Editorial
Uniform Prayers
Just How Many Religions Can Military Chaplains Serve?
by Russell D. Moore
The 1970s television comedy M*A*S*H shaped for a generation of Americans the idea of what a military chaplain ought to be. The character Father Mulcahy was kind, warm, sensitive, and benign. He seemed always ready to offer a listening ear, but was decidedly nonjudgmental, rarely raising a word of protest when those in his charge included an adulterous husband, a woman so promiscuous she bore the nickname “Hot Lips,” or a man willing to cross-dress to get out of military service.
Father Mulcahy wasn’t really all that Catholic, or even all that Christian. He seemed to be more of a Unitarian with a crucifix, the very icon of amorphous, therapeutic civil religion. There was no need for a Billy Graham or Fulton Sheen type, it seemed, because Father Mulcahy was, well, a chaplain.
It would be one thing if Father Mulcahy were simply a soon-to-be forgotten face from a long-ago cancelled television comedy. It is quite another when the United States military restricts chaplaincy to the point where only Father Mulcahys need apply.
The current flashpoint is not over some hard question of uncharted constitutional territory. It is instead over whether Christian chaplains can pray as Christians whenever they pray. More specifically, should Christian chaplains be required to scratch Jesus’ name from public prayers, in order to offer more “inclusive” prayers that serve a general spiritual purpose?
Sectarian Prayers
In a March communiqué to army chaplains, Major General David H. Hicks, the US Army Chief of Chaplains, assured those under his charge that the army did not wish to “censor prayers.” He furthermore told chaplains he always prays in the name of Jesus, “but I don’t always use that name. It is a matter of the heart.” With this in mind, he suggested that chaplains be “sensitive” when praying in “public settings where there may be those whose religious viewpoints are disrespected by a narrowly focused, sectarian prayer.”
This “sensitivity” had been defined in United States Air Force guidelines released in February that state that only “non-denominational, inclusive prayer” will be allowed at public ceremonies “when its primary purpose is not the advancement of religious beliefs.” There is already a question about whether praying in Jesus’ name is such an “advancement of religious belief.” While no branch of the military has yet come down with clear legal language against using the name of Jesus, some chaplains are already sensing the chill when it comes to speaking, as some now say in somewhat ominous tones, “the Name.”
According to the Religion News Service, Rabbi Steve Gutow, executive director of the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, met with Air Force officials to discuss the new prayer guidelines, and cannot see what all the controversy is about. “When somebody prays in Jesus’ name,” Gutow told RNS, “I wonder if they couldn’t also find another way to bring God in the room.” That comment can be translated as, “Why can’t they just be good liberal Protestants and pluralist Catholics?”
For millions of Evangelicals, Pentecostals, Fundamentalists, and Catholics, there’s not a way to “get God in the room” except through the mediation of Jesus. The United States military should understand that, for most conservative Christians, praying in Jesus’ name is not a really specifically worded prayer, akin to saying, “And, as you know, Father, I offer this prayer as a Southern Baptist.” It is the only prayer they believe that God receives. The one praying is recognizing that he can come before God only through the mediation of a priest, the high priest Jesus.
Inclusive Evangelicals
Russell D. Moore is president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention. He is a senior editor of Touchstone.
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