ADF religion declining as Christian chaplains still dominate internal mental health support

Ordained Australian Defence Force (ADF) chaplains - sometimes the "first port of call" for support - do not need mental health qualifications.

They require a theology or ministry degree and two years of pastoral experience before being embedded among units.

And, while 96 per cent of ADF chaplains are Christian, it's estimated only 20 per cent of new recruits affiliate with the faith, prompting calls to review the entire system.

"It's not a homogeneous-looking society anymore in Australia, so Defence shouldn't be either," Navy veteran Amy Blacker said.

The Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide raised direct concerns about the reliance on chaplains as support workers providing "mental health first aid" in recent hearings.

Veteran Alex* wished non-religious pastoral care was available to them in the years and months leading to their recent mental health discharge.

"It could have made a significant positive difference to the trajectory of my mental health overall," Alex said, now in their 20s.

"Perhaps, it would have prevented a complete spiral - which is what happened.

"I've never heard of anyone my age approaching a religious chaplain for anything other than a wedding."

Questions are being raised about the Department of Defence's assumption chaplains can entirely set aside religious beliefs to provide impartial wellbeing support.

Alex said witnessing chaplains offer religiously-guided pastoral care to Defence members suffering through mental health crises like PTSD seemed "quite inappropriate".

"Both are equally valuable trades but it doesn't change the fact they have different areas of expertise."

Alex delayed seeking professional help because of a Defence stigma surrounding doing so and because they felt their support options were limited.

"I could either approach a religious chaplain, who could offer informal support outside the medical team or my chain of command," Alex said.

"Or I could choose a more formal option that opened up the possibility that I would be potentially subject to negative consequences such as discrimination or rumour."

With neither option appealing, Alex stayed quiet until the deterioration of their mental health forced them into official medical channels, where they received "excellent" care before being discharged.

A veteran of more than two decades Amy Blacker said she also witnessed stigma around seeking mental health support through medical services.

"Self-referring to psychology can be seen as almost a soft choice," Mrs Blacker said.

This made chaplains an important embedded service - one which she herself accessed - when she joined and during her final deployment in 2018.

"It was a way to speak with someone in uniform or a professional, as it was, who could afford you that debrief opportunity without any kind of judgement."

As the key internal, pastoral support system within the ADF, there are no wait times to see chaplains and discussions are only reported if members are a danger to themselves or others.

Chain of command and external options like psychologists and civilian counselling services such as Open Arms leave an unattractive paper trail.

Mrs Blacker said greater diversity across all levels of the military, including the chaplaincy, "would be a huge enabler for Defence".

"[Defence] needs the opportunity to progress."

Of the 309 full-time, part-time and reservist chaplains serving across the ADF at the time of publishing, 297 of them were Christian.

But 2020 figures published by then-director of military recruiting Colonel Phillip Hoglin in ADF magazine The Forge show the decline of religious affiliation in the ranks.

Affiliation with Christianity dropped by over 25 per cent between 2003 and 2020.

ACM requested the most up to date figures from Defence but they were not provided.

On the available data's trajectory, we can predict that over 60 per cent of the ADF identifies as non-religious today.

In the 2020 article, Colonel Hoglin wrote that if the ADF was to provide effective support to its members, a shift towards secularism was essential.

"It is inevitable, given the changes in religiosity, that in the years ahead the ADF will be required to not only have the capacity to support Defence members with a diverse range of religions and beliefs, but also those personnel with no religion at all."

Greens spokesperson for defence and veterans' affairs David Shoebridge said in a Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade Legislation Committee November hearing 80 per cent of new ADF recruits had no religious affiliation.

Mr Shoebridge's claim went unchallenged and matched the trajectory of 2020 figures in the lowest ADF ranks.

Available data shows the higher the military rank, the higher the affiliation with Christianity.

As at July 1 2020, only 23 per cent of military cadets stated they were Christian, while 72 per cent of colonels and 76 per cent of generals were of the faith.

A major step forward in transforming the chaplain branch was creating Maritime Spiritual Wellbeing Officers in 2021.

ADF chaplain of 24 years Collin Acton was instrumental in establishing the trial role during his time as Navy director general of chaplaincy.

"I don't want to get rid of the chaplaincy, I just want to diversify it," Mr Acton said.

Wellbeing officers require a relevant human services degree like social work, counselling, psychology, occupational therapist specialising in mental health or mental health nurse, and two years experience in the field.

"They're the kind of skills we need because theology just doesn't give people that deep understanding of trauma and other complex issues," Mr Acton said.

Mr Acton, whose journey away from faith is well documented, said he was given no option but to leave his Navy role in 2020 after his efforts to overhaul the chaplain program.

"I was told if I want to advocate for change in Defence - because it was upsetting [the religious advisory committee], it was upsetting religious chaplains - I had to do it out of uniform," he said.

There are five permanent wellbeing officers embedded in the Navy but none in the Air Force or Army.

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"They join the military, they wear the uniform, get posted to units, they work alongside the people that they care for, they eat with them, they deploy with them," Mr Acton said.

A review of the position and its potential expansion is planned for 2024, which Mr Acton said could mean another couple of years before further roles are established.

National director for Chaplaincy Australia and member of the ADF Religious Advisory Committee to Services Ralph Estherby said he supported wellbeing officers but arguments around their need were one sided.

"I am not necessarily completely convinced that all three services will pick up a similar model because the same problems that were present in Navy are not present in Army and are not necessarily being argued," he said.

Mr Estherby said statements made about the ineffectiveness of military chaplains were "highly inaccurate".

According to the former ADF chaplain, the role had never been a purely religious one.

"It has always been to offer support to all people, whether they're people of faith or none," he said.

"What we lead with is care, support and an ability to provide a framework for people to access the other absolutely brilliant services which are already provided for in Defence."

Rationalist Society of Australia president Meredith Doig has campaigned for the secularisation of the ADF chaplain branch for the past year.

Dr Doig argued social workers with mental health support experience should be deployed across the military, schools and hospitals in key chaplaincy roles.

"It's hard for people to get over the assumption that we make in our society that somehow religiously trained people have skills in these areas," she said.

The ADF, Dr Doig said, reflected the lack of genuine separation between church and state in Australia.

"These chaplaincy roles are just one example of where the system privileges religious worldviews and particularly Christian worldviews," she said.

"The system is overtly discriminatory."

*This name has been changed to protect the person's identity.