In the Defence Force, religion is a barrier to care – and it
shouldn’t be
By Collin Acton OAM
In February 2018, as head of the Royal Australian Navy’s Chaplaincy Branch I attended an international Chiefs of Chaplains conference in
Helsinki, Finland. It was a fascinating experience. I remember one conversation with a participant – a fellow runner and the then US Army’s Chief of Chaplains. He mused that it would be difficult to conceive that anything like today’s chaplaincy model would exist if the US Department of Defence were starting over again with a clean sheet of paper. He was, and continues to be, right. When more than 60 per cent of the Australian Defence Force (ADF) – or, more tellingly, when 80 per cent of new
recruits – have no religious affiliation, why would you have religious clergy as the most accessible and available support to ADF people?