"...But the model of chaplaincy advocated by older chaplains such as Iasiello, which hinges on self-restraint, is increasingly under challenge by younger ones, such as Lt. Gordon James Klingenschmitt, 37.
Three years ago, Klingenschmitt left the Air Force, where he had been a missile officer for 11 years, and joined the Navy as a chaplain. He took a demotion and a pay cut to make the switch. But he was joyful.
"I had been serving my country," he said. "I wanted to serve God."
It was not long, however, before disillusionment set in. At the Navy Chaplains School in Newport, R.I., a senior military minister gave Klingenschmitt and other new chaplains a lesson in how to offer prayers in public settings. Classmates who prayed to a generic "God" or "Almighty" won praise. Those who prayed "in the name of Jesus" were counseled to be more sensitive, according to Klingenschmitt.
As a minister from a small evangelical denomination, the Evangelical Episcopal Church, Klingenschmitt bristled at those instructions. He wrote a paper citing a Pentagon regulation that "chaplains shall be permitted to conduct public worship according to the manner and forms of the church of which they are members."
Aboard the USS Anzio, his first post, he backed a Jewish sailor's request to receive kosher meals and tried to get permission for a Muslim crewman to take a turn offering the nightly benediction over the ship's public address system. But Klingenschmitt also insisted on his own right to preach what he believes as a born-again Christian.
In July 2004, he was reprimanded for a sermon at the memorial service of a sailor who died in a motorcycle accident. The sailor, Klingenschmitt said in a recent interview, was a Catholic, "and I had led him to a born-again experience before he died." In the sermon, he said, he emphasized that the sailor was certainly in heaven and "mentioned in passing" that according to John 3:36, those who do not accept Jesus are doomed for eternity.
"My sermon was in the base chapel, it was optional attendance, and it was by invitation. If we can't quote certain scriptures in the base chapel when people are invited to church, where can we quote them?" he said. "Don't paint me as a person who's going around forcing my faith on people. I've never done that."
In March, Klingenschmitt's commander recommended against extending his tour in the Navy, writing that he has "demonstrated recurring confusion concerning a chaplain's role within a military organization."
Klingenschmitt has accused the Navy of religious discrimination, contending in a written complaint to his superiors that he was punished because he refused to practice a "government-sanitized" faith that he calls "Pluralism," with a capital P.
Navy officials declined to discuss Klingenschmitt's case. But they noted that the National Conference on Ministry to the Armed Forces, a private association to which most chaplains belong, says in its code of ethics that each chaplain must "function in a pluralistic environment" and "not proselytize from other religious bodies," though they "retain the right to evangelize those who are not affiliated."
Whether there should be any tacit limits on chaplains' free speech has also been an issue at the Air Force Academy. A team of observers from Yale Divinity School criticized one of the academy's ministers for urging Protestant cadets to tell their classmates that anyone who is "not born-again will burn in the fires of hell."
"Could there possibly be a worse time for this fundamentalist Christianity to be pushed in our military, when we're in a war and the people we are fighting are recruiting their members by saying we're Christian crusaders?" asked Mikey Weinstein, a 1977 Air Force Academy graduate and former Reagan White House official.
[snip]
Lt. Gen. Roger A. Brady, the Air Force's deputy chief of staff for personnel, assured a June 26 congressional hearing that "the clergy pretty much have the political correctness thing down" and that "most of the complaints are with cadets and cadet-led prayers." But Klingenschmitt, who has served in both the Navy and the Air Force, said he thinks they share a basic flaw.
In both services, he said, "the higher-ranking authorities can impose their faith on the junior authorities. It's just that in the Air Force they have more evangelicals in power, and in the Navy they have more pluralists in power."
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