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U.S. Army Chaplaincy and Formation
James R. Lewis
Kent State University-- Cultural Foundations in Education
March, 2014 jlewis21@kent.edu
Formation and Moral Leadership
On Feb. 3, (1943) at 12:55 a.m., a periscope broke the chilly Atlantic waters. ...The U-
223 approached the convoy on the surface, and after identifying and targeting the ship, he
gave orders to fire the torpedoes, a fan of three were fired. The one that hit was decisive--
and deadly--striking the starboard side, amid ship, far below the water line. … Aboard the
Dorchester, panic and chaos had set in. The blast had killed scores of men, and many
more were seriously wounded....Others, stunned by the explosion were groping in the
darkness. Those sleeping without clothing rushed topside where they were confronted
first by a blast of icy Arctic air and then by the knowledge that death awaited.
Men jumped from the ship into lifeboats, over-crowding them to the point of capsizing,
according to eyewitnesses. Other rafts, tossed into the Atlantic, drifted away before
soldiers could get in them. Through the pandemonium, according to those present, four
Army chaplains brought hope in despair and light in darkness. Those chaplains were Lt.
George L. Fox, Methodist; Lt. Alexander D. Goode, Jewish; Lt. John P. Washington,
Roman Catholic; and Lt. Clark V. Poling, Dutch Reformed. …
One witness, Private William B. Bednar, found himself floating in oil-smeared water
surrounded by dead bodies and debris. "I could hear men crying, pleading, praying,"
Bednar recalls. "I could also hear the chaplains preaching courage. Their voices were the
only thing that kept me going." When there were no more lifejackets in the storage room,
the chaplains removed theirs and gave them to four frightened young men.…
'It was the finest thing I have seen or hope to see this side of heaven,' said John Ladd,
another survivor who saw the chaplains' selfless act. Ladd's response is understandable.
The altruistic action of the four chaplains constitutes one of the purest spiritual and
ethical acts a person can make. When giving their life jackets, Rabbi Goode did not call
out for a Jew; Father Washington did not call out for a Catholic; nor did the Reverends
Fox and Poling call out for a Protestant. They simply gave their life jackets to the next
man in line.
As the ship went down, survivors in nearby rafts could see the four chaplains--arms
linked and braced against the slanting deck. Their voices could also be heard offering
prayers 1
1 http://www.fourchaplains.org/story.html accessed March 12, 2014.

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This is a re-telling of what is often known as the story of “The Four Chaplains,” well-
known in some quarters, though forgotten by many, and is one of the greatest depictions of moral
leadership and the product of “formation” processes from recent history. “Formation” is about
building human souls. In our current day, seemingly driven by dynamics of “secularization,” we
might prefer to use more (allegedly) “neutral” terms such as “selves” and “development.” Yet to
do so would suggest the false conclusion that spirituality is either irrelevant or immaterial to
most people. However, both in the U.S. American context and worldwide-- with limited
exceptions in Western Europe and parts of Asia, demographic studies consistently depict the fact
that most, even the large majority of humanity, identifies themselves as either “religious” or
“spiritual” in some way.
Additionally, the term “soul” as traditionally used, is intentionally inclusive of the whole
of a person, to include cognitive, emotive, motivational, physical, relational, and spiritual facets
of the person, more completely and more simply that some artificial “secular” term that could be
put together would. “Self” is almost as holistic a term, but does not subsume the spiritual
denotations that the term “soul” does, making “soul” more inclusive and useful when discourse
is intended to that majority of the population who do identify as “religious” or “spiritual,” along
with those who also identify in some way as “secular.” All major religious and spiritual
traditions2
are built on foundational assumptions of cross-generational replication, and often,
growth beyond merely generational transmission, through identifiable processes of enculturation,
habituation, and socialization, that necessitate intentional strategies of “formation,” rather than
merely organic processes as implied by the term “development.”
2 Focusing on the U.S. American context, and as measured by numerical demographics, emphasis here is on all
MAJOR religions: Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism, as well as non-religious spiritual
traditions rooted in these religions comprise all but a minute fraction of the American population who claim
some religious or spiritual tradition. According to a recent Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life study , all
other traditions combined composed less than three tenths of a percent of the American population.

