{"id":406,"date":"2009-08-20T00:10:31","date_gmt":"2009-08-20T04:10:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2009\/08\/20\/us-army-chaplain-ministers-to-soldiers-iraqis\/"},"modified":"2009-11-21T21:30:39","modified_gmt":"2009-11-22T05:30:39","slug":"us-army-chaplain-ministers-to-soldiers-iraqis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2009\/08\/20\/us-army-chaplain-ministers-to-soldiers-iraqis\/","title":{"rendered":"US Army Chaplain Ministers to Soldiers, Iraqis"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As noted in a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.army.mil\/-news\/2009\/08\/13\/25992-muslim-chaplain-brings-unique-perspective-to-army\/\">US Army press article<\/a>, Chaplain (Maj.) Dawud Agbere is one of six active duty Muslim Chaplains in the US Army.\u00a0 He is currently a student at the Army&#8217;s Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth.\u00a0 In recounting his contributions to the Army,\u00a0a former commander of a 400-man battalion said the soldiers in his unit &#8220;although mostly Christian, trusted Chaplain Dawud Agbere right away.&#8221;<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>\nBesides ensuring soldiers&#8217; right to free exercise, Chaplains also serve\u00a0spiritual, emotional, and even cultural aspects of internal and external military operations.\u00a0\u00a0For example, despite criticism from activist groups, US military Chaplains have had the opportunity to minister to non-US peoples in Iraq.<\/p>\n<p><!--more-->Religion is an important aspect of Middle Eastern culture, and demonstrating a cultural sensitivity and respect for religion&#8211;rather than demonstrating an absence or dismissal of it&#8211;can be a crucial part of gaining legitimacy and respect in the region.<\/p>\n<p>Agbere, for example,\u00a0was able to\u00a0minister to the Iraqi population.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>As a chaplain in a Baghdad hospital in 2004-05, Agbere ministered not only to Muslim Soldiers, but the Iraqi population as well.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Despite orders prohibiting &#8220;proselytizing,&#8221; Agbere was still able to minister to Iraqis, providing\u00a0a positive impact on military operations to gain the trust and support of the local population.\u00a0 Those who would discount the importance of military Chaplains, or those who would prohibit discussions of religion while in uniform or in the presence of non-US locals, fail to realize the importance of such a cultural exchange.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As noted in a US Army press article, Chaplain (Maj.) Dawud Agbere is one of six active duty Muslim Chaplains in the US Army.\u00a0 He is currently a student at the Army&#8217;s Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth.\u00a0 In recounting his contributions to the Army,\u00a0a former commander of a 400-man battalion said the soldiers in his unit &#8220;although [&#8230;]<\/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":[4,2,10],"class_list":["post-406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chaplain","tag-churchandstate","tag-military","tag-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406","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=406"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/406\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}