Being Christian in the Armed Forces

|PIC1|Colonel Paul Eaton is a committed Christian and active serviceman in the Army. Last week, he helped launch United Christian Broadcasters' new Forces Prayerline for servicemen and women and their families. He speaks here about what it is like to be a Christian in the Armed Forces and the prayerful support that churches can offer.

CT: You are a committed Christian. What initially inspired you to join the Armed Forces?

PE: I wouldn't have said I was a Christian at the time, but one of the things I had been told when I was quite young was that service in the Forces and Christianity are not incompatible. And since I've become a Christian, one of the stories I take great heart from is when Jesus meets Cornelius, the Roman centurion, and praises him for his great faith. It seems to me that it's not incompatible and I've never had any particular issues with it since I became a Christian.

CT: Did you ever find yourself in a position where you felt you were being asked to do something at odds with your Christian beliefs?

PE: No. Actually what I found is that it is a tremendous help on operations because it gives you courage and hope and allows you to look at things with a higher perspective. A young soldier at the Forces Day of Prayer on Thursday said that, when things were looking bad - they had lost their leader and the enemy was closing in and he could see the fear in his comrade's eyes - he had been hugely reassured by a text he had read just that morning from the Bible that just spoke right into that situation and he was able to deal with it and lead the other chap out of it.

CT: It's quite an unusual context to apply your faith in.

PE: It is, but of course there are more mundane areas that are still very important. I've been faced with difficult situations in terms of budgets and people suggesting, when there's a problem, that we should cover up what's gone wrong to show ourselves in a better light. And I said, "No, we're not going to do that, we're going to say that we made a mistake, we got it wrong and we're going to do something to put it right."

CT: Did that sit well with other people who were not Christian?

PE: If you're the boss and it's your budget, you've got to take responsibility for your decisions, and for me it's important to make the right decision and tell the truth and they seemed to accept that because they know, well actually, he's going to have to be accountable for it and he's clearly not worried about that. So I have found my faith hugely helpful in dealing with some of those difficult issues where there is perhaps a moral dimension.

CT: When you are on operations, presumably it's difficult to go to a Sunday service and you might not have the structures of faith that you might usually have at home. Is it easy to find that time to just be with God?

PE: I think it depends on how important your faith is to you. If your faith is important to you, you will find the time. On operations, one of the things that the Forces are good at is that they do provide spiritual support, so in most of the places you are deployed to you will have access to a padre. It may not be every day but there will be a padre, a chaplain assigned to your unit, who is there to provide support and can supply you with any of the material you need. For example, the Forces have camouflaged Bibles available and there are field prayer books.

And there are services held on operations. When I was in Bosnia there were services. We weren't on the frontline but there were services every Sunday. And they were just held wherever they could be held, sometimes in a room somewhere or even in the open air. Chaplains are very good at doing that, at meeting the spiritual needs of people in the most difficult of places, particularly on operations. And it comes down to how important is your faith to you.

I spent a lot of time reading the Bible on operations. I had a small pocket Bible and I read it every night that I could.

CT: Servicemen have a reputation for being jack the lads. What did the other officers think of your faith? Were they indifferent when they saw you reading the Bible or were they curious? Was there anyone who found himself thinking about God who hadn't thought about Him before being on an operation?

PE: Well, people have always treated me very kindly. I became a Christian about half way through my career so I didn't go through that phase as a young officer when you are perhaps more likely to come under pressure and be teased about it. And I take my hat off particularly to junior soldiers and officers who are in that situation. I think it is quite tough for them to live out their faith.

People have, by and large, been very kind to me and very gracious. They will sometimes say things like 'oh you're a God botherer' but that's fine. I've been there, I've been on the other side of the fence, so I understand their perspective. I'm not afraid to talk about it and explain my faith if it's appropriate and it comes up, but equally I'm not going to give people a hard time if they have a different world view.

CT: I imagine you must have some very deep conversations with your comrades about the meaning of life, especially when you are faced with the possibility of death on a daily basis?

PE: That's particularly true on operations, but I would say that most of the time people avoid talking about faith, they just avoid the subject, they don't want to go there. And you can see in the conversation if someone is uncomfortable because they will either change the subject or they just won't respond to what you've said.

But on the other hand there are many people who are very interested. Chaplains are frequently deployed on operations and have some amazing stories to tell. One of the chaplains yesterday was talking about what he called "significant encounters" in a bomb shelter that was being attacked. He would get talking to someone and find out that they were either a Christian or were seeking answers. So there are opportunities to discuss issues of faith, particularly on operations.

Whereas in the past the military used to provide a degree of teaching and education about the Christian faith to all soldiers, through things like "padre's hours"; that has slowly faded out. So a lot of soldiers go off into conflict situations without ever having really heard or thought about the bigger questions of life and death and eternity. My view is that we need to redress that, and that's not in the sense that everyone should be converted. But everyone should at least have the opportunity to discuss the bigger questions of life, in the context of the possibility that God does exist and the possibility that they may be able to derive tremendous strength and courage through having a spiritual faith. It's about finding ways of doing that in a way that doesn't threaten people and is compatible with the Government's multi-faith aims.

The Forces have been brilliant at supporting people of all faiths. There is a temple for the Gurkhas next to the building I am in now and there are prayer rooms on other bases. The Forces have done a lot particularly for the minority faiths, but actually there are a lot of people out there who maybe don't go to church but see themselves as Christians and we're not necessarily doing as much as we can to support them.

