Mormons & Military Chaplains (feat. Ronit Stahl)

Professor Ronit Stahl (UC Berkeley) joins me to discuss the role of military chaplaincy (including Latter-day Saints) in changing how the US government interacted with American religions.

Transcript

Mormons & Military Chaplains

Stephen Betts: Hi, I'm Stepheen Betts. You're listening to Scholars and Saints.

Today on Scholars & Saints I'm chatting with Professor Ronit Stahl about the U.S. military chaplaincy. During World War I, the unprecedented size of the U.S. military, along with the mandatory draft, meant that the military had to contend for the first time with large scale religious pluralism. Over the course of the twentieth century, the military chaplaincy changed both the military and religion. Like other minority faiths, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints posed unique challenges, but also served as a catalyst for change in the ways that the military categorized and interfaced with religion.

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Stephen Betts: I’m pleased to welcome Professor Ronit Stahl today who joins us from the University of California—Berkeley. We're talking about her book, Enlisting Faith: How the Military Chaplaincy Shaped Religion and State in Modern America. Thanks for being at with us today, Ronit. 

Ronit Stahl: Thank you for having me. 

Stephen Betts: So, Ronit, I'm curious, what's the story behind your interest in military chaplaincy and why did you choose to write this book?

Ronit Stahl: You know, as with many people, there's sort of several reasons or several back-stories to how Enlisting Faith came about. The big animating force was that when I went to graduate school, I went in really interested in religion and the state. I thought that was an underdeveloped area of scholarship, especially in twentieth century U.S. history. And I thought that the work that centered in religion and law, which was really important, really good scholarship there, you know, tended to focus on intense moments of conflict that made it to the Supreme Court. And there's a lot to learn from those moments but my intuition was that there was something, there was a longer story, a more sustained, a story about religion and state, and I really, that's what I wanted to figure out. I wanted to figure out what was that relationship between religious groups and the federal government that wasn't necessarily litigated in a courtroom. And so that's the broad theme or the broad topic that got me to the military chaplaincy. 

The specifics are, you know, as with many of us, we encounter lots of people along the way. So, there were a few things I think that ultimately led to the military chaplaincy as the focus. One was that I had done a master's in education where I knew someone working on a dissertation that compared the training of teachers, clinical psychologists, and hospital chaplains. And that was the first time I'd thought about chaplains at all. So, you know, I had kinda in the back of my head a little bit thinking about chaplains and chaplaincy. That was one element. The second was that I grew up in Washington, D.C. My parents were not actually federal government employees. Most of the people we knew and family, friends were, and many neighbors were in the military.

And so, it was not an unusual institution to think about. And indeed, the story I sometimes like to say is the true origin story that I discovered in the archives later in the midst of the research was that I found a letter between two chaplains, one of whom was the husband of my kindergarten teacher, and one was the father of a kindergarten classmate from 1973 in the Vietnam War. And I was in kindergarten in the early eighties. So, you know, in some ways it'd been percolating for a very long time. And then finally the last reason was that as I was thinking about chaplaincy in a lot of different domains: hospitals, prisons, military corporations, what became clear to me was that the military. The space to look at the government, and there's a really tremendous archival source space to work from.  

Stephen Betts: Yeah, you engage a tremendous number of archival sources for this project. I was just astounded looking at your bibliography. Very impressive. 

In the book you characterize the military chaplaincy as what you call a “constitutionally anomalous institution,” and you argue that the ways in which the U.S. government has interacted with religion through the chaplaincy is really quite unique. And it has, you say, served as a fairly reliable bellwether of the politics of religious toleration and accommodation. So, the book starts out with World War I and the origins of what we might call the professionalized military chaplaincy. Of course, the military chaplaincy begins earlier than this, but this is when we start to see rank and professionalization, these kinds of things. And it kind of chronicles how the military has dealt over time with religious pluralism, including with Latter-day Saints, and also how the chaplaincy becomes more diverse through racial and gendered inclusion. And throughout the book you explore what I take to be two main themes that listeners can keep in mind as we chat today.

And that is 1.) How do American religions and especially minority religions change the military? And then conversely, how is the military affected by religion, right.[1] So I'm hoping you could say a little bit more about the chaplaincy as this “constitutionally anomalous institution”—I found that a really arresting way to characterize this—and why is it such a useful way to study American religion? 

Ronit Stahl: So, I think if you ask most people about religion in the United States, you would get one of two answers depending where they're coming from. And I am exempting scholars of religion from answering this question at the moment. But you would either hear, you know, some argument about, again, depends where you are and who you're asking, but some argument about the United States as a Christian space or a Christian nation, or something about Christianity infusing the United States in one way or another. Whether people agreed with it or disagreed with it, that that was really important. Or you would hear separation of church and state. It's the Constitution. And so, I think the chaplaincy, the military chaplaincy is interesting because it really sits at the intersection of those two arguments, which in their sort of extreme forms are not necessarily accurate historically or otherwise. But tell us something culturally, politically, socially, about how people in the United States think about religion in a nation where there is a First Amendment that has this interesting two-pronged side of there should be no establishment of religion, but also free exercise should be enabled. So, what does that look like?

