Sword of the Lord: Military Chaplains from the First to the Twenty-First Century (Critical Problems in History) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0268021767 ISBN 13: 9780268021764

Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press, 2004

Synopsis

The Sword of the Lord explores the development of the military chaplaincy across history and geography and shows the legacy of these devoted men.

From the first to the twenty-first century, from Europe to North America, the military chaplaincy has existed in a recognizable form for more than 1,600 years. The Sword of the Lord analyzes specific historical moments in the development of the chaplaincy, beginning in antiquity and progressing through the Crusades, the English Civil War, the American Civil War, both World Wars, and the Vietnam War. The book also includes vivid accounts by two former chaplains―an American rabbi who served in World War II and an American Catholic priest who served in Vietnam. This remarkable work treats with care and sensitivity a fascinating and important topic, serving as a record of these men’s lives as well as raising important questions about morality and faith in the face of war.

About this title

About the Author

Doris L. Bergen is the Chancellor Rose and Ray Wolfe Professor of Holocaust Studies at the University of Toronto. She is the author of Twisted Cross: The German Christian Movement in the Third Reich (1996); War and Genocide: A Concise History of the Holocaust (2003), and editor of Lessons and Legacies VIII (2008).

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Surveying the history of the military chaplaincy is only part of what this book does. The authors also concern themselves with more immediate questions about military chaplains in specific settings. What do chaplains do? What do those they serve want from them? Addressing these questions, one cannot help but be impressed and moved, in Paul Fussell’s words, by the “appallingly difficult job” of military chaplains in increasingly secular societies.

The intensity of wartime and the omnipresence of death haunt the work of the military chaplain. Perhaps a soldier’s words are the best introduction to the emotional and spiritual neediness that chaplains confront. During the American Civil War, a fourteen-year-old girl asked her brother, a young Indiana lawyer fighting for the Union, what it felt like to be in battle. His reply conveyed a desperate spirituality:

There is no man, however brave he may be, who does not when the storm begins to rage fiercest around him; when he sees a friend on the right and another on the left, stricken down and quivering in the agonies of death; when he sees the serried ranks of his foe coming upon him undaunted and pouring their deadly fire out toward him, making the air quiver and hiss with the rapid movement of all manner of projectiles, from the keen sound of the little bullet that sings on its errand of destruction like the buzzing of a fly, to the bomb shell that goes by you like a thunder bolt, overcoming all obstacles; I say there is no man who when the first waves of such battle as this surge upon him, does not involuntarily and mentally appeal to God for protection.

It may be precisely the chaos and terror of such moments that make the chaplain so important as a symbol that somehow, even in the midst of death and fear, there is meaning. That role of the chaplain―to embody courage, hope, and steadfastness in the face of alienation and destruction―may in turn explain why so many popular accounts of chaplains emphasize an almost superhuman bravery. Under the most extreme circumstances imaginable, people need heroes, and chaplains, because of their association with traditions that extend beyond the immediate horrors, are likely candidates.

All of these tendencies are evident in the story of U.S. Chaplain (Capt.) Emil Kapaun, a hero of the Korean War. A diocesan priest from Wichita, Kansas, Kapaun arrived in Korea in July 1950. Four months later, Chinese forces captured him and a group of soldiers he had refused to abandon, even when he had the opportunity to escape. From the moment of surrender through his own illness and death in May 1951, Father Kapaun proved fearless in his ministry. When an enemy soldier prepared to shoot a wounded GI, Kapaun pushed the man away, pulled his comrade to his feet, and supported him along the hundred-mile trek to a POW camp. During seven months of imprisonment, Father Kapaun encouraged his soldiers, prayed with them, stole food for them, washed their undergarments, and buried them when they died. A fellow POW described the chaplain’s message of hope:

Father always spoke in parallels, relating the sufferings that Christ endured to those we were forced to bear. As he spoke, the agony in the garden, the road to Calvary, the Crucifixion, became very real to us who bore our own crosses of blows, and cold, and illness, and starvation. Christ endured, he told us, and we, too, must endure, for the day of our resurrection from the tomb of the prison camp would surely come, as surely as the stone was rolled away from the sepulcher.

The Catholic War Veterans of the United States are seeking sainthood for Chaplain Kapaun.

(from the introduction)

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0268021767
• ISBN 13: 9780268021764
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 298
• Editor: Bergen Doris L.