Cook County Sheriff, Chaplains and the Burr Oak Cemetery

What is Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart, a public official, doing with chaplains on his government team? The answer may surprise you.

Tom Dart

During the past month, Sheriff Dart has become very involved in resolving the fiasco at Burr Oak Cemetery. As part of his efforts to deal with the mess, the Sheriff has been utilizing his team of chaplains to speak with members of affected families.

Is this the right thing for a government official to do?

Yes, it is. Here's why.

Many atheists get up tight when they check in to a hotel and find a Gideon Bible in their room, usually in a drawer in a nightstand. Having that book there doesn't bother me a bit.

Hotels are in the business of providing a service -- or make that, a variety of services -- to their clients. Not every service is applicable or needed by every client.

For example, most hotels have little bottles of shampoo in the bathroom. If you shave your head and don't use shampoo, having a shampoo bottle in the room is not a problem. Just don't use it. Leave it alone.

Similarly, a blind person shouldn't be offended if there is a TV in the room, and a deaf person shouldn't be insulted if there is a radio in the room, just because a deaf person has no use for a radio. Use the services that you want and leave the rest of the stuff alone.

A sheriff is in the emergency services business. When somebody, or a family, has a problem involving a death or an injury, the sheriff's officers want to know, "What I can I do to help you deal with this situation?"

The fire and police departments are the same way, and so are hospitals. They maintain, at their disposal, a variety of resources to help those in crisis. One of those resources is an array of counselors.

Many times, persons in crisis would feel better if he or she could just speak to the spiritual advisor that they are accustomed to speaking with, but that person is not available immediately, due to the time of day, the day of the week or other circumstance, such as the counselor just not being available on a moment's notice. The sheriff and other emergency agencies keep on hand, or on call, a list of service providers, including chaplains, who have agreed to make themselves available, immediately, at a time of crisis.

For about twenty years, from around 1979 to 1999, I was a volunteer with the American Red Cross Disaster Services. My job was to make sure that people who were burned out of their homes, usually in the middle of the night, or displaced from their homes due to tornadoes or floods, had a place to stay, food to eat, cots, blankets, toiletries, shoes, glasses, medicine and clean-up kits, among other things. Often, a chaplain or two responded to the scene, after hearing about it, either on the fire department scanner, the news, or getting called.

It was my experience that, of all the people in the religion business that I've ever dealt with, civilian chaplains "get it." They were always, every one of them, nice, pleasant, courteous, helpful and knowledgeable. They were never, ever, pushy, either about getting involved or about promoting their particular faith.

If you wanted to talk, whether you were a victim or an emergency services worker, fine, they'd listen to you and respond in a helpful way. If you wanted to be left alone, they'd leave you alone. They were just there to help, and not engage in any form of religious advocacy. The Red Cross also had secular mental health workers available, either on the scene at large-scale events, or available at single-family type situations.

The chaplains and I always got along, great, at disasters. We were both there for the same reason: To help people get through a crisis, because we had lots of experience in dealing with those kinds of crises and it was usually the first time for the victim.

Also with regards to the chaplains, it didn't even matter what faith the chaplain subscribed to and whether the disaster victim subscribed to the same faith, because the issues were pretty much the same: How do I manage this crisis situation, and "Why did God do this to me?"

Chaplain involvement with government emergency agencies, such as the Sheriff's office, is a very rare example of an appropriate situation of teamwork between church and state because, here, it really isn't a church that's involved. It's just trained counselors, who happen to also be trained in spiritual matters, offering to help their neighbor at a time of crisis.

It's a good thing.