ORLANDO SENTINEL – Army’s top chaplain-school officer questions training simulations for chaplains

Selected Article Excerpts:

• The chief of the U.S. Army’s chaplain school has raised a caution flag about a new high-tech system under development in Orlando that uses computer-game simulations to train chaplains for ministering to soldiers on the battlefield.Known as the “Spiritual Triage Trainer,” the nascent software project is the brainchild of the Army’s Orlando simulation-research lab and a private military contractor. Its goal: to help new chaplains develop their decision-making skills as they encounter injured or dying soldiers during “virtual combat.”

• The project has been criticized by Mikey Weinstein, a nationally known advocate for religious freedom in the U.S. military and a former Reagan administration lawyer, who has campaigned against what he says is widespread fundamentalist-Christian coercion within the armed services.“We’re finding a tsunami of Christian evangelical triumphalism rippling through the Pentagon, and this computer game could be just a Trojan horse for indoctrinating chaplains in this movement,” said Weinstein, president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. “Besides, there are thousands of Christian denominations alone — how are you going to create a game that incorporates them all? Our clients, many of whom are chaplains themselves, think this is just a horrible idea.”

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