Oops!
The top Army Chaplain upset a lot of people when he called for a fast on the first night of Passover. [That means he called for soldiers to pray and not eat on a religious holiday when Jewish soliders eat a lot.] Read about it at Baptiststandard.com.
Maybe he should have used this interfaith calendar.
An online search reveals a lot of unhappy people. Some just don’t like Christians, evangelicals, Southern Baptists or chaplains in general. Others have legitimate complaints and show genuine concern for Jewish soldiers and chaplains. Some news articles call it inadvertent, others call the Army Chief of Chaplains ignorant. What do you think?
I wholeheartedly disagree with the personal attacks directed toward Chaplain Carver. He’s a great guy who loves soldiers. That’s why he called for the fast. Soldiers keep killing themselves! That’s something serious to pray about. However, scheduling the fast on April 8 was a careless mistake. Ch Carver or someone in his office should have caught that.
Some articles say CH Carver put the fast on the 8th because that’s a Wednesday and Baptists tend to have prayer meetings on Wednesdays. That’s understandable. It was a natural choice for him. It’s easy for each of us to default to our own traditions. It’s easy to forget something as simple as checking a calendar or asking for input from people of different faiths. There are so many different religious holy days we’ve never heard of. [Passover isn't one of those though.]
As a civilian minister or seminarian, you might not need to know the practices and beliefs of other religions. Things are different in the Army. As a special staff officer one of the chaplain’s jobs is to offer the commander professional expertise on matters of religion.
Chaplains are THE religion experts. We must have multi-faith situational awareness.
“Situation awareness (SA) involves being aware of what is happening around you to understand how information, events, and your own actions will impact your goals and objectives, both now and in the near future.” – wikipedia
Clarification:
Carleton left this comment:
“The Chief of Chaplains office checked with two senior Jewish chaplains before publishing the voluntary day of praying and fasting for the CHAPLAIN family. This proclamation wasn’t intended for the whole Army. People may also miss the purpose which was to call for divine intervention for the high numbers of Soldiers feeling so hopeless, they are killing themselves in record numbers.”
Oh, people just need to get over it.
If they didn’t want to fast on Wednesday, why couldn’t they fast on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday? Granted, I’ve not read a single thing about this. All I’ve heard is that people from Hood to Bragg to Mannheim, Germany spent the day(and in some cases, the week) praying and fasting. Sounds good to me! (I’m a little biased I guess because I was so impressed by the Chief when we were in San Antonio)
Comment by Patti N — April 19, 2009 @ 1:15 pm
He was awfully impressive in San Antonio.
Comment by Amy — April 19, 2009 @ 2:20 pm
People are too critical and maybe should “get over it” as Patti said. I mean, prayer is a good thing. But you are right too. Chaplains must have multi-faith awareness. Yes. In this day and time, respect is easily lost and a careless mistake is costly. We make mistakes. But this was one that could have been avoided with a minimum of knowledge, or research. I’ll pray for this chaplain, and for those who have their undies in a bundle, so to speak.
Comment by Dorcas — April 19, 2009 @ 4:28 pm
Knowing the corps and the high respect that the higher ranking CHs I do know, I’d have to say this wasn’t prolly a case of ignorance. My guess this was a case where it was a genuine mistake. For the record, the offices I worked in used multifaith planners for our operations. Praying for Ch Carver.
Comment by Emily — April 19, 2009 @ 5:40 pm
The Chief of Chaplains office checked with two senior Jewish chaplains before publishing the voluntary day of praying and fasting for the CHAPLAIN family. This proclaimation wasn’t intended for the whole Army. People may also miss the purpose which was to call for divine intervention for the high numbers of Soldiers feeling so hopeless, they are killing themselves in record numbers.
Comment by Carleton — April 20, 2009 @ 6:46 am
Carleton,
Thanks for the comment. It lines up with what I expect of the Chief of Chaplains office.
I’m not sure what I think. I really can’t believe they would be sloppy and just pick the wrong date. I don’t believe they’d ignorantly or arrogantly disregard other religions. [As many writers have suggested.]
So did they know what they were doing and just think people wouldn’t mind?
Comment by Amy — April 20, 2009 @ 7:04 am
I heard this story on the radio and saw it online and was a little disappointed with the Chief of Chaplains office as well. I also thought he got unfairly raked over the coals by secular press and press from other religious groups based on what he said in an interview with a publication from his own denomination. However, if they really had checked with two high ranking Jewish Chaplains before issuing the statement, I wish the statment could have been co-signed by them in light of the upcoming important Jewish holiday or that they had issued a statement of support for it after it became an issue.
Comment by MBL — April 28, 2009 @ 10:01 pm