{"id":425,"date":"2009-09-04T00:15:14","date_gmt":"2009-09-04T04:15:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=425"},"modified":"2010-04-11T16:14:01","modified_gmt":"2010-04-12T00:14:01","slug":"baptist-pastor-to-buddhist-military-chaplain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2009\/09\/04\/baptist-pastor-to-buddhist-military-chaplain\/","title":{"rendered":"Baptist Pastor to Buddhist Military Chaplain"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thomas Dyer grew up Presbyterian and enlisted in the Marines.\u00a0 Feeling threatened by the training he was receiving to kill, he left the Marines and attended Mid-America Baptist Seminary, eventually becoming\u00a0a\u00a0Baptist preacher.\u00a0 His inability to find happiness as a Christian led him to convert to Buddhism.\u00a0 Having obviously given up his job as a Protestant preacher, he joined the Army National Guard and was commissioned a Chaplain in 2008.\u00a0 He will deploy to Iraq in January.<\/p>\n

The article on Dyer<\/a> is quite interesting, detailing both his wife’s reaction (she stands by him, though she hopes he’ll return to Christianity) and Dyer’s own lifelong search for fulfillment.<\/p>\n

Buddhist blogs have caught the story and are filled with attempts to reconcile the seeming contradiction of a Buddhist in the military, as the teachings tend to favor non-violence.\u00a0 However, while the article says Dyer is the first Buddhist Chaplain in the Army, he is not the first Buddhist Chaplain in the military<\/a>, nor is he the only Buddhist in the military.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Photo: Mike Brown \/ The Commercial Appeal<\/a>.
\nAs noted at Buddhist Military Sangha<\/a>, the blog created by the first US Armed Forces Buddhist Chaplain.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thomas Dyer grew up Presbyterian and enlisted in the Marines.\u00a0 Feeling threatened by the training he was receiving to kill, he left the Marines and attended Mid-America Baptist Seminary, eventually becoming\u00a0a\u00a0Baptist preacher.\u00a0 His inability to find happiness as a Christian led him to convert to Buddhism.\u00a0 Having obviously given up his job as a Protestant preacher, he joined the Army […]<\/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":[88,37,52,149,2,10,371],"class_list":["post-425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-chaplain","tag-army","tag-buddhism","tag-iraq","tag-marines","tag-military","tag-religion","tag-thomas-dyer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425","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=425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}