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American Humanist Association

Advocating progressive values and equality for humanists, atheists, and freethinkers

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August 19, 2013 News

He wants to be the Navy’s first humanist chaplain

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August 19, 2013 News

By David Zucchino
August 17, 2013

Jason Heap grew up in Texas among Baptists and Lutherans. He earned a master’s from Brite Divinity School at Texas Christian University.

Now, at age 38, Heap wants to be a U.S. Navy chaplain. But Heap is a humanist who doesn’t believe in God, and the U.S. military has never sanctioned a humanist chaplain. Nor has the Navy acted on Heap’s application, filed last month, to become its first approved humanist chaplain.

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“Thousands of our men and women in the services have their own life stories and issues they wish to speak to a chaplain about, but are unable to … because they do not have access to a nontheist chaplain,” Heap wrote in an open letter to the American Humanist Assn.

To read the rest of this LA Times article, click here.

 

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