The Royal Australian Navy is requiring that applicants for its secular wellbeing roles have a “strong spiritual connection” and demonstrate how their spirituality informs their life.

An advertisement on the Australian Defence Force Careers website asks applicants for the position of Wellbeing Officer to:

• “Articulate and illustrate (with examples) how they attend to and nurture their own spirituality.”
• “Articulate how their spirituality informs their own life, such as through choices and values.”
• “Articulate and illustrate any experience with regards to a well-rounded world view of spirituality and religion, such as exposure to diverse world views, beliefs or cultures.”

The Navy introduced the secular wellbeing support/pastoral care roles into its chaplaincy branch in 2020 to help meet the needs of its majority non-religious workforce. The Navy originally referred to the role as ‘Maritime Spiritual Wellbeing Officers’ (MSWOs), but has since moved to calling them ‘Wellbeing Officers’.

In 2022, the Navy removed references to ‘theology’ as a relevant qualification for the secular roles after the Rationalist Society of Australia sought an explanation about the inclusion of religious credentials in job advertisements.

In response to the RSA, the then Deputy Chief of Navy, Rear Admiral Chris Smith, said that he had directed his staff to “refine the MSWO narrative to clarify references to ‘spirituality’ and ‘spiritual connection’”.

It is not clear whether Rear Admiral Smith’s direction has been implemented fully in the current job advertisement.

The Army and Air Force still have not made secular reforms to provide their majority non-religious workforces with frontline non-religious wellbeing support – instead opting to rely on largely Christian chaplains and increasingly Pentecostal chaplains.

In a discussion about Defence chaplaincy on Christian radio in April, the Pentecostal member of the Religious Advisory Committee to the Services (RACS), Ralph Estherby, said that “all people have some level of spirituality”.

The taxpayer-funded RACS, which has oversight of Defence’s chaplaincy capability, has been accused of blocking much-needed secular reform and forcing out Navy’s former head chaplain, Collin Acton, who advocated for the reform.

Last year, the RSA revealed that a Defence review of Navy’s Wellbeing Officer roles showed “strong demand” among Navy personnel for non-religious pastoral care.

The review also revealed a dramatic undersupply of secular wellbeing support for non-religious Defence personnel, with the ratio of Christian chaplains to Christian Defence personnel being 1:134, while the ratio for non-religious pastoral carers to non-religious Defence personnel being 1:11,992.

Non-religious personnel make up more than 60 per cent of the entire Australian Defence Force and about 80 per cent of new recruits.

The Rationalist Society of Australia is actively lobbying and advocating for secular reform of the Defence Force. See the latest updates here.

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Si Gladman is Executive Director of the Rationalist Society of Australia. He also hosts ‘The Secular Agenda’ podcast.

Image: Department of Defence/Commonwealth of Australia