TRUTH OUT: Can Jesus Cure Shell Shock?
Accessibility Notice
This post was created on the previous version of the MRFF website, and may not be fully accessible to users of assistive technology. If you need help accessing this content, please reach out via email.Recent Posts
- May 4, 2026 | No comments
- April 30, 2026 | 2 comments
2 Comments
Comments are closed.
Suicide and PTSD are serious issues that take the full resources of all helping agencies, mental health and chaplains. Ask most Soldiers and Airmen and they will tell you that they would rather go to a chaplain than a mental health. Chaplains are integrated with the unit and the squadron. They are accessible with absolute confidentiality. They keep no records. Chaplains are trained to be sensitive to both those who claim a faith in a spiritual being and those who claim no faith in a divine. They are also required to be faithful to their denominational tenets.
MRFF continually over generalizes and extrapolates to the extreme the efforts of men and women who are on loan by their denominations to meet the equally constitutionally protected rights of free exercise.
In the black and white world of some clergy (chaplains) there can only be one answer, their version of God and religious order. A good Chaplain brings there own faith to the door and leaves there until it is welcomed or turned away, regardless a Chaplain is to be there as a presence, as safe haven. They are restricted in theory, on presenting there own beliefs, where as I have seen some Mental Health ‘professionals’ thump the bible harder than the most fervent right wing evangelical chaplain.
There will always be a problem in how Chaplains are perceived by the simple application of resources and requirements to become a Chaplain. Many of the new Chaplains are educationally funded through fundamentalist groups and learning institutions. You need a Masters of Divinity (or equivalent) to become a Chaplain. It is inherently a Christian degree. So while our population diversifies spiritually we maintain a metric that requires a level of Christian proficiency for the job.
The billeting is biased in the services as well as in the VA. You are always a “modified” Chaplain, Catholic Chaplain, Protestant Chaplain, Jewish Chaplain, Muslim Chaplain, etc. Until there are either Interfaith /Multifaith Chaplains, or educational requirements that include multiple traditions we will have these problems. The ones who lose have already given so much in service, they don’t need a betrayal from those who are supposed to serving them.