As I noted before, you know, court cases are often where this gets worked out, but the military chaplaincy is so fascinating because on the one hand, it is an institution embedded in the federal government in which chaplains who are clergy are paid by the government. There's no question about, you know, who is funding it or who is setting policy. It is a government institution through and through, and it's trying very hard not to establish religion and at the same time enable free exercise. But what really makes it distinctive compared to chaplaincy in any other institution is that it is a thoroughly government institution.

There are government funded chaplains in other spaces, but not from bottom to top, through and through. In the military, it is an exclusive government space, and so that's why I think of it as “constitutionally anomalous.” We don't see any other space, and in fact, we see lots of fights and arguments and debates and even current friction over the degree to which the government should or can fund any type of religious activity. But in the military, it happens. So, what happens in this space when the government is funding religious activity and clergy but is also trying to enable free exercise and avoid any kind of establishment?

And so that's why I think it's both fascinating and also incredibly useful, not ‘cause it is representative of how religion works everywhere. But because it is the singular space in which the government is authorizing, managing, and funding religion and what happens when that's the government's task, it's, you know, that's a role that's changed over time. It's not static, it's dynamic. It evolves. So that also makes it an exciting space to look at and study American religion. 

And it's also a space in which groups interact with one another in a way they don't have to in civilian society. And so, I think that's the other element that makes it to such a fascinating space is that you have religious groups coming into contact with one another. And while that's more common today than it was frankly a century ago, it is still, you know, you can live your, depending where you live, you can live a long time without necessarily having substantial interaction with people of other religious traditions. So, this is the space where it happens. 

And so, for that reason, while again, it's not necessarily representative or typical, but in fact it's singularity and difference has really been tremendous but also has had a tremendous influence because the military, frankly, in some ways, is an understudied institution in US history, at least as its institutional presence for so long in the 20th century with a draft meant that, you know, American families were constantly in contact with the U.S. military, and while that has changed, it's still an institution that has a large imprint on American life, American politics, American culture. 

Stephen Betts: Yeah. I really like the term you use in the book, which is, is it's this “bellwether,” it's like the, you know, the main sheep in a flock that everybody else follows. And it kind of, it almost predicts or shows you ahead of time what's gonna happen in American culture more broadly. And like you're saying, that has a lot to do with kind of the de facto pluralism of the military through the draft especially. And also, through the ways that the federal government is learning to manage pluralism. And one of the fascinating ways that they do this is, you know, early in the twentieth century, they're very invested in a particular way of viewing American religion, which is in this, you know, what you call a “tri-faith model,” which is sort of, you know, Will Herberg in the, in the mid-twentieth century, wrote this very famous book called Protestant, Catholic, Jew, which is this way of thinking about American religion as you're either a Protestant, a Catholic, or a Jew, right? And you show that in a lot of ways by the time that that Herberg was writing, certainly, but even before that had been almost an ideological goal of what the federal government was doing through the chaplaincy and the ways that they were dealing with these, especially minority religions. So, tell us a little bit more about what the chaplaincy looks like during World War I and how do we get to this point of thinking about a “tri-faith America.”

Ronit Stahl: So, when the U.S. entered World War I in April of 1917, in many ways it was completely ill-equipped to do so. You know, this had been a debate since World War I broke out in Europe. What was the United States gonna do? Wilson had won on, “We're gonna keep America out of war.” That was no longer tenable for a lot of reasons. Americans want or at least support entering the war. So, Congress declares war. We're going to war. But the military is small and then it's suddenly gonna get really big with a draft, ‘cause part of that entrance is about a draft. And the chaplaincy too, was in many ways, tiny. We're talking just a few hundred chaplains across the Army and the Navy, and then you're gonna have an influx of, you know, 4 million young men who are gonna serve in World War I, either over there in Europe or stateside.

So, what's this institution to? When the U.S. entered the war, the chaplaincy had only Protestant and Catholic chaplains. And the Protestants were pretty much your mainline Protestant groups: Episcopalians, Baptists, Presbyterians, et cetera. One thing that I think is important to note is that it did include African Americans. So it was one of the very few spaces, I hesitate to call it truly racially integrated, but there was racial representation in the chaplaincy. But again, there's what was often at the time called a “manpower problem. “You didn't have enough people to serve all of the, and men were the ones drafted. So, all of the men who were drafted to serve in the US military.

And from both the military and the broader federal government's perspective, the chaplaincy could do a few things. Um, it could, it, it was important to provide religious support for soldiers, but it was also a space of both morale and morals management. And it needed, you know, chaplains are sort of these interesting officers because they are officers, but they're a little bit different. They have their own hierarchy, but they're outside of the typical chain-of-command. They're talking to soldiers; they're talking to high-ranking officers. They're fulfilling a lot of different roles. And so, one thing that starts to happen, and this this starts stateside and then will also become clear with the American Expeditionary Force in France, is that not only does the chaplaincy need to grow, but its knowledge of multiple religious groups needs to grow.

