Army to review chaplain selection and training
Nomination process of Muslims for chaplaincy to be scrutinized

In the wake of the arrest of Chaplain (Capt.) James Yee as espionage and spying charges against him are investigated, The US Army has decided to review the way it accepts and approves Muslim clerics nominated for the chaplaincy.

Whether the chaplains are Christian or Jewish, Muslim or Buddhist, the military relies on religious groups themselves to recommend and to educate their own candidates. The military says that because of the constitutional provisions that govern the division of church and state, only churches and religious organizations can ordain or appoint their own clergy.

With Muslim chaplains, however, this has proved particularly problematic, especially since Islam has no centralized hierarchy. Most other faiths and denominations have a single authority responsible for chaplains, like the Roman Catholic Archdiocese for the Military Services. But in the absence of such an equivalent Islamic authority, the military has relied on grass-roots Muslim groups.

But many Muslim grassroots groups are pretty loose. And in Islam, unlike almost all Christian denominations, no special schooling is needed to be recognized as a Muslim cleric. Mosques decide on their own whom serves as an imam. There are no ordination orders, there is simply recognition by the Muslim community as they are needed. There is no Islam-wide standard by which Muslim clerics are trained or selected.

There are American Christian denominations that do much the same thing. I have worshiped in churches in Appalachia, for example who have no ordained clergy. They have elders and preachers and worship leaders, all selected by the congregation on the basis of their leadership, religious devotion, abilities and whatever other criteria just seem appropriate at the time.

But none of those denominations have a billion adherents worldwide, or have a presence among the members of the armed forces significant enough to justify sending someone to military chaplaincy.

(My denomination, the UMC, requires all chaplains to be ordained as elders, a process that takes at least seven years, requires the award of a Master of Divinity from designated seminaries, and involves denominational written and oral exams lasting two days on two occasions, three years apart.)

The Army says Chaplain Yee’s arrest did not prompt the review, and it probably didn’t. But it certainly puts it in the spotlight. Besides,

Two senators — Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, and Jon Kyl, Republican of Arizona — have begun a Senate investigation into how the government chooses Muslim clerics, or imams. Mr. Schumer has been saying for at least six months that the Muslim groups now responsible for choosing and training chaplains are all affiliated with a militant form of Islam popular in Saudi Arabia that some call Wahhabism.

But experts on Islam in America say that the senators are way off base. (There are only 12 Muslim chaplains in all the armed forces.) No matter how a Muslim is recognized as an imam in his home mosque, only two organizations currently may nominate him as a chaplain:

... the Islamic Society of North America, a large umbrella group based in Plainfield, Ind., [and] the American Muslim Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs Council, which is based in Virginia. ...

The chaplain candidates are also vetted by the military: they must meet age, height and weight requirements, pass a physical and a background check to qualify them for a security clearance.

They must also have a bachelor's degree and at least 72 hours of graduate education in religious studies and related disciplines. For Muslims, this has proved an obstacle. There are no well-established and fully accredited graduate schools or seminaries devoted to Islamic learning in the United States. Many imams in the United States are trained overseas, and in mosques without a cleric, laypeople often lead the prayers.

Meanwhile the Army faces a shortage of Catholic chaplains, which has continued for four years now.

by Donald Sensing, 9/28/2003 09:18:56 PM. Permalink |