Synodical Conference Convention Proceedings St. Louis, Missouri — 1954, Page 86

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86 Proceedings of the Forty-Third Convention,

the cooperative efforts of others. No chaplain is required to
conduct any service or rite contrary to the regulations of his
denomination. Moreover, no chaplain is required to officiate
jointly in a religious service with a chaplain or civilian
clergyman of another denomination.

The Chaplain’s spiritual authority to teach and to preach in
public, to conduct religious services, to perform ecclesiastical
rites, and to administer sacraments and ordinances is im-
parted in the ordination that his denomination has given him.
The ritual and rules of his denomination are consequently
his guide in these matters.

I do not see how our position could be more carefully secured
than by such official statements. These paragraphs are in this
manual, in the Army manual, and in the Navy manual, because
the chaplains from our Synod have insisted that they be put there.

It has been said that men in the service could be just as ade-
quately served by a corps of civilian pastors. That I think is very
unrealistic. How, for example, would we take care of men at the
front? Military chaplains are assigned to advance medical stations.
If a Lutheran man is hurt and is returned to such a station, he can
request a Lutheran chaplain; and it becomes the responsibility of
the chaplain on duty at the aid station to find one for him. How
could a civilian minister work under conditions of this kind, when
civilians are not even permitted in the combat area? Where,
moreover, would you get the men and the funds to cover the needs
of all our men in the military service, spread as they are over the
face of the entire free world?

It has been said that the military chaplaincy as an institution
violates the principle of separation between church and state. To
say this is to misrepresent the principle as it has been practiced
in America. The primary concern of the First Amendment and the
court decisions made on its basis is to keep any single or any group
of church organizations from receiving state sanction and support.
James Madison did not write that Amendment to say that our Gov-
ernment is not interested in religion. As Americans we have been
very vocal, in fact, throughout our history officially to declare our
dependence on Almighty God. The Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag
is a case in point; hence the addition of the words “under God” on
June 14 of this year. The words “In God We Trust” on our coins
testify to the same thing. For precisely that same reason church
properties are for the most part tax exempt. The establishment of
the military chaplaincy reflects this same interest in religion to
undergird the life of a nation.

I should like to conclude this discussion on the following per-
sonal note. This will, perhaps, serve to bring the whole matter
under discussion into proper focus. The date August 1, 1943, may
mean nothing in particular to most of you here. To us, however,
who served in the Ninth Bomber Command at Benghazi, Lybia,
this was a black day. That was the day on which our units staged
the first Ploesti air raid.

You may recall that the Allied command had decided to blast
the oil fields of Ploesti, in Romania, so thoroughly that they would
not be in a position to be used again for many months, preferably
for the duration of the war. With this in mind our crews were
ordered to practice low-level flying. Our men took this seriously.
They flew at tree-top level and sometimes even lower. When men