LUCKY SEVERSON, correspondent: It was only fitting that the first parachutist out of the plane at this festival for atheists and non-believers at Fort Bragg is herself an atheist—Sergeant Rachel Medley.

SERGEANT RACHEL MEDLEY: I am an atheist and I’m a good person—have, you know, a great life and have great friends, and my service to my country is based on my personal morals which are help other people, be kinds to others, treat others as you would like to be treated.

SEVERSON: She would like to be treated with more respect, as would many of the troops attending this first ever event expressly for soldiers who don’t believe in God. Sergeant Justin Griffith was one of the organizers.

SERGEANT JUSTIN GRIFFITH: This is us coming out of the closet, you know, shattering that stained glass ceiling. We want to remove the stigma about atheists and whatever they think the word “atheist” means.

SEVERSON: As unlikely as it may seem, one token of respect they would like is an atheist chaplain. That’s a tall order considering that conservative evangelical clergy dominate the ranks of the chaplaincy. Organizations like the National Association of Evangelicals, the NAE, dispute any need for an atheist chaplain. Galen Carey is an NAE vice president.

GALEN CAREY: Well, evangelicals very strongly supported the men and women in uniform, and they want to see that their spiritual needs are met. I don’t think you would find many who could understand, frankly, the point of a chaplain for atheists.

SEVERSON: There are over 3000 chaplains all together. Ninety percent are Christian, even though only about 7 out of 10 soldiers claim to be Christian. There are also a handful of Muslim, Jewish, and Hindu chaplains. Jason Torpy, an Iraq veteran, wants to know why the much larger group of atheists or humanists, estimated to be about 40,000 soldiers, don’t have their own chaplain.

JASON TORPY: They have trainings for the Jewish perspective and Eastern Orthodox perspective and the Christian Science perspective even though, you know, our group—even just the atheists, not even the general nontheists, you know—even though we dwarf their numbers.

SEVERSON: Torpy is a graduate of West Point. He was a captain in the 1st Armored Division and is now the president of the Military Association of Atheists and Free Thinkers.

TORPY: If I’m atheist or humanist, where’s that support for us? The same reason that a Christian will benefit from that and a Muslim will benefit from that and be a better soldier if they’re affirmed, and they can grow on their values, and they can plug into their community. we will benefit from that as well, but we can’t right now because the chaplains either are ignorant of or hostile to nontheistic beliefs.

SEVERSON: Our request for an interview with the Department of Defense was declined. Instead, we were given a statement reiterating the Pentagon’s longstanding position. It reads in part, “Anyone wanting to become a chaplain must have an endorsement from a qualified religious organization.” For the Department of Defense it is a sensitive issue, with pressure building from atheist groups around the country accusing the military of promoting Christianity. But Colonel Stephen Sicinski, the Fort Bragg base commander, would deny that.

COLONEL STEPHEN SICINSKI: I don’t see there being any inequality today. I’m not tracking as to where you might think that there is inequality of treatment. We don’t treat soldiers that are atheists as atheists. We treat them as soldiers.

SEVERSON: In 2010, Colonel Sicinski, at the urging of base chaplains, approved and supported a Billy Graham Evangelistic Association event called Rock the Fort to boost morale and, in the colonel’s words, “bolster the faith.”

GRIFFITH: We were “treated” to a just massive festival, and they were actually very successful. They converted hundreds of soldiers onstage.

SEVERSON: And when Sergeant Griffith asked for a similar event for atheists and humanists, Colonel Sicinski declined at first. Months later he changed his mind, and that set the stage for this event called Rock Beyond Belief. The keynote speaker was the British biologist and famous atheist author Richard Dawkins.

RICHARD DAWKINS: I’m delighted that a barrier has been broken through, that there never again can be a religious rally on a military base without the authorities knowing that it will be followed by something like this.

SICINSKI: This is just a manifestation, the latest manifestation of our attempt to ensure that a segment of our population gets the type of equal consideration that other types or segments of the population would.

