A Bridge in Babylon: Stories of a Military Chaplain in Iraq. Owen R. Chandler. St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 2021.

Recent works of note on the chaplaincy have generally fallen into one of two categories: scholarly treatments of the institution, often focused on one particular war or era; and individual or collective chaplain memoirs. Many of the broader histories, such as Ronit Y. Stahl’s Enlisting Faith, have offered thoughtful appraisals of the impacts of the military chaplaincy on American society, or of American society on the military chaplaincy. Conversely, more narrowly focused chaplain memoirs, such as James D. Johnson’s Vietnam-centric Combat Chaplain, can offer a level of granular detail and personal experience which the more sweeping academic tomes rarely provide. Both types of works are necessary, yet the former category necessarily relies on the latter; without the firsthand insights of those who served, scholars may struggle to understand larger historical trends later on. To that end, historians will soon begin offering comprehensive interpretations of more contemporary conflicts, including the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Chaplains who have served in these recent conflicts will also likely need to seek out the wisdom and insights of other clergy as they continue to process their own experiences and emotions. Owen R. Chandler’s 2021 memoir A Bridge in Babylon: Stories of a Military Chaplain in Iraq has much to offer to both readerships, as well as to other parties interested in the lived experiences of military chaplains.

Fittingly for this journal, Chandler notes his desire early on that his book serve as “a bridge, a way of addressing a common set of dilemmas: the gulf between the military and civilian worlds, between veterans’ complicated experiences and a public that has become accustomed to war, and between the reality of the Guard/Reserve and a perception that only ‘active duty’ military men and women matter.”[1] Rather than offering lengthy discourses or discussions on these rifts, Chandler instead tells stories—stories of his life at home, his service in his local congregation, his call to the chaplaincy, and his experiences in Iraq. “I understand my job as crafting a bridge between the sacred stories of God,” he writes, “and the daily stories of my congregation.”[2]

Though Chandler’s assembled stories range widely in topic and tenor, his main purpose in selecting and telling these particular tales is to debunk three widely held misconceptions or stereotypes related to the armed services and their constituent parts. These harmful notions can be challenged and rebutted, he notes in the introduction, but it will “require us, the public, to hear the prayers and stories of our veterans.”[3] Stereotypes, in the military as in any area of life, are often born of unfamiliarity, and misperceptions of veterans and their experiences frequently derive from a general lack of interest on the part of the broader public. Yet Chandler also acknowledges that this conversation is a two-way street, and veterans often struggle, for various reasons, to find the words they need to respond to innocuous but ill-formed inquiries such as, “So what was Iraq like?”[4]

A lack of understanding between veterans and the civilians on whose behalf they served is detrimental in its own right, but, as Chandler reminds readers, this relatively widespread ignorance about veterans’ experiences is made possible by the inherent nature of modern warfare, which can easily conceal or obscure the dangers and difficulties to non-participants. “To the general public, war is costly,” he writes, “but only monetarily.”[5] Even then, war often sparks economic development on the home front, and “as long as those who lose their lives are from other countries because we outsource the fighting to them,”this seems a small price to pay.[6] The clergy itself can be complicit, Chandler admits, “for we rarely discuss or even pray for the wars in which we are still engaged.”[7] Readers may or may not agree with Chandler’s estimation of the costs of war, or his perception of who paid the lion’s share of the bill. Yet his broader point—that most Americans on the homefront are largely sheltered from the realities of war abroad—remains persuasive.

 What are the three troublesome myths, though? First, Chandler observes, “People assume that veterans don’t like talking about their experiences because the trauma of war was so intense.”[8] Chandler acknowledges that film-, television-, and video-game-driven popular perceptions of combat do sometimes reflect the realities faced by soldiers. More commonly, however, the stresses of service are those of the “hurry up and wait” pacing of military life and the “second-order pressures” faced by support and other personnel.[9] “They also lost part of themselves externally, internally, and spiritually,” he laments, whether or not they ever fired a weapon. Chapter four, which describes an instance when a false alarm of mortar fire led Chandler to fear for his life while suffering through a bout of food poisoning in a port-a-potty, uses a touch of gallows humor to convey how even the most humdrum of circumstances can be transformed to something more dire in a moment’s time.

