Military suicide prevention class included time of prayer

As a Chaplain, I'm all for including spiritual healing when helping veterans with PTSD. Why? Because when it is done right, it works. After 30 years, I've been pretty successful, including in my own marriage that has lasted 28 years. It helps them heal and it helps their families. I've been able to talk veterans "off the ledge" because of sharing my faith with Christian veterans but have to adapt what I say to "non-believers" along with people of other faiths. If I am talking to an atheist, I ask if I can pray for them and say a silent prayer for their healing and comfort. My job is to help them and I can't do that if what I say shuts off their ears or makes them want to leave the room. If they cannot trust that I do no have another motive other than helping them, then they will not believe anything I say.

This story greatly saddens me. The young soldiers felt they had to stay there and listen to a Chaplain's Christian prayer at a time when they were supposed to be hearing about staying alive. Whatever else was said would have forgotten because they would have felt as violated as this 17 year career veteran.

Army Chaplain Holds Christian Prayer During Suicide Prevention Class, Soldiers Say
Huffington Post
Posted: 10/02/2012
Andrea Stone

During an Army-wide stand down for suicide prevention sessions, a Christian chaplain in Texas improperly led rookie soldiers in a candlelight prayer, an Army instructor said in a formal complaint last week.

Staff Sgt. Victoria Gettman, a lab technician instructor at Fort Sam Houston, told The Huffington Post that she was among 800 soldiers from the 264th Medical Battalion undergoing resilience training on Sept. 26. Almost all of the soldiers were fresh out of boot camp and in training for their first job in the Army.

After a 45-minute talk on how to cope with stress, the officer in charge turned the stage over to a chaplain for the sometimes controversial "spiritual fitness" part of the session.

Gettman did not catch the chaplain's name, and he has not been otherwise publicly identified. But as an atheist, she wasn't interested in what he had to say so she stood up and moved to the back of the auditorium. 

The 17-year Army veteran knew -- unlike the young soldiers -- that this part of the program was optional. Still, she could hear most of what the clergyman said from just outside the room.

"The chaplain said we have to have something bigger than ourselves. We need, and he stresses need, to have something divine in our life," she recounted, adding that the soldiers were not informed they were allowed to step out.

Gettman said the chaplain ordered the lights turned off and battery-operated candles passed around as the soldiers were told to bow their heads. "The entire theater was forced into a mass Christian prayer," she said. "I heard him refer to his 'Heavenly Father' and 'Lord.'"
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