In December, a chaplain for the Army Rangers was reprimanded after a soldier complained that the chaplain advocated for Christianity above all other religions. A month before that, a Navy chaplain was removed from his post after several sailors complained he was railing against homosexuality and sex outside of marriage.
Michael Berry is a senior counsel at the Liberty Institute, a Texas-based legal defense fund that advocates for religious liberty. Berry says the number of people signing up to join the military is actually quite low nowadays, although he had no statistical evidence to back up that claim.
"I can’t tell you how many moms and dads I’ve spoken to who say, ‘My son or daughter wants to join the military, (but) in light of what you’ve described, I’m not sure I want to let them join the military anymore,’ and I don’t blame them. I would have serious reservations about my own kids joining," Berry told The Washington Times.
"The problem is getting worse, not better, despite our efforts,” he said. "There is a culture (of) hostility (toward) religion in the military right now."
But Michael Weinstein, president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, an advocacy and watchdog group, said that while members of the military can believe whatever they want, those who think they must act on religious teachings about sex or sexuality, or other social issues have no place in the military.
"You can continue to believe that internally, but if you have to act on that, the right thing to do is to get out of the US military, because you have no right to tell a member of the military that they’re inferior because of the way they were born,” he said.
The armed forces have 2,837 active-duty chaplains as of December 2014, with the largest group being the Southern Baptists, with 437 members, followed by a little more than 200 being Roman Catholic, while 26 are Jewish, and just one is Hindu.
The Pentagon says it works to be as inclusive as possible. “The Department of Defense respects, places a high value on and supports by policy the rights of members of the military services to observe the tenets of their respective religions or to have no religious beliefs,” said Lt. Cmdr. Nate Christensen, spokesman for the Defense Department.
"The mission of the chaplain corps is to provide care and the opportunity for service members, their families and other authorized personnel to exercise their constitutional right to the free exercise of religion."
