{"id":18552,"date":"2012-07-16T02:23:18","date_gmt":"2012-07-16T05:23:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=18552"},"modified":"2013-10-30T20:05:50","modified_gmt":"2013-10-30T23:05:50","slug":"military-homosexual-ceremony-prompts-chaplain-clarification","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2012\/07\/16\/military-homosexual-ceremony-prompts-chaplain-clarification\/","title":{"rendered":"Military Homosexual Ceremony Prompts Chaplain Clarification"},"content":{"rendered":"

The endorsing agent for Southern Baptist chaplains in the US military recently reiterated its stance<\/a> against recognition of homosexual unions.\u00a0 The impetus was the AP article on the McGuire AFB “civil union”<\/a> event attended by Southern Baptist Chaplain (Col) Timothy Wagoner<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Retired US Army Chaplain (MajGen) Douglas Carver — former chief of all Army chaplains — is the executive director of the North American Mission Board, which endorses Southern Baptist chaplains in the US military:<\/p>\n

“When the AP story first came out, we contacted Chaplain Wagoner and he assured us he was either misinterpreted or quoted out of context in the story,” Carver said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Chaplain Wagoner “strongly refutes” the story that implies he condoned the “civil union” that was officiated in the military chapel at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst:<\/p>\n

“The (AP) article does not accurately reflect why I attended a civil union,” Wagoner said. “The general tone of the article has led many to conclude incorrectly that I personally support same-sex civil unions, with statements such as ‘he was watching supportively.'”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Carver acknowledged what was minimized in the AP article but has been repeated several times:\u00a0 The culture and expectations in the post-DADT environment are ambiguous at best.<\/p>\n

It’s a vague environment out there, especially as our chaplains promote and defend the whole counsel of God in a post-‘Don’t Ask-Don’t Tell’ military environment. Our chaplains are navigating through unchartered waters, where the cultural values of the military increasingly conflict with the traditional values and beliefs of Southern Baptists.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(General Carver previously noted the repeal of DADT had created a moral “tension”<\/a> in the military.)\u00a0 As was noted at the time, it is evident the AP article was written to portray the homosexual civil ceremony as a benign, non-event; Chaplain Wagoner now makes this more clear, indicating his presence was improperly used to reinforce that picture.<\/p>\n

The AP article joins a line of media reports that seem to go out of their way to intentionally portray the post-DADT environment in the US military as positively as possible — minimizing, or even misrepresenting, any indications to the contrary.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The endorsing agent for Southern Baptist chaplains in the US military recently reiterated its stance against recognition of homosexual unions.\u00a0 The impetus was the AP article on the McGuire AFB “civil union” event attended by Southern Baptist Chaplain (Col) Timothy Wagoner. Retired US Army Chaplain (MajGen) Douglas Carver — former chief of all Army chaplains — is the executive director […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[38,5284,1998,219,3371,3374,3386,3385,442,3373,83,1209,2,10,171,3384,3372],"class_list":["post-18552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government-and-religion","tag-chapel","tag-chaplain","tag-chaplain-alliance-for-religious-liberty","tag-dadt","tag-erwynn-umali","tag-evangelical-lutheran-church-in-america","tag-frank-clawson","tag-gary-linsky","tag-homosexual","tag-kay-reeb","tag-marriage","tag-mcguire-afb","tag-military","tag-religion","tag-religious-freedom","tag-timothy-wagoner","tag-will-behrens"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18552","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=18552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18552\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}