Alban at Duke Divinity School at Durham, North Carolina, United States for Monday, 6 November 2017 "PRACTICAL WISDOM FOR LEADING CONGREGATIONS: Ministry helps struggling veterans heal from wounds of war" - Alban Weekly
The Revs. Zac Koons (center) and David Peters lead veterans in prayer at an Episcopal Veterans Fellowship healing service. Photos by Brian Diggs
Faith & Leadership
Ministry helps struggling veterans heal from the wounds of war
The fading light of evening streaked through the stained-glass windows at St. Richard's Episcopal Church in Round Rock, Texas, as about a dozen military veterans knelt at the altar rail.
The veterans, including men who had seen combat in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, had come to the suburban Austin sanctuary that August night seeking reconciliation and healing.
The priest, a slim 41-year-old former U.S. Army chaplain, invited them to write down and offer up to God any transgressions they may have committed while in the military that now plague their consciences.
"Maybe you killed someone," the Rev. David Peters told them. "Maybe you don't know who you killed. ... Maybe you sat back when someone was suffering."
Silently, each person wrote a few words on a yellow Post-it, then deposited the note in a thurible used for incense.
"It will burn up," Peters said. "God will hear it and see it. And God will forgive you."
Flames darted out from the metal censer as the pungent odor of burning paper filled the church. Slowly, the sticky notes turned into ash.
Warren Gillespie swings a thurible as the smell of burning paper fills the sanctuary at St. Richard's Episcopal Church.
The ceremony -- a "moral injury healing service" -- is one of several ministries conducted by the Episcopal Veterans Fellowship. Founded by Peters in 2014 in Austin, the organization is a network of veterans and family members who meet twice a month to pray together and share the spiritual angst that lingers from military service. The fellowship is active in several parishes in the Episcopal Diocese of Texas, including St. Mark's Episcopal in Austin, where Peters serves as associate rector.In an effort to heal from moral injury and build a community for struggling veterans, members participate in reconciliation services, retreats and pilgrimages. They also teach other churches about their peer-led model, the first of its kind in the Episcopal Church. And with the support of the Episcopal Church Foundation, Peters travels to parishes around the country to help them create their own veterans ministries.
Guilt, loss of faith and the lure of suicidePeters knows firsthand how important such ministry can be. Like many of the men and women he ministers to in the fellowship, Peters -- who served a year in Iraq -- has grappled with guilt, loss of faith and the lure of suicide.
The Rev. David PetersAfter his deployment to Baghdad from 2005 to 2006, Peters plunged into a dark spiral. He went through a crushing divorce that cost him his ordination in the Bible Fellowship Church. Eventually, he made his way to the Episcopal Church, where he was ordained in 2012, and discovered a major source of his pain: moral injury, a penetrating soul wound soldiers incur when they violate their consciences on the battlefield. The ancient practices of penance and pilgrimage helped Peters to heal and inspired him to build a ministry to help other vets.
From his years as an Army chaplain and his earlier experience as an enlisted Marine, Peters knew when he formed the Episcopal Veterans Fellowship that veterans would do best in a community of fellow veterans. He also knew from his theological training that veterans needed the sacramental structure of penance and reconciliation -- even if their faith was destroyed.
For many soldiers who’ve been through combat, the moral universe has shifted, Peters said.
“The church is supposed to be the group that creates morality, or at least witnesses to it,” he said. “And when you think that God is the least moral being in the universe, that’s where the church has to witness to that, too.”
How can your church create and witness to morality for people who doubt God’s goodness or even existence?
Part of a much broader movement in the church to minister to veterans, the fellowship is increasingly focused on what experts call “moral injury.” In the last few years, books, articles and conferences have explored the topic, and philanthropic foundations have awarded large grants to faith-based moral injury projects.
Unlike post-traumatic stress disorder -- which is rooted in fear and marked by flashbacks and hypervigilance -- moral injury refers to the turmoil people experience when they violate their core values, such as a prohibition against killing. In combat, morality can become distorted, and when soldiers return to civilian life, they often feel spiritually unmoored, disconnected, even suicidal.
Veterans and family members prepare to receive communion during the healing service.
With all the attention focused on PTSD in recent decades, mental health professionals missed the moral devastation that many soldiers endured, said the Rt. Rev. James Magness, a Vietnam War veteran, former U.S. Navy chaplain, and until recently bishop suffragan for the Episcopal Church’s Armed Forces and Federal Ministries.“There’s another component of being in combat and experiencing combat that has little if anything to do with post-traumatic stress and has to do with … moral wounds, or moral injury,” said Magness, who has been a mentor to Peters.
“We need priests to work with these people, and spiritual leaders more so than therapists and clinicians,” he said. “Rightly so, post-traumatic stress clinicians don’t talk about reconciliation and forgiveness.”
Old as war itself
The concept of moral injury -- a term often credited to psychiatrist Jonathan Shay(link is external) -- is as old as war itself, scholars say. But it went unaddressed for centuries and is now gaining traction in both clinical and religious circles.