SEVERSON: Prior to this event the military announced that there would be no base chaplains available for interviews. One chaplain wrote an open letter on Fort Bragg’s Facebook page saying the secular festival would promote and glorify violence against people who possess a faith in God. There was no violence at the Rock Beyond Belief event. Sergeant Griffith, who was a passionate Christian in his teens and now wears dog tags that say he is an atheist, claims that he’s had death threats.

GRIFFITH: I get death threats on a regular basis claiming that I‘m going to burn down the chapel, and that’s not the case at all. In fact, we want to use the churches. We want to be a part of the community.

SEVERSON: Among atheists, one of the most objectionable tests they are required to pass involves their spiritual fitness. It’s a new test given annually. Sergeant Griffith failed.

GRIFFITH: It went on and on telling me that I need to improve my spiritual fitness. But if I need help, I call this 1-800 number. So I called that 1-800 number, and I was basically just going to yell at whoever it was, and to my surprise this was a suicide hotline. I was told that I was suicidal because I was not religious.

SEVERSON: Atheists contend it’s difficult to advance in the army if a soldier isn’t deemed spiritually fit.

GRIFFITH: I take this test again and again and again, because every three months since I failed a section, the spiritual portion, that means I’m red and I have to take it again in three months. It’s offensive in the highest. It’s illegal. it’s unconstitutional, it’s a waste of money, and it’s another tool to keep us down, to tell us atheists that we’re freaks or somehow unfit.

CAREY: It’s in the military’s interest as well as the individual service member’s interest that their spiritual needs are met, but I don’t think that anyone is being discriminated against in the military because of absence of having a spiritual affiliation.

SEVERSON: Jason Torpy says the discrimination is often subtle, but it’s ever-present and, he says, it’s misplaced because, he argues, atheists are making a greater sacrifice.

TORPY: Not only am I here serving my country, expanding the value, you know, liberty, protecting and defending Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic. This is even more valuable because I’m giving the one life, you know, and when I die I don’t go to heaven.

DAWKINS: I must say if I were in a fox hole in the heat of battle I’d much rather be with an atheist solder than with a soldier who believed that some kind of supernatural being was watching over him. I’d want a soldier who knew that it was his own wit and bravery keeping us safe.

SEVERSON: Galen Carey with the National Association of Evangelicals says if atheists and humanists need someone to talk to, to receive counsel from, there may be another way.

CAREY; Well, there are times when psychologists, psychiatrists, other counselors are needed. That’s not exactly the role of a chaplain, so if we need to have more psychiatrists, then sure, we should bring them in. But that doesn’t mean we need to have chaplains.

SEVERSON: Atheists argue that going to a psychiatrist, for whatever reason, is often interpreted as a negative on a soldier’s record.

TORPY: Chaplains have unfettered access to troops and they have clergy confidentiality. If you go to a psychologist or a psychiatrist within the military it goes on your official record, which can jeopardize your job.

MEDLEY: It’s just like anything else. Anything that’s different or newer than other ideas is always met with a little bit of trepidation by people. That’s human nature. In the sixties we were having the same conversation about people with different colored skin, so it’s not a new conversation. It’s just a new subject.

SEVERSON: It’s a conversation that will likely go on for some time, but for those who share the goals of people here, there are signs of incremental progress in their campaign for equality with religious denominations. This festival is one sign.

For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Lucky Severson in Washington.

CHAPLAIN STEVEN RINDAHL: The month of May, we sustained our largest volume of casualties. We were conducting memorial ceremonies every few days, and by the time that month was over, I was pretty well worn out.

LUCKY SEVERSON, correspondent: Chaplain Steven Rindahl served 15 months in Iraq. Now he’s the chaplain at the Fort Jackson hospital in South Carolina, which is also the headquarters of the Army’s Chaplain school. There are 2900 full and part-time chaplains, and many have served at least one tour of duty in a combat zone, and, like Chaplain Rindahl, been haunted by the experience.

CHAPLAIN RINDAHL: We have 17 of our soldiers killed and one of our contracted interpreters, and I did not keep count of how many traumatic amputations and other wounds that caused our people to be evacuated from theater.

