My friend and colleague, Danny Fisher, has called my attention to a recent article in Newsweek about the controversy of evangelizing Christian military chaplains.
The nearly 3,000 chaplains in the U.S. military are sworn to treat every soldier with respect and dignity regardless of their religious affiliation, according to a pluralistic socio-cultural model. The problem that has arisen is that, since two thirds of military chaplains are associated with evangelical and/or pentecostal views that tend to prioritize conversion methods, there has been a growing trend of proselytization in the military -- many Christians are attempting to convert people of non-Christian (or even differing Christian) affiliations.
This is totally antithetical to the values and protocol of chaplaincy in the U.S. military and efforts need to be made to halt such trends. Ideally, there needs to be more non-evangelical Christian military chaplains. That is, as more mainline Protestant, Catholic, Buddhist, Muslim, Hindu, and Sikh ministers take a place alongside evangelicals in military chaplaincy, the less free reign evangelicals will have to attempt to convert others since there will likely be less pressure as the number of other religious traditions grows. Regardless, those who are outrightly proselytizing need to be identified and reprimanded for their breech of conduct.
Read the full article here.
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