Church versus chapel
The world needs more chapels and chaplains
Last month Sectary of War Pete Hegseth fired Maj. Gen. William Green Jr., the U.S. Army’s chief of chaplains.
This was not, as commentary suggested, because Green is African American. He’s something much more upsetting to MAGA – he’s a moderate.
Shortly before cashiering Green, Hegseth invited a minister named Douglas Wilson to speak at the Pentagon. Wilson calls himself a white nationalist, says he wants America to become a theocracy in which Muslims must convert or be deported.
Maj. Gen. Green by contrast is a chaplain. Though ordained as a Baptist minister, as a chaplain he counsels all faiths, treats everyone with respect, and seeks to heal. Get rid of him!
Saint Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City, photo taken 1946 with Waldorf Astoria in background. Image courtesy NYC Urbanism.
As a descendant of Edmund Easterbrook, the Army’s chief of chaplains till 1929, your writer was struck by this development. (My middle name is Edmund.) If Edmund Easterbrook were still around, he wouldn’t judge Pete Hegseth. He’d try to salve what troubles him. That’s what chaplains do.
The United States military employs about 3,000 chaplains to staff its global footprint. Hegseth wants them to be explicitly Christian, a directive Green resisted as conflicting with the all-souls tradition of chaplaincy.
And until Hegseth cancelled it, the Pentagon had a Spiritual Fitness Guide, signed by Green. Hegseth thought the guide promoted secular humanism over piety, containing sentences such as one saying military leaders may draw their strength from God or “from a desire for personal growth.”
The whole affair got me to thinking about the difference between chaplain and clergy, between church and chapel.