SEVERSON: It was his fellow chaplains who took him aside and told him that he was suffering from what has become known as “compassion fatigue.”

CHAPLAIN RINDAHL: I realized that what they were saying was true because I would hear footsteps outside in the gravel, the crunching noise, and I would just be terrified that somebody was coming to tell me about another casualty.

CHAPLAIN MIKE DUGAL: Across the board we have recognized that we do have chaplains that have experienced combat trauma.

SEVERSON: Colonel Mike Dugal is the Chaplain Director for the Center for Spiritual Leadership at Ft. Jackson. The center opened in 2008 partly in response to the realization that, like soldiers, chaplains also suffer the trauma of combat stress.

CHAPLAIN DUGAL: We do have chaplains that are going through the same psychological and traumatic events that our soldiers are going through. It is hard to be empathetic and to show compassion to our soldiers and to see the brokenness, to see the carnage and that not to affect you.

SEVERSON: According to the army, since the beginning of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s chaplains have served a total of more than 20,000 months in combat zones, some have gone on as many as eight tours of duty. One survey revealed that 20 percent of these chaplains had suffered compassion fatigue or some sort of PTSD.

Like the soldiers, these chaplains are often in the heat of battle where death is very real and the casualties are friends. Lieutenant Colonel Graeme Bicknell is not a chaplain, but he is an army expert on compassion fatigue.

LT. COL GRAEME BICKNELL: It can be nightmares. It can be lack of desire to eat, sort of feeling sad, sadness, avoiding certain behaviors because it reminds you of what happened.

SEVERSON: He says it’s understandable that chaplains would experience compassion fatigue.

LT. COL BICKNELL: The more empathic a person is, the more they’re able to relate to somebody or be in their shoes. The more vulnerable they are to compassion fatigue. And I think that with chaplains, that empathic relationship is incredibly important to be able to benefit the soldier.

CHAPLAIN JOHN READ: I guess I first learned in a profound way how trauma can damage the soul when I was clinically trained at Brook Army Medical Center.

SEVERSON: Chaplain John Read is the army’s Director of the Soldier and Family Ministries.

CHAPLAIN READ: You see the gun shot wounds, the stabbings, the burn patients, all the volatility of the kinds of things you see in a war zone. I mean I recognized there, as a clinically trained chaplain working in a hospital setting how that would affect me in terms of questions of life, death, grief, loss. The things that profoundly become kind of moral, ethical, spiritual aspects of our lives.

SEVERSON: He tells of seeing the body parts of 38 little Iraqi kids blown up by a terrorist bomb right after learning he had just become a grandfather. And of the soldier who died in his arms.

CHAPLAIN READ: He had just become a naturalized citizen two months before his death, killed in a rocket attack. I held him in my arms as he died and gave him, recited a prayer from his specific faith that he was from, and the peaceful look on his face as he thanked me and died, I will just never forget. But there isn’t a day that I don’t wish that he could somehow be with his wife and kids.

SEVERSON: One thing that often comes through is the deep, abiding respect and fatherly love these chaplains have for their soldiers.

CHAPLAIN DUGAL: It is natural for chaplains to weep with those who weep because a lot of these kids, most of these kids are the age of my youngest son and I’m a father to them. There are times that when I reflect about the cost that our military has paid since 911, I’m grateful that I had the opportunity to be with them. Because it is an honor.

SEVERSON: And it is not only the soldiers chaplains weep for — it’s the soldier’s families.

CHAPLAIN READ: The chaplains that go out and do many notifications, supporting the casualty notification process and the death notifications. It’s a heavy load to bear. And so at some point in time, invariably they have to re-engage themselves in a meaningful way to move in and through and beyond that.

SEVERSON: That’s where the chaplain’s school and the Center for Spiritual Leadership come into play. They get training here, discussion groups, reading lists, counseling.

There’s a chaplain museum tracing back to the Revolutionary war. It was George Washington who first dictated that each regiment should have it’s own chaplain.

