Honest to God--Or Faithful to the Pentagon?

In another, more innocent day, God and country seemed to be solid and comfortable partners. To most of the nation, the second World War was a just cause, and when a chaplain at Pearl Harbor urged a Navy gun crew to "praise the Lord and pass the ammunition," it seemed appropriate that the slogan be turned into a popular song. But Viet Nam is a different kind of war, and clerical critics--including a few ex-chaplains --are beginning to question whether a minister in uniform can really be honest to God while remaining faithful to the Pentagon. This month several civilian clergymen from San Francisco --after an inspection tour of the stockade at the Presidio--bluntly suggested that military chaplains may have outlived their usefulness.

The ministers, members of the San Francisco Conference on Religion and Peace, focused on the failure of Presidio chaplains to concern themselves with stockade conditions, which led to the recent alleged mutiny there (TIME, Feb. 21). According to Rabbi Joseph B. Glaser, co-chairman of the conference, one Presidio chaplain told him that "it is not my job to see if a military man has been dealt justice." At this point, said Glaser, he decided that chaplains "do not have freedom of movement, and they do not even have freedom of conscience." Glaser's proposal: abolish military clergy altogether.

Spiritual Prostitution. Another antiwar critic, Lutheran Pastor Richard John Neuhaus of New York City, charges that clerics in military service expose themselves to "spiritual prostitution." In his view, there is an unresolvable contradiction between Christianity's gospel of peace and a minister's participation in a war that a growing number of Americans regard as wasteful or immoral. In trying to resolve the contradiction, Neuhaus says, many chaplains simply arrange their values along military lines, like good soldiers. He would prefer to see military chaplains replaced by civilian clergy accredited to the armed forces like Red Cross personnel.

What bothers many critics of the chaplaincy is that a minister serving the armed forces is forced to compromise his right to be a religious prophet, to speak out against the sins of the times, including morally questionable wars. Army Field Manual 16-5 makes it clear that the Army sees the chaplain's role as a military support mission: to "supplement and reinforce the total instruction of the troops in the Code of Conduct by his spiritual and moral leadership and his personal presence during combat and combat training." And as an officer, the chaplain is legally obliged to defend national policy.

Military chaplains themselves answer that in practice they are freer than many civilian ministers, who must often answer to hostile congregations if they take a radical stand on a matter of theology or politics. Navy Chaplain John A. Rohr argues that in a world where peace is still unattainable the fact of war's existence "must be borne even as we strive to abolish it." Christianity, he says, needs both kinds of ministers--the civilian picketing for peace and the chaplain serving "those brave young men who bear so disproportionate a burden of the sins of the world."

The majority of chaplains serving in Viet Nam, however, are convinced of the justice of the American cause, and a few have gone out of their way to support it in a somewhat untraditional manner. One chaplain, for instance, likes to take a turn firing M-60 machine guns from Huey helicopters. Another wears a shoulder holster and a .45 even when in Saigon. A third, with more honesty than relish, admits that "I could kill a man in a second. After you see how vicious the V.C. can be, it's hard to separate yourself from it." Some genuinely heroic acts, on the other hand, are forced simply by the nature of the war. The Rev. Jerry Autry, 28, a Baptist chaplain from Princeton, S.C., once landed near a Viet Cong village with a platoon of green soldiers commanded by an equally green lieutenant. When they froze, Autry rallied them and led the charge. Autry carries a weapon only because he has to. Like many chaplains who go on patrols or fly on combat sorties with airborne troops, he has discovered that his unarmed presence can make the men jittery.

Most chaplains, of course, are far more appalled at the cruelties of the war than fascinated by its glory--yet few have asked for release from service. One potential dropout, Army Captain Philip Seeker, recently returned to his unit after a week-long retreat in Tokyo, and explained why. The war, he was convinced, was still "unwise" --but not evil enough to keep him away from his men.

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