take on nuclear arms. Personal convictions involving nuclear arms could involve conflict which would not allow allegiance to the military. Separation is again indicated." (p. 49)
This is certainly what integrity would seem to demand. I do not know how easy it is for chaplains to separate themselves from the service, but in principle this does make sense.
Now let's turn and apply this to my situation at the Vienna mission. It does seem like it might apply, don't you think? (I'm assuming you've read some of the other posts?) After all, I had regular catalog of things I disagreed with them on. But the issue was that if I had confronted them with any or all of they would have denied them each and every one by a variety of ways. It could have been right across the board but they never have admitted to a one of them because they were a total institution and they were the only ones who had the right to make any such interpretations of right and wrong, or going on or why or any such overarching interpretive acts. None of us, supposedly, had enough information or knowledge to do that and that was a part of the division of labor for security's. So if you're caught mosying around in someone else's area of specialty that's grounds for suspicion for breach of security. But I never nosied around in anybody's business; I just happened to have the background from before I came to work at the mission that allowed me to think for myself and come to my own conclusions based on was seeing,hearing, experiencing and comparing it to what I knew.
So it wasn't like everyone knows that the U.S. military has nuclear, right? And the military isn't going to deny it (unlike the Israeli Defense Forces). So, yeah, I had a whole slew of complaints against them, but to them they were non-complaints, phantoms - as if I was chasing windmills or something. So, basically, I was just a little touched in the head. In this case, my separation from the mission would not have come out looking like separation due to a myriad complaints on my part and thus my ethics demanding a separation from the mission. In fact, the mission would ever allow a separation of that nature for even one complaint. Do you see now how come no one ever raised a voice of dissent and how I was most likely as close as it came to that and if so that was very pitiful, but even so it took a took a lot of emotional strength the year after I left them to recover emotionally. And my life was forever changed from what they did to me.
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...[E]ffective ministry within the military requires our allegiance to the military." (p. 50)This article is in response to the one I commented on in the last post, and this author would l a somewhat more pronounced focus on the military aspect of the chaplaincy than Chaplain Ettershank. I've explained stand, but it's more towards the spiritual while understanding enough of the lives of the soldiers to be able to related to them and understand them, but raise up lay leaders too, instead of the chaplain himself doing the bulk of the presence in that way and then his role won't get muddied, either and it will be clear that he is a chaplain, not a soldier (although I do understand he is an officer). It's called delegating, but it's also empowering and I think that if you have a bunch of these guys really trained well as lay leaders they could fill in well in a war setting too. They could get evangelism training, training in leading Bible studies, training in basic counseling, or whatever else is needed, etc.
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This is the end of this article. So I'm going to end here.