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cbayer

(146,218 posts)
Wed Jun 18, 2014, 08:13 AM Jun 2014

Secular group protests Navy’s rejection of humanist chaplain

http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/secular-group-protests-navys-rejection-of-humanist-chaplain/2014/06/17/71ae1746-f642-11e3-8aa9-dad2ec039789_story.html

BY MICHELLE BOORSTEIN June 17 at 4:56 PM

The battle in the military over the rights of service members who believe in God and those who don’t continued this week with a secular advocacy group asking the Navy chaplain’s office to help overturn the Navy’s recent decision to reject a humanist chaplain.

Jason Heap, a 39-year-old religion teacher and former Protestant youth minister, was told in late May that his application to be a chaplain in the Navy was rejected. Navy officials declined to Heap and to The Post to explain why — citing personnel privacy reasons — but no branches of the U.S. military currently have explicitly nontheistic chaplains.

“As you know well, military chaplains advise on far more than faith and spiritual issues; they handle moral and ethical dilemmas, and enhance morale and unit cohesion,” said a June 10 letter to Rear Adm. Mark Tidd, chief of the U.S. Navy chaplains’ office, from Todd Stiefel, chair of the advocacy group Openly Secular.

Chaplains “often control available meeting space on the base,” said the letter, which was released to the public Tuesday. “If a service member needs bereavement leave to attend a funeral of a loved one at home, the chaplain is the point of contact. Nonreligious service members face the same questions about life and death, fear and loss as any other person in the military.”

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