[Nice50BMG]

Guilty of being anti-gay in the Navy! (The world is officially turned upside-down).

[joesnuffy]

You gotta tow the party line or find someplace else to
preach...

It aint your daddy's Navy anymore...

[MineralMan]

Odds are that the USS Anzio has a single chaplain aboard. That's a tough job, and requires the chaplain to minister to a wide variety of folks.

Sounds like he's trying, given the story of his attempt to get adequate kosher meals for one man. But...it's a difficult job, and it isn't always done well.

I was stationed at a small base in Turkey while in the USAF. We had one chaplain, a Southern Baptist. He spent his entire time on that base trying to convert everyone to his particular sect of Christianity. Catholics, Jews...everyone. It was frustrating for many people there, who belonged to other denominations.

Finally, he told a Jewish Sergeant that he was going to Hell unless he accepted Christ. That was a mistake. Turns out that the Sergeant's father was a Congressman.

That chaplain was outa there in about a week. Last I heard, he was up on charges and about to be discharged under less than honorable terms.

For me, Father Mulcahey on M*A*S*H was the best model I've seen of a military chaplain. Not a lot like him out there.

[Alouette]

his advocacy for a Jewish sailor who wanted kosher meals

And he's accused of "intolerance"?

BTW my dad is a WW2 Navy vet.

FRmail me to be added or removed from this Judaic/pro-Israel ping list.

WARNING: This is a high volume ping list

[Wallace T.]

Many "Army brats" and their counterparts in other services attended generic services and Sunday school programs called "Army Protestant." Before World War II, there was something of a generically Christian flavor to much of American civil and social life. Many schools had Bible readings from the King James Bible, which was almost universally used by non-Protestant Christians before 1950. Nativity scenes in courthouse squares and city halls were very common, even in the windows of department stores. Church attendance was the norm, with skeptics often attending Sunday services for appearance sakes. Even large cities like New York and Chicago closed their stores and businesses on Sundays.

The breakdown of anything like common ground among Protestants has been ongoing since the early 20th Century. The mainline and evangelical wings of Protestantism operate as separately from each other as they do with respect to Eastern Orthodoxy. The de-Christianization of American culture has been in full force since 1960. The word "Christmas" is now all but gone from advertising and commerce; Nativity scenes are now confined to the lawns and parking lots of churches.

America is increasingly a nation lacking common ground in values and norms. The prevalent culture promotes secular humanism and moral relativism and its offspring, such as multiculturalism, sexual license, political correctness, and so forth. So prevalent have these views become that it has infected even those who consider themselves conservatives. Observe the FReepers who were more concerned with "due process of law" than with justice in the case of Terri Schiavo and who regard people who did not find Laura Bush's off-color jokes amusing as prudes or worse. No society will function apart from a code of morality that clearly defines right and wrong.

"Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!" (Isaiah 5:20)

[SJackson]

If you'd like to be on this middle east/political ping list, please FR mail me.

[rabidralph]

Here's another story. This one says that officials at the AF Academy are too evangelical, also. It could be a trend.