A landmark article by researchers in Clinical Psychology Review in 2009 defined moral injury as “perpetrating, failing to prevent, bearing witness to, or learning about acts that transgress deeply held moral beliefs and expectations.”
The departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs now acknowledge moral injury as a condition distinct from PTSD, though many people still conflate the two.
In his 2016 book, “Post-Traumatic God: How the Church Cares for People Who Have Been to Hell and Back,” (link is external)Peters writes that war thrusts soldiers into an “upside-down moral universe” where “everyday cruelties abound” and in which everyone -- even the chaplain -- absorbs guilt.
John Miller, a former midshipman in the Navy, bows his head in prayer.
Some soldiers incur moral injury because they have tortured a prisoner or killed a civilian. After returning from Iraq, Peters heard dozens of horrific stories when he counseled injured soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.For others, it’s less dramatic. Peters cites a relatively minor episode that haunted him for years. While riding atop a Humvee, he witnessed an Iraqi soldier punch an elderly man in the stomach. Peters did nothing. His unit rolled on.
“That’s the ‘thing left undone’ in a confession,” he said.
What are the “things undone” for your church or organization?
Even those “pushing the spear from way back down the line” can suffer the corrosive effects of moral injury, he said. “I was not at the tip, but I was there doing my part, shoving it into the body of my enemy. So my participation in that had an impact on me.”
Religious rituals vs. therapy
Peters, who is now remarried, found strength and a return to wholeness in centuries-old sacraments and penitential rites. As he discovered, religious rituals can sometimes provide more meaningful recovery than traditional psychotherapy.
The Rev. Zac Koons, left, associate rector at St. Richard's, bows his head as Peters blesses Scott Beachy.
Because study of moral injury is still in its infancy, no research has been conducted comparing clinical treatment with spiritual approaches, said Dr. Warren Kinghorn, associate research professor of psychiatry and pastoral and moral theology at Duke Divinity School. But religious approaches can provide a depth and context that no secular approach can, he said.“Religious responses to moral injury can not only speak to deeply existential questions,” Kinghorn said, “but also, unlike most nonreligious clinical approaches, can invite veterans into an ongoing community and can meaningfully engage complex moral questions of war.”
Does your church address or avoid complex moral issues?That has been the Rev. Rita Nakashima Brock’s focus for the last several years. In 2012, she started the Soul Repair Center,(link is external) the first moral injury program in the country, at Brite Divinity School in Fort Worth. The center provides resources and training for congregations.
While Brock promotes a spiritual response to moral injury, she’s quick to point out the church’s complicated history with war.
Early Christians regarded military engagement as sinful. As the church developed, however, theologians such as Augustine of Hippo refashioned Greco-Roman just war theory for a Christian audience. Later, during the Crusades, the church treated war as a holy act in which soldiers could receive absolution for their sins.
Christianity, Brock said, became “very morally confused about violence.”
She and Peters agree that today’s nationalistic fervor leaves little space for soldiers to talk openly about moral injury.
“When we lost the penitential system, we lost the ability to do both -- to be a good Christian and to serve in the military,” Peters said.
Penance and reconciliation
Peters looks to the pre-Crusades Ermenfrid Penitential (link is external)for inspiration. After the Battle of Hastings in 1066, Bishop Ermenfrid of Sion and other bishops prescribed various acts of atonement for the invading Norman soldiers -- a year of penance for every person they killed in battle, for example.
If today’s veterans believe they have sinned, Peters said, the church does them no favor by saying, “Oh, don’t feel bad; you were serving your country.” Instead, the church should help people repent and move toward reconciliation.
Who is your church helping to repent and move toward reconciliation?In the past, he said, monks offered spiritual guidance to returning warriors. Hoping to play a similar role and to deepen their commitment to ministry, some members of the Episcopal Veterans Fellowship have formed a monastic order, the Hospitallers of St. Martin.(link is external) Hospitallers pray the daily office, fast weekly and seek out veterans -- as well as others affected by war, poverty and violence -- who need help.
For Peters, who grew up in a fundamentalist church in Pennsylvania, the Episcopal Church’s sacraments and disciplines provide a road map for healing, one that resonates with others.
“People contact us from all over the country and say, ‘I want to be part of this,’” he said. “There’s a longing for ancient spirituality in every denomination.”
Peters welcomes veterans to the moral injury healing service.
But it’s not easy convincing veterans to show up, especially those who served in recent wars.Robert Hoehn, a Vietnam War veteran and member of the fellowship’s Round Rock chapter, understands. It took him decades to confront his moral injuries.
In the late 1970s, a Veterans Affairs psychologist counseled Hoehn to picture himself putting his feelings in a box and placing it on a shelf. It worked. He focused on his career and raising his two sons and kept his guilt and grief at bay.
In 2008, Hoehn was diagnosed with Parkinson’s and had to retire.
“Suddenly, I had a lot of time on my hands, and I got to thinking about that box,” he said. “I took it down off the shelf … and that’s all it took.”
