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Military Clergy : Draft of Letter to Knyght
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The number of members that recommended this message. 0 recommendations  Message 1 of 3 in Discussion 
  (Original Message)Sent: 7/9/2008 6:27 PM
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 Message 2 of 3 in Discussion 
From: MSN NicknameLadyMajykWhisperingOwlSent: 7/9/2008 6:32 PM
 
Dearest Knyght...
 
We concede that sacred wells has more experience in dealing with trying to get a Wiccan Chaplain in the armed services, however that does not mean that we have no experience at all.
 
Lady Mayk has several members of her family that have been involved in the military, maybe not as chaplains, but still the familiarity with their procedures IS known.
 
We did some research and found out some interesting information.
 
As far as speed in getting your credentials, you can see from the Army hand book below, that states the requirements for eligability for becoming a chaplain,
 
you MUST have a Baccalureate dregree, either a B.A. or B. S. of not less that 120 semester hours from an accredited secular college or university, (that's 4 years right there)
 
AND  a graduate degree in theological or religious studies,(which you can get from Sacred Wells OR Light and Shadows within 1 year and a day)
 
PLUS 72 semester hours in graduate work of these fields of study (which would be your second and third degree studies, another 2 years).
 
So just class time involvement you are looking at a minimum of 5-7 years of education alone.
 
You also have to have a MINIMUM of two years full time professional experience (as a Priest) validated by the applicant’s endorsing agency (the coven you serve)
 
So now we are looking at a minimum of 9-10 years before you can even qualify to be considered and even then, You have to be on active duty, get a security clearance and be PERFECT physically.
 
The following information was copied directly from the Army's handbooks:
 
 
CHAPLAIN REQUIREMENTS
  1. You must obtain an ecclesiastical endorsement from your faith group. This endorsement should certify that you are:
    1. A clergy person in your denomination or faith group.
    2. Qualified spiritually, morally, intellectually and emotionally to serve as a Chaplain in the Army.
    3. Sensitive to religious pluralism and able to provide for the free exercise of religion by all military personnel, their family members and civilians who work for the Army.
  2. Educationally, you must:
    1. Possess a baccalaureate degree of not less than 120 semester hours.
    2. Possess a graduate degree in theological or religious studies, plus have earned at least a total of 72 semester hours in graduate work in these fields of study.
  3. Applicants for active duty or the National Guard MUST be U.S. citizens. Permanent residents can ONLY apply for the Army Reserve.
  4. Be able to receive a favorable National Agency Security Clearance.
  5. Pass a physical exam at one of our Military Entrance Processing Stations (MEPS).
  6. A minimum of two years of full-time professional experience, validated by the applicant’s endorsing agency (This requirement is not applicable to Army Reserve applicants).
  7. Must be at least 21 years of age at time of appointment. No applicants are accepted at the age of 50 or above. Applicants aged over 42 should contact a regional chaplain recruiter for the latest age waivers being granted for chaplains and chaplain candidates.

Chaplain Basic Officer Leadership Course

Becoming an Army Chaplain

Chaplains and Chaplain Candidates do not go through Basic Training. Instead, they attend the Chaplain Basic Officer Leadership Course (CBOLC), which is a 12-week course taught at the USA Chaplains Center and School (USACHCS) in Fort Jackson, S.C. Instruction at USACHCS is conducted by highly trained, professional, and experienced Army officers and non-commissioned officers (NCOs).

CBOLC provides an introduction to the non-combatant common core skills, Army writing and Chaplaincy-specific training. Classroom and field training is dynamic, fun, and interactive. CBOLC is conducted in four phases. Each phase must be taken sequentially. However, the entire course does not have to be taken in the same year.

Common Core

A four-week resident course that teaches non-combatant common core skills such as map reading, military customs and courtesies, operations in field conditions and combat survival. Attendance is required for Chaplains and Chaplain Candidates who have no prior Army officer training. It is optional for others.

Phase I RC

A two-week course that focuses on Army writing and correspondence. This course can be completed by correspondence for Chaplains whose first duty assignment will be in a reserve component.

Phase II RC and Phase III RC

Two three-week resident courses of instruction in Army-specific Chaplain duties. This training gives Chaplains and Chaplain Candidates the ability to apply their civilian chaplain and pastoral skills in the Army environment

 

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 Message 3 of 3 in Discussion 
From: MSN NicknameLadyMajykWhisperingOwlSent: 7/9/2008 10:23 PM
Then there is always Religious bigotry in the U.S. Armed Forces' Chaplain Service to cope with such as this man:

 Don Larsen had a religious conversion while on duty as a Pentecostal chaplain in the Freedom Chapel at Camp Anaconda, the largest U.S. support base in Iraq. A crisis had been brewing for some time in Larsen's mind as he tried to harmonize his faith's exclusive claims to salvation and his belief in universal salvation. The bombing of the Golden Mosque in Samarra, Iraq on 2006-FEB-22 was the trigger. He said:

"I realized so many innocent people are dying again in the name of God. When you think back over the Catholic-Protestant conflict, how the Jews have suffered, how some Christians justified slavery, the Crusades, and now the fighting between Shiite and Sunni Muslims, I just decided I'm done. ... I will not be part of any church that unleashes its clergy to preach that particular individuals or faith groups are damned. ... In Iraq, I saw what was happening in the name of Allah and I thought, 'This has got to stop.' ... The common core of all religions, we're saying the same stuff. I just decided that the rest of my life I will encourage people to seek out the light however they see fit, through the Bhagavad-Gita, the Torah, the writings of prophets and sages -- whatever path propels them to be good and honorable and upright."