CHAPLAIN DUGAL: When pain and suffering is very real, soldiers know that they can turn to the chaplain.

SEVERSON: Chaplain Greg Cheney served in both Iraq and Afghanistan. He says there was a time when what he experienced in combat challenged his faith.

CHAPLAIN GREG CHENEY: Definitely, I mean when you go through that kind of extreme circumstances, there were times when I would, you know, question God and ask God what’s going on. Yeah, it’s one of those experiences where everything doesn’t make sense when it’s happening.

SEVERSON: Ultimately, he says, his faith actually grew from his combat experience.

CHAPLAIN CHENEY: Even when I was going through that, I felt an amazing sense of calm in those situations as I ministered to those soldiers, and I know that that could not have been anything from myself, it was only God, you know, Jesus Christ working through me to touch these soldier’s lives.

CHAPLAIN DUGAL: I would definitely say that my faith has developed and not to the point of questioning the existence of God, but having to deal with the reality of pain and suffering and realize that there are no just simple answers.

CHAPLAIN RINDAHL: If you think about what Christ did for humanity. He left a place of ultimate privilege in order to take on a hardship and ultimately sacrifice himself for people who didn’t know him. And soldiers take upon themselves the obligation to leave the most privileged county in the world and be willing to sacrifice personal comfort and, although not intending to sacrifice their own life, at least be willing to.

SEVERSON: There’s a phrase that’s become quite common among veterans, and among chaplains, of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. It’s called “the new normal.” It means that their lives are never going to be quite the same as before.

CHAPLAIN READ: Sunday school teachers I had had as a kid growing up who kind of always celebrated my journey, said you’re not the same. And I would say, reflectively, how am I different? Well, you’ve seen things that none of us will ever see. We can see that in your eyes.

SEVERSON: For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Lucky Severson in Crystal City, Virginia.

LUCKY SEVERSON, correspondent: This is the Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, the military’s largest and most advanced medical facility. It’s where doctors send some of the most seriously burned and wounded soldiers to recover, sometimes with artificial limbs. Since the beginning of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, thousands of soldiers, like Private Carlos Gomez, have suffered injuries like his. He was on a scouting mission and was seriously wounded when his vehicle ran over a roadside bomb in Afghanistan earlier this year.

PVT CARLOS GOMEZ: Well, the blast, it shot us straight up in the air so the impact actually broke my left leg. It shattered my heel and my bones down my right, left leg, I mean, and my right leg got crushed. They couldn’t save it anymore so they had to amputate it here at Brooke Army Medical Center.

SEVERSON: Two other soldiers were wounded in the blast. One was killed. At first Gomez wasn’t sure he wanted to live.

PVT GOMEZ: I woke up, you know, not really knowing what happened still. I didn’t know that my leg was amputated, and when I was fully, you know, aware of what’s going on, I saw my leg, yeah, I broke down in tears, you know, and I hated my life, and I didn’t want nothing to do with it.

SEVERSON: The first battle many seriously wounded soldiers face is whether they want to go on with their lives and then endure the long, painful process of healing, often alone. Doctors have learned that wounded soldiers heal faster and more completely when they have family around them. That’s what happens here at the Warrior and Family Support Center in San Antonio. It is the only one of its kind. It was the dream of Judith Markelz, and now she’s the director.

JUDITH MARKELZ (Warrior Family Support Center Program Manager): We attempt to form a home away from home for wounded warriors and their families, to help them feel some kind of connection to each other, things for them to do every day to take them outside of their own world and help them transition back to active duty or to the civilian community where they’re going to have to adjust and make a lot of changes.

SEVERSON: Although it’s located on an army post, the Warrior and Family Support Center is funded entirely from private donations and staffed by about 150 volunteers. Families live in apartments close by, so they can help soldiers accept what is called “the new normal,” which means their life will never be quite the same again. Sometimes family is as important as the medical care.

MARKELZ: To know that someone is there, that someone that comes from home to take care of you makes a tremendous difference for our warriors. If you believe in the triad of the healing of the mind, body, and spirit, then we probably fall in the category of the healing of the spirit.