That's why I think things like the Forces Prayerline actually offer a real practical service for people in a way that people can connect with and understand and give them the opportunity to reflect on the spiritual dimension of their life.

CT: Servicemen and women are portrayed as having a tough exterior and not particularly sentimental or emotional. Is that just a misconception?

PE: Yes, I think that's how people in the military are often portrayed. The truth is that we're all human beings and underneath that hard macho exterior there are fears, there are worries, there are questions. And there are lots of issues that they are struggling with.

I think they don't necessarily like to make those public, which is why having a confidential anonymous prayer line is good because they can open up quietly to someone who is outside the Forces environment. It's a safe way of discussing these issues.

But the Forces Prayerline isn't only for people serving in the Forces, it's also for their families. The young families are under a lot of pressure and live in constant fear from day to day as to what the next knock on the door might bring. There is also the impact when soldiers come back from operations and they have seen perhaps some terrible things and they are not themselves and maybe they are very silent. And then they explode.

So there is a real impact on relationships. Marriage counselling and welfare services are really, really important, but prayer is one of the things we can bring to bear as well.

CT: A lot of Christians who run prayer stalls and stands say they often receive requests for prayers from people who would not describe themselves as Christians and who would never set foot in a church. Do you think that will be the case with the Forces Prayerline?

PE: I imagine so. One thing we are very keen to stress is that the Forces Prayerline is for anyone who wants prayer. It doesn't matter what their background is or what their stance on faith is, if they come from another faith or if they have no faith. If they want prayer and they want someone to pray with them and pray to God into their situation then the prayer line is for them.

I know UCB, because I have worked with them on this project for four years now, and I know that is their heart too. They don't ask people where they stand. No one will be asked what their faith is when they call the prayer line. They will be asked "what would you like prayer for?'.

There will be people who never go to church, who aren't linked to a church, who are nervous about going to their padre or talking to another Christian but they are more comfortable with ringing a prayer line which is anonymous and confidential - and they can even put the phone down in the middle - and through that they can have prayer.

My hope is that there will be many people who will be blessed through the Forces Prayerline, no matter what need they have.

CT: What should Christians be praying for when it comes to people in the military?

PE: It's important to pray for the protection of our Forces and their situations. For wisdom and guidance of those who are leading them, because they often lead in very difficult circumstances. It would be great for people to pray for relationships and marriages, for marriages to be strengthened and not damaged by the psychological impact of war.



CT: Because that's quite a strain isn't it?

PE: It is and even from my own experience - I've been blessed with a very strong marriage - but it is difficult when you come back from operations and you've been away for several months and you come in and disrupt everything, you disrupt the routine.

And if you're not careful you can think there's something wrong with your marriage when it's not that, it's just that you've been away for a long time, you've seen some pretty awful things, and your wife has been struggling with the children. Of course, sometimes it's the other way around, the wife has been deployed and it's the husband that has been left behind.

And also it's important to pray for the children of those in the Forces, because children are not stupid, they know what's going on. Although they sometimes pick up the wrong end of the stick. When I was deployed in Bosnia, the mail system wasn't working very well and when another day went by without a bluey from me popping through the door, my son looked up at my wife and said 'Daddy's dead'. I'm really glad that for once in his life he was wrong!

But there is an impact on kids and from a certain age they know what's going on and it affects them.

CT: What would you like society to be mindful of as we mark Remembrance Day?

PE: I think for me in the past Remembrance Day has been about the tremendous sacrifice that people have given in the past, but now it is also the sacrifice that is being given today. And I think it's really important that the nation understands that there are ordinary men and women out there on the frontline. And regardless of the politics of it all, they are there effectively to defend our nation and are undergoing tremendous pressure and stress and some of them are paying with their lives or serious injuries and it is really important to pray for people to remember that it is going on today.

One of the things I think our people really value is a sense that the nation is behind them. It's not good when soldiers come home and people jeer at them in the streets or spit on them. Because then they think "Why am I doing this?"

I wonder if, for people coming back with war trauma, that sense that the nation is behind them is part of the healing process, that whatever they've been through they feel that it was worth it because people value what they've done?

It would also be good if people could pray for people to have a better understanding of what the Forces do on the ground. It would be really good if people had a better idea of what they were up to and what life was about. We sometimes miss the brilliant work that people are doing on the medical side, the logistics side, the communications side.

So it's important that the nation shows it is behind them. The Forces Prayerline is a part of the nation saying we are behind you, we are praying for you. But there are other ways to show that solidarity. One padre organised for the church in his area to send a card on Remembrance Day to the soldiers in his unit and apparently that was a real morale lifter.

CT: I can imagine the troops feel a bit forgotten sometimes with the financial crisis dominating the headlines.

PE: Something that dispirits our soldiers is that it is not only about fighting. A lot of our soldiers are doing really good work in the sense that they are helping to rebuild Iraq, rebuild Afghanistan. They are building schools, they are helping to build water systems and to deliver supplies to people. But very often the news doesn't report that, it focuses on the fighting because that's what people want to read about. But in all of that we miss all the really valuable things being done on the ground in support of the local population. And that's ultimately why we are there. To try and rebuild countries and make them stronger, to help rebuild communities, so they can support themselves, to be secure and have the sort of benefits that we enjoy in the West.