Cover Story

November 2008

Taking the Word to the war zone

Hundreds of Presbyterian ministers serve with the U.S. military, providing spiritual care and counseling in the midst of violence

By John Sniffen

Army chaplain David Bowerman ministering to wounded soldiers.

It doesn’t seem likely that burly 20-year-old U.S. Marines armed to the teeth would ask a petite Presbyterian clergywoman for help — but it happens. Just ask 5-foot-3-inch Autumn Butler-Saeger, a 33-year-old U.S. Navy lieutenant and Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) minister, who was serving a tour of duty with the Marines in Iraq earlier this year.

I am constantly amazed at how willing they are to talk with me,” she says. “They have a hunger to know and debate. And because I’m approachable and around, they ask questions about faith.”

Butler-Saeger is one of more than 300 Presbyterian* ministers serving as chaplains with the U.S. military around the world. They lead worship and memorial services; counsel the weary, sad and angry; pray for the wounded and provide spiritual guidance in the midst of violence.

Theirs is a ministry in which questions about life and death take on an urgency unknown to the average stateside pastor. With the exception of law enforcement and emergency response personnel, few people know the fears and doubts soldiers in a war zone face daily.

As non-combatants, chaplains do not carry weapons, a fact that surprises many Marines, says Butler-Saeger. “It impresses them — and stuns them — that even in the event that my life is in danger, I can’t defend myself.

“I believe it is the strongest way we can show our love, trust and willingness to obey God — that we would willingly come into a dangerous environment and risk our lives to take care of them, to pray for them, to be with them,” she explains.

That’s not to say that the military doesn’t protect its chaplains. In Iraq Butler-Saeger was assigned a “religious programs specialist,” who acted as bodyguard and administrative assistant.

With the soldiers

After leaving active duty in 1999, U.S. Army National Guard Major Jan Koczera was called as associate pastor for evangelism by First Presbyterian Church of Hamilton Square, N.J. Little did he or the congregation know that nine years later he’d be starting his third deployment as a chaplain to Iraq.

The congregation has been “incredibly supportive,” he says. “Many of them have purchased arm bands reminding them to pray for me daily.”

Working with the soldiers — “ the sons and daughters of America, a cross section of our country” — is what makes the service worthwhile, says Koczera.

“I’m the first clergy person that most of them have ever spent time with outside of a Sunday morning,” he says. “Army chaplains are with the troops. If they are sleeping outside, we sleep outside with them; if they’re on the range, we go to the range; if they’re in a dangerous spot, we’re there beside them.

“Sharing life like that brings real camaraderie and a credibility that can’t be counterfeited,” he adds.

And that sharing can include a lot of emotion.

“I am there when they are wounded, when their spouse leaves them, when their friend has died. And so I experience with them the healing mystery of the presence of Jesus Christ as I listen and pray with them in their pain, anger and confusion and find that Jesus brings hope even in the darkest hour of life,” says Koczera.

BOOTS IN THE PEWS: U.S. Air Force Reserve chaplain Gary Califf leading a Sunday worship service at Memorial Chapel in Camp Ramadi, Iraq. Courtesy Of U.S. Air Force

Another pastor-chaplain, Air Force Reserve Lt. Col. Gary Califf, is serving his second deployment to Iraq at Camp Ramadi, where a majority of the troops working on reconstruction efforts are reserves or national guards in their 30s and 40s. The nation’s continuous military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001 have “dipped deep into the reserve forces in ways unimaginable 24 years ago when I started serving as a chaplain,” says Califf.

He hears three dominant concerns from the troops: whether jobs will still be there when they return home, how their families will get by and regret for missed personal and family experiences.

“I have missed my daughter’s graduation from high school, and I will not be home when my wife, Kathy, enters our ‘empty nest’ years in the fall,” says Califf. “Others wistfully discuss a child learning to walk, riding a bike or hitting a homerun in little league.”

Like the rest of the troops, pastor-chaplains must trust that their employers — congregations in their cases — will support their service and welcome them back when their tour of duty is complete.

First United Presbyterian Church of DuBois, Pa., fully supports his deployment, says Califf, who was named Air Force Reserve chaplain of the year for 2008 by the Military Chaplains Association. In calling him as pastor, the congregation accepted the fact that he was a reserve officer and might be called to duty — not something every congregation is willing to do, he says — and agreed to call a stated supply pastor and continue his benefits during his absences.

“This support is invaluable to the deploying chaplain’s peace of mind,” he says, “and is the mark of a mature church serving God through mission to deployed members.”

Reaching a lost generation

Ironically the church may have a better chance reaching some persons during their service in war zones than back at home. All the chaplains interviewed agreed that many of the younger men and women in the military claim no church affiliation, but do profess to be spiritual.

“The bottom line is the church is not doing a good job reaching this younger group of adults,” says Koczera.

That’s because the church “waits for them to enter the building,” he explains. “Military chaplains are effective because they are accessible, easily found and share life with soldiers, whereas the church is often seen as remote, if not uncaring.”