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The formation of souls in whatever manner or according to whatever tradition, entails
more than the mere transmission of technical knowledge for social and independent economic
functioning, as seems to be the default goal and process of public schooling.3
Even the most
superficial of reflection on the values and foundational assumptions of any range of religious or
spiritual traditions (which would again include the bulk of human experience, both living and
past) would yield the conclusion that most of those traditions are built on what political
philosopher John Rawls calls “comprehensive doctrines.”4
These are those sets of assumptions
which could also be called “worldviews” or “metaphysical” understandings, by which persons,
communities, and peoples “know” what is “real,” what they understand to be the underlying
foundational truths about the cosmos, and what thereby sets the agenda for all further thought on
values, civic, moral and ethical living. These are the kinds of philosophical “Truths” by which
people live, though most often unstated, which can neither be addressed nor examined directly
by empirical study of the natural, material world-- hence the need for the disciplines of the
humanities, which of course includes areas of knowledge explored by religion, philosophy,
spirituality, ethics, politics, and law.
Foundational Challenges
From the range of human experience and in the emerging political framework of modern
democratic values, among the most valued and cherished areas of foundational jurisprudence
enshrined in the U.S. Constitution are those pertaining to freedoms of religion and expression.
Collective human experience across time and cultures has also shown, that while a stable and
clear grasp of foundational truths is always important, never is it more important than for those
3 While “formation” or “transformation,” are themes that entail personal development in addition to technical
content and are sometimes themes in educational writing, these themes rarely predominate in public education,
as evidenced among other things, by how few educational journals are built around these themes.
4 John Rawls, Political Liberalism, (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 134, 135.

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who wield weapons of war, and who literally hold in their hands-- even at the tender young age
of those barely out of the schoolhouse—tools of life and death by which not only individuals, but
whole communities live or die in the blink of an eye.
Public schools do not prepare souls for that awesome responsibility. Neither do the
empirical disciplines of medicine-- meant to bring healing to body and mind, healing back to
conditions of presumably prior stability and homeostasis. Fighting skills themselves are taught
by those adept in the disciplined and controlled application of lethal force, and lawyers in
uniform assist Commanders in the right application of tools of justice after the fact of infraction.
How, then, are souls--trained in the basic economic skills provided by public schools-- trained in
and entrusted with the use of tools of systematically applied politics and lethality by drill
sergeants and Warrior trainers? How are young adults barely out of high school formed into
souls with the wisdom and capacity to use those deadly tools to “do justice, love mercy, and walk
humbly with (their) God” (as variously understood by any range of religious or a-religious
traditions or comprehensive doctrines), in ways that might possibly prevent war crimes
perpetrated on others, or moral wounding to their own souls?
Such questions weighed heavily on the mind of General George Washington even before
the birth of the Constitution under which we now live. Relying on the wisdom of the ages and
his own experience with fighting men, among his first acts as General of the Continental Army in
1775, was to fight for publicly funded religious and moral leaders to be those Chaplains who
could be entrusted with that awesome responsibility of forming and shaping the fighting
foundation of what would become a new nation. Central to his concern was to lead not only
effective fighting and killing machines, but Soldiers5
who were moral agents with lethal means
5 Except where used differently in quotations, I will be following standard U.S. Army practice of capitalizing the
terms “Soldier,” “Chaplain,” Warriors, “Veteran,” as well as “Constitution” when referring to the U.S.
Constitution.