Reliving painful memories
He began reliving painful war memories, including the mortar attack that had wounded him and killed his best friend. Nightmares were constant. The anguish felt like “full-body heartburn.”
Some of his symptoms were unmistakably PTSD. But he was also consumed with guilt.
“I did some things in Asia that I look back now … How could I have done that?”
Two years ago, a friend convinced him to attend an Episcopal Veterans Fellowship reconciliation service. Eventually, Hoehn and his friend Warren Gillespie started a fellowship chapter at their own parish, St. Richard’s. Their twice-monthly support group usually draws 15 to 18 people. Both took Hospitaller vows.
“I’m so much healthier than I was,” Hoehn said.
Peters hugs Scott BeachyHe credits God. And Peters.
What makes the Texas fellowship work is Peters’ credibility as a fellow veteran, said Magness, now bishop assisting for the Episcopal Diocese of Southern Virginia.
“One thing that nonveterans can’t do is establish a safe environment [for veterans],” he said.
What role can non-veterans play in helping veterans heal?
Magness attended the fellowship’s first retreat with more than 20 veterans at a Catholic monastery in Central Texas.
“After about 12 hours together,” he said, “we started experiencing the expression of some tremendous stories of pain and injury and the need for reconciliation and forgiveness.”
That peer-led model is central to other efforts around the country.
Earlier this year, Brock left Brite for the nonprofit organization Volunteers of America,(link is external) where she is working on a two-year pilot program called Spiritual Resiliency Training. Funded by a $918,000 grant from the Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation, the peer-led interfaith project will use meditation and other spiritual practices to help veterans develop inner awareness, acclimate to civilian society and sleep better.
Rituals and meaning
Brock, the daughter of a World War II and Vietnam veteran, believes that people who have been in the military find the structure and repetition of religious ritual comfortingly familiar.
“Rituals deliver meaning every time you do them,” she said. “That’s exactly how the military trains people in boot camp.”
Meanwhile, the Soul Repair Center continues working to equip congregations to help veterans with moral injury, said the Rev. Nancy Ramsay, the chair of the center’s national advisory board.
“It’s a clear and present danger for lives,” she said. “And it’s a significant suffering that people bring home. It’s in our congregations. It’s in our communities.”
Ramsay wants to see congregations address the moral injury not only of veterans but of all Americans.
“We are complicit,” she said. “[Soldiers] have incurred moral injury on our behalf, in a way. It’s important not to lose sight of the fact that this is national as well as personal.”
Peters is working to spread that message beyond his diocese. He has already helped start a chapter in South Carolina. In June, he received an Episcopal Church Foundation fellowship,(link is external) which will enable him to travel to Episcopal churches around the country and help leaders improve their veterans ministries or start new ones.
“A lot of things I did I’m not proud of,” he said.
Hoehn nodded emphatically. “I think I’m hiding something no one else will know,” he said.
That’s one of the gifts of the fellowship, Hoehn said -- discovering he isn’t alone.
Peters knows that many more veterans could benefit from reconciliation services and other ministries. It can be discouraging, he said. “You’re trying to build community with people who don’t trust anybody.”
The fellowship’s task is to be a visible presence, to be there whenever veterans are ready to show up.
“People are watching,” he said. “They might not participate yet. It might take them years.”
His military training has taught him to keep flying the flag.
IDEAS THAT IMPACT: MINISTRY WITH MEMBERS OF THE ARMED FORCES & VETERANS
Others had skirted around the issue before, but my professor was the first to ask the question outright. Despite being put on the spot in front of a roomful of my classmates, I was grateful for the opportunity to answer.
Basically, I explained, soldiers too need pastors. Their job is not one for the faint of heart. From the first days of basic training to their initial assignments to the combat zones where many eventually serve, soldiers experience challenges and even trauma that few in the civilian world will ever know.
Even as a first-year divinity student, I already knew from my undergraduate experience in ROTC that many in the military come from backgrounds on the margins of middle-class American life. Often, they enlist because they see the military as their best, if not only, means to get access to education or to break free from generations of poverty.
To 18-year-olds looking for any chance to get at least a little ahead, a four-year commitment seems harmless. They don’t realize how life can be forever altered in seconds. One moment, a soldier is strong and fit. The next, he or she is missing a limb.
Nobody but those who experience such loss can understand the cost. Signing up is easy. Negotiating the wreckage of war -- from lost comrades and accidental civilian casualties to failed marriages and all the other collateral damage -- is hard. It requires a lot of work and a lot of help.
After years of war on two fronts, there is no shortage of people needing help. Many soldiers and sailors, airmen and Marines bear wounds, whether visible or beneath the surface. For these men and women, a long road toward healing stretches ahead, but it is not a journey that they should make alone.
Healing requires the strength and endurance of community -- of family, friends, health care professionals, brothers and sisters in arms, and even of strangers. Don’t pilgrims on such an arduous journey need pastors to walk with them? Perhaps even pastors who have been formed in institutions that question whether a faithful Christian life is consistent with military service?
