24th
The Church Should Be Not a Chaplain but a Conscious to Society
The function of the chaplain in any institution is to presuppose the adequacy and legitimacy of the structures of that institution, whether it be a hospital, an army unit, or a factory, and to deal with the “religious” needs of his harsh parish within that framework. His attitude by definition must therefore be “positive” toward the rules of the particular unit of society which he serves, toward its aims and toward its preservation. That the opposing army also has its chaplains makes evident the limits of the moral independence of both. Should he take a critical stance at all, this must be filtered through his fundamental acceptance of the system as it is.
Now the message of the Christian gospel is a promise of salvation. It is in the deepest sense a “positive” message. Yet this message of promise comes by way of a condemnation of our self-centeredness, our self-satisfaction, and our self-confidence. To this the conscience testifies; its first incidence is critical. It is theoretically possible for one’s conscience to approve one; but usually this is not what happens first and it can never be taken for granted. This clarity and the objectivity of the standards by which it measures are reflected in this readiness to judge man’s motives and achievements, as is the need of one beyond oneself to forgive and to restore. So conscience, by definition, must be able to criticize.
Most of the discussion of the place of the churches in the face of the racial revolution seems actually to be balancing against one another two different conceptions of the “chaplaincy” role. On the one hand we see most of the churches, fearful and conservative, as chaplains of the segregated order—accepting it, accepting the authority patterns which prevail within it, and making the situation palatable. It has seemed to many that the only alternative is for the church to be in the same sense the chaplain to the revolution—accepting it wholeheartedly, agreeing with its new authority patterns, and receiving its support.
My suggestion is that our traditional assumptions have prevented the breakthrough of a new and more creative alternative; namely, that instead of blessing this cause or that in a blanket way, the churches might be the conscience of a movement whose dynamism (including its egoism) the church neither completely supplies nor expects completely to control. This vision of the stance of the church would seem to be a more discerning goal (and likewise descriptive of what has thus far actually happened” than to feel that the churches should, in a modern edition of the Social Gospel, proclaim that the liberation men need will be obtained through the abolition of certain of the most evident structural injustices.
