by Nathan Becraft

Darold Bigger grew up listening to his father’s exciting stories of the second World War. “Like any kid exposed to both those stories and Pathfinders, I couldn’t help but become a little fascinated with military life,” Bigger says. By the late 60s, however, his fascination with the military had turned to pacifism.

“Now when I see myself in the mirror wearing a Rear Admiral’s uniform, I ask myself ‘How did I get here? Have I really changed all that much?’”

In 1999 Bigger, a professor of religion and social work at WWC, became senior chaplain of the United States Naval Reserves. His duties are primarily administrative, overseeing the religious needs of more than 100,000 Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard Reservists.

It is a role almost unthinkable by those who knew him during his years at Walla Walla College in the mid-60s. In college Bigger studied to be a minister, and as a theology major he had a draft-deferred status. His college experience included a year studying in France. His mistake in not notifying the draft board of his year abroad would catch up with him after his college graduation in 1966.

In 1968 the draft board noted his excursion to France and called him to a physical during the second year of his ministerial internship in the Idaho Conference. By then the Vietnam conflict was raging but Bigger convinced the draft board that he would be more valuable as a chaplain after the seminary than as an enlisted man right then. In the early 1970s, when Bigger returned to the Idaho Conference after the seminary, the Vietnam conflict was winding down and the military did not need his services as a chaplain.

This close brush with military life combined with his frequent discussions on war and pacifism in his seminary ethics classes had convinced Bigger that war was never justified. The pillars of his belief were the Ten Commandments and the New Testament which were, to Bigger, specific and unequivocal in their rejection of fatal force. Secondly, divine command had higher priority than the apparent situational emergencies of civic authority. “I also came to believe that it was always possible to avoid killing by having faith that God would resolve the situation in His own way. And, that to kill is to take the law into our own hands, playing God,” says Bigger.
“Despite my relatively easy out from Vietnam, I started having serious doubts about my pacifism. I had brittle and too rigid views on war,” he says. “As the years went by, I couldn’t help but think that it was inaccurate to impose such literalistic interpretations on the Bible.” Bigger started to see his former position on war as too limiting to God.

“I was putting God in a box where He didn’t have room to move. And more often than not God acts through just people fighting for just causes. I came to believe that I would actually be shirking responsibility to expect God to take care of every difficult situation,” he explains.

A family tragedy many years later helped confirm Bigger’s emerging conclusions. In 1996 his oldest daughter, Shannon, was murdered at the age of 25. “If I had still believed as I did in the seminary—that it was God’s responsibility to intervene on her behalf—I don’t think I could have handled it. My helpless cries to God and questions to Him about fairness were painful enough, but if I had still believed that God took responsibility for preventing evil, and then simply chose not to save my child, my faith would have been shaken to the very core,” he says.

In 1973 Bigger enrolled at Claremont Graduate School, still struggling with his belief in the concept of a just war. It was a frequent topic of conversation with classmate Joe Frazier, a Baptist Navy Chaplain. Their conversations about war and the role of the military chaplain convinced Bigger to join the Naval Reserves in 1977.

For fifteen years after he first wore a uniform Bigger was a “closet” Navy chaplain. Only his family, close friends, congregational leaders, and church conference administrators knew about his military duties. Bigger chose to keep quiet because of his public position, first as a pastor at the La Sierra University Church and then as the senior pastor of the Walla Walla College Church. He also knew that his Naval Reserve position might have an unintended result. Bigger says, “I did not want to influence any young people in my congregation to join the military as enlisted men and women. Whereas I, as a chaplain, had a great deal of control over my Sabbath-keeping, they would be under the complete authority of their commanding officer. Also, as a chaplain, I am by definition a non-combatant. They would not have that option.”

In the early 1990s Bigger slowly became more open about his secret two-days-a-month and two-weeks-a-year service. The Persian Gulf War eventually thrust Bigger into the public eye. “During the buildup to the war we invited Captain Herman Kibble, a Seventh-day Adventist active duty Navy Chaplain, to speak at the College Church. When I went to his motel room on Sabbath morning to pick him up, he was in uniform. But the clincher was when I went to the airport to pick up a Seventh-day Adventist superior in the Navy. I was dressed in a church suit since I was scheduled to preach later that morning. He looked at my civilian suit and asked me, ‘Darold, why are you out of uniform?’ He ordered me to go home and change. Needless to say, most people that Sabbath figured out that I was in the Navy,” Bigger says.

The coordinator for the Upper Columbia Conference National Service Organization (military affairs) asked Bigger to participate in campus meetings and panel discussions about the Gulf War. That prompted visits with college students and parishioners about the challenges and conflicts that arise in military life.
“I am privileged to be where I am, both in a loving supportive college community and in the military community. It is wonderful to see the world and thousands of the wonderful people in it. From all walks of life, we come together and have an almost instant camaraderie because we wear uniforms,” he says. “I can minister and share my Adventist faith with people that I would never meet otherwise. I experience a broader cross-section of America than I would meet solely in an Adventist college setting.”

Bigger says he still has concerns about the motives that initiate wars and he is still uncomfortable with the thought of personally bearing arms. In some strategic and policy making decisions he has been a part of, Bigger is both “disturbed by the realization that economic interests often motivate political decisions to use military force” as well as “impressed by the spirituality and commitment to the core ideals of America that drive many military leaders.” He adds, “I love and admire the men and women that I meet in the military, but the idealist in me wishes that we could use our military more for high moral causes than economic or political concerns.”

Nathan Becraft is a junior history major. He is currently conducting thesis research on Japanese American Adventists during World War II and is seeking people to interview. If you or someone you know has information about this topic, please contact Becraft at (509) 527-6951 or by e-mail at becrna@wwc.edu.

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