Commenting on Wicca, he said:

"You can't intellectually talk about witchcraft. You gotta show up, What Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell and a lot of us universalists think is, people need the magical side, the mythological side, of religion. We don't need more Calvinist rationalizing. We need mystery. We need horizons. We need journeys."

He first learned about Wicca, an Earth-centered, Neopagan religion, during a Chaplain's Basic Training Course at Fort Jackson, SC, in 2005. Chaplains are required to have some knowledge of many different religions because they will have to meet the spiritual needs of soldiers from diverse faiths. Larsen converted to Wicca.

He said:

"In Iraq, I saw what was happening in the name of Allah and I thought: 'This has got to stop.' ... The common core of all religions, we're saying the same stuff. I just decided that the rest of my life I will encourage people to seek out the light however they see fit, through the Bhagavad-Gita, the Torah, the writings of prophets and sages -- whatever path propels them to be good and honorable and upright."

On 2006-JUL-06, he applied to become the first Wiccan chaplain in the U.S. Armed Forces. Switching religious allegiances is a routine request among chaplains, but it is normally from one Christian denomination to another. In this case, he asked to be registered under a different religion.

By the end of the year, in spite of an unblemished service record:

bullet His request was denied.
bullet He was withdrawn from Iraq, and
bullet He was removed from the chaplain corps.

Some Wiccans feel that his dismissal was ultimately cause by a misunderstanding of the nature of their religion. Many Christians still believe the religious propaganda that has been circulated groups within the Christian Church since the burning times (late 15th century to late 18th century) when religious minorities were accused of Witchcraft and Satanism -- the worship of Satan and either burned at the stake or hung. In reality, Wicca is a benign religion whose followers believe in a deity with male and female aspects. They do not believe in Satan or any other all-evil quasi-deity.

Your friend, David from Sacred Wells is recorded as saying:

Reactions to Larsen's dismissal:

bullet David L. Oringderff, a retired Army intelligence officer and an elder in the Sacred Well Congregation, Larsen's Texas-based coven, said: "Institutionalized bigotry and discriminatory actions ... have crossed the line this time."
bullet Kevin L. McGhee, Larsen's superior at Camp Anaconda, and a Methodist chaplain, believes a "grave injustice" was done. He said:

"I could go on and on about how well he preached, the care he gave. What happened to Chaplain Larsen -- to be honest, I think it's political. A lot of people think Wiccans are un-American, because they are ignorant about what Wiccans do."

Wiccans in the military:

The total number of Wiccans in the U.S. is unknown. It is an almost completely decentralized religion and no central authority counts the membership. In 2001, the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, conducted a massive survey of over 50,000 American adults between 2001-FEB and APR. It is called the ""American Religious Identification Survey." 2 They reported the following weighted estimates:

bullet Wiccans: 134,000 (A rise from 8,000 in 1990!)
bullet Pagans: 140,000 (This probably contains a large number of Wiccans who prefer to identify themselves as Pagans
bullet Druids: 33,000.

These estimates probably represent only a fraction of the actual number of Wiccans in the U.S. Many Neopagans are quite reluctant to admit their faith to a stranger over the telephone.

In 2006-MAY, the Stars and Stripes newspaper reported that: "According to 2005 Defense Department statistics, more than 1,800 active-duty service members identified themselves as Wiccans." 3 This is probably a partial count, because in 2007-FEB, the Washington Post lists Pentagon data as including 1,511 Wiccans in the Air Force and 354 in the Marines -- for a total of 1,865. 1 Data for two larger branches of the military, the Army and Navy, is not included. Some Wiccans estimate that there are at least 4,000 of their members in uniform. However, many are reluctant to reveal their religion because of ridicule, harassment, and discrimination.

The Washington Post reports that:

"More than 130 religious groups have endorsed, or certified, chaplains to serve in uniform. But efforts by Wiccan organizations to join the list have repeatedly been denied by the Pentagon."

"Lt. Col. Randall C. Dolinger, spokesman for the Army's Chief of Chaplains office, said the Sacred Well Congregation has met all the requirements to become an endorser, except one: It has not presented a 'viable candidate.' The group's previous nominee was turned away because his eyesight was not correctable to 20-20.