Army and other military chaplains come from a variety of denominations and faith traditions, from mainline Protestant to Judaism, from Catholic to conservative evangelical. Some are more theologically comfortable with the idea of war than others. But whatever their background, I have never met one who is a champion of killing.
No chaplain is excited by news of the injured and slain, whether our own or the enemy. Loss of life is the loss of a chance to foster forgiveness and reconciliation in the future, the pillars of the Christian faith. Even chaplains who advocate a “just war” position -- believing that sometimes war is needed in order to protect innocent life -- do so out of a hope that eventually war ends with peace.
But it is one thing to advocate for war, even the most just war imaginable, and quite another to be present and to help pick up the pieces when it happens. The blood that has been spilled taints us as well. You can’t get too close to the fire without being a little burned.
This jarring truth became real to me one Sunday in Afghanistan after our chapel service. One of my most faithful congregants asked to speak to me, and so for about an hour we kicked rocks around camp. That day, I had preached a sermon on nonviolence, even quoting the Rev. Martin Luther King. My friends from seminary would have approved.
My soldier was wrangling with a memory from another deployment, a scene that haunts him still. He and his men were patrolling along a road when they stumbled upon a hanging cemetery -- lifeless girls, some no older than 5, strung up by the Taliban in the branches of a tree.
“Chaplain,” he said, “nonviolence sounds wonderful to me, but what about the little girls in the next village? What choice did we have but to go and find every last person involved with killing these children and make sure they were not able to do it again?”
The chaplains who make a real difference aren’t necessarily the brightest or the ones with the most impressive theological pedigrees. They are the ones who are willing to be shaped and refashioned by the context of their ministry. They accompany their soldiers into the crucible and look horror in the face, knowing they may not emerge unscathed.
At the same time, they also find ways to remember the good news. Whenever the time is right, they are the voice of radical love, a love that lays down its life for friends and even for foes. They hold these ideals in bloodstained hands, praying that God’s goodness and mercy will continue to follow them despite all they have done and left undone.
“When a man takes guilt upon himself in responsibility, he imputes his guilt to himself and no one else. He answers for it,” Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote in “Ethics.” “Before other men he is justified by dire necessity; before himself he is acquitted by his conscience, but before God he hopes only for grace.”
Toward the end of my deployment in Afghanistan, conditions worsened. Between the bleak news of casualties and the sirens warning of dangers, I was more than ready to call it done. Sitting in my office one evening, I shamefully acknowledged to myself that if I had a chance to leave early, I would probably take it, even if it meant leaving my flock behind.
I could hear the voice of Ezekiel, holding Israel’s false shepherds to account: “You have not strengthened the weak … [or] bound up the injured, you have not brought back the strayed … [or] sought the lost. … So they were scattered, because there was no shepherd” (Ezekiel 34:4-5 NRSV).
Sitting there, surrounded by tons of cement and barbed wire, bounded by volumes of rules and regulations that dictate what I can and cannot do, I also realized that I could not leave even if I wanted to. When I agreed to don the uniform, ironically, I gave up my freedom.
Even though I am an ordained minister, tethered to a book of order and vows to Christ and the church, whenever I wear this other uniform, I live in the same world where soldiers dwell. Wearing the uniform makes me one of them, and only as one of them can I truly be with them.
I know now, more than ever before, how implicated I am by my calling to military chaplaincy. In the end, standing side by side with my fellow soldiers, I too can only hope for God’s grace.
How can I claim to be a Christian and at the same time willingly be a part of an organization that breaks things on purpose?
I don’t see another way.
Read more from Mel Baars »
What makes the Texas fellowship work is Peters’ credibility as a fellow veteran, said Magness, now bishop assisting for the Episcopal Diocese of Southern Virginia.
“One thing that nonveterans can’t do is establish a safe environment [for veterans],” he said.
What role can non-veterans play in helping veterans heal?
Magness attended the fellowship’s first retreat with more than 20 veterans at a Catholic monastery in Central Texas.
“After about 12 hours together,” he said, “we started experiencing the expression of some tremendous stories of pain and injury and the need for reconciliation and forgiveness.”
That peer-led model is central to other efforts around the country.
Earlier this year, Brock left Brite for the nonprofit organization Volunteers of America,(link is external) where she is working on a two-year pilot program called Spiritual Resiliency Training. Funded by a $918,000 grant from the Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation, the peer-led interfaith project will use meditation and other spiritual practices to help veterans develop inner awareness, acclimate to civilian society and sleep better.
Rituals and meaning
Brock, the daughter of a World War II and Vietnam veteran, believes that people who have been in the military find the structure and repetition of religious ritual comfortingly familiar.
“Rituals deliver meaning every time you do them,” she said. “That’s exactly how the military trains people in boot camp.”
Meanwhile, the Soul Repair Center continues working to equip congregations to help veterans with moral injury, said the Rev. Nancy Ramsay, the chair of the center’s national advisory board.
“It’s a clear and present danger for lives,” she said. “And it’s a significant suffering that people bring home. It’s in our congregations. It’s in our communities.”
Ramsay wants to see congregations address the moral injury not only of veterans but of all Americans.
