"As trained chaplains, we are not qualified for the duties envisioned by SB 763," they write

More than 100 Texas chaplains have signed a letter urging Texas school boards not to replace trained social workers with religious chaplains even though the Republican-dominated state legislature has given districts permission to do so.

The controversy began earlier this year when Texas Republicans filed a bill allowing schools to hire chaplains in lieu of people who actually know what they’re doing:

… a school district may employ a chaplain instead of a school counselor to perform the duties required of a school counselor under this title. A chaplain employed under this subsection is not required to be certified by the State Board for Educator Certification.

In essence, a school would be able to bring in local pastors who have no formal certification to work with children while dismissing the experts who are actually trained to help kids.

It’s not like the bill’s backers are subtle about their intentions here. After passing a major hurdle earlier this year, Sen. Mayes Middleton, who sponsored the bill, boasted online about how his goal was “representing God’s presence within our public schools.”

The awful idea became law this past June. There’s nothing in the bill prohibiting chaplains from proselytizing to students, nor is there anything requiring chaplains from one faith to serve students from a different religious background.

Beyond passing a background check, there are no pre-requisites for the position either. What’s stopping the most fundamentalist Christian churches from declaring all of their male members honorary “chaplains” for the sole purpose of placing them in schools? (When COVID vaccines became available, plenty of conservative pastors signed formed exempting their members from getting shots. They had no problem pretending to be medical professionals; why wouldn’t they just declare their allies chaplains?)

The law also requires school districts to vote, sometime in the next six months, on whether they want to hire or accept voluntary chaplains.

It comes at a time when Texas schools are struggling to find mental health providers at all. A Houston Chronicle report noted last year that Texas public schools serving 98% of students “did not meet the Texas Education Agency’s recommendation of one counselor per 250 students.”

It all boiled down to funding. The state didn’t give districts enough money to hire counselors, social workers, nurses, and psychologists despite having a budget surplus of roughly $32.7 billion. Instead, Republicans wanted many of those positions staffed by chaplains who would undoubtedly be Christian and who didn’t need any paperwork to attest to their abilities to do the job. If districts pay those chaplains, the cash would come from money earmarked for licensed counselors and mental health professionals.

We’ve seen plenty of symbolic examples of Christian Nationalism, like putting “In God We Trust” in public schools, but this legislation actively harms children by not giving them access to qualified professionals in a place where, and at a time when, they arguably need them more than ever.

Bringing religious chaplains into schools doesn’t solve any problems; it only creates new ones. Why would a Muslim or atheist student be better off meeting with a Christian chaplain and not a trained social worker? Is there any reason to think non-Christian chaplains would be hired by any of these districts? What would the chaplain bring to the table that those other (actual) experts can’t? Absolutely nothing. If a child wants to see a pastor, their families should be able to arrange it on their own time.

Even if the chaplains were prohibited from evangelizing in the public schools, their very presence sends the message that Christianity alone can solve problems. The entire assumption that chaplains are beneficial rests on the idea that mental health problems are the result of a lack of proper spirituality.

That’s why the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, Interfaith Alliance, and Texas Impact put together a letter urging districts not to go down this dangerous path. It’s currently signed by over 100 (actual, qualified) chaplains in the state:

As trained chaplains, we are not qualified for the duties envisioned by SB 763. We cooperate with mental health counselors – we do not compete with them. Further, professions which help children with sensitive matters, such as therapists and police investigators, typically require special training on how to interview and treat juveniles. Few chaplains have this expertise. Finally, using the school safety allotment to pay for chaplains is wholly inappropriate.

…

We urge you to support religious freedom and parental rights by rejecting this harmful program to have government-approved chaplains in our public schools. We believe that a strong public school system is one in which the limited funding for safety and security of students is used to hire the most skilled professionals for those roles. We believe that families, not the government, are entrusted with their children’s spiritual development.

It’s a bold move for a group of professional chaplains to say, Don’t hire us! There are better people to do the job! Hire them instead! But that kind of humility is something many conservative Christians simply don’t have. They assume they’re more qualified to help students than trained mental health professionals and they’ll never admit otherwise because that, to them, is a sign of weakness.

It would be even better if Christian pastors took the lead here and urged their congregations to oppose the program in their districts. There’s no reason they couldn’t. None of this is a knock on the services chaplains provide—which is important and useful when people want their help.

The letter is merely an acknowledgment that the law was purposely written to have enough holes for bad actors—namely conservative Christians with no formal training—to sneak through. Hell, if you’re a good chaplain, the last thing you want are bad chaplains injecting themselves into school districts and harming students.

The law goes into effect on Friday, but school districts are under no obligation to comply with it. For the sake of their students, they’d be better off listening to the chaplains who signed this letter and making sure only qualified individuals have access to kids.

Other Texas chaplains who wish to sign the letter can do so here.