Because as it turns out, when you draft Americans from across the country, they're not just mainline Protestants and Catholics. And so, it's happening on multiple levels. Chaplains in the field who are meeting their charges and realizing they don't have the full knowledge and information to be able to serve all of their soldiers well, because one charge of the chaplain is they have to serve everyone in their unit. They can't just serve the Catholics or just serve the Methodists. And in this case, in World War I, you get, because of the way the draft worked and because of the way kind of the organization of the military worked, you would get large clusters of young men from the same places, which meant in, you know, in a particular area sent to a specific place.

So, that geography meant that there were often clusters of religious groups that weren't represented: Jews, LDS, Christian Scientists, other people were starting to then appear that had been present, but often invisible to the command previously. The other things that's happening is that religious groups themselves [are] seeing this mass mobilization for war, and there being a fair amount of religious cooperation on the civilian side in terms of war bonds and other things are starting to work together. And so, there's pressure coming from civilian religious groups. There's pressure coming from soldiers and their families, and there's pressure coming from within the chaplaincy itself to broaden the range of religions inside the chaplaincy. And so, one thing I wanna be really clear about is that it is an absolutely pragmatic need that the military is addressing in World War I and the opening of the chaplaincy to more faiths and in particular, more minority religious traditions. Just to say demographically minority  in the United States is because of pragmatic need and pressure. 

And so, Congress passes legislation that authorizes the opening of the chaplaincy to more faiths. This was not necessarily required in order to do so. But the Secretary of War, the Secretary of the Navy sort of felt more comfortable if Congress had authorized it. And so, then all of a sudden the chaplaincy needs to pull in chaplains who are distinct from those they've already worked with and during World War I that ends up being primarily Jews, Latter-day Saints, Christian Scientists and actually the Salvation Army. There are provisions for the Eastern Orthodox. They don't actually have, which is say, groups like the Greek Orthodox. They'll get chaplains in World War II. They don't yet have them in World War I. 

But all of a sudden, the landscape's different. And so these, these chaplains who are now commissioned military officers are both resources for the military, resources for soldiers, and have to figure out how to position themselves in an institution that is supporting religion but isn't necessarily used to people from their particular backgrounds or traditions. So it's kind of an interesting cauldron, but it is one, and I really do emphasize this, that is about pragmatism. 

And so, what does that mean? Well, one of the reasons for the tri-faith architecture that emerges in the military in World War I, so as you said, several decades before Herberg's claim in print, is that this is a management issue, right? Like we can't, yes, there are lots of religious groups. Yes. We need to find ways to serve soldiers from. But we certainly cannot, you know, have every small group doing their own thing. So, what's the way to manage it? Well, one way to manage it is to create larger groups, right? And so, Jews are the one group that really doesn't fit Protestants and Catholics.

And while there are lots of debates amidst both Latter-day Saints and Christian Scientists and other smaller Protestant groups as to whether they are in fact Protestant or not, from the military's perspective. This is about lumping, not splitting. So, three main groups we can work with, and that in many ways, again, a real pragmatic underbelly of what becomes a framework for at least some people understanding American religion writ large in the twentieth century really comes from a need to manage things well in World War I.

Stephen Betts: Well, it seems like groups like the Latter-day Saints, like Christian Scientists are willing to, for the time being, especially during World War I— I think you note that, you there are three Mormon chaplains in World War I—certainly this is going to increase in World War II and afterward, but, they're willing to submit themselves to this kind of categorization that doesn't fit how they see themselves. But this is going to change in World War II when they start pushing back against the government and they're gonna start demanding more representation, more accurate representation in terms of how they see themselves, whether that's Mormons or Orthodox or whoever.

And one of the places that this plays out is things like dog tags, right? So, you have, on your dog tags, you can either be Catholic, Protestant, so ‘C’ for Catholic, ‘P’ for Protestant, or ‘H’ for Hebrew, right? The ‘H’ doesn't get changed to ‘J’ for Jewish until World War II

Ronit Stahl:  after World War II, in fact.

Stephen Betts: Oh, is it after? Okay. So, even worse, right. So yeah, there are other examples of this. You know, I think it's during World War II, correct me if I'm wrong, that you have a requirement that chaplains go to graduate school now. Of course, there are ordination requirements. One of the things that plays out here though is a tension, again, whether it's Mormons or Christian Science, or Jews is that you don't always have similar requirements that that conform to a kind of liberal Protestant mold that this ecumenical liberal Protestant mold that the military is working with. And so, they kind of have to invent ways of interfacing with these groups, whether that's with Mormons, you know, Mormons are going to have unique requirements to become chaplains that other people are not gonna be okay with or with Jews. You know, it's not like there's some sort of Jewish, you know, national Jewish organization that's going to naturally represent all Jews, all denominations, you know, Reform, Orthodox. And so, you're gonna have to invent these kinds of, uh, administrative structures to be able to deal with the military, right? So how does the military decide, for instance, how many chaplains these kinds of minority faiths receive? 

