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The Mormon military experience is unique in American history. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) is the only denomination to field military units for its own support and purpose rather than national interests, an effort which began in Missouri in 1838 and lasted through the Spanish American War of 1898. From World War I onward, however, the military exceptionalism of the LDS Church faded and Mormon soldiers came to serve national interests as loyal citizens alongside their fellow Americans. The Mormon Military Experience: 1838 to the Cold War is the first book to present a historical overview of the Mormon military experience. Sherman Fleek and Robert Freeman tell this unique story of how the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has experienced war and military service and of their teachings concerning participation in armed conflict. The LDS Church’s distinct relationship between religious life and military service is rooted in its adherence to the Book of Mormon and its unique doctrine based in ancient and then-modern revelations from church leaders. Religious and military exceptionalism went hand in hand during the nineteenth century, when LDS Church leaders dictated when and how members would serve in armed conflict. Mormon militiamen were often more loyal to church interests and the guidance of LDS leaders than they were to government policy, from mustering of the Mormon Battalion during the Mexican War to orchestrating the armed effort during the Utah War of 1857–1858 to serving as Civil War volunteers in the West. Similarly, they followed Church leaders’ teachings not to serve in the Civil War’s bloody campaigns in the East. While LDS leaders adapted church practices and policies to support national objectives at times, there were also occasions when Mormon militia units defied state and federal military forces, sometimes to the point of open combat. No other American denomination has done this. This is a story about changing loyalties: as the LDS Church transformed from a personalist religious movement on the edge of society to a mainstay of American religious and political life, Mormons have moved from battling the US military to serving with distinction within it.
A century ago, as the United States prepared to enter World War I, the military chaplaincy included only mainline Protestants and Catholics. Today it counts Jews, Mormons, Muslims, Christian Scientists, Buddhists, Seventh-day Adventists, Hindus, and evangelicals among its ranks. Enlisting Faith traces the uneven processes through which the military struggled with, encouraged, and regulated religious pluralism over the twentieth century. Moving from the battlefields of Europe to the jungles of Vietnam and between the forests of Civilian Conservation Corps camps and meetings in government offices, Ronit Y. Stahl reveals how the military borrowed from and battled religion. Just as the state relied on religion to sanction war and sanctify death, so too did religious groups seek recognition as American faiths. At times the state used religion to advance imperial goals. But religious citizens pushed back, challenging the state to uphold constitutional promises and moral standards. Despite the constitutional separation of church and state, the federal government authorized and managed religion in the military. The chaplaincy demonstrates how state leaders scrambled to handle the nation’s deep religious, racial, and political complexities. While officials debated which clergy could serve, what insignia they would wear, and what religions appeared on dog tags, chaplains led worship for a range of faiths, navigated questions of conscience, struggled with discrimination, and confronted untimely death. Enlisting Faith is a vivid portrayal of religious encounters, state regulation, and the trials of faith—in God and country—experienced by the millions of Americans who fought in and with the armed forces.
Based on extensive in-depth interviews with more than thirty active duty chaplains regarding their successes, failures and conflicts, the book is about the way military chaplains handle religious diversity among the enlisted they serve and within their own corps.
Evidence-based medicine has transformed contemporary medical practice. For over twenty-five years, George Fitchett has been a pioneering advocate of the view that evidence-based spiritual care can, and should, equally transform chaplaincy. This book collects a key selection from his ground-breaking research. As models of good research practice, these papers demonstrate the real-world value of research and introduce their readers to issues that have continuing importance to spiritual care and professional chaplaincy. As such, this collection offers an ideal introduction to spiritual-care research. The collection is complemented by three essays, specially commissioned from observers well-positioned to comment on future directions for both professional chaplaincy and spiritual-care research.
A Religious History of the American GI in World War II breaks new ground by recounting the armed forces’ unprecedented efforts to meet the spiritual needs of the fifteen million men and women who served in World War II. For President Franklin D. Roosevelt and many GIs, religion remained a core American value that fortified their resolve in the fight against Axis tyranny. While combatants turned to fellow comrades for support, even more were sustained by prayer. GIs flocked to services, and when they mourned comrades lost in battle, chaplains offered solace and underscored the righteousness of their cause. This study is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the social history of the American GI during World War II. Drawing on an extensive range of letters, diaries, oral histories, and memoirs, G. Kurt Piehler challenges the conventional wisdom that portrays the American GI as a nonideological warrior. American GIs echoed the views of FDR, who saw a Nazi victory as a threat to religious freedom and recognized the antisemitic character of the regime. Official policies promoted a civil religion that stressed equality between Protestantism, Roman Catholicism, and Judaism. Many chaplains embraced this tri-faith vision and strived to meet the spiritual needs of all servicepeople regardless of their own denomination. While examples of bigotry, sectarianism, and intolerance remained, the armed forces fostered the free exercise of religion that promoted a respect for the plurality of American religious life among GIs.
Most people in the United States today no longer live their lives under the guidance of local institutionalized religious leadership, such as rabbis, ministers, and priests; rather, liberals and conservatives alike have taken charge of their own religious or spiritual practices. This shift, along with other social and cultural changes, has opened up a perhaps surprising space for chaplains—spiritual professionals who usually work with the endorsement of a religious community but do that work away from its immediate hierarchy, ministering in a secular institution, such as a prison, the military, or an airport, to an ever-changing group of clients of widely varying faiths and beliefs. In A Ministry of Presence, Winnifred Fallers Sullivan explores how chaplaincy works in the United States—and in particular how it sits uneasily at the intersection of law and religion, spiritual care, and government regulation. Responsible for ministering to the wandering souls of the globalized economy, the chaplain works with a clientele often unmarked by a specific religious identity, and does so on behalf of a secular institution, like a hospital. Sullivan's examination of the sometimes heroic but often deeply ambiguous work yields fascinating insights into contemporary spiritual life, the politics of religious freedom, and the never-ending negotiation of religion's place in American institutional life.