Christianity Today August 5, 2026 13 min signal 2026-08-05

Even chaplains don't agree what chaplains should do

Archived text mirror, captured for personal reading when the Signal ran. Formatting is approximate — read the original at the source.

Christianity Today

August 5, 2026

- Facebook

- X

- WhatsApp

- Telegram

Image courtesy of Cpl. Alexander Devereux

Reid Wiseman had just completed the longest journey from Earth in human history, and after he landed, one of his first requests was a chaplain.

Wiseman was one of the four astronauts on the Artemis II space mission, NASA’s first crewed mission to orbit the moon in more than 50 years. He had snapped the first of thousands of photographs of Earth and the moon that the crew beamed back to awed onlookers. After touching down off the San Diego coast on April 10, Wiseman and the others boarded the USS John P. Murtha to undergo medical evaluations and mission debriefings.

Chaplain Eliseo Morales was aboard the Murtha when crews recovered the astronauts. He postponed his evening prayer until the astronauts arrived so they could hear it over the ship’s loudspeaker. When Wiseman got the chance, he sought a visit with Morales.

Thanks for signing up.

Explore more newsletters—don’t forget to start your free 60-day trial of CT to get full access to all articles in every newsletter.

Sorry, something went wrong. Please try again.

“I’m not really a religious person, but there was just no other avenue for me to explain anything,” Wiseman said at an April 16 press conference. “When that man walked in, I had never met him before in my life, but I saw the cross on his collar, and I just broke down in tears. Like, it’s very hard to fully grasp what we just went through.”

Morales, 35, a Presbyterian, lives in San Diego with his wife and two daughters and has been stationed on the Murtha since 2024. He has open office hours and routinely walks the ship, giving the evening prayers and trying to engage the ship’s crew where they are.

During his roughly three-minute discussion with Wiseman, Morales did not try to proselytize his Christian faith or make the astronaut feel any sort of way about his lunar trek. He listened as Wiseman broke down and embraced him.

“It was just a moment of gratitude,” Morales told CT. “I think they were still just in awe of what happened.”

The experience was affirming for Morales, who said meeting with Wiseman validated his belief that everyone needs spiritual care.

“The astronauts, they got the food that they wanted, they had the medical that they needed, but they still needed something else, and the only way that they were comprehended was to ask for a chaplain,” Morales said.

Morales’s visit with Wiseman was one in a series of headline-grabbing developments involving chaplains in recent months. In December, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced major changes to the military’s chaplain corps. In April, he fired Major General William Green from his position as the Army’s chief of chaplains, contending that Green was teaching “secular humanism.”

The incidents reflect a growing interest in chaplains nationwide. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, the chaplaincy has been having a moment—not only within the federal government but also at the state level.

At least five states have passed legislation to allow chaplains into public schools, citing, among other reasons, the need to address a “plague level” of suicide, as one chaplain organization put it. More than two dozen other states are considering similar bills.

The legislative efforts, like Hegseth’s reforms at the Pentagon, have triggered the usual objections about separation of church and state. But they are also drawing criticism from chaplains themselves, concerned that pro-chaplain measures are ushering underqualified men and women into the profession.

The tug-of-war stems in part from disagreement over a fundamental question: What, exactly, does a chaplain do?

Chaplains have been part of the fabric of the United States since its founding. George Washington authorized them for the army in 1775. Meetings of the Continental Congress opened with chaplains’ prayers.

After World War II, the chaplaincy expanded into prisons and hospitals, establishing itself more broadly as a profession to provide spiritual care in secular spaces. Contemporary chaplains are everywhere now—from police departments to airports to college campuses to the locker rooms of Super Bowl football teams.

Unlike clergy in a church setting, chaplains minister to the spiritual—not necessarily religious—side of a person. Chaplains bear personal religious affiliations but traditionally are trained to care for people of all faith traditions, including atheism or agnosticism.

The position gained attention during the COVID-19 pandemic as hospital chaplains argued spiritual care was just as important as meeting mental and physical needs.

A 2021 study of chaplains worldwide showed the pandemic had blindsided them and left them uniquely disadvantaged, as there was no higher authority to advocate for their presence in hospitals or hospice care.

“There is no way of speaking for chaplaincy as a unified profession with clear vision and identity,” the study’s British author wrote. “Until this changes, chaplains will continue to be undervalued and misunderstood, and the people who suffer most from this are the patients they serve so uniquely.”

Disagreements over the mission of chaplains and the credentials they require have hurt attempts to organize a larger governing body for the profession. Subsequently, the public’s image of chaplains is hazy.

In 2018, sociologist and current Bryn Mawr College president Wendy Cadge and consultant Trace Haythorn started the Chaplaincy Innovation Lab (CIL), a think tank dedicated to understanding the current climate around the chaplaincy, chaplains’ public standing, and the challenges they face.

