14FEB2018 (02:12 UTC-07 Tango 06) 25 Bahman 1396/28 Jumada l-Ula 1439/29 Ren-Yin 4715
“Through all of the chaos, I realized I had to keep my eye on the prize and keep going.”-Captain Kelley Thury
The biggest hot potato about women in the U.S. military is whether they should directly work in combat jobs. But what about the spiritual battlefront?
Kelly Thury getting pinned with her new rank by her husband, and title by her father. South Dakota Army National Guard photo by Staff Sergeant Austin Pearce, 06JAN2018.
In January, South Dakota Army National Guard welcomed its first ever female chaplain, Captain Kelley Thury.
Thury stated that she never thought about becoming a military chaplain, at first. It was after graduating university, and then serving as a evangelical missionary overseas (motivated by the evangelical slogan Getting to know God and making God known) that she began to doubt what she thought was God’s plan for her: “I was left coming back to states going, ‘Okay God, what in the world? Did I hear you wrong? What’s going on? What have I done? What did I not hear correctly?”
Her brother convinced her to join the South Dakota National Guard, as a photographer. During basic training one of her drill sergeants openly professed his faith to trainees, something during my Cold War basic training would’ve gotten a drill sergeant into trouble, and I as a believer in The Constitution-Bill of Rights believe religion should be kept to oneself especially if you’re a government employee (after all Jesus in the Bible says “render unto Caeser what is his”, and “you cannot serve two masters”). But I digress. Thury credits her Bible thumping Drill Sergeant with showing her The Way: “At basic training, I had a drill sergeant who was very vocal about his faith. Right before we left in-processing and were shipped out to our respective training units, he prayed over us. I said, ‘You know what drill sergeant? Let us pray for you too.’ So I prayed for him. He was kind of the first one that spoke it out. He said, ‘Some of you are going to do certain things in the military, some of you will get out, some of you will become chaplains’ and he looked straight at me. It’s kind of when I said, ‘Yeah. I have felt the call of ministry on my life.’”
Thury also praises the chaplain training she got through the South Dakota militia: “I wasn’t thrust into a church and told, ‘Here, go lead a congregation.’ I was really led through the process by several chaplains in South Dakota. It was an incredible training experience for me because I got to see how it works before having to do it. It is a great program.”
By the way, her father is also a preacher.
STOP YOUR BITCHIN’!: 1ST EVER FEMALE U.S. MILITIA COMBAT COMMANDER!