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of pursuing moral and noble political ends.6
Much more recently, Army doctrinal guidance pertaining to foundational roles of
Chaplains codified a more recent form of what General Washington's concerns from early on:
In the late 1940s, chaplains developed a program called Character Guidance to provide
religious, moral, and citizenship instruction to all army personnel....Although one of the
main reasons the army instituted Character Guidance was to reduce the high incidence of
venereal disease among soldiers, Character Guidance did not limit chaplains' moral
guidance to sexual matters. The lectures prepared by the Army Chaplain Board
inculcated a wide range of “personal and civic virtues,' including not only religious faith,
but also self-reliance, courage, obedience, fair play, and persistence. The stated objective
of the program was 'to develop the kind of soldier who has sufficient moral understanding
and courage to do the right thing in whatever situation he may find himself.” 7
Formation for Right Action
A central concern in the formational work of the chaplaincy has to do with inculcating
into Soldiers the wisdom, the will and the capacity, as this guidance states, “to do the right thing
in whatever situation”– regardless of one's personal opinion or preference, and regardless of how
one feels about any of the elements of a situation. The heroism depicted by The Four Chaplains
is an ideal example of the formation of souls-- not only of teaching about what “the right thing”
to do may be, but in demonstrating with their very lives, the capacity, the commitment and the
will to “do the right thing,” even in the most harrowing of experiences, even when their decisions
led to their own certain deaths. Formation involves not only right thought, but also wisdom to be
able to discern what is “right”-- despite a frequent milieu of moral ambiguity-- as well as the
discipline to do what is right regardless of any other belief, the “fog of war,” whatever emotional
state or what one might “feel like” at the time-- regardless of very real threat and cost to life and
limb. The capacity to discern that which is right has to do with morals, with ethics, which are
6 Office of the Chief of Chaplains, Strategic Roadmap: Connecting Faith, Service and Mission, 2012.
7 Anne C. Loveland, “From Morale Builders to Moral Advocates: U. S. Army Chaplains in the Second Half of the
Twentieth Century,” in Doris L. Bergen, ed., The Sword of the Lord: Military Chaplains from the First to the
Twenty-First Century, (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004) pp. 234-235.

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often based in religious teachings from various traditions, hence Washington's desire to build into
his army the role of the Chaplain as religious and moral leader and practitioner.
One of the important “religious” freedoms also protected by the Constitution's First
Amendment, is for some, “freedom from religion,” or freedom from being subjected to
parameters of any particular religion. Yet a-religious worldviews are also shaped by certain
foundational assumptions about reality which function in a metaphysical, “religious” capacity for
persons holding such beliefs. In the same way that some understanding of the reality of “That
which is Divine” (however understood) shapes perceptions of reality for those with religious or
spiritually shaped identities, the assumed non-reality of any sense of that which could be called
“divine”-- the exclusively materialistic assumptions of philosophical naturalism--shapes some
atheists' foundational understandings of what is real. In many cases, these foundational
understandings of that which is real are mutually exclusive, shaping equally mutually exclusive
foundational values and conceptions of what is moral or ethical-- what it means to “do the right
thing.”
The religious context of Washington's day was a bit different from 21st
century America.
Yet straddling the thought worlds of the religious and the emerging Enlightenment, and perhaps
learning from his Masonic tradition in which religious tolerance was already a central theme in
the late 18th
century, Washington had the wisdom to also build an early form of pluralism into the
early chaplaincy. This intent and wisdom is clearly documented through letters, his early
General Orders, a range of excerpts from all three branches of the Federal Government, to
include documentation of early challenges. Summarizing this background, Pepperdine
University's Hans Zeiger states: “The constitutional history of the chaplaincy is consistently
affirmative. Early challenges were rejected by Congress. Far from an establishment of religion,

