I was honored to be asked by the UUA Advocacy and Witness Staff Group to write a guest 
article on their blog “Inspired Faith, Effective Action” for the 6 year mark of the War in Iraq. Here is a short bit of the article:
One of the most common questions that Unitarian Universalists without military experience ask about military ministry is whether our liberal faith is attractive to or can be understood by those serving in the military. Unitarian Universalist military veterans never ask this question, because they know from their own lives how much our faith can speak to the military experience, how it can even seem like salvation. Even with my own experience as a soldier, I do not think I realized the profound depth of what Unitarian Universalism offers to those who serve until I began presenting weekly Unitarian Universalist Worship at the Great Lakes Naval Station, Recruit Training Command.
Here is the link to the whole article.
I want to thank the Advocacy and Witness Staff Group for the invitation.
Yours in Faith,
David
Define the funding lack, David. What do we need to do to allow UU service men and women (many, it sounds like, probably just having identified themselves as being some of us…) with tags that affirm that?
Patrick,
I answered your question on this at the Advocacy and Witness site, but it takes awhile for them to approve comments (because they are not always in the office). But I can answer it again…
For a run of about 500 Identification (dog) tags that have a chalice on one side and say “I am a Unitarian Universalist” on the other, it would cost about 900 dollars. That is pretty close to our entire budget for a year (we run really cheaply, thanks to our volunteers). If we only give them to recruits who come several times and ask for them, we could probably make 500 last over a year, maybe two.
But I would also like to stipend the next student in my position, or to bring up some musicians and pay them… or to pay an honorarium to our volunteer preachers… none of which we currentlly do. We now have 30 hymnals, due to a gracious gift from the Central Midwest District and the Association Sunday Fund. We have brochures from the Church of the Larger Fellowship and now the Church of the Younger Fellowship. And the money we currently have to cover travel expenses comes from several Congregations in the Chicago area, including the Unitarian Church of Evanston, Third Church, and Unity Temple.
I am proud that we run this ministry on as little as we do… but things like ID tags are outside of what we can do. What I do now is point them towards the CLF Gift Shop, where they can get a chalice to wear once they are outside of basic training.
Yours in Faith,
David