Responding to my post on military chaplains post-DADT, commenter Sandra Brown writes: <\/p>\n
First of all you are missing one thing, the clergy takes
\nan oath before God to uphold God’s message. <\/span>Religiously speaking this is suppose to be their first commitment. <\/span>A clergy member is sworn to this or their own salvation is void! <\/span>It
\nhas nothing to do with the military <\/span>only those who take their oaths SERIOUSLY.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\nIn regards to your reference to “render unto
\ncaesar,” in the clergy setting, rendering unto God is first and
\nforemost! <\/span>Stop misquoting the bible. <\/span>That was
\nnot the intent of the quote by Jesus Christ. <\/span>Simply it meant to pay taxes, or obey the law, rendering unto
\nGod is to follow God’s guidelines for ministers. <\/span>Remember, clergy are suppose to be set apart
\nfor God’s work Titus 1:7-16. <\/span>When
\ncrossed between God and man, the clergy are suppose to choose God!
<\/span><\/p>\n\n
But that’s a catch twenty-two situation because the
\nmilitary will tell them to preach acceptance not repent!<\/p>\n
<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\nLet me try once more. The government does not
\ncompel clergy to serve in the military, and if a chaplain finds that he
\nor she cannot square God’s teachings (as he or she understands them)
\nwith the rules of military chaplaincy, then he or she should not serve.
\nConsider a military chaplain who comes to believe that his oath to God
\nrequires him to preach that war is always wrong. The government is
\nentitled to prevent him from doing so, and if he finds this intolerable,
\nhe should resign his commission. If there are chaplains who insist that
\nthey cannot serve without publicly attacking some other military
\npolicy, whether that be denouncing other faiths or condemning gays
\nserving openly, then they should resign their commissions as well.<\/p>\n
The military hires chaplains in order to enable other<\/i>
\npersonnel to have access to religious services. And that certainly
\nmeans providing an authentic version of their faith (whatever it happens
\nto be) to those who seek it. But chaplains do not have the right to
\nturn the armed services into a mission field, simply because they
\npersonally believe that God has ordered them (for example) to carry out
\nthe Great Commission<\/a>.
\n<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Responding to my post on military chaplains post-DADT, commenter Sandra Brown writes: First of all you are missing one thing, the clergy takes an oath before God to uphold God’s message. Religiously speaking this is suppose to be their first commitment. A clergy member is sworn to this or their own salvation is void! It…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":222,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\n
Yes Sandra, military chaplains must obey the rules - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/12\/yes-sandra-military-chaplains-must-obey-the-rules.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Yes Sandra, military chaplains must obey the rules - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Responding to my post on military chaplains post-DADT, commenter Sandra Brown writes: First of all you are missing one thing, the clergy takes an oath before God to uphold God’s message. Religiously speaking this is suppose to be their first commitment. A clergy member is sworn to this or their own salvation is void! It…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/12\/yes-sandra-military-chaplains-must-obey-the-rules.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2010-12-25T08:31:13+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Mark Silk\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Yes Sandra, military chaplains must obey the rules - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/12\/yes-sandra-military-chaplains-must-obey-the-rules.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Yes Sandra, military chaplains must obey the rules - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk","og_description":"Responding to my post on military chaplains post-DADT, commenter Sandra Brown writes: First of all you are missing one thing, the clergy takes an oath before God to uphold God’s message. Religiously speaking this is suppose to be their first commitment. A clergy member is sworn to this or their own salvation is void! It…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/12\/yes-sandra-military-chaplains-must-obey-the-rules.html","og_site_name":"Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk","article_published_time":"2010-12-25T08:31:13+00:00","author":"Mark Silk","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/12\/yes-sandra-military-chaplains-must-obey-the-rules.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/12\/yes-sandra-military-chaplains-must-obey-the-rules.html","name":"Yes Sandra, military chaplains must obey the rules - Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#website"},"datePublished":"2010-12-25T08:31:13+00:00","dateModified":"2010-12-25T08:31:13+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#\/schema\/person\/927f8b0a579506efe527e8e0967f519d"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/12\/yes-sandra-military-chaplains-must-obey-the-rules.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/12\/yes-sandra-military-chaplains-must-obey-the-rules.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/2010\/12\/yes-sandra-military-chaplains-must-obey-the-rules.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Yes Sandra, military chaplains must obey the rules"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/","name":"Religion & Public Life With Mark Silk","description":"Beliefnet Voices","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#\/schema\/person\/927f8b0a579506efe527e8e0967f519d","name":"Mark Silk","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/c82\/c82eec82562775fad85f4a47e1a5fc4ax96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/c82\/c82eec82562775fad85f4a47e1a5fc4ax96.jpg","caption":"Mark Silk"},"description":"Mark Silk graduated from Harvard College in 1972 and earned his Ph.D. in medieval history from Harvard University in 1982. After teaching at Harvard in the Department of History and Literature for three years, he became editor of the Boston Review. In 1987 he joined the staff of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where he worked variously as a reporter, editorial writer and columnist. In 1996 he became the founding director of the Leonard E. Greenberg Center for the Study of Religion in Public Life at Trinity College and in 1998 founding editor of Religion in the News, a magazine published by the Center that examines how the news media handle religious subject matter. In 2005, he was named director of the Trinity College Program on Public Values, comprising both the Greenberg Center and a new Institute for the Study of Secularism in Society and Culture directed by Barry Kosmin. In 2007, he became Professor of Religion in Public Life at the College. Professor Silk is the author of Spiritual Politics: Religion and America Since World War II and Unsecular Media: Making News of Religion in America. He is co-editor of Religion by Region, an eight-volume series on religion and public life in the United States, and co-author of The American Establishment, Making Capitalism Work, and One Nation Divisible: How Regional Religious Differences Shape American Politics. In 2007 he inaugurated Spiritual Politics, a blog on religion and American political culture.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/author\/msilk"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/222"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/143\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/religionandpubliclife\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}