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the chaplaincy is an essential bulwark of religious liberty.”8
Even without the constraints of budgetary restrictions, the character that formation
establishes could not be found by any stocking number in any catalog to by ordered by some
supply sergeant. Nor is that character merely a cognitive product that could be conveyed through
even the most brilliant of texts, nor merely a facet of an “emotional intelligence” that might be
picked up from experts on a radio show, though formation certainly includes intellectual
capacity, and is nurtured by emotional experience. Formation toward the capacity for the Soldier
to “do the right thing” regardless of circumstance involves shaping not only skills, but the will to
act, regardless of fear, self-interest, or even self-preservation. It is not only taught, but modeled,
it is not only in or through acts or rituals of religion, but acts of courage.
Formation for a Pluralistic Context
Many stories from both Chaplains and Soldiers depict what proper formation can yield
(and unfortunately, what happens in its lack as well). Many of those stories of moral leadership
at the same time, also depict that formed moral leadership in the midst of the military's context of
plurality, that, while more salient today, has always been a part of America's story. The
experience of The Four Chaplains described earlier is just one such icon. The following scene
unfolds from the memoirs of Father William Corby, a Roman Catholic Chaplain with the Union
Army at Gettysburg: Before advancing on the attacking Confederate troops at Cemetery Ridge:
Corby climbed onto a nearby boulder and, exposing himself to enemy fire, stood up and
pronounced the absolution of sin on every man he saw. He later claimed that all the
soldiers in the brigade, whether Catholic or not, knelt solemnly in front of him as
cannonballs exploded and bullets whistled over their heads. Sustained by their own
prayers and the priest's benediction, the troops then joined the battle and bravely risked
8 Hans Zeiger, “Why does the U.S. Military Have Chaplains?” Pepperdine Policy Review-Wol. II- 2009,
http://publicpolicy.pepperdine.edu/policy-review/2009v2/why-does-us-military-have-chaplains.htm , accessed
March 13, 2014.

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death in defense of the Union position.... Veterans of the Irish Brigade never forgot the
courage their chaplain had displayed at that critical moment in the conflict, and nearly
fifty years after the event, they erected a bronze statue of the priest, his right hand raised
in blessing, on the Gettysburg battlefield.” 9
Formation entails the whole person, mind, body, emotions, and spirit, in multi-sensory
ways, and engages the whole person down to their adrenal glands, even under such deadly
circumstances as bullets and bombs whistling and bursting overhead, or a ship sinking out from
under one's feet in frigid Arctic waters. Textbook and Power-Point presentations do not gird the
soul for the capacities for right action in the face of combat. Consistent experience and
documented recollections of the “right action” of Chaplains, whether in providing religious ritual
on the hood of Jeeps or on cases of rations, slogging through the mud and blood of battle in the
Civil War,10
suffering torture and death for simple acts of kindness, as was the case in the Korean
War for Chaplain Father Emil Kapaun,11
it is in “accompanying the men on combat missions,
living in the dust and mud with them, eating the same rations, sharing the trauma and losses of
battle-- that kind of intimate association, apart from their performance of the usual priestly and
pastoral duties,”12
that earns Chaplains the “spiritual authority”13
necessary for their work of
formation.14
In words not fit for academic publication, one Chaplain Assistant after almost
twenty years experience in the role, trains ministry teams by indicating that the best place for the
ministry team to do their work is wherever the circumstances and situation is the worst.15
9 Gardiner H. Shattuck, , Jr., “Faith, Morale, and the Army Chaplain in the American Civil War,” chapter 5 in
Doris L. Bergen, ed., The Sword of the Lord: Military Chaplains from the First to the Twenty-First Century.
(Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004) in Bergen, pp. 112-113.
10 Shattuck in Bergen, p. 106
11 http://www.army.mil/medalofhonor/kapaun/ accessed March 13, 2014.
12 Loveland in Bergen, p. 236.
13 Shattuck in Bergen, p. 112.
14 Loveland in Bergen, p. 236.
15 Word of my own Chaplain Assistant, Staff Sergeant Ross Carter, used many times as we trained young Chaplains
and Chaplain Assistants.