Ronit Stahl: These are all really good questions and get it some of the challenges and inherent tensions of trying to run a pluralist organization with people who, you know, this was not an organization in which people sat down at some point at the beginning were like, “We are going to become ecumenical or pluralistic, so let's think together about how to do this in the broadest or, you know, most effective way.” It's very much ad hoc decisions that arise in response to particular practical needs. And so just as with the opening to the chaplaincy really comes from the U.S. entry into World War I, so too, you know, a flurry of all these other issues.

So as you point out, right, you need something to interface between the military and a religious group. It's not gonna deal with every small group who like they're writing in, but it doesn't mean, I mean, there are volumes, reams of correspondence, but they're not, you know, they're not gonna pay attention to every congregation that wants to tell the military what they should be doing. So, in the case of hierarchical churches, In the case of Mormon chaplains, right? Okay. We're gonna interface with the Church. All right? And over time, it won't happen in World War I, but by World World War II, you'll get a military relations committee, right? And you'll, within the infrastructure of the church, figure out a way to interface with the military.

And this is then the unit that's gonna both solicit applications from chaplains, review them, vet them, and ultimately what's called, “endorse” them to the military, basically approve them as sanctioned by the Church. They're still gonna have to meet all the other, you know, military standards. But one of the things the military does in part because of the First Amendment and in part and not wanting to be perceived as sort of being in the role of saying who is an acceptable representative of any particular faith is they delegate the kind of religious acceptability to a given institution. As you noted this, this is a real problem for American Jews who do not have a centralized authority. The Jewish Welfare Board is an entity that emerges in World War I, in part on the civilian side to support Jewish soldiers and is part of kind of a broader movement like the YMCA and the Red Cross to kind of be a layer of civilian support, but also raise money and do other things. But it becomes, you know, within, there's a commission on Jewish chaplaincy that's gonna play that role of vetting Jewish chaplains and also being the entity that says to the military, Yes. Soldiers need this, or no, they don't need that. Or ignore, you know, that issue or this, this one you gotta deal with.

So, right, part of what emerges is an administrative infrastructure that's responding to a need for the military to have kind of a point, if not a point person, then at least a single committee or entity. The authorized representative on the side of religion. And so, you know, and that is going to both simplify certain aspects, right? You're gonna have a process for commissioning chaplains. It's not gonna be, it was in many ways ad hoc in the case of Mormon chaplains in World War I, the Church kind of finds three people. It works, but you know, we'll ultimately need to create an application and vetting infrastructure in part because it has to work out how it's gonna handle the military's standards and the standards for chaplains include a few things that the military thinks in many ways are no-brainers, right?

You have to have a bachelor's degree in part cause you're entering the military as an officer. So, this is an officer requirement. But also you need to be an ordained member of the clergy. And this is in part about, as you noted, a Protestant assumption about what does a member of clergy look like? They have degrees, they've gone to seminary, you know, they've done, they've checked off certain boxes. But there's also an interesting assumption that emerges in letters and memos from the military. You want educated chaplains for two reasons. One, again, they're officers and they're gonna interact with other officers. You need them to be respected by others in the military, but also because they assume, and I think this is a debatable point, but I think it's an interesting one, analytically and historically they assume that whoever has been ordained and thus gone to graduate school is gonna be more open and tolerant and ecumenically minded.

And so, you know, this is built in. And then, so what do you do in cases where there is no, you know, graduate seminary training, which is an issue for Mormon chaplains, for Christian Science chaplains. And later it'll become an issue for some evangelical and fundamentalist Protestant groups that want chaplains, but don't require that kind of training for their clergy. So, it will have, uh, consequences down the road. But you know, it comes from an administrative attempt to organize a group of clergy coming from different backgrounds and create some set of standards. But it is a set of standards beset with assumptions from liberal Protestantism. And one of the ways in World War I that's, you know, kind of interesting is if you look at the situation of American Jews, accusations will be lobbed at the Jewish Welfare Board that they are biased against orthodox rabbis.

The problem in World War I is that there's no one in the Orthodox rabbinate who meets both the age requirements and the bachelor's degree from an accredited university. They tended to be ordained in Europe at the time, and so they can't muster the credentials in the same way by World War II. It's a different landscape for most religious groups in the U.S. and so this will start to change, but it will actually continue to be attention through mid-century in part. And this is one of these recurring issues that kind of goes away for a while. Then there's some sort of crisis or conflict. There's a negotiated resolution, and then that falls apart and it comes back. And so, after World War II, we'll see it emerge again as a tension in particular between Mormons and Evangelicals because one thing that happens during World War II and in the immediate post World War II years is there is a lot of institution building amongst evangelical and fundamentalist Protestants and they actually make a deliberate decision not to contest the military's education requirements, but instead to meet them. And then when they can meet them, they start to get annoyed at another religious group that isn't meeting them and has a different accommodation that the military has worked out.