SEVERSON: Bryant Casteel is a Baptist chaplain at the center. He says the most important part of his job is simply to be there.

CHAPLAIN (CAPT) BRYANT CASTEEL: You know, sometimes you want to find the right words. I found many times when dealing with soldiers there’s not a right word. There’s no right way to tell someone you’re going to be okay. And some say, hey, can you pray for me chaplain? You know, can you let me know things are going to be all right? I can’t promise you, but I can promise you I’ll be here to support you.

SEVERSON: One of the favorite nights around here is bingo night. For a while they forget that the war for them is not yet over. For those who think this must be a very sad place, Judith Markelz says the opposite is true. She says it’s a place of hope, which is the name of the sculpture hanging in the center which was created by a staff sergeant who had 29 surgeries while he was at Brooke. She says the wounded may cry in their beds at night, but never in public.

MARKELZ: These young men and women do not want your sympathy. They want your support and in the help of their healing, because they’re going to be okay. They did what they were commanded to do, and they did it with great integrity and honor.

SEVERSON: And many paid a huge price, like Master Sergeant Doug Reed with the Ohio National Guard, critically wounded by a rocket-propelled grenade in Afghanistan in 2010. He’s the father of seven kids, here with his wife, Jana.

MSG DOUG REED: The angel of death had me in his arms, and Jesus said, “No, I’m not done with you.” So they fought over me, and my jaw came off.

JANA REED: He was very close to death, in the fact that I mean with every surgery they didn’t know if he would ever wake up or ever become independent. And so that’s when I just had to say, “Okay, God, I am not in control. The doctors are not in control. But you are in control, and you are going to have to fix this, if this is what you want.”

SEVERSON: And when he finally did wake up, for two months he didn’t know his wife. He didn’t even know who he was.

JANA REED: But when our kids walked in the door he gave them a hug, and he called them all by their pet names, and so the kids began to cry, not because of what they saw, but because it’s dad, he does know me, when the doctors were saying we don’t think he’ll know you.

MSG REED: I didn’t know what I looked like. It couldn’t have been good, and they don’t see that. They don’t care if I have teeth or not or my jaw is out of shape now or anything else. What they cared about is I was still alive. I was still with them.

SEVERSON: Judith Markelz says the families themselves need support.

MARKELZ: This is not a singular effort. It involved families, children, wives, mothers. An injury or a death is like dropping a rock in the water, and the ripples go forever, and they affect everyone with whom they ever came in contact.

SEVERSON: Private Gomez has two children, and he says he knows things will get better when he gets his prosthesis, but in the meantime his seven-year-old son is having a hard time.

PVT GOMEZ: It’s affecting him. I know definitely it’s affecting him. You know, he has to help out his dad a lot with stuff that I can’t do, like picking stuff up for me, you know, putting on my shoes, stuff like that.

SEVERSON: Gomez says he’s always been religious, but one of the few times he didn’t have time to pray was when he rushed out on a mission in the middle of the night, the mission that cost him his leg. He says the war has not cost him his faith.

PVT GOMEZ: I don’t question God, not one day, you know, why this happened to me. I thank him actually, because it could have been the opposite, you know. I could have paid the ultimate sacrifice and passed away. It was because of him I’m still sitting here talking to you right now.

SEVERSON: Jana Reed says her faith and her husband’s are actually stronger.

JANA REED: Because every day we have a miracle that has been answered, and some people might say, oh, it’s a coincidence, but we’ve just had too many coincidences in the pasts 16 months that I do not accept it. It is not a coincidence.

SEVERSON: Chaplain Casteel says he has seen how the Warrior and Family Support Center has helped soldiers get better quicker. But he worries about what happens when the soldiers go home.

CH CASTEEL: When you walk around here, you don’t feel like you’re different. You don’t feel like, wow, someone’s staring at me or looking at me like I’m strange, and so I think here for a soldier it can be safe. Now when they leave this environment, going back to their home of record, then it could be a little more challenging, and I think that anxiety rises again for the soldier: Hey, will I be accepted?