“We are complicit,” she said. “[Soldiers] have incurred moral injury on our behalf, in a way. It’s important not to lose sight of the fact that this is national as well as personal.”
Peters is working to spread that message beyond his diocese. He has already helped start a chapter in South Carolina. In June, he received an Episcopal Church Foundation fellowship,(link is external) which will enable him to travel to Episcopal churches around the country and help leaders improve their veterans ministries or start new ones.
After the moral injury service, Pauline Hoehn and her husband, Robert Hoehn, greet Peters.
After the recent reconciliation service at St. Richard’s, veterans mingled in the sanctuary. Hoehn, the group’s jokester, teased his friends, including newcomer Brad Hardin, a Navy veteran who served from 1977 to 1984 and later worked for the National Security Administration. Hardin admitted he wasn’t big on groups but was relieved to release some of his burdens.“A lot of things I did I’m not proud of,” he said.
Hoehn nodded emphatically. “I think I’m hiding something no one else will know,” he said.
That’s one of the gifts of the fellowship, Hoehn said -- discovering he isn’t alone.
Peters knows that many more veterans could benefit from reconciliation services and other ministries. It can be discouraging, he said. “You’re trying to build community with people who don’t trust anybody.”
The fellowship’s task is to be a visible presence, to be there whenever veterans are ready to show up.
“People are watching,” he said. “They might not participate yet. It might take them years.”
His military training has taught him to keep flying the flag.
Questions to consider
- What does it mean to “witness to morality?” How can your church create and witness to morality for people who doubt God’s goodness or even existence?
- Violating one’s core values is not unique to those in combat. In what ways can core values be violated in civilian life?
- What are the “things undone” for your church or organization?
- To what extent does your church address complex moral issues? To what extent does it avoid them?
- Who is your church helping to repent and move toward reconciliation?
- Do you agree that only veterans can create a safe space for other veterans? What role can non-veterans play in helping veterans heal?
IDEAS THAT IMPACT: MINISTRY WITH MEMBERS OF THE ARMED FORCES & VETERANS
After a tour of duty in Afghanistan, an Army chaplain ponders anew the question a professor once asked: How can she be a Christian and be a part of an organization that breaks things on purpose?Faith & Leadership
It was sometime toward the end of my first year of divinity school when a professor hit me with the question I had been anticipating since the day I arrived: “How can you claim to be a Christian and at the same time willingly be a part of an organization that breaks things on purpose?”Others had skirted around the issue before, but my professor was the first to ask the question outright. Despite being put on the spot in front of a roomful of my classmates, I was grateful for the opportunity to answer.
Basically, I explained, soldiers too need pastors. Their job is not one for the faint of heart. From the first days of basic training to their initial assignments to the combat zones where many eventually serve, soldiers experience challenges and even trauma that few in the civilian world will ever know.
Even as a first-year divinity student, I already knew from my undergraduate experience in ROTC that many in the military come from backgrounds on the margins of middle-class American life. Often, they enlist because they see the military as their best, if not only, means to get access to education or to break free from generations of poverty.
To 18-year-olds looking for any chance to get at least a little ahead, a four-year commitment seems harmless. They don’t realize how life can be forever altered in seconds. One moment, a soldier is strong and fit. The next, he or she is missing a limb.
Nobody but those who experience such loss can understand the cost. Signing up is easy. Negotiating the wreckage of war -- from lost comrades and accidental civilian casualties to failed marriages and all the other collateral damage -- is hard. It requires a lot of work and a lot of help.
After years of war on two fronts, there is no shortage of people needing help. Many soldiers and sailors, airmen and Marines bear wounds, whether visible or beneath the surface. For these men and women, a long road toward healing stretches ahead, but it is not a journey that they should make alone.
Healing requires the strength and endurance of community -- of family, friends, health care professionals, brothers and sisters in arms, and even of strangers. Don’t pilgrims on such an arduous journey need pastors to walk with them? Perhaps even pastors who have been formed in institutions that question whether a faithful Christian life is consistent with military service?
Army and other military chaplains come from a variety of denominations and faith traditions, from mainline Protestant to Judaism, from Catholic to conservative evangelical. Some are more theologically comfortable with the idea of war than others. But whatever their background, I have never met one who is a champion of killing.
No chaplain is excited by news of the injured and slain, whether our own or the enemy. Loss of life is the loss of a chance to foster forgiveness and reconciliation in the future, the pillars of the Christian faith. Even chaplains who advocate a “just war” position -- believing that sometimes war is needed in order to protect innocent life -- do so out of a hope that eventually war ends with peace.
But it is one thing to advocate for war, even the most just war imaginable, and quite another to be present and to help pick up the pieces when it happens. The blood that has been spilled taints us as well. You can’t get too close to the fire without being a little burned.
This jarring truth became real to me one Sunday in Afghanistan after our chapel service. One of my most faithful congregants asked to speak to me, and so for about an hour we kicked rocks around camp. That day, I had preached a sermon on nonviolence, even quoting the Rev. Martin Luther King. My friends from seminary would have approved.
