Send your theological, biblical, and practical ministry questions to [email protected] along with your full name, city, and state. We’ll pass them along to The Gospel Coalition’s Council members and other friends for an answer we can share.
Jon S. from St. Louis writes,
I have a female complementarian friend who believes that it is not biblical for women to be pastors, but is considering becoming a military chaplain. Why would or why wouldn’t it be biblical for a women to become a military chaplain? What are the differences or similarities to the pastoral office?
We asked Mark Coppenger to answer the question. Coppenger is a professor of Christian apologetics and vice president for extension education at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. A retired infantry officer, Coppenger is the son of a naval chaplain and son-in-law of an army chaplain.
To this question, my own Southern Baptist denomination says no, though, for a season, it took the other tack. The change came after the 2000 update of our doctrinal statement, the Baptist Faith and Message, which now reads, “While both men and women are gifted for service in the church, the office of pastor is limited to men as qualified by Scripture.”
Similar circumstances and convictions led earlier to the formation of the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, whose Danvers Statement declares, “In the church, redemption in Christ gives men and women an equal share in the blessings of salvation; nevertheless, some governing and teaching roles within the church are restricted to men.”
The SBC’s sticking point was ordination to the gospel ministry, required by the military, but denied for women by the vast majority of SBC churches, who expressed their convictions on the subject as early as 1984. A resolution urged that churches not be swayed “by modern cultural, sociological, and ecclesiastical trends or by emotional factors,” and, encouraged, in light of biblical authority, “the service of women in all aspects of church life and work other than pastoral functions and leadership roles entailing ordination.”
Women in the Ranks
Be that as it may, don’t we need women chaplains to minister to the influx of women in the ranks? This might be more compelling if these women chaplains were assigned to women only—sister to sister. But that would be an unacceptable to the military and non-military politicians in charge. They insist that “a chaplain is a chaplain is a chaplain.”
Of course, base chapels aren’t real churches with member rolls and discipline. As one chaplain put it, they serve more as missionaries than pastors, “performing or providing” religious counsel as needed to the various groups in their zone of ministry—more like drinking fountains to which thirsty personnel may come to drink at their leisure than parents who say, “Drink your milk.”
But I believe this description understates reality. According to Army Regulation 165-1 (Army Chaplain Corps Activities), chaplains’ job description includes the “conduct of worship,” performance of “rites, sacraments, and ordinances,” and the “conduct of marriages, burials, baptisms, confirmations, blessings, daily prayers, and other required religious ministrations.” And while they are often called upon to do more generic duty pertaining to troop and family welfare (e.g., next-of-kin notification; substance abuse counseling), they are unmistakably charged to act as de facto pastors for many of the faithful. And for this work, the Army insists on pastor-level ordination. This arrangement has been in place for 40 years, with the appearance of Christian, Jewish, Hindu, and Buddhist women chaplains, some rising to the rank of admiral and general.
Some Christian groups are more sanguine than others over endorsement. Army Chaplain Arlene Williams found her way from the Baptist fellowship of her youth to the Church of God, more open to women preachers. She had some early disappointments: “I would hear, I’ll send my females over to you, but they didn’t understand that I was there to provide guidance for males and females.” But things got better at a new post, where she was looking forward to her first preaching stint to the troops. She enthused, “We need more women chaplains. . . . Women are nurturers by nature, and we can nurture women and men in faith. I encourage all females who are interested in being a female chaplain to just do it. It’s a very fulfilling ministry.”
Band of Sisters
Yet nurturing doesn’t tell the whole story, as Chaplain Delana Small well knows. A graduate of Evangel College, she’s endorsed by the Assemblies of God. At present, she serves with an all-male battalion of the 101st in Afghanistan. She joins many other military women who have served with distinction in Iraq and Afghanistan, some of whose stories are told in Kirsten Holmstedt’s book Band of Sisters. She offers inspiring accounts of women in harm’s way, often at loss of limb and life. But the question lingers, “Why are they there in the first place?”
In some instances, their presence is arguably essential, as with nurses, who’ve served in the wartime tradition of Florence Nightingale, “The Lady with the Lamp” in the Crimean War. Even then, we need to recognize the cost. Navy Lieutenant Estrella Salinas left two children behind, “well aware she could be killed and her children could be left motherless.”
Whatever case one might make for the need for women nurses in war, there is no corresponding military case for women chaplains. There are plenty of evangelical male ministers to go around, and since “a chaplain is a chaplain is a chaplain,” the men are capable of pastoral care and leadership for both genders, just as they are in the churches. To the social engineers, it doesn’t matter. To Christian men and women, it certainly should.
Is there enough evidence for us to believe the Gospels?
In an age of faith deconstruction and skepticism about the Bible’s authority, it’s common to hear claims that the Gospels are unreliable propaganda. And if the Gospels are shown to be historically unreliable, the whole foundation of Christianity begins to crumble.