The CIL conducted studies before and after the pandemic to learn more about the people chaplains serve, the work they perform, and how the profession can grow.

One fact CIL knows for certain: The public doesn’t really understand chaplains. In a 2023 study, 44 percent of respondents said they had interacted with a chaplain in their lifetime. But follow-ups showed that participants often confused chaplains with clergy or pastors, and the actual portion of those who had interacted with chaplains was closer to 18 percent.

“A lot of people were calling people chaplains who were actually parish pastors or rabbis or priests,” Haythorn told CT. “The general public is very confused about all of it. So if the general public is [confused], you can only imagine what it’s like when you get a whole bunch of chaplains together to try to get them to talk about what it is we are.”

Haythorn said he and CIL colleagues were close to creating an umbrella organization for chaplains, connecting the various operations that provide credentials and unifying the profession, but that effort ended when one major group pulled out. He said there is a split in chaplain philosophy between those who believe they must proselytize and those who say they should meet only people’s immediate needs.

There is no universally accepted definition of the word chaplain. Just as church denominations design their own requirements for ordaining clergy, organizations that hire chaplains—or that allow them as volunteers—are free to set standards however they want.

The result is an inconsistent, interfaith patchwork. One hospital or university may require chaplains to have seminary education or be certified by groups like the Association of Professional Chaplains or the National Association of Catholic Chaplains, while another may ask little more than a few hours of training—meaning almost anyone could become a chaplain.

Experts say lack of common consensus has fed public misunderstanding around the role of chaplains, perhaps nowhere as prominently as in the US military.

Studies show that hospital patient care and mental health outcomes for military service members improve with chaplain involvement—but that did not stop Pete Hegseth from declaring that the military’s chaplain corps was broken.

“Our chaplains are chaplains, not emotional support officers, and we’re going to treat them as such,” Hegseth said in a December video, declaring he was working to “make the chaplain corps great again.”

The firing of Green was one of Hegseth’s first steps toward that end. He also replaced rank insignia that military chaplains wear with a display of their religious affiliation and cut the number of recognized faiths from more than 200 to 31.

Among Hegseth’s grievances with the chaplain corps was the Army’s Spiritual Fitness Guide, a handbook given to chaplains that emphasizes spiritual health as well as mental and physical health. Hegseth, who vowed in March to scrap the book, complained that it mentioned God only once, feelings 11 times, and playfulness 9 times.

The Army Chaplain Corps includes more than 3,000 chaplains, nearly 3,000 religious affairs specialists, and 50 directors of religious education covering the regular Army, Army Reserve, and Army National Guard alone, according to the organization, with pushes for more recruitment and expansion leading up to Hegseth’s announcement.

Army colonel David Wake, executive director of the Armed Forces Chaplains Board, of which Green was a member, said that although he may disagree with some of Hegseth’s approach, the chaplaincy needs to center once more on its spiritual mission.

“I’m not a big fan of ‘Make it great again’ kind of language,” Wake told CT. “I don’t see it as that we have done poorly, but there’s an aspect of getting away from some of the humanist culture that said, ‘You can do better.’”

Wake, a second-generation Christian chaplain, said some of the initial internal changes will put a greater emphasis on spiritual health, allowing service members time from their training and daily regimen for spiritual practices.

Wake, who plans to retire in the fall, said more changes are likely, though he is not aware of specifics. He cited studies that showed spirituality is a growing priority with young people, and the chaplaincy reforms can be considered part of that trend.

Hegseth “is absolutely committed to caring for the religious needs of the service members,” Wake said.

When asked what Green’s firing signaled to him about the chaplaincy, Wake did not have a clear answer.

“I’m not sure yet, and it’s a big change—uncharted territory—so I don’t know if I have a crystal ball,” Wake said. “It doesn’t signal anything to me other than we’re in a time of transition.”

Wake said the military chaplain role is evolving, and he sees an opportunity to forge a new trail.

On the John P. Murtha, Morales is positive about the changes. He said removing his lieutenant rank from his uniform elevates the importance of his chaplain role above any other status. After all, he was still wearing insignia when he spoke with Wiseman, Morales said, but the astronaut never acknowledged his military rank.

“In the interview, he said, ‘I saw that young man, and I saw the Cross.’ He never said anything about the two bars that I have on my right,” Morales said. “And I think that, again, is a reminder to people. Like, this is a very specific person on this ship.”

As the military reevaluates the chaplaincy, states are making their own decisions about the profession. At least 30 states have seen some sort of chaplain bill proposal since 2023. Alabama and Missouri are the latest states to pass legislation allowing public school districts to hire chaplains in schools. The others are Texas, Florida, and Louisiana.