And this will actually ultimately lead to BYU having a clinical pastoral education program, a master's degree. You know, and that's also why this is such an interesting institution, is because it's not just what's happening in the military. It will have ramifications for what religious groups do, the institutions and infrastructure they set up, and the assumptions that then get built. What do people need to do to serve in this capacity? What makes a good chaplain is actually, you know, there are certain elements that may be consistent, but what it looks like institutionally changes and it changes both because of responding to the military, but also religious groups absorbing certain ideas and building infrastructure around it.

Stephen Betts: Yeah, I think two of the examples of this that really stick out to me of the kinds of assumptions that are built into this institution building are things like the kind of de facto policing of good religion in the chaplaincy where, for instance, you can have a Protestant or a Catholic chaplain who officiates in a Jewish high holiday or anybody else's religion for that matter, but, “Mormon or a Christian Scientist, heaven forbid, you know, we don't want those people contaminating the rest of us.” So, it's kind of this really interesting, again, these assumptions about who is capable of ecumenism and who isn't. 

Ronit Stahl: And yeah. And to that point, sorry to interrupt, but to that point, you know, right. This is like this World War I demarcation of, “we're just gonna have Protestants, Catholics, and Jews” means that that Protestant category is enormous. And so, it's both a problem for the religious groups that don't quite see themselves as Protestant, but it's also a problem for the people who are, you know, sort of thoroughly Protestant and looking askance at these other groups like, “what do they really know about leading (what the military calls) a general Protestant worship service.” As though in any civilian church there is something called “a general Protestant worship service.” 

Stephen Betts: The other place that this played out for me was in, in marriages, right? Because chaplains are, you know, they're authorized by the military to conduct marriages, including marriages overseas, which can get into some really interesting territory there as well. But, particularly for, again, for Mormons and Christian Scientists, they're not regularly ordained, and so they don't have this authority in civilian life. And so this is distinguished as a particular legal right that they have only in their role as chaplains. And so, for Latter-day Saints, for instance, this has an interesting effect on the way that the Church frames the right to marry, you know, the Church's First Presidency will say, “oh, well we're the ones giving you the right to do this. This doesn't come from the state.” Which is a really fascinating way of framing a kind of theology of the state in a certain way that's very Mormon. But yeah. Are there other examples? I mean, I know that there are other examples, but what are some other examples of the military running into issues with it's desired de facto ecumenism running up against people's consciences or against their particular denominational needs.

Ronit Stahl: Yeah, I think, you know, this issue around marriage is a fascinating one and takes a lot of twists and turns and one thing that I think is an important context for it is the whole notion in the civilian world, even, of clergy standing in as really kind of county clerks, officers of the state, you know, able to officiate at marriages in many ways, you know, that it's actually a state-by-state development legally that's not fully entrenched until the early 20th century. But now we take as an sort of obvious thing, if you have a religious ceremony that whoever the clergy presiding over it is that they can also sign the city form that makes you married. So, you know, I think it's interesting that's like a really interesting case, both because it gets into questions of, you know, what do clergy do? What are they allowed to do? Who's giving them that authority? But also, because it's part of a backdrop, a context that's actually changing in the United States, and there's really interesting tensions over, you know, what is that role and who should be doing it, and what does it mean? You know, what are people's visions of what it means to be married and to have it officiated, you know, and we'll see that play you know, over the twentieth century in the military context where the same issues that arise in civilian contexts will arise and sometimes have different answers, right?

So there'll be questions about interfaith marriages, there'll be questions about interracial marriages. There'll be questions about one of my sort of favorite little ones that doesn't really make it into the book, but I think is interesting, especially given the moment we're living in today. But the question that was called at the time of “telephone marriages,” right? Can you get married over the telephone? And you know, sort of these technological questions, these questions of proxy marriages, you know? This soldier is off wherever, can someone stand in for them and will that make it official? And this has real consequences financially for benefits for other things.

So, I think that's, again, part of what makes this such a fascinating institution is that these interconnected dimensions that both track with evolving ideas in American life about say, you know, what is marriage? What does it look like? For some, a religious question, for others a civil question or a legal question for others, you know, a racial question. You know, there are all sorts of ways this is getting worked out, but again, often comes to a head when someone is going off to or in war. And so, I think the other area we really see this, and perhaps not surprisingly, is around, you know, one of the arguments for the need for a chaplaincy beyond providing religious support to soldiers when they're at war or, you know what, in a footnote to a Supreme Court case in the 1960s, you know, a justice sort of refers to as like, “the lonely soldier” out there at an outpost needs religious support and their civilian congregation is not in a position to do it.