Chandler contends next that, in general, “People discount reservists as irrelevant.”[10] This is the case, he notes with a touch of irony, despite the reality that most Americans are more likely to know someone in the Reserves or the Guard than someone on active duty. Additionally, the contributions of the Reserves and the Guard have been and remain indispensable to long-term military endeavors, making the underestimation of their importance all the more unfortunate. And even within the Reserves, the distinction between those wearing the combat patch and those with “slick-sleeves” threatens to further obscure the valuable contributions of those whose service did not happen to include combat.[11]

The last of Chandler’s targeted clichés is, as he puts it, that “[p]eople believe that wars are fought exclusively by young men and women.”[12] Chandler’s own experience challenges this canard. Prior to entering the chaplaincy, he had served congregations within the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) for several years already, and he was thirty-two, with a wife and two daughters, when he received initial notice of his deployment. But he is certainly no lone wolf in this regard. “We [in the Reserves] are in our thirties, forties, even fifties,” he points out, with all of the work, family, and other home front obligations and concerns that come with increased age.[13] Chandler spotlights the deleterious impacts of service on human relationships, sexual and otherwise, in the troubling but powerful ninth chapter of the book. This chapter merits a brief content warning in the Author’s Note, though Chandler also rightly contends that “it would be shortsighted to dismiss these details of war. The loneliness, the lack of intimacy, and the destructive sexual habits of military men and women destroy the soul more pervasively and as lastingly as bodily harm.”[14]

To give too many specific details of the stories Chandler includes in A Bridge in Babylon would greatly undercut the effectiveness of the book; after all, this work is a memoir, not a scholarly history of the Iraq War or a theological treatise on the chaplaincy. But speaking generally, Chandler’s assembled stories, presented with some identifying details changed and not in strict chronological order, powerfully convey the impacts of war on chaplains and their families, as well as the multifaceted roles played by chaplains in those conflicts. They reveal the expectations placed on chaplains by others in the service, along with the hopes and desires that they bring to their work. They illustrate not only the highs of successful spiritual guidance and personal mentorship, but also the lows of depression, addiction, suicide, and broken relationships.

A Bridge in Babylon is published by Chalice Press, the publishing arm of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), of which Chandler is a long-time member. Despite this personal connection, Chandler does not spend too much time exploring how his own denominational affiliation may have impacted his experiences, and readers hoping for such a discussion because of the publisher may find themselves somewhat disappointed. Chandler does devote a full chapter, one of the book’s very best, to his home congregation, the Saguaro Christian Church, but there is little discussion of the Disciples of Christ as a fellowship or of the wider Stone-Campbell Movement heritage of which the Disciples are a major part. This is true even in places where the group’s historical tendency towards pacifism could have provided valuable insight for Chandler’s consideration of “whether I was loving my enemies by offering direct support to their destruction.”[15] Readers seeking context on the longer historical relationship between the Disciples and pacifism would be well advised to explore, for instance, the work of Joshua Ward Jeffery, particularly his 2017 article on conscientious objectors among the Disciples during World War One.[16] Michael W. Casey’s work on pacifism within the Churches of Christ, another of the Stone-Campbell Movement fellowships, could be beneficial as well.[17]

In the end, though, readers of The Strategy Bridge are less likely to desire these denominational distinctives and more likely to want the timely and widely applicable insights that A Bridge in Babylon offers. Short, accessible, and relatively inexpensive, with an appealing cover, the paperback could easily serve as the basis for a discussion group, such as a church Bible study or a chaplains’ support group. Individually or collectively, it will be read profitably by chaplains and other service members looking for the words to describe their feelings; by policymakers and other stakeholders seeking insights into the recent lived experiences of military chaplains; and by the wider public, including future historians and other scholars of the chaplaincy and of the Iraq War.

John Young is an Associate Professor in the Turner School of Theology at Amridge University, where he teaches courses in church history. His research interests include the history and theology of the Stone-Campbell Movement as well as the intersection of American religion and popular culture.

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Header Image: A Christian Chaplain reads the last rites for Major General Maurice E. Rose (1899-1945), CG 3d Armored Division, Germany March 1945. (WW2 US Medical Research Centre)

Notes:

[1] Owen R. Chandler, A Bridge in Babylon: Stories of a Military Chaplain in Iraq (St. Louis, MO: Chalice Press, 2021), 13.

[2] Chandler, A Bridge in Babylon, 14.

[3] Chandler, A Bridge in Babylon, 21.

[4] Chandler, A Bridge in Babylon, 18.

[5] Chandler, A Bridge in Babylon, 21.

[6] Chandler, A Bridge in Babylon, 21.

[7] Chandler, A Bridge in Babylon, 22.

[8] Chandler, A Bridge in Babylon, 18.

[9] Chandler, A Bridge in Babylon, 19.

[10] Chandler, A Bridge in Babylon, 19.

[11] Chandler, A Bridge in Babylon, 30.

[12] Chandler, A Bridge in Babylon, 20.

[13] Chandler, A Bridge in Babylon, 20.

[14] Chandler, A Bridge in Babylon, 24.

[15] Chandler, A Bridge in Babylon, 78.

[16] Joshua Ward Jeffrey, “‘A Barbarous Method of Adjusting Differences’: Federal Persecution of Conscientious Objectors among the Disciples during the Great War, 1917-1918,” Stone-Campbell Journal 20, no. 1 (Spring 2017): 17-33.

[17] Michael W. Casey, “From Religious Outsiders to Insiders: The Rise and Fall of Pacifism in the Churches of Christ,” Journal of Church and State 44, no. 3 (Summer 2002): 455-475.