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Emerging Military Practice and Concerns
As recently as 2008, the U.S. Army, ever on an evolving quest for quality improvement,
re-organized its proponency for professional ethics to the new entity known at the Center for
Army Profession and Ethic(CAPE)16
under the guidance of its broad training directorate. With a
liaison to the Chief of Chaplains office, this new organization is helping with a part of that task
of formation that has always been a key facet of the chaplaincy since its organization in 1775
under General George Washington. The Soldier's personal and professional identities are
understood to be the foundational locus as the source for the Soldier's internalized will and
capacity to “do the right thing.”17
However, CAPE's role is to shape the ethical framework for Soldiers as “professionals”--
since the Army has appropriate jurisdiction of the professional behavior of its “employees.”
Therein lies the subtle difference between “ethics” and “morals.” “Ethics” are generally
understood to pertain to professional behaviors of persons in organizations, while “morality”
tends to be associated with one's personal behaviors outside of professional roles. This
distinction presents practical challenges in organizations such as the military, though, especially
in deployed contexts, where even when “off the clock,” all members of the U.S. military are
understood to be beholden to standards beyond their own personal “morality.” Additionally, how
personal morality is understood in 21st
century American culture is highly debatable, complicated
even further by those times when Soldiers are serving in the globalized context in areas which
often have very different understandings of what constitutes both personal morality as well as
professional ethics.
One's personal morality may either follow the whims of faddish social convention of
16 http://cape.army.mil/history.php accessed March 13, 2014.
17 Insight from a conversation with the current Chaplain Liaison for CAPE, in November, 2013.

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whatever group with which one associates, or if thought of or developed with some
intentionality, is most often associated with the comprehensive doctrine/ religion/ worldview/
ideology that one follows. While the influence and authority the military as a professional
organization has over the personal lives and morality of its constituents is limited by
Constitutional First Amendment protections, common experience suggests that personal behavior
(that may or may not be construed as “moral”) is very often, far from intentional, but often
merely conventional-- at least if it's convenient at the time.18
However, quite frequently when
asked, a somewhat modified form of a “Judeo-Christian-Ten-Commandment” morality is
idealized and thought of as a personal moral framework.19
Unlike the limitations of concern to the professional realm of “professional ethics” by
which CAPE is bound, Chaplains address the identity and moral integrity of the whole person--
the Soldiers' soul-- and the life of that soul and how it is lived in both the personal as well as the
professional realms, in both their personal religious expression and their public expression of
pluralistic moral leadership. Even as far back as General Washington, wise souls recognized that
not only professional ethical integrity, but equally so, the personal moral integrity of Soldiers,
are both essential for a dynamic and motivated fighting force; but both facets are also a hedge
against very practical concerns such as security leaks. Current training like never before,
emphasizes that enemies capitalize on any avenue of attack. Breaches or weaknesses in personal
morality and integrity can be exploited just as readily as breaches or weaknesses in any fortress
wall. Personal moral and spiritual formation that protects against such personal vulnerabilities--
18 This assessment is derived from almost three decades of personal experience, intentional consulting and research
with others also involved in coaching, counseling, advising, and picking up the pieces of moral lives and moral
casualties in both civilians and military populations.
19 Observation from a career and consultation with others in areas of morality, where the modifications typically
fall in areas of sexuality and “little” infractions such as “little white lies,” cheating in school, speeding (as long
as it's not TOO fast...) and the like. Exactly where one draws the line between “minor” issues and those that are
major, hence becoming “moral” infractions varies immensely across people and contexts.

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while the central theme of the Chaplain's area of concern with Soldiers-- is totally out of bounds
to all other military, professional or government influence.
Additionally, while civilian clergy who also service religious needs of Soldiers, civilian
clergy are concerned with the sectarian religious lives of their constituents, and are limited in
where they can serve. They cannot be where bullets fly and bombs burst, in the foxholes of life
where souls are laid bare, where the Valley of the Shadow of Death may be a dark path or may be
a bloody grave. Perhaps most importantly, civilian clergy are also neither trained in nor
concerned with Constitutional protections, with the needs of pluralistic contexts, nor the needs of
those outside their flock, and certainly not the distinct needs of protection “from religion” for
those who so choose. Their duties are their sectarian agendas, while Chaplains' duties extend to
pluralistic protections, ensuring not only the rights of their constituents, but the rights of those
with whom their beliefs may be mutually exclusive or even at odds. Yet as times are changing,
while once atheists needed the most adamant protections for religious freedoms, now both
atheists and religionists of all stripes face attacks and risks of suppression from persons both in
uniform and out. The chaplaincy stands almost alone in its proponency for freedom of religious
expression treasured by both followers of religion and followers of no religion.
Conclusion
I have argued here that two distinct facets of identity for military Service Members--
while not unique concerns for those in the military, but uniquely salient and relevant for those in
military service-- are those facets of formation and the Constitutional protections of the First
Amendment which are necessary for the political and ideological context of pluralism. These
facets of identity have been recognized as being foundationally important from before the birth

