How much money is spent for chaplains?

You serving in the military Crabby? No, I thought not carry on with your ranting...Well Crabby they did not pass the plate in Vietnam! And I dubt the Chaplins are passing the plate in Iraq.

Money spent on chaplains is the same as that spent on any other officer of similar rank and time in grade. Chaplains, aside from religious duties perform a number of very important functions. They fill the role of counselor/therapist, they are the first point of contact anytime there is a death or serious illness in the family, they provide pre-marital and marrige cxounseling if requested, all for free. But probably the most important function is to provide a person outside of the normal chain of command that a servicemember can go to in absolute safety and with no fear of repurcussions. This is for anything from a complaint of harassment bfrom his 1st SGT / Chief to the way the CO runs the unit. Chaplains provide an invaluable way for servicemembers to make legitimate complaints without having to involve the person they are complaining about. For this if for no other reason they are well worth their pay.

As to the "Seperation of Church and State" this was a fiction imposed upon us by the Supreme Court. The actual wording in the constitution is "Amendment I: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

What this was meant to do was keep from imposing a state mandated religion on the populace, not to keep religion out of the government.

You apparently have never served in the military, and benefited from the Chaplain's presence.

And, FYI, the Chaplain only gets pay from the military. Soldiers, etc., do not give the Chaplain any more money than what the military pays him.

And, while you might find missionaries doing similar work, they are not military, and don't have the point of view that a service member has. If you are going to minister, you should walk in their shoes. A Chaplain has, a missionary likely has not.

And, since you brought it up, Chaplains insure the rights of the service members to worship according to their own conscience, and they are the guardians of that part of the First Amendment to the US Constitution.

Further, George Washington (Remember him? Father of the country, etc.?) asked Congress to supply Chaplains to the Continental Army. They were more than happy to agree.

He wrote: "the chaplains of the several brigades will render thanks to Almighty God for all his mercies, particularly for his overruling the wrath of man to his own glory, and causing the rage of war to cease among the nations."

UPDATE: Yes, the chapels do take a collection, but none of that goes to the Chaplains. It goes into the Non-Appropriated Fund, for use by the chapel programs. The monies fund youth events, men's and women's retreats, Thanksgiving and Christmas baskets for military families who wouldn't get anything otherwise, and so on. None of the money goes to the Chaplains. Zero. I served on the Chaplain's Fund Committee, and there are regulations that govern disbursement of those funds.

from what I have seen the Chaplin has a bloody hard job with the only difference being that he does not carry a gun............

and if its just officers that you are ranting about well often for the amount of work some of them do a lo of people shake their heads and wonder why they get paid so much BUT they did the work to get there so at least they have some skills.

Leave them alone IMO

Could you point me to that famous "separation of church and state" clause in The Constitution?