Chaplains

I read in the Los Angeles Times today that the LA Police Department (LAPD) has named its first Islamic Chaplain.

I served in the U.S. Army overseas. When the military is overseas, often in a country where the people speak a language other than English, it seems alright to me for the government to provide a “place of worship” for the troops, with a chaplain who really is completely non-denominational. These guys try to help Jews, Muslims, Christians, and intelligent secular humanists. Sometimes they even help the military maintain morale.

It has been my experience that these chaplains do not overtly try to convert people over to their particular brand of “faith.”

As long as these chaplains are really careful about this policy, and in fact atheists are just as welcome as the fanatic, true believer fundamentalists, I can sort of accept this. It is clearly getting heavily into the grey area of separation of church and state, but when handled carefully these chaplains often are kind of like shrinks rather than religious fanatics with all their obscure religious symbols and mumbo jumbo.

My first thought upon reading about the LAPD’s new chaplain, is what on earth does a domestic police department need any chaplains at all for? There are plenty of churches, synagogues, and mosques in LA with lots of their own religious fanatics already on the payroll.

This seems like a clear cut violation of the very important constitutional doctrine of separation of church and state. Especially when you shift from a non-denominational chaplain to a different one for each sect. Do the Baptist cops need a different chaplain than the Catholic policemen? What if a Jewish cop needs a chaplain? Does having some Muslim cleric on the LAPD’s payroll help him? And what about all the secular humanist (say non-religious) cops?

No wonder California is bankrupt.
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