By Col. Alexander F. C. Webster, retired US Army Chaplain
STARRS Board of Advisors
Four generations of Webster men have served in the Army. Before he emigrated to the United States in 1922, my grandfather Charles was a color sergeant for a Scottish regiment in the United Kingdom from 1912 to 1918, including the last three years of World War I on the Western Front.
My father, Frederick, was an enlisted radio operator on B-17s with the U.S. Army Air Corps based in the Panama Canal Zone from 1942 to 1945.
My son Andrew served as an enlisted combat engineer with the U.S. Army, on active duty from 2010 to 2012, including an assignment in Germany.
And I served as a U.S. Army chaplain on active duty or the reserve component from 1985 until my retirement in 2010, which included twelve one-month deployments to Afghanistan, Iraq, Kuwait, and Qatar.
None of us could have imagined, much less anticipated, the steady radical politicization and moral degeneracy that have afflicted all five original American military branches during the last three decades. Nor is the newest branch, the U.S. Space Force, immune from this trend.
Numerous Betrayals
Here is a concise list of some of those internal betrayals of the traditional American military ethos and of the warriors themselves, led or cheered on by the highest-ranking generals and admirals.
• The “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy announced by President Bill Clinton’s Department of Defense in December 1993, which overturned a practice of more than two centuries, beginning with the Revolutionary War (1775 to 1783), whereby colonial or U.S. military personnel who engaged in homosexual practices were summarily discharged from the armed forces.
The new policy (Directive 1304.26), which was the law of the land from February 1994 until September 2011, expressly forbade discrimination against or harassment of so-called closeted homosexual or bisexual members of the U.S. armed forces. However, this measure still allowed for the dismissal of “openly gay, lesbian, or bisexual persons from military service” and the rejection of such applicants for military service.
• A full embrace of the so-called LGBTQ (etc.) agenda in 2011, which not only overturned the traditional compulsory separation of known sexual deviants from the ranks of the armed forces, but also quickly led to unbridled celebration of the full “rainbow” agenda, including active recruitment and public celebration of homosexual, bisexual, and “polysexual” military personnel and flagrant, omnipresent displays of rainbow paraphernalia.
• The mandatory inclusion of women, since 2015, in the most demanding and dangerous combat military specialties, such as the infantry, armor (tanks), special operations, and Navy Seals, together with the drastic lowering of heretofore rigorous standards for physical fitness tests (that is, the “gender-neutral” Army Combat Fitness Test, introduced in 2017), maximum weights and minimum heights, and personal grooming (for example, long hair for women but not men).
• A mandatory policy of promoting the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) and Critical Race Theory (CRT) “reforms” in contravention of traditional standards of individual merit without attention to race, ethnicity, or sexual “preference” or “identity”; a full embrace of the entire neo-racist “woke” agenda within all components of the armed forces as necessary; and obvious sex- and/or race-based promotions and favored assignments within all ranks, including some of the most senior officers among the four-star generals and admirals.
• Beginning in 2020, an unyielding, draconian, mandatory, and punitive policy of compulsory vaccination during the Covid-19 crisis, without exceptions for religious “conscientious objection” based on the derivation of those vaccines from cells taken from aborted babies in 1973 and 1985.
• A renewed effort by the current U.S. Congress and the Biden administration, launched as recently as July 2024, to enact into law the failed “Draft Our Daughters” initiative of 2016. In a May 30, 2016 article titled “Churches Must Oppose Female Conscription,” in the traditional Roman Catholic journal Crisis Magazine, Capt. Bob Miller, U.S. Navy, Retired, a devout Evangelical Protestant, and I denounced the looming “Draft Our Daughters” legislation. We pledged to endeavor to protect our American daughters and young mothers from coercive service in the violent and deadly profession of arms by personally joining peaceful public protests.
Eight years later, military watchdog Elaine Donnelly, who founded the Center for Military Readiness, observes that a revival of that political corpse would “automatically register all persons of draft age (18–26) who are subject to Selective Service law, extending government power into the lives of every young person in America while weakening military readiness.”
Donnelly notes also how such a new policy, motivated by false notions of “equality,” would be devastating for women:
“Involuntary conscription of women would make combat arms units less strong, less fast, more vulnerable to debilitating injuries, less ready for deployment on short notice, and less accurate with offensive weapons during combat operations.”
An Outrageous Case
The seventh and last odious practice that I wish to explore here is the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on April 29, 2024, in the Alvarado v. Austin case, to deny a petition by 38 military chaplains to be reinstated to the service assignments they had held prior to suffering punitive action by their chains of command.
The Court refused to stay or pause the policies that caused unfair retaliation by the Department of Defense (DOD) against the chaplains merely for requesting religious exemptions from the Covid-19 vaccine made mandatory in September 2021, during the Biden presidency.
To put a name and face on this radical political and grossly insensitive anti-Christian trend, I turn to the plight of Jonathan Shour, a Protestant chaplain in the U.S. Navy for sixteen years and one of the 38 petitioning chaplains in the case.
Here is the description of his plight in the Alvarado v. Austin brief, for which Arthur A. Schulcz, Sr., was counsel of record for the chaplains:
Plaintiff Chaplain Jonathan Shour is a Lieutenant in the U.S. Navy with 16 years of service. He is domiciled in Kootenai County, Idaho, and he is stationed at Camp Lejeune, Onslow County, North Carolina.
Lieutenant Shour’s initial RAR [Request for Reinstatement] was denied on February 6, 2022; he submitted his RAR appeal on February 20, 2022, which is still pending. He has natural immunity from previous Covid-19 infection in August 2021.
Lieutenant Shour submitted a request for medical exemption based on a documented previous Covid-19 infection, which was denied.
