Vocal Point-Chaplain Bob Freiberg

Topic: How Important Are Chaplains?

Chaplains in America are older than the nation. This includes military chaplains and legislative chaplains. In fact, when the ACLU challenged the chaplain program in the early 1980s, the Supreme Court ruled against them because of the historical reality of the whole chaplaincy program, which predated the writing of the Constitution in 1787. Dr. Bob Freiberg is a retired seminary professor who has been active as a chaplain in the Navy for several years. He is quite knowledgeable about the history of chaplains. Dr. Bob writes about a recent initiative of his with some chaplain colleagues. He writes: “We all belong to an ecclesiastical endorsing agency known as the Associated Gospel Churches (AGC) and we provide military chaplain training for Zambian military chaplains….[Recently] I went and taught 100 Zambian chaplains about the Bible and the military chaplaincy….The program has been successful and we are seeing some other nations asking to do the program for them and also civilian chaplains in Zambian fire, police, prison and hospitals are sitting in on our classes too.” Dr. Bob Freiberg joins Jerry Newcombe to discuss the important role of chaplains, including recent events in Africa to help shape godly military chaplains. People can subscribe to Bob’s free, daily historical reminders by sending him an email: bob@morningblessings.org