The UK Guardian‘s Riazat Butt continued her reporting on religion in the British forces in Afghanistan with an article on the UK chaplaincy, which is similar to the chaplaincy in the US military, but with some significant differences.  Still, the content of the fairly long article is interesting.

Noting the importance of the ministry of presence by chaplains (who are, in fact, on the “front lines” with the troops): 

The Rev James Francis was travelling in an armoured vehicle north of the Bowri desert in Afghanistan, accompanying the Brigade Reconnaissance Force during the stopping and searching of vehicles for insurgents, when a Royal Marine interrupted his chat with a gunner to ask if it was right to kill.

“That was a direct question,” says the padre for 30 Commando, “but it’s quite normal for these things to occur to people out here and it’s vital that when difficult decisions are being made we have direct answers, that as Christians we don’t retreat into some kind of holy huddle…”

“Not to provide them with an element of spiritual direction and support would be seriously negligent. We have a role to serve those who are there to pull the trigger. We help them negotiate the moral maze,” he says.

More so than in the US, the military chaplaincy in the UK is in contrast with an “increasingly secularised Britain.”  The UK has slightly less than 300 chaplains, while the US military has on the order of a few thousand.