Every few weeks I get an email or a call from someone in leadership of one of our Unitarian
Universalist congregations asking how they can set up an outreach program to military veterans, servicemembers, and families. For a long while, I would send them the information I have on the UUniforms program conducted by the UU Church of Norfolk, Virginia. I still send that information when requested, but I do so with a bit more trepidation. Why? Three reasons.
First, I do not believe there is a lack of veterans in our congregations. As I have visited dozens of congregations in eight states, I have yet to have one where veterans of WWII, of Korea, of Vietnam, and of Desert Storm and Just Cause did not come up to speak to me afterward. What I have instead found is that these veterans within our congregations have felt for years that the stories of their military service (often the most formative years of their lives and their faith) are not welcome within the walls of their churches and fellowships. Often, after I am the guest preacher, they will come up and tell their stories to me, because a military chaplain candidate appearing in their pulpit seems to have given momentary permission for those stories.
These veterans have found their way to our congregations and to our faith, even if it means that there is a part of their lives that they feel they cannot openly bring forward on Sunday morning. There is something about our faith that is so attractive to them that they are willing to keep this part of their life story silent for fear of offending others and no longer being accepted in our faith. They choose not to challenge some of the assumptions about military people and life that are extant in our churches, because they fear being ostracized, or being defined solely by their military past.
Though it is better now than it was five years ago, I still regularly get the questions based around some of those prior assumptions about the military that many of my fellow UU’s hold. Here is a small sampling of those:
So, are those people in the military really able to understand Unitarian Universalism?
So as a UU military chaplain, do you get to help people become conscience objectors?
I didn’t think there were any military people in our churches. Are you sure?
(And, my personal favorite, and more an observation than a question)
Ahh, so you are going in the military because of how hard it would be for a veteran to be called to a UU church as a minister, right?
This small collection of questions I have received come from the more benign assumptions many UU’s have about military service. Five years ago people would directly challenge whether or not I am really a Unitarian Universalist because of my military service. Now I’m just exotic.
My point for sharing these comments is this: As a military chaplain candidate I cannot help but be a lightning rod for these questions, but the comments and commentary behind these assumptions are deeply ingrained in our congregations. The veterans in our pews know this, and in order not to offend, they leave part of who they are at the door. So, my second reason why I am reticent to help congregations with “outreach” efforts to military veterans is that I’m not sure we are ready to provide the kind of environment these veterans might need in a faith community. Those who are able to be in our pews seem to be finding ways to them without our help.
Outreach is an external act. Outreach programs are about bringing what a congregation has to offer to those outside the congregation. The motivations for outreach vary, especially in a faith that does not have evangelism as a faith imperative. In speaking with those who have contacted me about military and veteran outreach programs, the motivations have varied from seeing it as a way to increase church membership (and pledging units) to a desire to “save” these individuals from their reactions to combat.
This past two weeks, I have been studying the relationship between spirituality, combat resilience, and combat stress disorders (PTSD and others) at the National Defense University in Washington DC. In those studies, I came across a program by a group of Native American counselors and psychologists that uses Native American ceremonies and spirituality as a framework for helping people learn to cope with PTSD.
One of the primary ingredients in their formulae is a ceremony that formally recognizes that the veteran (warrior) has been deeply changed by their experience. The ceremony allows the veteran (warrior) to tell the story of their service, and that story is formally and officially taken in as a part of the community. The veteran (warrior) is honored for their service, and the responsibility for that service is spread among the entire community, so the veteran (warrior) does not have to carry it alone. The veteran (warrior) then formally re-enters the community as an honored and respected member.
Several psychological studies of PTSD have shown that how the community accepts and welcomes the military veteran back from war has a deep impact on the rates in which reactions to combat stress become a disorder that impairs social functioning. Anecdotally we can see this difference in the rates of acute combat stress injuries from WWII and from Vietnam, and make the connection between how the veterans of each of those wars was received by the communities to which they returned.
I believe many of our congregations are not ready to receive these veterans in the way they need to be received by a faith community. Some of the congregations that have contacted me have expressed motivations that made it clear they were not ready to hear the veteran’s stories and welcome them in the way they need.
So, if not outreach, then what? I applaud the energy that some congregations have shown around the issue of veterans, military families, and military servicemembers. I have written and spoken of my belief that this nation is about to face a spiritual crisis that makes the aftermath of Vietnam look mild. I believe that there is a salvific nature to Unitarian Universalist Faith that can play a deep role in the spiritual healing of some of those veterans, just as it did in my own life. But I also believe that our congregations are not yet ready for that role.
We as a denomination know how to get ready to play a positive role in helping our veterans, their families, and our nation weather the spiritual storm I see on the horizon, because we have done it before. I have begun to recommend (and develop resources for) our congregations to take a deep look at our own reactions, assumptions, prejudices, and relations to the military, to war, and to our veterans through something similar to the current Welcoming Congregation program for GLBTQ persons and communities.
We need to deepen our understandings of ourselves, of our own responsibility for the wars and conflicts our veterans have been sent to fight. We need to have a deeper understanding of the processes of recovery of those struggling with PTSD and other combat stress injuries, and to see how what might otherwise be an innocent and unthinking comment can be deeply damaging to a veteran’s recovery and to their trust in this faith. We need a commitment to a different balance between pastoral needs and prophetic impulses.
I think of a military spouse whose loved one was serving in Iraq, and her church kept asking her to go to protests against the war. When she said no, some people questioned her UU faith. Becoming welcoming for veterans and their families will require some re-evaluation of our priorities of faith.
We need a deeper understanding of the chronic nature of combat stress injury, and of how family members of veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are themselves showing signs of stress injuries (called secondary traumatic stress disorder) brought on by the immediacy of modern telecommunications and the manifestations of repeated deployments.
More than this, we need to deal with the feelings that many in our denomination have in relation to their own involvement in the spiritual crisis in the lives of our veterans and the life of our nation in the aftermath of Vietnam, a set of feelings that I have often perceived as including shame, regret, and denial. We have some healing to do ourselves, before we can really welcome military veterans and their families into our congregations.
The shame of our involvement in the aftermath of Vietnam is the third reason why I am reticent about supporting outreach efforts to military veterans. I know I am being controversial by even saying this aloud, but there is a spiritual and emotional “ghost” in our denominational system that has not yet been exorcised, and until it is brought into the light of day and we heal from it, we will continue to be motivated towards this kind of outreach for all the wrong reasons.
So, if you contact me for advice on outreach to military veterans, be prepared for me to turn the work back upon yourself. Rather than seeking to bring veterans to our congregations, let us first prepare our congregations to receive them. If we do that, those who need us will find us. I promise.
Yours in Faith,
David