California Firefighters File Lawsuit Over Chaplains in Their Ranks

While there may be no atheists in foxholes, it seems there are at least some agnostics in firefighting trenches.

Six California firefighters have gone to federal court seeking an end to the chaplain's corps of the California Department of Forestry and Fire Prevention, saying it impermissibly mingles church and state.

The middle-level officers brought the lawsuit earlier this year, saying that the chaplain's corps, run by an evangelical minister who is also a senior official of the department, was almost exclusively Christian and had improperly injected religious faith into a government organization.

The department created the corps two years ago, replacing a peer-counseling program that had existed for years. Of the first 52 people to join the chaplain's corps, all but two are Christians and wear crosses on their firefighting uniforms, according to the lawsuit. The program has since added a Buddhist and a Jew.

The complaining officers, who sardonically call themselves the Satanic Six, object to the chaplains' wearing religious insignia while on duty and say it is only a short step from counseling fellow firefighters to proselytizing them.

The plaintiffs include a Baptist, an Episcopalian, a Christian Scientist, a Jew and a self-described "rationalist agnostic."

Their suit asks that the official chaplain's corps be disbanded and replaced with a nonuniformed, volunteer group of religious counselors. It also asks that no state money be spent for the training or services of chaplains, and that no explicitly religious language be used at public ceremonies, like fire academy graduations.

"This program has given a de facto acceptance of religion in the workplace," said one of the officers, Robert Lewin, a battalion commander and the group's spokesman.

Commander Lewin said he believed that those who had joined the program were motivated by sincere religious faith, but he objected to its predominantly Christian cast and the use of Christian symbols on public property and religious language at department functions.

"I know it comes from their hearts," said Commander Lewin, who teaches at a Jewish Sunday school in his off hours. "But it's not my heart. It's not my religion."

The California Department of Forestry and Fire Prevention is the state's front-line force to respond to fires, floods and other disasters. It employs roughly 4,000 full-time firefighters and administrators, supplemented by thousands of volunteers and prison inmates during fire season, which generally runs from May to November.

Commander Lewin, who was interviewed at his home in San Luis Obispo along with three of his fellow plaintiffs and two lawyers, has served in the forestry department for 22 years. All of his co-complainants have at least 19 years of experience with the department.

Commander Lewin said that he and his colleagues had tried for two years to negotiate changes to the chaplain's program to avoid a lawsuit, but that the department's leadership was unresponsive.

The plaintiffs say that unlike chaplains in the military and most other public safety organizations, the California forestry chaplains mix religious ministry with their day-to-day duties as firefighters or supervisors. Military chaplains are ordained in various denominations and serve only as religious counselors, not as combat troops. They are outside the chain of command and have no authority to promote or assign troops.

Commander Lewin said he knew and had served with a number of firefighters in the chaplain corps, including its director, Jay Donnelly, an assistant chief in the forestry department who has written and spoken publicly about the religious vision that inspired him to begin the program. Chief Donnelly is an ordained minister in the Foursquare Church, an evangelical Christian denomination.

Chief Donnelly deferred to the agency's lawyer to answer the plaintiffs' objections to the program.

Norman Hill, the chief counsel for the forestry department, said he believed the chaplain program was constitutional. "This is designed to provide an additional dimension to the counseling people receive when they have a need for these services," Mr. Hill said. "There is very minimal involvement of religion in the workplace."

He said fire service chaplains cannot initiate religious discussions and can provide spiritual counseling only when asked. No one is required to accept a chaplain's services, and other employee counseling programs are available, he said.

"We are not promoting religion but only providing services to people who need it," he said. He said that chaplains cannot wear religious symbols during normal working hours. They are not permitted to refer to themselves as chaplains except when acting in that capacity.

Carol Sobel, one of three lawyers representing the complaining firefighters, said such small changes do not alter the fundamentally religious nature of the chaplain program.

"The department has other programs that virtually duplicate what the chaplain program is doing in a nonreligious context," said Ms. Sobel, a former lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union who is donating her services to the plaintiffs. "They have psychologists and other counselors on staff, and they had a nonreligious peer counseling program, which this replaced. The only reason for this program is to add a religious component to what the department is already doing in a nonreligious manner."

From The New York Times on the Web (c) The New York Times Company. Reprinted with Permission