Article
What Army Chaplains Are For
Should Christians become army chaplains? AT Jones quoted a talk by an archbishop, who said "The chaplain invested the soldier’s fighting, the soldier’s whole round of labor and suffering, with the halo of moral duty." At Jones responded to this statement: "We have never believed in the utility of the office, but this statement makes it worse even than we had thought. We had never before conceived of the chaplain’s duty as being that of casting a halo about the business of killing people. Unquestionably the soldier’s business is one that will admit of a service of this kind. This is no natural halo about it, certainly. To deliberately shoot down men, made in the image of the Creator, to smash their skulls with clubbed muskets in fierce hand-to-hand conflict, to cut and stab them to death with sword and bayonet, to pour their life blood out upon the earth, to make widows and orphans of those they have left at home,—these are actions which, unsurrounded by any halo, would strike the minds of ordinary people with horror. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, who certainly knew what the soldier’s business is, said, “War is hell.” Putting this statement of this eminent military authority with that of Archbishop Ireland concerning the chaplain’s office, we are brought to the conclusion that the legitimate business of the army chaplain is to cast a halo about hell!" So no, we should not become army chaplains and do a job making what is wrong seem right.