{"id":1049,"date":"2009-09-10T00:15:01","date_gmt":"2009-09-10T04:15:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=1049"},"modified":"2010-04-11T16:13:05","modified_gmt":"2010-04-12T00:13:05","slug":"baptist-to-buddhist-chaplain-to-deploy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2009\/09\/10\/baptist-to-buddhist-chaplain-to-deploy\/","title":{"rendered":"Baptist Turned Buddhist Chaplain to Deploy"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Military Times papers<\/a> have now picked up on the previously noted story<\/a> about Army Chaplain (Lt) Thomas Dyer, a former Marine and\u00a0Baptist pastor who converted to Buddhism and joined the Army National Guard (as published in the Tennessean<\/a>).<\/p>\n

The most recent article did have some interesting (and sometimes controversial) comments.\u00a0 For example, despite the accusations that Chaplains can never<\/em> evangelize, the article does provide the qualifier:\u00a0 <\/p>\n

While they can share their faith with the willing<\/span><\/em>, they are not allowed to push their faith on those who are not interested…Chaplains can\u2019t try to persuade people to change their faith.\u00a0 But they can try to convert the unchurched, provided that a soldier lends them a willing ear<\/span><\/em>. (emphasis added)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The reporter accurately acknowledges that a Chaplain (of any faith) can<\/span><\/em> share their faith with a military servicemember who expresses interest.\u00a0 In addition, a Chaplain recruiter notes that the tales of coercing Chaplains may be overstated, because such a person wouldn’t “last long” as a Chaplain:<\/p>\n

Chaplain Steve Blackwell, a Tennessee native who now serves as an Army chaplain recruiter in Los Angeles…said a chaplain who pushes his faith too hard will eventually fail.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am as evangelical as they come,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd I am not going to shy away from the chance to lead someone to Jesus. But if someone comes in and they see every soldier as a potential convert, they are not going to last long as a chaplain.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The article also plays some fun with numbers when it cites the number of Chaplains representing a Protestant Christian denomination, and compares it to the number of Chaplains of other faiths.\u00a0 The comparison is disingenous because the military doesn’t actively recruit individual Protestant denominations as it does with other distinct faith groups.\u00a0 It is also notable that the article cites a lot of comparative demographics\u00a0but fails to say how many Buddhists<\/em> are in the military.<\/p>\n

The military is understandably in a difficult position when recruiting Chaplains.\u00a0 The “problem,” though, is not necessarily that the military is hiring specific Chaplains as much as it may be that those are the Chaplains who are volunteering<\/em>.\u00a0 Just recently the Air Force started offering to pay<\/em><\/a> Catholic Chaplain candidates (but no others) in order to mitigate the extreme shortage of priests, and the shortage still exists.\u00a0 It is a challenge, no doubt,\u00a0and it will continue to be so.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Military Times papers have now picked up on the previously noted story about Army Chaplain (Lt) Thomas Dyer, a former Marine and\u00a0Baptist pastor who converted to Buddhism and joined the Army National Guard (as published in the Tennessean). The most recent article did have some interesting (and sometimes controversial) comments.\u00a0 For example, despite the accusations that Chaplains can never […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[58,372,37,5284,4,70,149,2,10,373,371],"class_list":["post-1049","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chaplain","tag-afghanistan","tag-baptist","tag-buddhism","tag-chaplain","tag-churchandstate","tag-evangelism","tag-marines","tag-military","tag-religion","tag-steve-blackwell","tag-thomas-dyer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1049","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1049"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1049\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1049"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1049"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1049"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}