Description
Military chaplaincies are conventionally analysed through the lens of mental health provision and pastoral care within armed forces. This paper challenges this normative perspective, arguing for the critical importance of understanding the strategic and political dimensions of military chaplaincies, particularly their overlooked role in counter-insurgency and pacification operations and in mitigating soldiers’ moral conflicts during violent engagements. Drawing from critical military studies and the practice approach to security phenomena, the paper first examines why chaplaincies matter in contemporary analysis, highlighting how, despite formal secularism, in liberal countries the separation of church and state remains contested, making chaplaincies sites of political dispute, as illustrated by the Brazilian case involving conservative and authoritarian groups. Second, it delves into military doctrine, primarily focusing on the evolved U.S. model, to analyse how religious assistance is conceptualised and instrumentalised, particularly concerning counter-insurgency and pacification strategies. Finally, the paper presents Brazil as a key case study. It scrutinizes the Brazilian Army's recent manual on religious assistance and its application during military interventions in urban favelas, as well as tracing the expansion of these practices to military police forces nationwide. This analysis, informed by the rapid growth and politicisation of Evangelical chaplaincies in Brazil, underscores how religious actors and ideologies are increasingly integrated into state security apparatuses as instruments of pacification and social control, demanding closer critical scrutiny.
