Former US Navy Chaplain Gordon Klingenschmitt recently responded to testimony by the Rev James Magness, the Episcopal Church’s Armed Forces Bishop, given at the House Armed Services Committee (previously discussed here):

Klingenschmitt calls it arrogant for James Magness, the Washington National Cathedral’s bishop for the armed forces, to say that chaplains who pray in Jesus’ name risk offending non-Christian troops and harming unit cohesion.

“This quote by him demonstrates exactly the reason we need religious freedom in the military,” says the former chaplain. “Because if we don’t have it, then you have liberal senior chaplains imposing their religion on everybody.”

The context is a story Magness told about himself (which has been his go-to tale repeated for years), in which he closed a prayer “through Jesus Christ our Lord” at a Navy Captain’s retirement ceremony — when the retiree and his family were all Jewish. Of his own conduct, Magness said

I created a potential violation of the need for unit cohesion, good order and discipline, and the individual’s Constitutional rights. The service member for whom my prayers were offered was offended, and he should have been offended.

Given that the Captain was retiring, it was unlikely “unit cohesion, good order and discipline” were affected, nor did such a prayer reasonably constitute government action that actually offended the Captain’s constitutional rights. (Fortunately, Magness is a bishop, not a lawyer or commander.)

Still, Magness was correct to acknowledge the retiree had every right to be personally offended — because retirements are ceremonies intended to honor the individual. Young in his first assignment, Magness presumably learned from that incident to talk to the retiree before such a ceremony, so as to understand their wishes for their ceremony, as any courteous person should.

Based on the rest of the testimony, Klingenschmitt does have a valid point. Magness is wrong to extrapolate that example to all public prayer in the military, implying that such prayers are, ipso facto, contrary to good order and discipline. (To be clear, Magness did not call for such a policy.) Even without a policy change, a “Chaplain Magness” could influence his subordinate chaplains in a manner not consistent with religious liberty because of a feeling he had, rather than what the law requires.  Again, chaplains are bishops, priests and pastors — not lawyers, and not military commanders.

Such improper influences — even from well-meaning chaplains — would best be addressed by clear and unequivocal DoD guidance protecting religious liberty; absent that, it should be made clear in the law.

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