Baptism of Fire : Expressions of Faith Among U.S. Soldiers Flourish Despite Restrictions in the Gulf

Out in the Saudi Arabian desert on Christmas Eve, 28 soldiers shed their guns and worldly burdens and dip into the warm Saudi waters. This is no idle swim under the stars. Rather, it is a baptism, a ceremony admitting 28 souls to Christianity, a symbolic spiritual purification and washing away of sins.

The soldiers of Operation Desert Shield are not only being baptized regularly, but also praying, witnessing, making confession and reading the Bible. After five months of waiting for war, more and more soldiers are turning to military chaplains, sharing their innermost worries about life, death and the families they left behind.

“There are no atheists in foxholes,” William Thomas Cummings, an American chaplain in the Pacific during World War II declared--and the clergy representing almost 85 religious groups in Desert Shield say this seems to be true.

Wary of offending the people of Saudi Arabia--where all who do not follow Islam are considered infidels and where the Koran is the national constitution--the U.S. military has imposed restrictions on expressions of faith among American troops.

But while religion may have gone underground, it has not gone away.

“In 25 years in the Army I have never seen as much spirituality,” Col. Dave Peterson, chief of the nearly 1,000 chaplains for U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf, said in a telephone interview from Riyadh. “The chaplains are with their units from dawn until dusk, and that contact, as well as other things, is having an effect.”

In fact, there are many factors to explain this surge of faith among the men and women in the desert: fear, loneliness, boredom, burdens back home, a yearning for spiritual roots.

“They’re out there in the sand working hard all day, away from their families,” said Col. James Edgren, a top official in the Army chaplains’ office at the Pentagon. “When their day is done, unlike in (the) Vietnam (War), there’s no alcohol, no pornography, no movies for distraction. So when the chaplain comes by and says, ‘Hey, you want to come look at a video?’, well, it may be about the Bible or family issues, but they want to see it anyway.”

Chaplain Mike Reynolds, a division director who helps produce the curriculum for the Army chaplains’ school in Ft. Monmouth, N.J., said most of the services the clergy have performed during Desert Shield are standard. However, there have been brush-up seminars on how to minister in “mop suits,” the heavy protective gear worn in case of chemical attacks, and how to perform mass memorial services.

Most ministering goes on during small meetings in the chaplains’ unmarked tents. A passerby, seeing one of these groups, might conclude it was just an ordinary bull session, said one chaplain. But he added, “The strangest thing is the spontaneity. I think it’s because we’re constantly with the men. We eat breakfast with them, go running and are out in the field together.”

The high intensity of religious expression also may spring from what happens when men live in this sand: Three of the world’s major religions--Islam, Judaism and Christianity--were born close to the current military front. (The patriarch Abraham was said to have come from what is now southern Iraq.)

One U.S. military chaplain wrote home to his brother about “this place, this cradle of Western religious civilization. It seems to call to a man deep down in his religious consciousness.”

Among the troops, the most widely circulated publication is the Bible, officials say. Thousands upon thousands of Old and New Testaments, pocket-sized and with desert-camouflage covers, have been distributed.

And there is plenty of evidence that they are read.

Since August, when Desert Shield began, battalion chaplains have reported back to Washington nearly 1,000 “conversions” to Christianity--or, as one Pentagon official described them, “bona fide religious experiences, where a person stands up right there in the desert and says, ‘I believe in the Lord.’ ”

The conversions represent a small percentage of the U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia now. But military officials believe they are an important sign that religion is flourishing.

Still, if this military buildup has meant a boon in business for chaplains, it has hardly been business as usual.

Even as American troops landed in the gulf, Saudi religious leaders made clear they were concerned about having non-Muslims on Saudi soil. Saudi Arabia is the site of Islam’s two holiest cities, Mecca and Medina. In a country where religion and culture are one, King Fahd is considered the protector of the Islamic faith, and his government has banned other faiths’ houses of worship and has prohibited any display of religious symbols or observances by non-Muslims.

With Saudi sensibility and law in mind, Peterson, the chief of chaplains, set out to formulate a policy for U.S. troops “that could allow us to meet the spiritual needs of our service members and at the same time respect the customs of the country,” he said. “That was no easy trick, and the key word became ‘discretion.’ ”

Restrictions were applied mostly to Army, Marine and Air Force personnel near Saudi Arabia’s major cities, while chaplains at U.S. facilities and aboard U.S. ships were told to carry on as if they were on American soil.