My soldier was wrangling with a memory from another deployment, a scene that haunts him still. He and his men were patrolling along a road when they stumbled upon a hanging cemetery -- lifeless girls, some no older than 5, strung up by the Taliban in the branches of a tree.
“Chaplain,” he said, “nonviolence sounds wonderful to me, but what about the little girls in the next village? What choice did we have but to go and find every last person involved with killing these children and make sure they were not able to do it again?”
The chaplains who make a real difference aren’t necessarily the brightest or the ones with the most impressive theological pedigrees. They are the ones who are willing to be shaped and refashioned by the context of their ministry. They accompany their soldiers into the crucible and look horror in the face, knowing they may not emerge unscathed.
At the same time, they also find ways to remember the good news. Whenever the time is right, they are the voice of radical love, a love that lays down its life for friends and even for foes. They hold these ideals in bloodstained hands, praying that God’s goodness and mercy will continue to follow them despite all they have done and left undone.
“When a man takes guilt upon himself in responsibility, he imputes his guilt to himself and no one else. He answers for it,” Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote in “Ethics.” “Before other men he is justified by dire necessity; before himself he is acquitted by his conscience, but before God he hopes only for grace.”
Toward the end of my deployment in Afghanistan, conditions worsened. Between the bleak news of casualties and the sirens warning of dangers, I was more than ready to call it done. Sitting in my office one evening, I shamefully acknowledged to myself that if I had a chance to leave early, I would probably take it, even if it meant leaving my flock behind.
I could hear the voice of Ezekiel, holding Israel’s false shepherds to account: “You have not strengthened the weak … [or] bound up the injured, you have not brought back the strayed … [or] sought the lost. … So they were scattered, because there was no shepherd” (Ezekiel 34:4-5 NRSV).
Sitting there, surrounded by tons of cement and barbed wire, bounded by volumes of rules and regulations that dictate what I can and cannot do, I also realized that I could not leave even if I wanted to. When I agreed to don the uniform, ironically, I gave up my freedom.
Even though I am an ordained minister, tethered to a book of order and vows to Christ and the church, whenever I wear this other uniform, I live in the same world where soldiers dwell. Wearing the uniform makes me one of them, and only as one of them can I truly be with them.
I know now, more than ever before, how implicated I am by my calling to military chaplaincy. In the end, standing side by side with my fellow soldiers, I too can only hope for God’s grace.
How can I claim to be a Christian and at the same time willingly be a part of an organization that breaks things on purpose?
I don’t see another way.
Read more from Mel Baars »
Faith & Leadership
Russ Ferguson: Making space for veterans
Many of the nation's veterans are in desperate need of community, and the church should welcome and help them, says a Navy chaplain.
As a Navy chaplain serving a USMC infantry battalion, I listen to heartbreaking and disturbing stories every day.Marines and sailors who have killed people in battle struggle with their feelings. Some tell me about childhood sexual trauma. Others recount violent crimes they’ve committed for which they have never been held to account. Often they tell me about turning to alcohol and drugs when their illusion of invincibility is shattered.
These stories are not easy to hear. But after returning from a combat deployment in Afghanistan last year, I’ve become convinced that the church needs to hear them.
Not every congregation has the resources or a calling to work with veterans. But as a Christian community, we need to be there for those veterans seeking us. We need to find ways to connect with this group, which is in desperate need of community.
One important service congregations can provide for these men and women is to offer a sacred space where they can talk openly about their conflicted emotions -- even when it makes those around them uncomfortable.
Discomfort is scary and difficult. But discomfort allows the space for grace to enter into someone’s life. Can you listen with love to someone sitting next to you when he speaks of killing another human being?
Grace is powerful with big, tough Marines. They hide their brokenness well, but it is there below the surface. Many of them come from backgrounds in which they didn’t receive much grace, and the military isn’t a repository of grace-giving individuals.
In a world where a mistake can mean the death of a friend, grace gets pushed aside as a weakness. As a Christian chaplain, I represent grace within the military. However, chaplains can’t be the only spiritual support in the life of a service member.
Because of the transitory nature of service and the fact that more than 70 percent of military members serve less than six years, our impact on these young wanderers has limits. While chaplains may participate in a moment of beauty that provides a spark of hope, veterans will spend the majority of their lives as civilians who served, and they will seek much-needed grace within your congregations.
Formal support services for both active-duty members and veterans are inadequate. I am the sole provider of spiritual care for more than 1,000 military members and their families at Camp Lejeune, N.C. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has an overwhelming backlog of war-related disability claims -- according to one estimate(link is external), veterans have to wait more than eight months for a decision about their claims. And a recent study showed that the rate of suicide among veterans is even higher than previously thought: 22 veterans kill themselves every day. The Christian community can step in with little cost other than time, space and a sympathetic ear. Prayers and thoughts on Sundays are always appreciated, but congregations can do much more.
Churches would be amazed at the response a welcoming attitude can generate. While I was deployed, I listened as a young Marine told me about killing an insurgent by purposely running the man over with a military vehicle. A devout Christian, he needed to talk through what had happened. The most important part of our conversation wasn’t what I said but that I was the only one who was ready to listen to his story without judgment or morbid curiosity.
