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August
8, 2005 
VOL.
43, NO. 14Oakland,
CA
Faith moves soldier to quit Army in Iraq
Prayer sustained Joshua Casteel through his days in
Iraq, and prayer spoke to him of the gap between his faith and actions.
And it was prayer, in the end, that moved him out of the U.S. Army, away
from his fortified Humvee and the interrogation rooms at Abu Ghraib prison.
Since May 31, when he was released as a conscientious objector, Casteel
has continued to pray and ponder his experiences in Iraq, “dealing
with the profound questions of war and violence,” and sharing his
journey with others. He joined Christian Peacemaker Teams member Sheila
Provencher on her visit to the Bay Area last month, when she spoke about
her work in Baghdad.
“I’m simply asking what every other Christian who’s
passed through history has also had to ask,” he said during a presentation
at the First Congregational Church of Berkeley. “As a follower of
Christ, what does it mean to be authentic?”
The question became a vital one for Casteel, who was serving as an interrogator
and Arabic translator in the 202nd Military Intelligence Battalion. “Each
morning I rose. I prayed my prayers. I donned my M-16 and body armor.
I walked to my interrogation booth.”
There he faced “more than a few who had done plenty to earn their
stay” in prison, but most often he’d “stare across the
table at taxi drivers, at local laborers, at school boys, at young fathers,
at imams and at veterans of previous Iraqi wars.” He knew that their
arrests – from the military’s wide-cast net – often
left poor families without breadwinners.
Then he’d return to his barracks with “the rows and boxes
of goodies sent from the States, entire boxes of snacks that would usually
just get thrown away because the soldiers couldn’t possibly eat
them all.” And he’d wonder what the families of the imprisoned
men were eating.
He also returned to pray, “kneeling before an altar of cardboard,
cutout icons, and rosaries made of ranger beads, praying for the strength
to get through another day, to find justice, to be a servant of justice.”
Casteel, who was raised an evangelical Christian and converted to Anglicanism,
“by almost complete surprise” found himself immersed in a
“Marian prayer life.” He prayed the Magnificat and the Hail
Mary, in addition to his own petitions; he relied on traditional prayers
of the church to guide him beyond his own pressing needs.
“One does not think clearly when bombed on a regular basis,”
he said. “I knew that I needed to pray for something greater than
my own safety.” So he prayed that he could see the truth and let
it shape him, “even in the midst of threat.”
When he went out in a convoy, armed and shielded by a Humvee, he was filled
with terror at “becoming one who kills.”
Once, just outside Baghdad airport, he was following routine and pointed
his rifle outside the window of his armored Humvee. “Through the
sights of my rifle I saw the faces of three young shepherd boys, probably
eight years old each.”
He was stricken. “I realized in that moment that I had just pointed
a loaded weapon at three eight-year-old boys, all with whom I’d
made eye contact.” He thought, “How was I, an ambassador of
Christ, supposed to recall that day?”
Casteel found his question – how to be an authentic Christian –
growing ever more urgent. “How can I talk of the freedom of Christ,”
he asked himself, “while playing the role of captor and inquisitor?
How can I talk of faith when I only move from place to place by means
of guns pointed in all directions, even at eight-year-old shepherd boys?”
His army friends suffered as well, though not all had the consolation
of faith. Back in the States they grew uneasy during ceremonies that honored
their work. “They pinned medals on us, which my friends and I wanted
to lock away from sight,” he said. They were praised as heroes,
but “no one could tell us why.”
The gap between his faith and his role as a soldier grew too wide to sustain,
and Casteel applied for conscientious objector status. His case was “probably
atypical,” he said. “I had the support of my entire chain
of command.”
In a matter of weeks, his investigation was complete, and he was free,
but a friend “had the absolute opposite experience” and was
turned down. “It’s about 50-50 who wins,” Casteel said.
“I’m still a man in process,” he told the audience in
Berkeley, still trying to understand what he experienced and how best
to bring peace to the world. “I have to believe there is a more
perfect way,” he said.as their prophet; and Turkmen Muslims.
Joshua
Casteel