Butler-Saeger agrees. “For many the church has stopped being a place that they can seek answers or find someone to listen to them.”

Duty vs. peace

When the 2004 PC(USA) General Assembly called the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq “unwise, immoral and illegal,” the statement angered Presbyterians serving as chaplains and in the military at large.

“Chaplains and other Presbyterians in uniform complained through our office and asked if this meant that they were seen as ‘war criminals’ by our denomination,” says retired U.S. Air Force Col. Edward T. Brogan, director of the Presbyterian Council for Chaplains and Military Personnel.

General Assembly leaders responded with a pastoral letter noting that the 2004 Assembly also called for pastoral support for U.S. military personnel and their families and recognized that the men and women served “at great sacrifice, both in their personal and family lives and also in relation to vocational responsibilities at home.”

But any criticism of a war that’s underway is a hard sell to the military. Most chaplains and military personnel want peace, the chaplains say, but feel that completion of their assignments is a part of the path to peace.

FOR A FALLEN COMRADE: A Marine bugler plays “Taps” at the conclusion of a memorial service led by Navy chaplain Autumn Butler-Saeger, second from left, on the banks of the Euphrates River, named in Genesis 2:14 as one of four rivers flowing from the Garden of Eden. “I was able to stand by one of the rivers that made the cradle of civilization and give thanks to the God who gives us life and comforts us in death,” she says. Official photo by Senior Chief Petty Officer Gary Boucher USN, Task Force Ramadi Public Affairs

“These Marines desire peace. They long for it, they pray for it, they ask me to pray for it because I’m ‘buddies with the Big Guy,’” says Butler-Saeger. “They want to go home and see their babies born, their kids go to kindergarten and attend dance recitals and baseball games.”

“Nobody enjoys war and likes killing others,” says Califf. “Yet the reconstruction efforts are successful because we have special operations forces willing to do the awful work of eliminating opposition to building a civil society.”

He adds, “Without a doubt, the men and women with whom I serve are praying earnestly that the effort in Iraq will prove itself to be worth the costs.”

Prayer’s healing power

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have resulted in tens of thousands of wounded men and women, also putting to the test the chaplains serving in U.S. military hospitals and Veterans Administration hospitals.

U.S. Air Force Capt. Terri Gast recently completed a five-month deployment as the only chaplain at the trauma hospital at NATO’s Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan.

TERRI GAST: returned from a tour of duty in Afghanistan in January of this year.

As the wounded were brought into the emergency room, she would pray with them if they were conscious. Sometimes all she could do was open the door so soldiers could carry in a comrade, bring water to the thirsty or help communicate needs — things the doctors and nurses did not have time to do.

“It’s sort of a ministry by presence and ministry by service,” says Gast, now back “home” at Langley Air Force Base in Virginia.

“When they were done and the patient was stabilized, if there was an opportunity I would introduce myself and ask if they wanted prayer,” she says. “I don’t remember anyone turning down prayer.”

A majority — 70 percent — of the injured treated at Bagram are Afghanistan soldiers and civilians, some women and children. Thus Gast’s role as chaplain had an impact on civilians.

“What surprised me the most was that Muslims would accept me, a female, Christian chaplain from the United States,” says Gast. “I prayed — with their permission — with Muslim families, and was very much accepted by them and the translators who worked with me. That was incredible.”

Continuing the work of chaplains who preceded her, Gast used personal funds to buy traditional burial cloths for Afghan patients who died and clothing for those who survived. When the injured are being rushed to the hospital, medics frequently cut away clothing so they can better treat wounds. “Our troops and NATO troops get new clothes when they leave,” says Gast. The Afghans do not have such a source of new clothes.

Wounded soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan eventually arrive at hospitals like Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., where U.S. Army Maj. David Bowerman is serving as chaplain. He has just returned from a tour of duty in Iraq, and earlier served at Landstuhl Army Medical Center in Germany, one of the “in between” stops for many wounded.

Making his rounds one day, he entered the room of a young soldier wounded in Iraq.

“He asked me to read to him from the Bible,” says Bowerman. “He had a well-worn, leather-bound King James Bible at his bedside. I asked him if he wanted any particular passage, and he said, ‘Ecclesiastes.’”

Bowerman sat down, turned to Ecclesiastes 3 and started reading to the young man and his roommate, another wounded soldier.

“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven,” he read, continuing through the famous refrains of “A time to …” After finishing with “A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace,” Bowerman looked up to see if he should continue.

“They had both fallen asleep,” he says. “I was struck by how young they both looked and resisted the urge to pull the covers up under their chins. Instead, I placed the Bible back on the nightstand, turned out the light and gently closed the door behind me as I left.” 

John Sniffen is associate editor of Presbyterians Today.

*This number includes chaplains serving in active duty armed forces; reserve and national guard units of the Army, Navy and Air Force; and Veterans Affairs. Most are Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) ministers, but also included are chaplains from the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, the Cumberland Presbyterian Church in America and the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church. Source: Presbyterian Council for Chaplains and Military Personnel.

Send a letter to the editor.