Secularism in the Military Chaplains
 

For those of you who haven't served; you may not realize how often we have chaplains give invocations. Often at any offsite event such as group lunches or dinners; and sometimes at start or close of conferences.

I personally dont have a problem if a chaplain invokes the name of whichever version of god/prophets he chooses to invoke. But I know there is always someone out there ready to take offense. The Navy appears to be taking a formal policy line defined by attire. (that doesn't seem to make sense - a deployed catholic chaplain doing mass to only catholics cn't mention the name Jesus?). But there is a time/place for being blatantly sectarian as well.

I would like to think we could just let the local commanders be in charge of correcting overenthusiastic chaplains, but then we get stuff like the AF academy situation too. So in the end; I guess I have to believe that some kind of guidelines to multi-ecumenical versus sectarian appriopriateness is required.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,179575,00.html

What about muslims in the military? Is there such a thing as a "muslim chaplain?"

How would that work?!

Well, that's two violations of the UCMJ ...

Failure to Obey a Lawful Order (Art. 92)

Destruction/Damage of Military Property (Art. 108) (I believe this applies)

Also, he (and any other commissioned chaplain) can pray according to their beliefs, as long as it does not interfere with the mission.

In this case, the commanding officer has issued a lawful order which must be followed. The proper course would be to follow the order, engage the assitance of the JAG corps, and route it through the chain of command.