It is unclear why a chaplain, in a non-combat role, must have perfect eyesight. The Post continues:

"When Larsen came along last spring, Sacred Well's leaders thought they finally had someone the military could not possibly reject: a physically fit 6-foot-4 clergyman originally ordained as a Southern Baptist minister, who holds a master's degree from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary. Moreover, Larsen had spent 10 years as an officer in the National Guard, finished near the top of his class in chaplain's training and was already serving as a chaplain in Iraq.

But Oringderff said that his group, like Larsen, underestimated the institutional resistance. 'Each time we advance to a scoring position, they change the rules,' he said.

Chaplains cannot serve unless they are endorsed by a recognized faith group. The Sacred Well Congregation applied on 2006-JUL-31 to endorse In Larsen's case the military. But the Army could not find a copy of his previous endorsement from the Chaplaincy of Full Gospel Churches. After the Army contacted the Full Gospel Churches they acted quickly to cancel Larsen's endorsement. Since the Sacred Well Congregation was not yet an official endorser, Larsen was without an ecclesiastical endorsement. He was ordered to cease functioning immediately as a chaplain. He was quickly relocated from Iraq.

Dolinger stated that no discrimination was involved. He said:

"What you're really dealing with is more of a personal drama, what one person has been through and the choices he's made. Plus, the fact that the military does have Catch-22s."

 

Now..... with all that in Mind, and your comments about needing a Religious Endorsing Body (REB) for your application to be a chaplain... I contacted the Army and asked for a list of the institutions they accepted as such and the person I spoke with told me there was no list, that the REB's are all from a book called "the Yearbook of American and Canadian churches 2008".  I ordered a copy of it and it will arrive shortly. Since according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yearbook_of_American_and_Canadian_Churches, "The Yearbook does not list individual congregations, nor smaller or local church organizations."

And as of 2007 SacredWells was not in it, and probably won't be in the future... being a 501C tax exempt instituion has something to do with being a church, but nothing to do with being in this yearbook. and this yearbook is the ONLY reference the Army uses for REBs.

Because the Yearbook of American and Canadian Churches is written by the National Council of Churches and that is a ultra Christian organization, even tho they tolerate universalist churches, they are not likely to accept any wiccan teachings, no matter what their 501c status is.

Furthermore:

Jim Ammerman, founder of the Chaplaincy of Full Gospel Churches noted that there is a longstanding agreement that ecclesiastical endorsers do not terminate the papers of a chaplain who wants to make a valid switch. He said:

"But if it's not a valid thing, all bets are off,. ... [Wiccans] run around naked in the woods" [and] "draw blood with a dagger [in their ceremonies]. You can't do that in the military. It's against good order and discipline."

Brig. Gen. Cecil Richardson, the Air Force's deputy chief of chaplains responded:

"He's right, we can't have that in the military, but I don't think we've had any of that in the military."

Ammerman appears to misunderstand the religion of Wicca. Wiccans do use a sword or athame (a double edged knife) at their rituals. However, they never use either for cutting or drawing blood. Wiccans in their rituals don't cut anything higher on the evolutionary scale than an apple or orange. The Sacred Well Congregation does not practice skyclad (ritually nude).

Richardson said that there are too few Wiccans in the military to justify a full-time chaplain. However, the Washington Post quotes Pentagon figures to show that this is an invalid claim:

Religion Number of soldiers Number of chaplains Soldiers per chaplain
LDS (Mormons) 17,513 41 427
Buddhism 4,546 1 4,546
Judaism 4,038 22 184
Islam 3,386 11 308
Christian Science 636 6 106

And for the 1,865 known Wiccans and the approximately 2,000 unidentified Wiccans there are zero chaplains. The number of Wiccans in the military is probably between the number of Jews and Muslims. Thus one could argue that there should be something between 11 and 22 Wiccan priests in the Chaplain Service.

It is impossible to prove that the Larsen case is one of simply religious bigotry. However, some aspects of the case match the Veterans' Administration and its refusal to provide Wiccan symbols on tombstones, even as it supplies them free to followers of a vast selection of religions.

Due to David's commitment and personal commitment to remedy the problem of the lack of wiccan Chaplains in the Army we feel his sales pitch to you is one of a personal and political agenda...not to say that his goals are wrong. , they are honorable, but consider this... if you WERE to be the first Wiccan Chaplain, you wouldn't be free to switch Religious Endorsement body's and join L&S , mostly because it would jeopardize you stability in keeping your status in the service as a chaplain, but also you would be the Wiccan Chaplain "posterchild" who got there sponsored by Sacred Wells and there is a loyalty factor in the eyes of the public.

Never doubt for a moment that there will be a certain amount of notariety and fame in such an accomplishment, and fame is a double edged sword. Is that what you really want for your priesthood?

I'm not trying to influence you one way or the other, but I think you should take a step back and take a long look at the big picture and have all the facts.

So in closing... after all is said and done... Seek the Goddess in all things and know we'll always be here for you.