Article May 16, 2011 Issue

Spiritual safety briefing

By Janet Horton

The following is a transcript of a briefing Janet Horton gave at Capitol Hill Day sponsored by the Federal Office of the Committees on Publication March 8, 2011.

I would like to open by sharing a statement from a document I wrote to explain the military chaplaincy to civilian appointees in the Department of Defense. 

The First Amendment may rightfully be considered one miracle in American democracy. The genius of the military chaplaincy has been its ability to provide comprehensive, continual religious support to service members, families, and authorized civilians without establishing a state religion. The chaplaincies even more miraculously somehow manage to do this by the hard work of clergy resources from over 200 different religious organizations that lend their clergy to the Armed Forces. This is even more amazing when you realize that the diversity of the American landscape has exponentially diversified in the last few decades. 