SEVERSON: There was a time when wounded soldiers returning from the Vietnam War received more hostility than community support. But times have changed.

MARKELZ: Whether you agree with what these young men and women did is of, frankly, no concern to me. If you don’t like the war, it is not an issue for me. The issue is that we continue to support these young men and women for the rest of our days and theirs, because this doesn’t end tomorrow.

SEVERSON: She says that there are now other warrior and family support centers being built around the country modeled after the one here.

For Religion & Ethics Newsweekly, I’m Lucky Severson in San Antonio, Texas.

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: Now, a report on an army boot camp for chaplains where they learn to carry out their ministry within the military culture. They’ve already been ordained in their own faith traditions, but the Army recognizes more than a hundred religious groups within its ranks, and it wants its chaplains alert to the potential dangers of evangelizing — and even religious discrimination. Saul Gonzalez reports from Fort Jackson, South Carolina.

SAUL GONZALEZ: At Fort Jackson, South Carolina, soldiers train for the dangers of Iraq and Afghanistan.

SOLDIER #1 (shouting): Go. Go. Go. Go. Go!

GONZALEZ: This afternoon it’s a simulated insurgent ambush on a military convoy.

SOLDIER #2: Combat base, this is Charlie One. Copy that.

GONZALEZ: But many of the troops in this exercise, the ones not carrying weapons, aren’t warriors. They’re members of the clergy attending the Army’s boot camp for chaplains.

Colonel CLARKE MCGRIFF: (Commandant, U.S. Army Chaplain Center and School): So we are not a theological school, but we take theologians and train them on how to provide or perform religious support in an Army setting.

GONZALEZ: Colonel Clarke McGriff, an American Baptist minister, is the commandant of the U.S. Army Chaplain Center and School. It teaches new Army chaplains who have already been ordained by their own religious bodies the rules and customs of Army life.

Col. MCGRIFF: The Army is a world of its own, and we walk, we talk, we do things in a peculiar way, and for a chaplain and a chaplain assistant to be effective in that environment they each must have the understanding of the codes, the lingo, the particular battle rhythm that the people that they’re serving have as well.

GONZALEZ: Much of the school’s 12-week long curriculum emphasizes battlefield skills, from how to react while under fire to administering first aid and moving wounded soldiers.

ARMY TRAINER: And you just gently ease him down.

Lieutenant Colonel MARC GAUTHIER: The biggest question is if they deploy to Iraq or Afghanistan is their survivability on the battlefield.

GONZALEZ: Chaplain and Lieutenant Colonel Marc Gauthier plans and manages training at the school.

Lt. Col. GAUTHIER (Chaplain Training Officer, U.S. Army): The expectation is they already have the ministry skills understood, and what we are trying to do is teach them to learn military skills to make both those things match together so they provide effective care to soldiers and families and provide effective ministry.

CHAPLAIN ASSISTANT: Behind me, behind me, Chaplain.

GONZALEZ: Since military chaplains are classified as noncombatants they don’t carry weapons on the battlefield. Armed and unordained chaplain assistants, who also train at Fort Jackson, provide protection for the military clergy.

ARMY INSTRUCTOR #1: Conduct yourself with dignity and honor and comply with the law of war.

GONZALEZ: New Army chaplains say they’ve joined the military as a way to serve both their faith and country.

Chaplain MIKE SMITH (U.S. Army): I’m giving every soldier the opportunity to learn about God, to get a source of faith and hope that they may not get.

GONZALEZ: Before becoming a Baptist minister, Mike Smith had been an enlisted Marine and Florida police officer. He says joining the Army chaplaincy has given him a new purpose.

Chap. SMITH: What an opportunity to be with those young soldiers now as a mentor and as an encourager to give them spiritual motivation. What kind of motto that we have is “we are bringing God to the soldiers and the soldiers to God,” and that is exciting. That’s exciting. That’s a new mission.

GONZALEZ: To further serve soldiers, chaplains at this school learn about crisis intervention and counseling.