Churches can play a similar role. Let veterans and active-duty military members tell their stories in a place where they know they will be loved and accepted. Some will want to repent for war; some will not be seeking forgiveness at all. You may not agree with their actions or choices, but you can help them deal with what they have experienced.
Hosting VA seminars to explain the agency’s services and benefits is a practical way to serve this community. The VA’s Rural Clergy Training Program(link is external) is a wonderful but underused program designed to connect churches in rural areas with veterans.
Even small gestures can make a difference. In my unit, the simple act of placing a bowl of candy by my door invites Marines and sailors to stop by and say hello and sends a signal that my office is a refuge.
My Marines on deployment loved reading letters from across the country, especially handmade cards from children. This reminded them of whom they serve and provided joy and hope in difficult circumstances. I brought two such cards back and have them taped to a wall in my office today.
Contact your denomination’s chaplain-endorsing agency to connect with your chaplains serving on active duty, in the reserves or at VA hospitals. My denomination’s endorser is a vital source of strength for me and works hard to serve as my chaplain while also sharing my story with my denomination.
Perhaps the most important thing a congregation can offer veterans is a renewed sense of community. Those who have served know what it means to have a group of people that cares about them -- and how a caring community can help them overcome almost any burden.
These bonds aren’t created easily. On deployment, it was only after I had spent 10 days sleeping in snow and freezing rain alongside my Marines that they finally began to trust me. None of them ever told me I was now part of the group, but they acknowledged it by seeking me out for advice and counseling.
As I said, not every congregation will sense a call to minister to veterans. However, if we truly seek to embrace Matthew 25 and show grace, we must find ways to extend that grace to every person we encounter, including veterans.
My Marines and sailors are used to asking and answering difficult questions about life and faith, and they desire a spiritual home when they leave active duty. It is up to us as the church to provide a place of healing and hope for them.
Read more from Russ Ferguson »
Faith & Leadership
Logan (Mehl-Laituri) Isaac: Reborn on the Fourth of July
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, more than one million military veterans and their families are taking advantage of the Post-9/11 GI Bill to attend college.
Photo courtesy of Lance Cpl. Manuel F. Guerrero, U.S. Marine Corps, via Wikimedia Commons
A Christian combat veteran offers guidance for seminary professors whose students include veterans.July 4th, 2015, marks my ninth “rebirthday” -- the anniversary of my baptism, which triggered a chain of events that culminated in my honorable discharge from the Army.
My Christian conversion followed in the wake of my 2004 combat deployment as an artilleryman, embedded in an infantry platoon as we made our way through Iraq.
As a soldier, student veteran and veteran professor -- I now teach in the philosophy and religion department at Methodist University, near Fort Bragg, North Carolina -- I often get emails from colleagues soliciting my advice. They need help responding to military-related concerns that arise in their classrooms or offices in their interactions with student veterans.
The frequency of requests makes me think there are few veteran faculty on staff at Christian colleges -- possibly stemming from the draft exemptions in place for seminarians and clergy during the generation that’s most represented in current tenure-level positions.
It’s no small issue. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, more than one million military veterans and their families are taking advantage of the Post-9/11 GI Bill to attend college.
Especially in the twilight of two major conflicts in the Middle East, it is critical to identify faculty who have shared such life-altering military experiences, to whom student veterans can turn.
I have personal experience with this. As a veteran of the “global war on terrorism” (GWOT), I experience Sept. 11 each year as a day of profound significance. I remember one anniversary well -- how frustratingly mundane it was for every student and professor I encountered that day, many of whom expected me to engage in basic small talk. It was a normal day to them.
The only person who knew the right question to ask was another student veteran. “You OK, brother?” he said.
As soon as the words left his mouth, I felt the muscles in my back and neck relax. Somebody understood me, and not only understood but took the initiative to reach out.
Student veterans should be supported in identifying faculty allies to mentor them along the way in higher education, to ease the transition from soldier to student and beyond.
Faculty members who don’t have combat experience can understand war only in the abstract or by relying on the experience of those who have been to war. I suspect that the reason colleagues have turned to me for advice is their concern that their understanding or theological interpretation of war or the military might be inadequate. They know that there’s something they don’t know, and they care enough about their students to want to improve their teaching and engagement with those whom they do not fully understand.
After all, Christian educators, ordained or not, have a responsibility for more than merely a student’s mind; they must also attend to a student’s spirit.
War, different from other traumatizing events in its severity and scope, leaves a mark upon those who have lived through it. That mark determines the way they look at the world, affects how they interact with and trust other people, informs how they read Scripture and receive the sacraments.
Rather than ignoring these differences, the church should mine them for what is of value for all Christians.
In light of this, I offer some advice for professors who do not have a history of military or combat experience but find themselves teaching students who do.
