An atheist recently sought the help of his fellow non-believers in trying to overcome a problem with chaplains at his deployed US military location in the Middle East:

Every week the chaplain posts a new message, it has a short story, a bible verse to relate, and times they run service…

Doesn’t seem like a big deal, and at first, he doesn’t think so either, then reconsiders:

What’s wrong with this? Well nothing, depending on where you are. The issue is they’re everywhere, most annoyingly in the bathrooms. Whether you’re sitting or standing they’re right in front of your face!

Then again, he goes back go saying they’re a good thing:

I like that they’re intended to be inspiring and uplifting. In a stressful environment it’s absolutely necessary…

And then reverses himself yet again: 

but I have a problem with the Bible references, the verses, and that it’s only from a Christian perspective. If it offered other religion options I wouldn’t mind so much…

So, as an atheist, he would be less disturbed if there were other religious options. In truth, it seems his problem is less with the chaplains and more with the prevalence of the Christian Holy Crap. That’s not entirely unfair — but his application of this to the Christian chaplains may be. A US military chaplain is under no obligation to advertise other religious services as a “balance” to advertising his own.

The atheist here might have a legitimate gripe if other religious views were prohibited — but that’s not the case. They’re simply not represented because advocates for those religious beliefs have not chosen to take the steps necessary to advertise as widely as the Christian chaplain has. It’s almost as if the atheist is bothered by the fact the Christian has taken initiative that others haven’t, and he thinks the Christian chaplain either needs to back off until others catch up, or actually advertise for those others who won’t advertise for themselves.

(This is reminiscent of the Shaw nativity, when critics essentially claimed Christians had to put up other religions’ displays if members of those religions didn’t.)

The atheist continues, saying its not just papers in the loo. Again, he says its not a big deal:

there’s another chaplain who will walk into our briefing room and share something, usually a quote or message that is supposed to make us feel like superheroes, and then will end in prayer. It’s nothing long and he’s not pushy. Myself and any other atheists just hush while the others bow their heads…

But, he then says, it is a big deal. In fact, it’s “rampant”:

I’m just giving another example of how it’s not just a single person, and I suspect situations like this are rampant around the military.

“Situations like this” are what, exactly? Chaplains advertising religious services? Chaplains performing benign ministry by presence? Both of those are precisely the explicit role of the chaplaincy.

In asking his peers for “options” to deal with this “situation,” the atheist brings up what he seems to think is the deal breaker:

I know our General Order prohibits ” Proselytizing of any religion, faith or practice.” but I don’t want to walk in with that as my trump card only to have him, being a chaplain, have a trump on that.

Kindly put, there’s a lot of naïveté here.

First of all, that’s not what the General Order says. It actually says [emphasis added]:

This Order prohibits proselytizing of any religion, faith, or practice to local nationals or third country nationals in countries in the USCENTCOM AOR.

So the GO doesn’t actually say what he thinks it says at all. It gets better, though. The GO continues:

This rule does not prohibit Chaplains from performing their official religious duties.

So the chaplain does have a “trump” card — right there within the atheist’s trump card.

More to the point, though, is the atheist’s personal hypersensitivity toward Christianity, which seems to be translating fairly benign acts into “proselytizing.” To wit, no reasonable, rational person would consider advertising religious services — something troops need to have so they know where they can get their religious support — an act of “proselytizing.”  In fact, this atheist doesn’t consider them that, either — he just wants to see other religions included, or so he says.

No reasonable, rational person would consider chaplains stopping by the duty post/work center “proselytizing,” unless they said things that were attempting to convert others (that is the definition of the word, after all). This atheist doesn’t think that either; in fact, he characterized the chaplain as “not pushy.”

So — in his own words — the atheist doesn’t think the chaplains at his location are proselytizing, yet he wants to pull the trump card of not being allowed to proselytize in order to make them stop non-proselytizing?

This atheist is one long built-in self-contradiction.

Truthfully, there are probably a lot of people associated with the military (that is, government civilians, contractors, as well as US troops) who have these kinds of misunderstandings on both sides of the ideological spectrum. Hopefully, this atheist will learn about the role of the chaplaincy and the need to provide for the religious exercise of the deployed troops around him, even if that’s not something to which he wants to avail himself.  Then he’ll see that his observations are of nothing more than chaplains doing their jobs — jobs the atheist’s religious peers want the chaplains to do.

While one can hope, it’s people like this who also manufacture (intentionally or not) some of the “scandals” involving religion in the military. In response to his request for advice, he received two telling responses:

There’s a special organization to handle this.

Military Religious Freedom Foundation

Try them. They understand the military.

Followed by:

There’s a special organization to handle this.

Not delicately though, haha!

Indeed.

The text of user “Italian_Not_Jewish” can be read on Reddit.

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