UU minister joins Army as a chaplain

[icymist]

The Rev. George Tyger prepares for summer deployment.
By Donald E. Skinner
1.4.08

After fourteen years as a Unitarian Universalist parish minister, the Rev. George Tyger has joined the U.S. Army. And Chaplain Captain Tyger of the 1st Battalion, 6th Field Artillery, 3rd Infantry Brigade Combat Team of the 1st Infantry Division, loves his new job.

Tyger is now at Fort Hood, Texas, training with, and ministering to, the 350 men and women in the 1st Battalion. The unit expects to be deployed sometime in the summer of 2008.

Tyger’s previous ministry was at the First Universalist Church in Rochester, N.Y., where he served for six years. Although he liked parish ministry, he said he’d always had a desire to be a military chaplain. He had participated in Navy Junior ROTC in high school and served in the Army Reserves in the 1980s. He likes extreme sports and being active.

From time to time through the years as he moved from one congregation to another the idea of being a chaplain would come up. “I finally got serious about it two years ago and did a discernment process about where it is that I get satisfaction,” he said. “I really liked the idea of being with the people I minister to all the time. I feel like I understand soldiers and I believe I can do a lot more working in the military than in a parish.”

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[LiberalEsto]

1. I am astonished

that there are no other UU chaplains in the Army.

[Hellenic_Pagan]

2. Thank gods!

Now if only Pagans and Wiccans could have a Chaplain to represent them!

I have Wiccan and Pagan friends currently serving in the army and navy who are pressured by command and others to "accept evangelical xianity".

Only recently have people who have been KIA able to have a pentacle or other pagan symbol on their grave-markers.

I think it is such total fucking BS that people who serve our country and give of themselfs can't even practice their faith or have freedom of religion!

At least now there is someone who is cool with people of "alternate faiths" and doesn't feel the need to prosyletize.