What is at Stake in Military Chaplaincy When Muslims Join the Ranks? An International Comparison

Abstract

This paper analyzes the 'strategic action field' (Fligstein and McAdam 2013) evolving in five European countries (and the U.S.) around the inclusion of Muslims into military chaplaincy. The paper shows that cross-national institutional differences in particular with regard to the state-religion relationship have an influence on the accommodation of Muslims in military chaplaincy: countries with a strong focus on equality in their state-religion relationship are more advanced in setting up a Muslim military chaplaincy, whereas countries whose state-religion relationship explicitly allows for the differential treatment of religious groups lag behind, in particular if Muslims are among the groups for whom official cooperation with the state is impossible since they have not acquired the requested legal status. At the same time, the paper shows that organization-specific arguments that push for religious accommodation and equal treatment in the military lead to a convergence of practices across the different European countries. Similar things are 'at stake' in the strategic action field that evolves around the inclusion of Muslims into military chaplaincy: the distribution of scarce chaplaincy positions, training and education of chaplains, security and control of religion, attracting new recruits and assuring social cohesion as well as being in line with principles of equality and religious liberty. France stands out in this comparison because it reached a high level of Muslim accommodation in military chaplaincy that stands in stark contrast with the limited accommodation of religion reached in public schools. All European countries in the study differ fundamentally from the U.S. where the distribution of chaplaincy positions is organized along a relatively easy market-based system that does not depend on the European institutionalization of faith-specific military chaplaincies.

The political accommodation of military turbans and the police hijab in Norway: windows of opportunity

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The accommodation of Muslim body practices in German public swimming pools

“…A growing body of literature is following Bender et al's (2013) call to study religion outside of congregations and thus focuses on the negotiation of the role of religion in public organizations. Many of these studies, be they on prisons (Beckford and Gilliat 1998;Becci 2011;Jahn 2015;Martínez-Ariño et al 2015; Harms-Dalibon 2017; de Galembert 2020), on the military (Bertossi and Wihtol de Wenden 2007;Hansen 2012;Bertossi 2014;Michalowski 2015), on hospitals (Bertossi and Prud'homme 2011;Cadge 2013;Bernardo 2018) or on the police (Thériault 2009;Gauthier 2011;Lillevik 2019) contain a reflection on the negotiation of secularity and religious pluralism in a specific organizational context. They show that there are important differences in the accommodation of religious pluralism not only across national but also across organizational contexts.…”

Responses to Religious Diversity in Spain: Hospitals and Prisons from a Comparative Perspective

“…Growing religious diversity has also entailedt he increasing presenceo f"visiting ministers" (Gilliat-Ray 2010) and religious volunteers for minority religions in both settings.Y et, unlike the situationsinthe UK (Gilliat-Ray 2005), the US (Sullivan 2014) and Canada( Beckford /C airns 2015),w here inter-faith chaplainciesare more common,religious care provision in Spain is organised around faith-specific chaplaincies (Michalowski 2015). However, aclarification should be made before movingo n: whenw er efer to chaplaincyh ere,w ea re not always referring necessarily to an organised and institutionalised service,a si st he case with Catholicism.…”