Religion in the public sphere – the role and function of military Chaplains

It is clear that religious faith and activity still has power in the public sphere. Not least, the significant presence of religious motivation amongst those with whom NATO’s Armed Forces have to engage raises questions about the place of religion in the world and the relationship between religious organisations and public institutions.

It is further clear that the liberal West may in fact be the anomaly – the majority of the rest of the world is much less concerned about the separation of the public and the private religious spheres.

These issues have attracted significant academic interest in recent years. In a short collection of essays entitled The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere (2011 Columbia University Press), Jurgen Habermas and Charles Taylor suggest a complex relationship between state, society and religion.

Habermas’s position epitomizes a view of religion within Western Liberal society with which many chaplains will be familiar. He is concerned  that there are occasions when religious belief, doctrine and activity, for example Christianity, threaten to impinge on the activity of the secularised state.

This systemic concern  is allied to his concern that religion can impinge on individuals who do not share those beliefs – for instance those of other faiths or those of none. This is a real threat, in a world where religion remains a significant force.

Here, he distinguishes between the secularizing movement within socio-political institutions, and the ongoing relevance of religion within the wider culture. To this end, Habermas asserts that ‘the secularisation of the state is not the same as the secularisation of society’. Moreover, he notes that ‘democratic process within [secularized] civil society’ neither requires nor depends on the secularisation of society.

As an antidote, Habermas maintains, albeit in a more sophisticated form, the typical Western Liberal view that religion is a private matter and that whilst theological doctrine may affect interpersonal relationships it should be kept separate from the state or society.

Charles Taylor, on the other hand, argues that it is wrong to think of religion as a threat to secular liberal democracies. Taylor argues for a conceptualisation of secularism that actively promotes values of liberalism, equality and fraternity.

Thus understood, secularism is a ‘good faith attempt’ to mediate between the public and the private spheres and generate an overlapping consensus where there is legitimate religious rhetoric and activity in both.

Military Chaplains work in oraganisations that are clearly public bodies and organs of the state, which reflect to some extent the societies from which they are drawn. Operating as they do between church, state and society, Military Chaplains therefore inhabit the interface between public / private, secular / sacred spheres.

The purpose of IMCCC17 is to reflect and consider the reality of this interface – What is the relationship between religion and the public sphere in the military? What is the relationship between religion, secularisation and secularism? What does this mean for the rhetoric and activity of Chaplains?