FULL DISCLOSURE: I am a Retired Army Reservist with Veteran Status who served nearly 23 years as a chaplain in the National Guard, US Army Reserve, and on Active Duty. My rank at retirement was Chaplain (Lieutenant Colonel). I am a retired but active pastor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA).
During my military career, I ensured that my Soldiers' needs (and families when applicable) were met. Chaplains are to perform or provide. That means that if a Soldier wanted something that I could not handle for whatever reason, I found someone who could. For instance, a Latter-Day Saints soldier in the hospital I served in Germany wanted a certain prayer. I asked an LDS chaplain, but since he could not I found an LDS civilian who worked at the hospital to offer the prayer.
Over the years there were chaplains, usually of a more congregationally-based faith group, often Baptist of some sort, who had problems with chaplains from a liturgical faith group. That meant Lutheran, Episcopalian, some Presbyterians, and Methodists. Roman Catholics and Orthodox certainly, but they were not Protestants and would not be sharing worship services. In fact, some of the chaplains from a looser faith tradition did not think that other chaplains were even Christians. That would include me.
Now not every Baptist, for lack of a better term, chaplain felt that way. I enjoyed working with many of them. But there was an undercurrent, which sometimes surfaced, that we were not on the same wavelength. To them, Lutherans and other liturgical chaplains seemed suspect. Not really Christians, Catholics in secret, and so on.
If that were all, well enough. But these chaplains evangelized on steroids. They infused their ministries with conservative politics, tried to convert Soldiers from their existing faith groups, and caused dissension. A number of Soldiers came to me during my deployment to me in the hospital I was at in Germany because their chaplains were judgemental.
The sad thing is that many Soldiers would be turned off to religion in general because of chaplains like this. I would have stayed in a while longer to push back against this false evangelism, but I knew that eventually, I would have to retire. Additionally, it was time to be more available for my family. And most of all, I knew that God would take care of it.
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