ARMY INSTRUCTOR #2: Here is the scenario.

GONZALEZ: Chaplains also learn about dealing with death.

ARMY INSTRUCTOR #2: You are the chaplain for the infantry unit, and you have two soldiers who are killed in action as a result of an IED.

GONZALEZ: Through mock ceremonies, the chaplains receive instruction in the solemn task of conducting memorial services for soldiers killed in action. The details range from organizing pallbearers to reciting prayers before bodies are sent back to the United States.

Chap. SMITH (praying during training exercise): I will say to the Lord He is my refuge and my fortress and my God. In Him will I trust.

GONZALEZ: Some chaplaincy students at Fort Jackson have already served tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan and have returned for additional training.

Chaplain SETH GEORGE (U.S. Army): We lost, in this last deployment, 22.

GONZALEZ: Chaplain Seth George has served two tours of duty in Iraq.

(to Chap. George): Is it hard being all things to all soldiers at different times?

Chap. GEORGE: Oh yeah, it’s difficult, because you will be with a platoon that just lost a soldier. Guys are crying. You’re hugging them. You are trying to talk to them a little bit, and then you literally walk around the corner to another company area and it’s, “Hey chaplain, what’s the word for the day?” And they want to laugh and cut up, just like always, and so to switch gears like that is very difficult, and I try my best to do that. You rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep, and that’s part of, I think, the unique element of being a chaplain in the Army.

GONZALEZ: Along with all the military training chaplains who attend this school also learn a lesson in religious tolerance, namely, how to uphold the beliefs and practice of their own faiths while also respecting religious differences within the ranks.

Col. MCGRIFF: As I say to my students as they first come in here, this is not a Christian summer camp. The Army did not call the chaplain into the Army to promote his or her faith. The Army has called the chaplain into the Army to provide for the religious support needs of its members, and its members include men and women of all sorts of orientations.

ARMY INSTRUCTOR #3 (speaking to class): Evaluate your opinions very carefully.

GONZALEZ: Although students don’t receive formal religious instruction at this school, they are encouraged to learn about other faiths. When deployed, the chaplains will be allowed to perform the rites and rituals of a religion not their own as long as they have no personal objections and it doesn’t violate the doctrines of the other faith. The Army, like other branches of the armed forces, also has no formal rules against its more than 2,500 chaplains evangelizing troops of different faiths, as long as soldiers don’t feel coerced or pressured.

Chaplain DAVID DICE (U.S. Army): I am given a lot of freedom to be myself to the soldiers as I minister to them, and as they ask questions regarding their own faith or my faith. They’re coming to me seeking advice.

GONZALEZ: Chaplain David Dice, an evangelical Protestant, says he looks forward to talking about his beliefs with interested soldiers.

Chaplain DICE: You know, I live out my ministry and what that is as an evangelical, and the Army gives me the freedom to do that. As a soldier comes to me asking questions, that’s when I find full freedom to really share what my personal belief is in God’s word and in that truth that I hold to personally.

GONZALEZ: Although the Army recognizes 115 religious groups, about half of active duty chaplains are Protestant. Some people, both in and out of uniform, have expressed concerns about the growing number of evangelical Protestant chaplains in the Army and other branches of the armed forces. They fear it could lead to proselytizing and religious discrimination within the ranks.

Col. MCGRIFF: When a person’s ideals or faith orientation gets in the way or supersedes the provision of religious support to all persons, then it becomes a problem.

GONZALEZ: Colonel McGriff acknowledges the need for more qualified clergy from a wide range of religions. The Army has set a target of recruiting 350 more chaplains. As for these new chaplains, they’ll soon be putting the lessons they’ve learned at this school into battlefield practice. After graduation, nearly all of them expect to be deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan.

Chap. SMITH (praying during training exercise: Today, as we honor our fellow soldiers, may their sacrifice be our motivation. May it be our strength as we continue with the mission that they gave their life for.

GONZALEZ: For RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY, I’m Saul Gonzalez at Fort Jackson, South Carolina.