Under a sun-blanched desert sky, Navy Chaplain Michael Baker and Marine Sgt. Bill Hudson Gross bounce in the back of a truck as it rumbles across Camp Habbaniyah. Clad in helmets and body armor in the 110-degree F. June heat, they’re on a mission: to baptize Sergeant Gross.
“I am going to try to talk him out of it,” confesses Chaplain Baker, a tall, lanky Methodist minister whose formal Mississippi-tinged speech and posture mask an often goofy sense of humor.
It’s not the baptism itself; it’s just the part where Gross wants Baker to immerse him in the Euphrates, one of four rivers that the Bible describes as flowing from the Garden of Eden. For Gross, an infantry platoon leader who just weeks before saw two of his men wounded by shrapnel, the river has a personal connection. Two years ago he deployed to a small base on the river, where he turned his back on religion after learning of his father’s death back home. Now that he has rediscovered his faith, he feels it fitting to be baptized in a river where, he says, “a lot of people gave up hope.”
Couple of things:
It’s ‘Marine,’ not ‘marine.’
[blockquote] While chaplains are not to proselytize..[/blockquote]
Not so. Chaplains are allowed to proselytize under appropriate circumstances and in accordance with the denomination that endorsed them for chaplaincy.