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of the United States as well as moving into the twenty-first century. As the world and the U.S.
military grows in complexity and into a more secular context, various facets of human need are
addressed by ever more specialized professional roles and providers.
I would argue further that this increasing specialization and secularization, far from
eliminating the distinct need for military Chaplaincy, makes the need for the Chaplaincy all the
more vitally essential. Regardless of any given Service Member's “religious preference”-- the
formation both the personal and socio-cultural ideologies through which both distinct sectarian
expressions and intentional social plurality of expression are formed and protected necessitate
the unique roles and capacities of the Chaplaincy. Perhaps even more importantly on a practical
level, the formation of souls by which persons wield and control the god-like powers of life and
death over both individuals and whole communities, which distinguishes Warriors from mass
murderers, which shapes souls into “peacemakers” even while wielding weapons of war, rather
than mere barbarians or automatons in the service of global political actors, can only be
exercised in contexts of plurality, by those with the unique and distinct role of Chaplains. For
most people, the character of the soul is either religious or spiritual in nature, hence the need to
be fed by those trained and authorized to appropriately nurture souls in contexts of plurality. Yet
those souls which are shaped by “secular spiritualities” that provide or define meaning outside of
religious realms, also need to be formed in their own ways. The rights of both religionists and
the irreligious to be formed by their own Traditions is as “sacred” as anything in a Constitutional
society, though even with good intent, those rights can be unknowingly trampled if not
intentionally protected. Formation itself in any form, and the rights of the protection the range of
expressions of formation, are entrusted primarily, if not solely, to the Chaplain. If those rights
are to be maintained, if as a culture and society, we wish to have Constitutional freedoms and

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physical safety in the hands of souls rather than automatons, then these roles of soul formation
and protection, ever entrusted into the hands of the Chaplaincy, are essential.

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Bibliography
Carter, Ross A. From both formal and informal training events with military personnel across our
relationship, 2009-2014.
Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. U.S. Religious Landscape Survey.
http://religions.pewforum.org/reports. Accessed January 13, 2013.
http://cape.army.mil/history.php . Accessed March 13, 2014.
http://www.army.mil/medalofhonor/kapaun/ . Accessed March 13, 2014.
http://www.fourchaplains.org/story.html . Accessed March 12, 2014.
Loveland, Anne C. “From Morale Builders to Moral Advocates: U. S. Army Chaplains in the
Second Half of the Twentieth Century,” in Doris L. Bergen, ed., The Sword of the Lord:
Military Chaplains from the First to the Twenty-First Century. Notre Dame: University of
Notre Dame Press, 2004.
Office of the Chief of Chaplains. Strategic Roadmap: Connecting Faith, Service and Mission.
2012.
Rawls, John. Political Liberalism. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993.
Shattuck, Jr.,Gardiner H. “Faith, Morale, and the Army Chaplain in the American Civil War,”
chapter 5 in Doris L. Bergen, ed., The Sword of the Lord: Military Chaplains from the First
to the Twenty-First Century. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004.
Zeiger, Hans “Why does the U.S. Military Have Chaplains?” Pepperdine Policy Review-Wol. II-
2009. http://publicpolicy.pepperdine.edu/policy-review/2009v2/why-does-us-military-have-
chaplains.htm. Accessed March 13, 2014.