A taxpayer-funded committee of religious clerics has successfully pushed the Australian Defence Force to adopt a definition of ‘spirituality’ that has been altered to include a reference to ‘God’.

Army chaplain Darren Cronshaw, writing in the 2024 edition of the Australian Army Chaplaincy Journal, revealed, in his footnotes, that the Religious Advisory Committee to the Services (RACS) added the reference to ‘God’ into a long-standing academic definition of spirituality featured in key strategic Defence documents.

In 2014, Christina Puchalski and a number of fellow researchers wrote that, at a 2009 conference focused on the topic of integrating spirituality into health care structures in palliative care, the following definition of spirituality was achieved via consensus:

Spirituality is the aspect of humanity that refers to the way individuals seek and express meaning and purpose and the way they experience their connectedness to the moment, to self, to others, to nature, and to the significant or sacred.

RACS has changed the definition to the following: 

Spirituality is the aspect of humanity that refers to the way individuals seek and express meaning and purpose and the way they experience their connectedness to God, to the moment, to self, to others, to nature, and to the significant or sacred.

The chaplain who provided the information in the Army’s chaplaincy journal said that the revised definition now featured in the Army chaplaincy branch’s Strategic Plan and the Defence Mental Health and Wellbeing Branch’s ‘Wellbeing Factors’.

The development comes as religious affiliation continues to nosedive within Defence, with official data published last year showing the continued surge of non-religious affiliation in Defence to 61 per cent.

In recent years, RACS – a committee of religious leaders with oversight of the Defence chaplaincy and a direct line to Defence chiefs – has been accused of blocking much-needed secular reform within Defence, including by working to force out of the military a champion of secular reform. 

Defence chaplains and their backers are increasingly trying to make the case that, even though a majority of Defence personnel identify as not religious, spirituality remains important and chaplains remain “fit for purpose” for attending to spiritual needs.

Even though most of their personnel say they are not religious, the Army and Air Force continue to only provide religious-based frontline wellbeing support – and, increasingly, Pentecostal and evangelical chaplaincy – to their service personnel. The Navy, meanwhile, provides a handful for secular frontline wellbeing officers. Defence data from 2022 showed that the ratio of Christian chaplains to Christian Defence personnel was 1:134, while the ratio for non-religious pastoral carers to non-religious personnel was 1:11992.

In evidence given to the Royal Commission into Defence & Veteran Suicide and to a parliamentary committee, the RSA has demonstrated that RACS members view the role of chaplains in the Defence Force as a missionary one.

Non-religious Defence personnel do not have an equivalent advisory body within Defence to advocate for their needs. Earlier this year, RSA Executive Director Si Gladman asked the responsible minister, Matt Keogh, when the government would give non-religious Defence personnel fair representation on RACS or at such an advisory level. The RSA has not received a reply.

RACS is a statutory body appointed by the federal government and consisting of 10 members from different faith communities. Each member is paid up to $778 per day to advise the Defence on religious matters and works a minimum of 40 hours per year.

Last year, the RSA raised concerns with Navy headquarters after revealing that the Navy required applicants for its secular wellbeing roles to have a “strong spiritual connection” and demonstrate how their spirituality informs their life.

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: Alex de Sousa on Flickr (CC)