Having talked a lot about being a Christian and church life, perhaps I also need to point out some salient issues involving chaplains.
When I was a chaplain for the Bella Vista Police Department, I knocked on one door and introduced myself as a chaplain. The person at the door questioned my introduction, and asked pointedly, "What's a chaplain?" People know about pastors, ministers, priests, etc., but sometimes they do not know about chaplains--this, although chaplains are in the proceedings of our Congress, at both the national and state levels, in our fire departments and police departments, throughout our military, our hospitals and in many of our other institutions. So, what is a chaplain and what does he/she do?
The term "chaplain" is a rather enigmatic term applied to religious leaders assigned to an area that is different from a church organization. Just like any other profession, chaplains must meet certain qualifications in order to be certified. In general, in order to be an endorsed chaplain--e.g. one recognized by an appropriate governing organization--in the military, hospitals, law enforcement, etc., a person must first obtain a college degree, a graduate seminary degree, be ordained and then complete four units of Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) or its equivalent. The Association of Pastoral Chaplains is normally credited with setting the standards for chaplaincy, but many other groups have followed its leadership.
Since my expertise is largely with the law enforcement community, I am not qualified to speak about all of the different kinds of chaplains in our country and the world; but consider that police officers must attend the Police Academy and be credentialed; doctors and nurses must complete their courses of study and pass qualifying examinations--all before they are permitted to do their jobs. So must all good chaplains. The International Conference of Chaplains (the largest such group in our country) insists that police chaplains complete at least their twelve basic courses before it will list a person as a law enforcement chaplain.
Chaplains (like many other religious figures) obtain their basic authority from the First Amendment of the US Constitution, which says, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, prohibiting the free exercise thereof..." In 1971, the Lemon versus Kurtzman case resulted with the US Supreme Court issuing a three-prong test which is used almost universally in the United States to define chaplaincy. (1) Does the Government action (e.g. chaplaincy) have a secular purpose? (2) The Government action must not have the primary or principle effect of enhancing or inhibiting religion. (3) Does the Government action foster an excessive entanglement with religion? This test is used in most US courts.
Unfortunately, many contemporary chaplains do not understand their basic authority nor the guidelines of their profession. Some law enforcement organizations (and fire departments) eschew enlisting the services of a credentialed chaplain and instead rely upon asking pastors to fill in whenever there is a need. There are several reasons why this is risky. (1) Pastors are called to preach their church's gospel and obtain new church members (evangelize), and are not trained for the more intense situations in which law enforcement chaplains too often find themselves. (2) Local pastors too often either do not know the law or simply ignore it in order to bring their pastoral skills to any issue. (3) Having an untrained chaplain within a law enforcement community too often creates a critical loss of morale and confusion over his or her role. These issues remain regardless of how good the skills happen to be with the on-call chaplain. In addition, I suspect that many law enforcement leaders really do not want a qualified chaplain in their departments for fear he or she will interfere with law enforcement activities and decisions.
Next week, I will continue this discussion about chaplains. In the meantime, consider yourself fortunate if you ever needed spiritual help and guidance and a chaplain was called to be there with you. In our ever-growing secular world, chaplains are too often among the first people to be eliminated either for financial reasons or as an excuse to rid the workplace of spiritual values. Pray for your chaplains; they need it.
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Robert Box has been a law enforcement chaplain for 29 years. He is a master-level chaplain with the International Conference of Police Chaplains and is an endorsed chaplain with the American Baptist Churches USA. He also currently serves as a deputy sheriff chaplain for the Benton County Sheriff's Office. Opinions expressed in the article are the opinions of the author and not the agencies he serves.