First, sympathize with them as you would any conversation partner. The knee-jerk reaction of correcting someone’s theology to fit your own works against you. Your job as a professor is to teach students to think, not to create copies of yourself. And veterans will know things you don’t know, such as the complex reality of war and what we can learn from it.
More importantly, it is possible that your veteran students carry some form of combat stress, whatever name you might give it. PTSD, for example, afflicts up to 20 percent of GWOT veterans. Many also suffer from “moral injury,” the inner conflict caused by acts of serious transgression against core ethical and moral beliefs.
Sympathy will enable you to hear what is really going on, to understand what is funding the convictions that they have held through the fires of hell -- and that have held them.
It is not unimaginable that your teaching is challenging these beliefs, and the alternative, quite frankly, is frightening. This is not to discourage you but rather to remind you to be keenly aware of the significance of theology taught well.
The second piece of advice I would give is to be honest and expect honesty in return. You don’t serve anyone by avoiding difficult issues, and certainly not if you are teaching at a Christian college, where death and hell constitute parts of our core beliefs.
Worse, it can be insulting to those who have endured the difficulties of military training and service for fellow Christians to avoid important subjects because feathers might be ruffled.
The imprecatory psalms, prophetic literature and Christ’s passion all make clear that the memories of dismembered bodies or bloodied infants one might encounter in war are theologically significant and should not be dismissed out of hand. In fact, the rest of the church could stand to think more critically about how the profane helps us comprehend the sacred all the more fully.
Part of being honest with students will be to hear and reflect on subjects or ideas they bring up that seem obscene. To be sure, military speech is often peppered with obscenities. If veterans’ discussions with you include offensive subject matter or language, consider taking that as a compliment, since it strongly suggests that they trust you. Or that they would like to.
Furthermore, take it as a reminder that the real world of the now-not-yet kingdom includes obscenity, and that denying this by policing our words in the way we Christians tend to do is as ineffective as refraining to speak Lord Voldemort’s name at Hogwarts, inviting disaster by cultivating unpreparedness.
National holidays provide Christians an opportunity to reflect on our relationship with the nation within which we minister. Nearly a decade of ministry in and with military communities has left me with the distinct impression that dialogue concerning them is riven with false binaries.
For some, the phrase “Christian soldier” is redundant; for others, the two words are mutually exclusive. The reality is much more complex, and the story of Christian soldiers is one that the Fourth of July compels us to explore much more deeply.
The church needs a robustly martial hermeneutic if we are to have anything to say to the many classrooms and congregations that include or care for veterans. Seminaries, as an intersection between faith and knowledge, are a wonderful place to begin telling their stories with the beauty and tragedy combat comprises. It begins with you.
Learn more about student veterans
- Veterans and College: National Conference of State Legislatures(link is external)
- Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome: U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs(link is external)
- Moral injury: U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs(link is external)
- Support for Christian soldiers and veterans: Centurions Guild
The Postindustrial Promise: Vital Religious Communities in the 21st Centuryby Anthony E. HealyTales of demise and decline have come to characterize news on the state of religion and congregations in America. In The Postindustrial Promise, author Anthony Healy finds that the changes in religious life and among congregations are being misunderstood.
Instead of seeing the changes as the result of the presumed aspects of postmodern life -- individualism, the collapse of social groups, and the scrapping of tradition --Healy sees what has occurred as a postindustrial transformation, in which an economy based on manufacturing has been replaced by one based on corporate and consumer services. This transformation has changed what we value and how we live, as well as how we work. It has also changed congregations and religious life, but not necessarily in the way that many people think.
Contrary to the stories of decline, Healy finds that in this time of postindustrial dislocation people are again putting down religious roots. Congregations are making it possible for people to reconnect with the stories and traditions of previous generations and have become the places in society where the reembodying of religious and cultural narratives is taking place. Different from the postmodern script, this postindustrial explanation leads us to fresh insights into the change that has occurred among religious bodies, their congregants, and their communities.
This book provides pastors, lay leaders, teachers, scholars, and seminarians with a solid grounding in the basic aspects of the postindustrial transformation and offers direction to help religious leaders develop responsive and viable places of ministry, mission, and program in this time of change.
Paperback $22.00
eBook $20.50
The Postindustrial Promise
Vital Religious Community in the 21st Century
ANTHONY HEALY
Tales of demise and decline have come to characterize news on the state of religion and congregations in America. In The Postindustrial Promise, author Anthony Healy finds that the changes in religious life and among congregations are being misunderstood. Instead of seeing the changes as the result of the presumed aspects of postmodern life—individualism, the collapse of social groups, and the scrapping of tradition—Healy sees what has occurred as a postindustrial transformation, in which an economy based on manufacturing has been replaced by one based on corporate and consumer services. This transformation has changed what we value and how we live, as well as how we work. It has also changed... more »
Book Details
Author
Rowman & Littlefield Publishers / Alban Books
Pages: 152 • Trim: 6 x 8 3/4
978-1-56699-287-9 • Paperback • April 2005 • $22.00 • (£14.95)
978-1-56699-668-6 • eBook • April 2005 • $20.50 • (£13.95)
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Alban at Duke Divinity School
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