So that is an animating justification for the chaplaincy. But then what actually happens when people die? And how are they treated? What do they want? What is the capacity to provide what they want? And so, we see this worked out in a few different ways. One is, you know what do you do when someone is dying? And there are religious traditions, the Catholic tradition of last rights, or you know, other religious traditions have their rituals around death. How do you make them happen? And what happens when a chaplain’s faith doesn't match the dying soldier’s. How do you provide that? How do you adapt who is allowed to do certain work that, and again, we see some adaptation in the military context of who officiates at funerals or who provides last rights, and there are all sorts of fascinating pamphlets developed that are supposed to be guides to what do you do if you know the soldier is Catholic, or Mormon, or Jewish, or Methodist, or you know, Lutheran?

What are the different needs? What do you say? How do you treat them? What are the rituals that you do? Where do you bury them? How do you bury them? All of these questions have to be worked out. And it's another space where both chaplains and then soldiers and their families, you know, have expectations but also are in certain circumstances, forced to modify those expectations or be at least comfortable with a little bit of discomfort, but knowing that at least some, you know, ritual occurred. And that gets at the question of dog tags too, which is, dog tags serve a lot of different functions, but one is if someone dies that they know how to bury them. They know how to treat them in death because that, again, that ranges so significantly across religious traditions and dog tags, this is one of my favorite sort of material culture, material histories of the military. We can see so much through this one. And so dog tags only become required in World War I. They don't yet have religion on them. It's not until World War II that religion, and as you said, you get one initial. And in World War II, it's a ‘P’ for Protestant, a ‘C’ for Catholic, or an ‘H’ for Hebrew.

So, what does that mean? What happens when that's not sufficiently reflective of what someone's beliefs and traditions are? What happens in the case of Jewish soldiers during World War II who sometimes don't wanna acknowledge they're Jewish, if they're going off to Europe, there are all sorts of issues that emerge. But the real question for many, especially that get lumped in this giant Protestant category is, “what if I'm not actually Protestant or what if I'm a specific tradition within that that might or might not be Protestant, but the point is, I have rituals I want done that just a ‘P’ doesn't describe.”

And so how do you accommodate that? In many ways, both a very reasonable desire and also very challenging. At least if you're, you know, in a combat zone, the capacity to do things is not perfect. Sometimes there are sort of adapted, modified or shortened rituals that can be done, and then the expectation is that things will happen later. But there's so much variation. But one of the things, and I think this is a testament to many of the people who serve in the chaplaincy, is this willingness to recognize, “I may not be whatever religious tradition this soldier is, but this is something that means a lot to them and a lot to their family. So whether it's that I kind of engage in a ritual that's a little bit strange for me, or I find the person who can do it, my task is to make sure that this person is buried and treated in death the way they want to be. And that that is my job. My job isn't to do what I think should happen when someone dies, but rather to provide the death rituals that, that this person wanted.” And in many ways that's really tremendous. 

Stephen Betts: So, do we have, I mean, did you run into examples, I recall at least one example from the book. I think it was a Jewish chaplain who sees a dying comrade who's Christian and holds the crucifix up to his mouth. I don't know that it was, you know, a standard sort of last rights, but certainly not a Jewish way of, of approaching that, right. But do we have examples of actually performing somebody else’s religious rituals at the deathbed?

Ronit Stahl: I mean, it, it is really interesting. It's the Catholic church that does make some allowances for modified last rights in times of war. And so that's probably the most clear example we have of whether it's other soldiers, so right, not someone who is a priest, but maybe a fellow Catholic, but also sometimes a chaplain kind of operating as chaplain, not as a minister, rabbi, whomever, enacting certain rituals. You know, the effort often is to find someone who can, right? And many times, yes, people are at war, but it doesn't mean you're always, you know, in the middle of combat. So there often is an opportunity. Whether it's to find, you know, a civilian from the religious tradition who's, you know, local or bringing in a chaplain from elsewhere who can do it. I mean, there is a lot of effort put into this and for many circumstances that will take care of it. Obviously it's a little bit different really in the midst of combat. A little bit of like, you “do what you need to do and you make things happen the way you need to make things happen.” And you're gonna do whatever you can do is gonna be good enough because what else can you do? So, you know, so it's a mix of being, intrepid enough when there are options to find options and make things work. But also, when push comes to shove, you know, again, you might just be reading from the pamphlet you've been given as to, you know, step one, “I do this,” step two, “I do this,” but at least you've done it. And that can be meaningful too. I mean, I think it also gets at really interesting questions about rituals, sacraments, and the sacred, because it suggests that at least around the edges sometimes there, it can happen. Unusual or untraditional ways and still be incredibly meaningful.

Stephen Betts: Yeah. That's so fascinating. That’s really awesome. 

So, with the rise of the Cold War, you talk about something you call “the military-spiritual complex,” and you you say that this is “a religious armory that ideologically structured and crusaded on behalf of the American state.” Of course, ideology is going to play a huge role in you know, the U.S.’s  battle with communism. So, what role did the chaplaincy play in this military spiritual complex?