So, for example, Air Force chaplains in Saudi cities where American troops are stationed at airports have not been wearing their insignia--a cross or Star of David. But when the chaplains go into the field, away from Arab civilians and soldiers, they put the insignia back on their collars.

Perhaps the key way in which the United States has bridged the gap between American and Saudi religious sensibility has been to try to control media reports on the subject. The Saudis and U.S. military leaders alike have done everything possible to keep coverage of religious activities off TV screens and out of newspapers. And they have largely succeeded. In particular, the Americans and Saudis have not wanted to give Iraqi President Saddam Hussein further ammunition for criticism against the Saudis in the Arab world.

Eventually, the policy that was adopted has allowed chaplains to hold religious services as long they are kept small and low-key, particularly in heavily populated areas, where chaplains are referred to as morale counselors and religious services as morale meetings. And for the first time in military history, chaplains have been discouraged from carrying out missionary and community activities the way they did in Europe during World War II and in Vietnam.

“In previous wars, we had services in downtown Saigon or downtown Paris. This time we’re staying out of downtown Riyadh,” Reynolds said. “Now, the chaplains are out in the firing areas, out in the motor pool or in the flight line. Whether they have three minutes or 30 minutes, they’re going ahead and conducting services.”

Still, at one recent gathering, a number of Marines made it clear they were chafing under the curbs. Some concern was inspired by what military officials say were faulty instructions issued early in the troop buildup, when Marines were advised not to bring religious medals along.

In this session, one young Marine stood to describe himself as “kind of troubled” by what he understood as the limits on religious expression.

“I don’t see how the Marine Corps can ask any man to hide his faith,” he said. “We’re here defending (the Saudi government). Why are we kissing their butt?”

But in Riyadh, at the central command offices for U.S. forces, the perception has been different.

“I know there have been stories back there in America that our service members have not had the opportunity to worship freely,” Peterson said. “That’s absolutely not true. We’re just trying not to be the ugly Americans. We want service members to be able to live out their faith as they always would. But at the same time, we absolutely don’t want to do damage to the Saudi-American relationship.”

Jeff Houston, a 37-year-old Baptist minister from Van Buren, Mo., who is normally stationed at Ft. Bragg, N.C., was with the first group of soldiers to hit the ground in Saudi Arabia. A chaplain for a battalion of 750 in the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, he wrote last August to friends at Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary in San Francisco, where he recently earned his doctorate:

“I have discovered that there really are ‘springs in the desert.’ The ministry here is so intense; the men are so thirsty for the water of life. We have four worship services each and every day, and . . . we are averaging over 160 at these services. . . . Last Sunday we had 12 professions of faith; the Sunday before that, we had 18. Are these conversions real--or are they merely emotional decisions coming out of the fear of the moment? I do not know. I’ll leave that question to God.”

“One thing I can say for sure,” Houston added, “the Christians have begun to stand out like beacons and have become a rallying point for soldiers. I’ve heard countless testimonies about how God is working in the lives of his people. Please pray for us that God will continue to work.”

The chaplain who wrote about the desert as a cradle of religion--whose letters were provided to The Times by his family on the condition he not be identified--also described the infectious nature of faith in close quarters:

“Sometimes at night, one of the guys will begin talking to his friend in the next cot about dying and how he hopes for the afterlife if Saddam Hussein gets him. And in all the other cots men are listening. And thinking--about what could happen to them if there is a war.

“Invariably, the next day I get five or six guys who probably haven’t talked to a priest in 10 years asking me questions about life and death and God. . . . Sometimes I too get frightened and long for spiritual comfort.”

The relatively small number of Jewish and Muslim U.S. soldiers has faced unusual circumstances in following the tenets of their faith.

For the 800 to 1,000 American Jews in Saudi Arabia, there are two chaplains with land forces and two on ships, said Rabbi Nathan Landman of the Jewish Chaplains Council in New York. Because personnel are so scattered, Jewish chaplains have conducted services as often on Mondays and Tuesdays as they have on the Jewish Sabbath.

