Those darn witches with guns...

[elfs]

In the U.S. Armed Services there is one chaplain for: every 106 Christian Scientists, every 427 Mormons, every 183 Jews, every 307 muslims, every 4,546 Buddhists (I guess Buddhists don't need that much guidance: they only have one chaplain, period).

Apparently, having even one Wiccan chaplain is out of the question. Donald Larsen, a Pentacostal chaplain with a long and umblemished record, decided he wanted to change his faith of registry to Wiccan. This has happened in the past and it is tradition for the church that initially endorsed the moral character of a man to a chaplaincy to not pull its endorsement as long as his new faith is "valid."

"But if it's not a valid thing, all bets are off," says retired Colonel Jim Ammerman, founder of the Chaplaincy of Full Gospel Churches, adding that Wiccans "run around naked in the woods" and "draw blood with a dagger" in their ceremonies. "You can't do that in the military. It's against good order and discipline." But role-playing cannibalism is healthy.

Larsen's endorsement was pulled. The Pentagon summarily ordered Larsen to cease all chaplain's activities and withdrew him from Iraq. Their excuse is that with only 950 congregants, there aren't enough Wiccans in the military to justify having a chaplain.

The Washington Post has more, although I loathe the "Let's start the article with something that'll make the readers think of Halloween!" opening.

Comments

Although it's not the thinking the DoD used

[dakiwiboid.livejournal.com]

sunfell made an excellent point in her post about this issue. You could consider Larsen a "faith-hopper". He only discovered Wicca in 2005, at which point he promptly abandoned Pentacostalism. Now, with only two years of experience as a Wiccan, he wants to be a chaplain. I'm not so thrilled with him.

Re: Although it's not the thinking the DoD used

[elfs.livejournal.com]

I think the point is that he was already a chaplain, and the endorsing sect traditionally does not revoke its endorsement if a chaplain changes faiths. It did in this case, directly implying that this change was beyond some normal level of acceptability and that the tradition would not be allowed to stand for it.

He may be a faith hopper. But that's somewhat irrelevant to the issue of whether or not Wiccans deserve a chaplain, and whether or not the normal procedures and traditions, even the unwritten ones, of chaplaincy were violated in this case because Wicca was involved.