Wm, discrimination is wrong whether due to race or denomination.
However, what I’m saying to you is that with their requirement to promote and ALSO to keep a representative balance of denominations, that sometimes what might appear on surface to be discrimination is not, in fact, discrimination.
Let’s take Catholic chaplains, for example.
If you were the Catholic Chief of Chaplains at a promotion board, you would know that the service required 300 priests and had less than 100. You also know that instructions to the promotion board ALLOW you to take into consider under-strength denominations if those chaplains are FULLY QUALIFIED.
You have a board with 100 names on it. The congress of the US says you are permitted to promote 20.
You look at all the records with your other board memebers. The most important records are those called Officer Efficiency Reports from the past commanders of these chaplains. Each of them before the board has from 10-20 of these in their file. The chaplain can be rated a 1,2,3,4 with 4 the lowest.
Most of the chaplains have an average rating of 2. There are a very few, 5 of them with a rating of 1.5 to 1.
They are the BEST QUALIFIED. Therefore they are at the top of the list REGARDLESS OF DENOMINATION.
The bottom 10 are between 2.1 and 4: They are the least qualified and WILL NOT be promoted REGARDLESS OF DENOMINATION.
You are down to 85 candidates for the remaining 15 slots. The 85 candidates are all QUALIFIED. You rank order them from 6-85 based on a numerical score between 1.51 and and 2.0. In looking at other points in the record, besides just the OER averages, you see reasons to assign other +’s to the records of other candidates. Instead of the next 15 being merely numbers 6-21, you have a list that might stretch from 6-35. These are the FULLY QUALIFIED.
As you look at the 15 more promotions you are to consider denominational balance, race, gender, doctrinal practice so that the military can have a good spread of these attributes so that ministry can best take place.
You know that you are 200 Catholic Chaplains short in the military and that there are 2 Catholic chaplains in the FULLY QUALIFIED category who are NOT ranked numbers 6-21. Therefore, you don’t want to LOSE ground with Catholic coverage, so you move those chaplains to slots 20 and 21 and bump the former #21 down to #22.
How is this different than in the regular, non-chaplain officer ranks bumping up a fully qualified officer who also speaks FLUENT ARABIC to number 21 and bumping the former #21 down to 22?
It is not any different. It is taking care FIRST of the needs of the service.
I KNEW we were in agreement on this point. I really doubt there are any Christians in this discussion that differ on this point.
However, what I’m saying to you is that with their requirement to promote and ALSO to keep a representative balance of denominations, that sometimes what might appear on surface to be discrimination is not, in fact, discrimination.
I agree with you about the need for representative balance. However, why does the denomination of the chief of chaplains correspond to the denomination with the highest % promoted?
ONLY looking at the Stateside situation, the Bible-believing Baptists of our general strain who serve in the military are rarely found in base chapels; rarely seeking the services of military chaplains. Most leave the base/post to attend independent Baptist churches, and join independent Baptist churches; and rely on the pastoral ministries of civilian Baptist pastors.
I cannot speak with authority about other conservative/fundamentalist denominations. But when I was stationed at Whiteman AFB, Missouri, I was invited to two different Assemblies of God churches; one in Knob Noster, one in Clinton, MO. At that time, both of those churches were very much old-fashioned fundamentalist.
I accepted those invitations and discovered that those two Assemblies of God churches were both full of airman, NCOs, and officers from Whiteman AFB. So I assume that military personnel who were raised in, or strongly influenced by, fundamentalist/conservative Assemblies of God are much more interested in being members of off-base local churches than participation in the base/post chapels.
While in the Air Force I was sent to the Baptist chaplain once by my instructors in an NCO leadership school. The Chaplain was tasked with trying to convince me that the social drinking of alcohol was an acceptable compromise I should make, and attendance at NCO Club functions was important for me if I wanted to advance very far in rank!
Right! They sent me to a CHAPLAIN for this purpose. That chaplain was "Baptist," but from a very liberal line of them, perhaps Northern Convention.
While overseas in Korea in 1975/76 I sought out Baptist missionaries and attended their mission churches (of course, off base).
While I was in Korea, a new Baptist chaplain came who had been sent to Korea after having exposed a wife-swapping ring among officers at a New England base (forgot which now). The other chaplains at Kunsan AB took this new chaplain to 'A'-Town to break him in right, and he found himself quickly abandoned in town. He told this account at a Tuesday evening Bible study he began, and when asked whether he had some idea of what happened to the chaplains that evening after having led him to 'A'-Town, he answered, "They found their girlfriends maybe?---I really wouldn't know. I just returned to the base."
So I have always considered chaplains to be of the very liberal sort, with rare exception, and I have never wanted to have much to do with them, generally. When I was in the Service, I and my wife were always members of off-base Bible-believing churches.
Most of the independent Baptist churches around the States with which we fellowship are heavily engaged in supporting and financing off-base missions to military personnel. These missions are often storefronts or other facilities very near the military installations, providing a place, 7 days per week, for Servicemen/women to go and study the Bible, get Scriptural counselling, and hear the Gospel.
Many of these Serviceman's centers are set up outside of our bases in Europe as well.
The directors of such missions are supported from the missionary budgets of independent Baptist churches all over America.
Obviously, independent Baptists have no confidence in the spiritual nature (whatever that might really be) of the military chaplaincy, and therefore are heavily invested in off-base missions to the military.
Very many independent Baptist churches near military bases run buses on Sunday mornings to bring soldiers, sailors, and/or airman to church. Although we never rode the bus, my wife and I both came to Christ instrumentally by the ministry of just one such church. After we were saved, we never recommended any of my military friends or their families to attend the base chapel, but always invited them to our church, 4 miles off-base.
YES, I REALIZE there are unique situations in war zones, as well as on naval ships.
I know some good men (not chaplains) who are in the army, who conduct Bible studies and even worship services with other personnel in Afghanistan, and pay absolutely no attention to chaplains. Historic Baptist distinctives include the individual priesthood of the believer.
I have one friend in the ministry who actually served as "pastor" of a "church" on an aircraft carrier during the late 1970s. He had graduated from a Bible college and had been ordained by his home church before he enlisted in the Navy. He was not a Navy chaplain; he worked in ordnance. But he preached and taught the Bible on board, baptized converts by the authority of his home/ordaining church, etc. A goodly number of members of that "church" on board a carrier are known to have gone into the Christian ministry later.
So, I'm not sure I would even care about how many chaplains there are of any given denominational level. What I mean is, if I were in the Air Force today and stationed in Afghanistan, and there were no Baptist chaplains who believed the Bible, and I were to know what I know now from the Scriptures. . . I wouldn't really feel a very strong need of a chaplain at all. In fact, I'd just as soon begin winning my own buddies to Jesus Christ by the Gospel and start a "church" in the war zone.