Yet the historical enmity between Arabs and Jews apparently has not forced any special restrictions on Jewish Americans. The Saudis did not object to services for the Jewish New Year and the Day of Atonement, although King Fahd reportedly was upset by media reports that showed an American soldier blowing the shofar , or ram’s horn .

The services, in fact, were well attended, according to military officials. Said Landman: “Psychologically, these restrictions are making more religious men and women over there.”

Initially, Muslim soldiers complained that the U.S. military had not provided chaplains to lead their Friday services and that they were being kept out of Saudi mosques. But arrangements were recently made for those soldiers to use mosques within U.S. military compounds.

Stanley Scott, a 23-year veteran of the chaplaincy in the Marines, said he felt that the Saudis had tried to accommodate the religious practices of their American guests.

Talking to a group of soldiers not long ago on a stretch of sand at the headquarters of the 1st Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, Scott explained that he had spent three years in the early 1980s based in nearby Bahrain. At that time, he said, he could not enter Saudi Arabia officially as a chaplain and had to come in under different auspices in order to minister to a small contingent of U.S. troops there at the time.

Now, he told the Marines, many obviously skeptical, “The concessions that this country has made to allow me to be here are phenomenal. You may not see it, but I see it as a tremendous step forward in religious dialogue.”

In one letter to his wife, Lisa, and three teen-age daughters, Houston described a daily schedule that begins at 5:15 a.m. and ends at 10 p.m., and demonstrated that he has been able to reach out to serve the secular and spiritual needs of the soldiers in his battalion.

In addition to two daily worship services on weekdays, Houston noted that he spends most of his day counseling soldiers one on one. He has dealt with several suicide attempts, conscientious objectors and individuals whose homosexuality was troubling them.

“I talk to many guys whose marriages are falling apart because of our deployment--they feel so helpless when they get ‘the letter,’ where their wife says she’s leaving them,” Houston wrote. “They can’t do a thing about it. They can’t call, can’t go home, can’t do anything. They just sit and cry. I’m so glad our family is so strong.

”. . . Please know that I am convinced that I am right where I am supposed to be. My ministry is more intense than ever before, and in that sense I am having a party. I’ve worked for almost two weeks straight, and I am learning what it means to be poured out. It’s such a good feeling to know that I am needed and that God is meeting needs through me. There truly is joy in the midst of trials. In a sense, this is sort of like being at church camp. . . .

“My Bible study group has been studying the book of Jeremiah and praying together a lot. Kind of a strange group, but we help each other out--guess that’s what it is all about.”

The chaplains’ work for Operation Desert Shield begins even before the soldiers hit the sand. As well as introducing troops to Saudi customs and traditions, they help prepare them mentally for life on the front.

Father Tom Mullin, a Roman Catholic priest from New York who has been an Army Reserve chaplain for more than a decade, began hearing from members of his unit as soon as he was notified that he would ship out later this month.

“They were on the phone talking about leaving babies behind,” Mullin said. “People were crying about their interrupted lives. Students in the middle of their college careers were going to lose credit. I don’t think they were making excuses about not going; I think they just had to talk out their fears.”

Similarly, Reynolds recalled early one morning this fall when he was visiting Ft. Bragg, where several hundred troops were waiting to board planes bound for Saudi Arabia. As he walked up to a group of sergeants, he said, one grabbed him and pleaded, “ ‘Chaplain, would you please have a prayer with us? Right now.’ ”

Reynolds said, “I must have conducted a dozen services that morning. And by 8:30 a.m., they were all gone.”

Houston, meanwhile, has written his family that he does most of his work in Saudi Arabia out of his tent, counseling and holding services there as well as sleeping. Often he shares duties with Tom Soljhun, another chaplain. The two men hold services together and discuss ways to minister in the desert.

“Tom Soljhun and I had 130 people in our worship services this morning,” Houston said in one letter. “I led the music, and he did the preaching. We even had a choir of about 15 men who came an hour early to practice. . . . I am so surprised at the way the men sing--they really get into it. We had four other services today also--don’t know the total attendance, but more and more people are coming all the time.

“This is more like a revival than a war,” he concluded. “So strange.”

Staff writer Douglas Jehl, a reporter in The Times’ Washington bureau who has been stationed in the Persian Gulf, contributed to this story.