Since entering into the Navy in August 2021, he has faced discrimination and retaliation for his request to abide by his religious beliefs at three separate commands.
Among other things, he has been isolated and treated differently in training environments, had his assignment changed simply for seeking exemption, and has been excluded from performing rites and services as a chaplain.
His family was effectively made homeless for seven months by the Navy’s restrictions on permanent change of station (PCS) moves due to the vaccination mandate. His family was restricted from completing their PCS while they were already in between assignments.
Having already moved out of their last home and their household goods in storage, the Navy told him he would not be able to leave a training assignment to complete their move to North Carolina. He was held over after training for over three months.
During this time, his family of five (pregnant wife, three young children, and family dog), effectively homeless, lived in a hotel with no end in sight through most family birthdays, Thanksgiving, and Christmas.
(Case 8:22-cv-01149, Document 1, filed 05/18/22, page 31 of 126)
Attorney Schulcz, a retired American veteran of the Vietnam War, is not giving up the cause. He told American Family News on May 20, 2024, that the Supreme Court’s “unconscionable denial of our petition” would not deter him and his chaplain clients.
He also vowed that “a new case can be started to seek declaratory, injunctive and remedial relief for the career-ending injuries resulting from the Armed Services’ retaliation for filing religious accommodation requests.”
As a retired Army chaplain and a lifelong American citizen, I am personally outraged by the despicable treatment of my brother chaplain, Lieutenant Shour—a loyal, caring, effective Navy chaplain and loving husband and father.
The same applies to the other 37 chaplains who were party to the petition. Where do those chaplains go now to get back their reputations, livelihoods, and military careers?
This is not the U.S. armed forces in which I served—and survived—for a quarter-century until my retirement in 2010.
This is not how a grateful nation and its highest military commanders ought to treat their chaplains, or anyone in the military uniform of his country.
This is not a U.S. armed forces in which I would serve today.
Rod Bishop, a distinguished retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant general and chairman of the board of STARRS (Stand Together Against Racism and Radicalism in the Services)—for which I also serve on the board of advisors—offers this devastating criticism of the U.S. military’s draconian Covid-19 fiasco:
“The creation and implementation of the military’s Covid vaccine mandate probably violated federal laws, as did the military’s anthrax vaccine mandate stopped by a federal court injunction in 1994. The military’s failure to allow thousands of religious exemptions to taking the Covid vaccine violated the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, as confirmed by at least eight federal courts, and probably the First Amendment as well. DOD’s breaking the laws of our land is RADICAL. It is tyranny and Marxism at work!”
A Solution for Prayer
To be sure, my own time in military uniform was somewhat rocky in the beginning. After 26 months of a three-year active-duty commitment, I concluded in 1988 that the U.S. Army’s “unofficial” expectation that Christian chaplains refrain from invoking the Holy Trinity or the name Jesus Christ at any formal event or public occasion aside from specifically denominational religious services or direct pastoral care to parishioners was simply too much to bear.
No Eastern Orthodox priest may, in good conscience, pray in the name of a nameless god. Reluctantly I requested a REFRAD (Release from Active Duty) and reverted to the U.S. Army Reserve on a part-time basis. I knew, of course, that such a REFRAD would be a professional kiss of death and preclude me from performing any future service on active duty.
Ironically, a chance conversation with an Orthodox rabbi chaplain at an Army chaplains conference led to a solution that I practiced without exception for the next seventeen years as a Reserve or National Guard chaplain before the U.S. Army Chief of Chaplains summoned me back to active duty, in the senior rank of Colonel no less (!), for my last five years in uniform, from 2005 until retirement in 2010.
My primary mission was to serve as the Third Army “theatre religious asset” for Eastern Orthodox personnel by visiting and providing Orthodox liturgies, sacraments, and pastoral care, including funerals, for the relatively few Eastern Orthodox Christians among U.S. and Canadian military personnel, but primarily for the large contingents of Orthodox troops without chaplains among the Romanian, Bulgarian, and Georgian units in Iraq or Afghanistan, as well as civilian Arabic linguists in Qatar.
My rabbi colleague explained to me that he was uncomfortable when he had to endure a Christian chaplain praying in the name of the Holy Trinity or Jesus Christ. However, he also allowed that he would have no problem if Protestant, Roman Catholic, or Eastern Orthodox chaplains simply used the singular first-person pronoun I or me instead of the plural we or us.
That simple adjustment would respect the rabbi’s personal identity and conscience, while the Christian chaplain would be free to name the “deity” as he saw fit.
Here is the “formula” that I devised as a result of that fraternal inter-faith encounter: “As an Orthodox Christian chaplain, I invite you to join me from your own faith traditions as I pray in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.”
That adjustment entailed three concessions by me: (1) I identify myself and acknowledge the other faith traditions in the gathering; (2) I invite those of other traditions to join in my prayer if they desire or to dissent quietly; and (3) I employ the singular first-person pronouns I and me instead of the plural ones.
Daunting but Not Hopeless
I relate that story here to conclude on a somewhat hopeful note this otherwise alarming and sobering warning about the steady moral, cultural, and military decline of our U.S. armed forces.
Although the task is still daunting, the overwhelming victory of Donald J. Trump in the national election on November 5 should enable our federal government to step back from the abyss, reverse course, and return our armed forces to their historic focus on military excellence, traditional values, virtuous warriors, common sense, and deference to the will of Almighty God.
Perchance to dream!
Alexander F. C. Webster (Archpriest), Ph.D., is Dean & Professor of Moral Theology Emeritus at Holy Trinity Orthodox Seminary in Jordanville, New York, and Adjunct Professor of Religious Studies at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.
First published in the January/February 2025 issue of TOUCHSTONE: A Journal of Mere Christianity
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