[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 160 (2014), Part 12]
[House]
[Page 16457]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                            RANGER CHAPLAIN

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Poe of Texas). The Chair recognizes the 
gentleman from Georgia (Mr. Collins) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. COLLINS of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak on 
something very dear to my heart. The duty of a military chaplain is to 
help guide the hearts and minds of the soldiers that he serves with or 
she serves with, and that comes from a perspective of a background of 
their own faith, but also the respect of the faiths of others that they 
serve with, making sure that all feel a responsibility to not only do 
their job, their mission, but also to themselves, that they are being 
all that they can be in their own careers, in their own missions.
  But just again, here we go again, as the old saying goes. Recently, 
in my district, an Army chaplain gave a suicide awareness and 
prevention brief as required by the Army and received a letter of 
concern in his official record. A letter of concern is a means to 
admonish a soldier's actions.
  The chaplain did not infringe upon anyone's rights, did not receive 
any complaints from anyone being briefed that day; but after the 
chaplain's actions were reviewed, he was considered to have not 
violated any Army regulation or policy, yet his negative counseling 
remains, simply because at a time in which our society is dealing with 
soldiers and airmen who are struggling with depression and struggling 
with suicide rates, he had the audacity to share his own experience 
with depression and how his faith helped him.
  What is a chaplain supposed to do except to share from his own heart 
in a way that is encouraging to others whether they have faith or no 
faith? I hope--no, I pray--this counseling record will reflect soon his 
innocence.
  The Military Association of Atheists & Freethinkers decided to 
characterize the chaplain's briefing as evangelism in mental health 
training. The MAAF goes on to say that receiving Christian doctrine as 
a way to combat depression and suicidal thoughts would increase the 
amount of suicides in the military. This statement belittles the belief 
of soldiers who feel their faith may help them through difficult and 
troubling times.
  Apparently, the MAAF feel only their systems of beliefs are worth 
propagating and any others are irrelevant, if not damaging, to a 
soldier's emotional health.
  As a military chaplain, all I have to say to the MAAF is that if it 
protects and helps someone value life, keep their own life, then what 
they need to do is be reminded that they have an opinion, and so does 
everyone else.
  It is time that they lived up to their own thoughts, that thoughts 
matter, and that what this chaplain did should be reversed. It should 
not reflect on his record. When you have someone actually in the game 
trying to help, it is not the time for little people on the outside to 
criticize. They need to get a new direction and a new focus, and this 
chaplain needs to be restored and this letter removed.

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