US military chaplaincy marks 250 years of providing spiritual support to service members

(RNS) — In 1775, a year before there was a United States and six weeks after the Continental Army was formed, George Washington made a declaration that has shaped the military ever since.

“We need chaplains,” he reportedly remarked, prompting action by the Continental Congress near the start of the Revolutionary War.

The U.S. military chaplaincy marked 250 years on July 29 as the national military marked its own 250th anniversary in June. A week of celebrations includes a golf tournament at Fort Jackson in South Carolina, hosted by an organization raising funds for scholarships for family members of chaplains, and a sold-out ball nearby in Columbia. Meanwhile, across the globe, thousands of clergy in uniform continue to provide counsel and care to military members of a range of faiths or no faith.

“In times of peace and war, our chaplains have held fast as beacons of hope and resilience for our troops, whether enduring the brutal winter of Valley Forge, comforting the wounded and dying on the battlefields during the Civil War, braving trench warfare in World War I, storming the beaches of Normandy during World War II, marching the frozen mountains during the Korean War, slogging through the rice paddies and jungle battlefields of Vietnam or traveling the bomb-filled roads of Iraq and Afghanistan,” said retired Chaplain (Major General) Doug Carver, a former Army chief of chaplains in charge of the Southern Baptist Convention’s chaplaincy ministries, at the denomination’s June annual meeting in Dallas.

A month later at the annual session of the Progressive National Baptist Convention in Chicago, Navy Chaplain J.M. Smith, the grandson of a former PNBC president, stood before delegates and described his just-completed tour as a Marine Corps command chaplain in Okinawa, Japan, and his plans to report to a ship in Norfolk, Virginia, to begin a tour of Europe and the Middle East and be promoted to lieutenant commander.

“My team and I have ministered to thousands of Marines, sailors, civilians and Japanese,” he said. “We increased our chapel’s membership from eight to 100. We incorporated spiritual readiness into our base’s core curriculum.’’

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