Ronit Stahl: The chaplaincy during the Cold War really becomes both symbolically important as a way to manifest the idea of America as a religious, or what's often called at the time a Covenant Nation counterposed to the Soviet, you know, the atheist Soviets, communists. And then so on the one part it is symbolic. It's also ideological, and that is, that becomes most clear through, there are a series of what is called “character education programs,” which kind of sometimes are lecture series, sometimes are almost like workbooks, but part of what the chaplaincy is supposed to do is to make the American military, you know, “moral.” And morality is definitely at the time tied to religion, but it's attempted to be done in this way that it is at least a head nod to some degree of ecumenism. That it doesn't have to be one particular religion, but yet it’s gotta be religious. And to be religious is to be moral. To be moral is to be religious. And so, one part of the chaplain's portfolio really becomes character education programs, which we can look back today and see, you know, just how ideologically infused they are. Also, in many ways, how simplistic they were. You know, they, when I was reading them, even when I first encountered them in the archives. It was like someone took, you know, Ben Franklin aphorisms and made them into an entire curriculum and you know, chaplains sometimes bought in a hundred percent and other times ridiculed the program just as much as the soldiers rolled their eyes sitting in these lectures recognizing that the complexities of military life in the fifties far outpaced this very simplistic program.

At the same time, again, it is all part of an infrastructure that sets up the, it literally in some of these documents says, right, “the U.S. is a covenant nation and the Soviet Union is a demonic nation,” right? This is not subtle and this is an effort to push the military. On the, you know, Marshall side is there, uh, is supposed to be ready to fight, you know, we'll engage, whether it's in proxy wars or, you know, other, there are, you know, hot flashes in the midst of a Cold War, but it's also about building American troops to believe in themselves as religious warriors and as members of a religious nation that is fighting.

You know, again, sometimes it's atheist, sometimes it's demonic. So, you know, it takes on it's cast in various terms, but it's always the enemy. It's always perceived as either not religious or anti-religious. And so, religion therefore becomes really important. Ideologically writ large and American society, but within the military takes on these concrete forms in terms of education or really put, they can't make  attending worship services mandatory, but they sure can incentivize or try and really trying to build religious soldiers. 

Stephen Betts: Well, it's precisely during this time that I think the military, as you note, comes to an awareness that the tri-faith model just doesn't work anymore. You know, you're starting to see many more of what we've called minority faiths coming forward and saying, “yeah, but we need representation too.” right. So tell us a little bit about, as we wrap up here, a little bit about the Post Tri-Faith America and the kinds of changes that occurred in the chaplaincy. 

Ronit Stahl: As you point out, you know, there the United States is from a religious perspective, demographically diverse, and especially, you know, in the midst of the twentieth century when there is a draft, from ‘48 to ‘73, the height, in many ways of the Cold War, there is a draft, which means people are coming in and they're coming from different backgrounds. And we'll see this both in terms of the fracturing of American religion in multiple senses. So, we'll see the multiplicity of Protestant groups, especially evangelical and fundamentalist groups who like Mormons and Christian scientists in World War I bristle at being lumped in this general Protestant category. They don't wanna be general Protestants, they wanna be what they specifically are. You know, that's one area of fracture. At the same time, there's also a recognition of there are Buddhists, there are Hindus, there are Muslims, there are other religious groups that have long been present in the United States, not always in huge numbers, but in ways that they want to be recognized. They wanna be recognized as religious groups, but they also want the accommodations that come with it. 

Or in the case, you know, of Buddhists, and this really is a lot about the organizing of Japanese Americans after World War II, where one of the things that emerges through a study of the chaplaincy is, minority religious groups make calculations and choices about when to make arguments for inclusion, for accommodation, for recognition. And these are tactical decisions, some of which work out and some of which, you know, take multiple iterations. So, in the case of Japanese Americans, they don't push Buddhism during World War I. There is a brief effort to commission a Buddhist chaplain. It doesn't work out for a variety of reasons that get at, you know, questions of religious inclusion, racism, and prejudice and administrative issues. But there, you know, that wasn't when Japanese Americans pushed the military. They wait until after World War II, at which point in the late 1940s there's a massive effort to get the military to recognize Buddhism. You know, in American religion, this is happening over time. The volumes of correspondence really are incredible.

People are writing regularly to the military, seeking recognition, seeking inclusion, and the military often tries to kind of push it off like, “We like our tri-faith architecture. It's simple and it works.” The problem is what works administratively or from a management perspective doesn't work for the soldiers in the military or for their families, not to mention all just the civilian congregations and religious groups who want to be recognized, you know? So, we see on the one hand the fracturing of evangelical and fundamentalist Protestantism into like all these different smaller groups, all of whom want in. And we also see the push by a lot of religious traditions, many of which are large worldwide, but still at the moment, relatively demographically small in the United States, you know, pushing for recognition. 