The first such bill appeared in Texas in 2023, when lawmakers, in an effort to address growing mental health issues in public schools, proposed legislation to allow school districts to bring in chaplains to support students’ spiritual health.

Critics argued against the perceived merging of church and state in such proposals, and others pointed out that the legislation required only that chaplains be certified by an unspecified body and that they not be sex offenders—the bare minimum, some contended.

Chaplains also came out against the legislation, with the Association of Professional Chaplains (APC), which claims more than 5,000 members, leading the charge. It posted a letter opposing the bills, citing qualification concerns, issues forcing public school children to interact with the chaplains, and lack of parental consent.

“Everybody else that is working in that public school has some type of additional education and training that focuses on working with students in a school,” APC communications director Kyle Christiansen told CT. “We would expect and want chaplains serving in that capacity to have some additional training that would properly prepare them for that kind of setting.”

Rocky Malloy, CEO of the National School Chaplains Association (NSCA), a Christian chaplain ministry he organized that works to get chaplains in K–12 schools, is one of the most vocal proponents of the bills.

He said chaplains would help prevent youth violence, teen suicide, and teacher burnout. Malloy claims that in the more than 36,000 schools around the world where his organization has affiliated chaplains, there have been no reported suicides. (In US schools, student referrals for mental health treatment are confidential.)

Malloy has also dismissed concerns over proselytization, saying a chaplain’s role is to be a spiritual representative for all. When asked about the backgrounds of the chaplains the NSCA trains, he says they work only with “Jesus people.”

Malloy argued chaplains have been allowed in all federal and public spaces since the nation’s founding.

“All the arguments somehow or another—this is inappropriate, it’s illegal—that’s all BS,” Malloy said. He contends that because the Articles of Confederation recognize chaplains, they supersede any constitutional provisions that would bar chaplains from public spaces.

Malloy runs a training program through the NSCA that offers a chaplain certificate. The program is an eight-week course that—with active shooter response and first-aid components—is just under $1,200. To qualify, candidates need either a two-year associate’s degree and 2,000 hours of “hands-on ministry experience” or three years of full-time ministry experience as “ordained clergy.”

“The idea [that] somebody reads a newspaper and gets a $5 sticker and they go into school, that might happen, but that’s not our guys,” Malloy said.

The Texas bill and similar legislation do not say the employed or volunteering chaplains need to be trained to work with children, have a degree, and specify they need not be state certified.

Despite confusion around the role, chaplain groups report that the profession is growing and that more young people are choosing chaplaincy as their first job than ever before.

Christiansen said that nine years ago, the APC received roughly 300 annual applications for chaplaincy certifications. Now, they see around 500 a year. Malloy did not share numbers for his organization but said the pandemic and an increased interest in religion, especially among young men, have prompted growth.

Haythorn also said the CIL saw a significant rise in chaplaincy training programs offered at colleges and universities, with 1 identified in the 1990s, around 80 in 2015, and more than 200 this year.

With the influx of prospective chaplains, Cadge isn’t sure there’s a job market for all of them. Health care systems like Mass General Brigham in Boston and M Health Fairview in Minneapolis have trimmed their chaplain ranks since the pandemic.

“There are more people who want to be chaplains now, and I think that has to do with changes in religious leadership,” Cadge said, citing declining congregational numbers and more spiritual leaders wanting to work outside traditional churches. “Those people are going to be supplying services. Whether there are more people looking for those services—that’s the demand question.”

Cadge said some companies are foggy about the return on investment for chaplains. Psychologists and career coaches, for instance, have more obvious value propositions.

“There hasn’t been a robust body of research across the settings where chaplains work” that can provide concrete reasons for employers to invest in them, she said. “It’s essential that chaplaincy—and spiritual care as a field—be able to articulate in a clear and consistent way who they are and what they do.”

On the USS John P. Murtha, Morales said the ship’s occupancy doubled over the few weeks leading to the Artemis II astronauts’ return. While engineers and crew were busy working on the “no-fail” mission, Morales kept his office hours faithfully and was available to serve crewmates.

He often felt lost in the shuffle. So he was thrilled when Wiseman and the astronauts requested a chaplain upon their return.

Morales doubts he will have the opportunity to speak again with Wiseman—but then again, he said he didn’t think he’d have the chance in the first place.

“God’s gonna do what God’s gonna do,” Morales said. “If I ever bump into him again for whatever reason, I would love to continue that conversation.”

- More from Jack Panyard

- Facebook

- X

- WhatsApp

- Telegram

### After Iran Strike, Military Chaplains Lean on Prayer and Presence

Harvest Prude

### Police Officers Are Burning Out. Can Chaplains Help?

Kara Bettis Carvalho

### Putting Their Prayers on the Line, Evangelical Chaplains Minister on Multiple Fronts in Ukraine

Photo essay by Joel Carillet