Spiritual Fitness:
What is it, can we train it and if so, how?

By Master Sgt. Eric B. Pilgrim

Chaplain Mark Johnston, U.S. Army Sergeants Major Academy chaplain

Army leaders are taking total Army fitness more serious these days in light of unfolding events in the Global War on Terrorism. The war has touched everybody's life in one way or another; good in some ways, bad in others.

In an effort to stay on top of total fitness, renewed emphasis is being placed on every aspect of military life from physical training to Army Values, Warrior Ethos, family assistance programs, post deployment counseling and countless Equal Opportunity classes. The list goes on and yet, news continues to flow from Iraq and Afghanistan of allegations of another revenge killing, another senseless rape or murder of innocents; another immoral act from an American warrior who swore to uphold the Army Values.

One chaplain, Maj. Mark Johnston, at the U.S. Army Sergeants Major Academy, says this increase in wrongful actions is a symptom of deep spiritual bankruptcy beginning long before Soldiers enter the Army. He and other chaplains are calling for new thinking on a crucial missing ingredient of Soldier health – spiritual fitness.

Surprisingly, spiritual fitness is not a new concept. It is actually a part of Army policy, found in DA PAM 600-63-12 and Field Manual 16-1. But like the elephant standing in the front yard, spiritual fitness has gone largely unnoticed. Johnston wants to change all that but in order to do so, some questions need to be answered first.

"Three questions challenge the whole purpose of spiritual fitness: what is it, can we train it, and if so, how," Johnston said. "Those are the three prongs that we are dealing with." In order to answer those questions, he met last month with Master Sgt. Harry Bryan, Johnnie Dills, Sgt. Maj. (ret.) Rebecca Meldrum, Sgt. Maj. Carrie Stevenson, Command Sgt. Maj. Ronald Cook Jr., and Benjamin Stevens, all from the Directorate of Training and Development at the academy. They develop training modules for the Noncommissioned Officers Education System.

Johnston: So, what is spiritual fitness?

Meldrum: I think spiritual fitness is the development of those personal qualities needed to sustain a person in a time of stress, hardship and tragedy.

Johnston: So spiritual fitness is a component of a personal sense of well-being that can help people to go through some of the very difficult times in life.

Meldrum: Right, go that extra mile or pull up that strength you need to go forward.

Stevens: To me, somewhere in there you have to draw the line between what's right and what's wrong. [Some] Soldiers in combat have seen others shot or mutilated or just blown apart. They don't think about the consequences, they just react to get revenge.

Bryan: [I] approach spiritual fitness more as something to do with self discipline. When you get right down to it, the only difference between an army and a mob is discipline. Last year, I [was] talking about this [in a Basic Noncommissioned Officer Course teleconference], especially with Soldiers that had just come back from combat. They basically viewed Iraq as the Wild, Wild West: "If they don't look like me I can shoot them and there will be no consequences." We've got to make sure the Soldiers understand that there are reasons you have laws of the land in warfare; there're reasons that you have that self-discipline.

Johnston: What I'm hearing from both of you is spiritual fitness may have some positive impact on morality on the field of battle. Does it have some means of correcting what might be the abuses or does it have some means of reinforcing the positive?

Bryan: Well yes, that's just part of your Army Values. They go hand-in-hand.

Johnston: Then getting back to that first question, what is spiritual fitness?

Cook: I think it's more like living a healthy and balanced life. That means you have to develop skills internally to make yourself better.

Johnston: So it would be a conglomerate or a composite of healthy habits?

Cook: It's getting the Soldier to look at how they work in the workplace and how they improve their ethical self, and we have to start with a foundation somewhere.

Johnston: Well, the Army Values are a foundation. I believe that you can go to Basic and you can have a drill sergeant reinforcing Army Values to recruits and they will memorize the Army Values. But how do they internalize those values in a way that really becomes a part of them? I'm thinking spiritual fitness is not so much the drill sergeant telling a recruit what Army Values are or are not, but rather, a personalization that has not a horizontal plane of man to man but a vertical plane of a higher power.

Dills: You might not be religious but if you have human values, you may also overcome some of the problems. I think, though, that when people see this word spirituality, the first thing they do is think, "Somebody's going to talk to me about religion."

Johnston: Is spiritual fitness devoid of religious meaning or is it inclusive of religious meaning, or does it matter?

Bryan: Quite frankly I don't think it matters. As long as you get to the end result, the direction in which you get there is pretty much irrelevant. We don't care how they get there, as long as they're there.

Johnston: Do you think spiritual fitness has a religious sound to it because of the word "spiritual"?

Stevenson: I think it can, yes.

Johnston: As I understand it, spiritual fitness is a sense of well-being that individuals possess or maintain and nurture often by virtue of personal choices. But if those personal choices contradict the institutional value system, then we've got a question that comes up as to whether the accommodation of that religious group can be permitted for reasons of safety. Here's something though, can an atheist have spiritual fitness?

Bryan: They may not profess a belief in God but within their mentality they have a line they're not going to cross whether they call it religion or atheism. I don't believe in God but I'm not going to cross that line.

Johnston: Can we suggest another word, then? Like serenity? Do you think a Soldier who is going into harm's way might seek some sense of personal serenity prior to going into combat? It could then be a part of the definition. What about hope? Perhaps respect for life? We can begin to identify spiritual fitness when we identify certain characteristics. So let's assume we have then a solid understanding of this concept; is it something that can be trained?

Stevens: As long as we keep it within a proper perspective, don't make it overly religious. It has to be found in words like you used; serenity, combat morality. When you tie it into words like that, it will be more appropriate and better respected.

Bryan: But you cannot completely divorce religion when teaching it; you have to show there are many paths to get there. The path the Soldier chooses to get there has to go with their value systems.

Johnston: Spiritual fitness doesn't line up entirely with my beliefs as a Christian, but it's important to note that this is not about proselytizing, it's not about evangelism. So where then do we implement it?

Cook: This needs to begin being taught in (Advanced Individual Training) at a minimum because there are Soldiers who graduate AIT and go straight into war. It needs to be at the very bottom...

Johnston: When it comes down to the very foundational level with training Soldiers and introducing them to this concept of spiritual fitness, we are going to have to rely on training the trainer. We're going to have to be involved at the very bottom, so that the initial entry of men and women from the American culture – the video culture, the video game culture, the violence culture – are all introduced to this idea that good Soldiers are Soldiers who maintain hope, who maintain serenity, who seek to respect life and are responsible. These things fit in and fold into Army Values.

Stevenson: But I think people tend to forget that values are personal. When the Army came out and said, "These are the Army Values" – "Okay that's the Army Values, but it's not necessarily your values or my values."

Johnston: And that's the real. This is the ideal – When I put on this uniform, I put on Army Values. But you're exactly right, the reality is that you can put this uniform on, but how do you wear it inside? My contention is that spiritual fitness is a basic upon which the Army Values flourish. It's like a tree with fruit. The fruit of spiritual fitness ought to be selfless service, ought to be loyalty and ought to be personal courage. The problem is, we don't know how to define spiritual fitness easily, we do not know how to train it well, and we do not know how to facilitate that training, so that it becomes a real part of life.

Editor's Note: Chap. (Maj.) Mark Johnston and the members of Directorate of Training and Development talked for more than 1½ hours in an effort to come to a consensus. Johnston later addressed students from Sergeants Major Course Class 57 and continues to develop a plan to make spiritual development a part of mainstream Army life. For a detailed explanation of Johnston's take on spiritual fitness, log into Army Knowledge Online and visit our Web site.

Source: NCOJ, Spiritual Fitness: What is it, can we train it and if so, how?