The changing immigration landscape will also affect who is pulled into the military. You know, military service is often dangled as a reason. Immigrants can naturalize. It's a lot more complicated than that. It's not a one-to-one correspondence, but part of what it means is after changes in immigration law in the 1960s, again, you've got lots of immigrants coming from around the globe with different religious traditions. They want respect. They want recognition, they want accommodations, and so questions around religious traditions are going to continue to arise. It's not until the 1990s that the military will in terms of the appointment of chaplains, move beyond kind of this large Protestant. Catholics and Jews. In 1994, the military will appoint its first Muslim chaplain and then we'll get Buddhist and Hindu chaplains after that.

But just because the chaplain isn't appointed until the 1990s doesn't mean there aren't Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Sikh, and other soldiers working to be recognized. They're, they have groups. They are meeting on military bases. They often, fom amidst the ranks, someone who is taking on a religious leadership role and providing religious support, they'll be seeking religious support from the chaplaincy. So sure, there's not a Muslim chaplain yet, but it doesn't mean Muslims aren't seeking space to pray or the ability, you know, accommodations during Ramadan. You know, all of this is happening a little bit, I won't say under the surface, but just out of the vision of most Americans, unless you're sitting in the chief of chaplain's office, you're not necessarily seeing the reams of correspondence.

If you're not a chaplain on a base, you're not necessarily seeing different groups seeking the ability to practice their faith. In the military, you also at this time, by the late twentieth century, are gonna have a large push from groups including Humanists, Wiccans, Pagans, all sorts of groups that want to be able to meet, they wanna be able to use space, you know, and so part of what chaplains then have to do is face a much more religiously diverse military than anyone in a civilian pulpit ever would. And so, they are seeing the demographic diversity of American religion. And I think this also is an important point, is that the United States religiously is diverse. And you can parse that religious diversity in all sorts of different ways. But there is not a singular American religion. And the military reflects that, both in terms of the composition of the military of soldiers, but also then the work the military has to do to figure this out. So, to get back to the point of it being a bellwether is long before some of these debates emerge in civilian society about what does a more religiously diverse nation look like? Or rather what happens when we recognize the diversity that's in our midst? The military's trying to figure out, often imperfectly, often hesitantly, often uncomfortably, but it is the task of the chaplaincy to work on it.

Stephen Betts: That's Ronit Stahl. We've been chatting about her book, Enlisting Faith: How the Military Chaplaincy Shaped Religion and State in Modern America. That's available from Harvard University Press. So Ronit, before we go, I always like to ask people what are you currently reading that you would recommend, and what are you working on that we can expect to read in the future?

Ronit Stahl: Sure. Well, you know, it is the end of the semester, so mostly what I'm reading when I'm not reading my students work are mystery novels, which I note simply to say that it's important for everyone to take some time to do some pleasure reading and at whatever intervals you so, On a scholarly front, you know, I have in front of me a couple of books that came out this fall that I'm really eager to dive into.

One is Jesus and John Wayne, which has attracted a lot of attention for very good reason about understanding American Evangelicals. I have also got The American Jewish Philanthropic Complex, And Church-State Corporation, as you can see, a bunch of books about religion and institutions in many ways.

Which gets at my current project. I've turned from the institution of the military to the institution of healthcare. I'm working on a book on religious hospitals. I'm learning a lot about the corporate structure that I had no idea I would ever get into, but also this is a book that, that like Enlisting Faith is going to be the multiplicity and diversity of religion within an institution. So using the hospital as a way to see all sorts of different hospitals. Typically, when we talk about religious hospitals, the go-to is Catholic or maybe Adventist, but this is a project that includes some LDS hospitals, Jewish hospitals, Baptist, Methodist hospitals, Muslim healthcare clinics, and thinking about what happens in this space of religious healthcare and how do religious hospitals develop as an institution, as a corporation that can both access government funds and acquire religious exemptions from federal law. So, thinking about the ways in which religious identities and really corporate identities evolve in the twentieth century. And if anyone has any tips or resources, it's at the early stages. So, you know, I welcome all, all sources.

Stephen Betts: Fantastic. Well, I look forward to reading that. I had a tremendous amount of. fun reading this book. I've read it twice now, this semester. So it's been great. Well, it's been great having you on the show today, Ronit.I appreciate your time. 

Ronit Stahl: Thank you. This was delightful. 

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Stephen Betts: You've been listening to Scholars and Saints today. We talked about the intersection of two worlds that Americans normally think of as separate: church and state. In the U.S. military ordained and lay clergy, chaplains, are employed by the government to act in a religious capacity. Latter-day Saints, Christian Scientists, Seventh Day Adventists, Hindus, Buddhists, and others were catalysts for change in the ways that the military dealt with and thought about religion, but they were also changed in return. 

Next time on Scholars and Saints, join me in guest host Kathleen Flake as we chat with Professor Peter Coviello about his book, Make Yourselves Gods: Mormons and the Unfinished Business of American Secularism.

Support for Scholars and Saints comes from the Mormon Studies program at the University of Virginia. 

Music for this episode was provided by Ben Howington. To hear more, visit mormonguitar.com.

[1] I think what I meant to say here was “how does the military affect religion?”