May God have mercy on the Pentagon's soul, for the lawyers may not. A computer game to train Army chaplains may draw a
The game in question, tentatively named "Spiritual Triage", is just beginning development by the Army's Simulation and Training Technology Center and an Orlando-based contractor. Spiritual Triage is a tool to allow chaplains to train for a situation where there are mass casualties, including ministering to dying soldiers. The theory is that chaplains will get more practice in coping with highly stressful situations if they can supplement their face-to-face classroom training with a computer game (for more background, go here.)
Except that there are a couple of obstacles between the Army and eternal bliss. The first is that the Army's Chaplain School says it never asked for the game and doesn't want it. The second is Mikey Weinstein, the avenging angel of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, who says he may file a federal lawsuit to stop the development of the Spiritual Triage game. Though he won't disclose his legal strategy, presumably it will focus on whether the game violates the separation of church and state.
Weinstein, himself a graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy, has long fought against what he and others see as a pervasive effort by fundamentalist Christians to impose their values on the U.S. military, which has been plagued for years with accusations of coercion and proselytizing by fundamentalist Christians among U.S. military personnel, as well as incendiary actions such as proselytizing among Afghans. Weinstein particularly points to the nfluence of dominionist theology, a militant, nationalistic belief which holds that the U.S. is a Christian nation that should be governed by Christian rather than secular law.
A military-religious computer game raises questions that would vex King Solomon himself. Is pastoral care something that can be taught by a computer game? As one former military chaplain told me, pastors have to establish a personal relationship to the people that they care for. A personal relationship with living, breathing and grieving human beings. Technology had made remarkable strides in creating lifelike avatars, but can it duplicate human relationships?
On the other hand, the concept of using computer games is so embedded in the modern U.S. military that the only surprise is that there isn't a military chaplain game already. They are convenient, portable, and most of all, cheaper than live training. The military uses computer games for everything from teaching squad tactics and treating PTSD to speaking conversational Pashto and how to conduct a counterinsurgency campaign. Indeed, Spiritual Triage will be based on an existing game for training Army medics. Is it really such a radical departure to have military chaplain practice their pastoral skills on virtual soldiers instead of real ones? With the defense budget being cut, can we afford to ignore cheaper training alternatives?
Yet I suspect the real question over Spiritual Triage won't be the game itself, but rather who decides what goes into the game. As would be expected, the Army says it will be designed with input from military chaplains. But if Weinstein's fears come true, the content will be more likely to reflect the values of a specific religious denomination. That may or may not happen, but Weinstein is correct to point out that there are so many religious denominations among the major religions that they can't possibly all be included. There are more than 41,000 Protestant denominations alone, according to one estimate. More than 200 religious organizations are endorsed by the Armed Forces Chaplains Board, more than 130 are represented by Army chaplains, and soldiers can have "Wiccan" and "Jedi" stamped as their religion on their dog tags (just look at this 2009 breakdown of religious preferences among military personnel.
I don't know what Jedi mourning rituals are nor if they even have any. But I do know that people can and will get very angry if they feel that their religion or its beliefs are slighted or neglected. In the end, the devil will be in the details.
