A former enlisted service member turned chaplain, recounts his tumultuous journey through the “racist” challenges of navigating Veterans Affairs (VA) chaplaincy.
The Gateway Pundit spoke to Vincent Rentz (a pseudonym), who left the military in 2001, following eight years of active-duty service. Speaking on a condition of anonymity, he said he went on to pursue a college education and, together with his family, continued a small business.
However, in 2009, Rentz’s life took a significant turn when a friend suffered severe injuries in Afghanistan. This event served as “the calling,” the “catalyst” for him to embark on a new career as a military chaplain and as a VA chaplain. In 2018, along with being in seminary he took on the role of a chaplain intern at his local VA Medical Center (VAMC) in a program called Clinical Pastoral Education (CPE) through an organization named Association of Clinical Pastoral Education (ACPE).
Encountering Partiality
Rentz noted that from the onset of the CPE class, he noticed bias and antipathy towards his core identities which he came to realize were biases rooted in Critical Race Theory (CRT), Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI).
Rentz recounted one of his encounters as a CPE chaplain VA intern where a Black female CPE student openly expressed her “problem with White men and her distrust of them” during a group class. As one of a few White men present, he found the situation to be quite uncomfortable and wondered how her open bias was acceptable to the CPE Educator, who was also the Chief Chaplain at that VAMC. However, he noted that “everyone in the room just kind of let it go,” finding the situation to be very awkward, he simply regarded it as “a weird experience.”
He also realized that being a supporter of President Donald Trump as a conservative evangelical chaplain and a White heterosexual male made him “a target of wokeness,” while in the VA CPE program. The same female chaplain who had previously created the awkward moment in class questioned why he was wearing a small MAGA patch on the back of his hat. After some initial conversation, he then suggested that she may have underlying issues with racism.
He shared that following this remark, “the whole room blew up at me, and I was accused by the CPE Educator/Chief Chaplain that I was the racist one.” I was basically forced to apologize to her,” he said. The CPE Educator/Chief Chaplain began encouraging him to explore books on Critical Race Theory (CRT), specifically mentioning books like, White Fragility. The Educator indicated that once he embraced CRT, he’d be more equipped to interact with minorities.
Although Rentz would have preferred to pursue a mature, even Biblical, resolution to the concerns regarding Trump, racism, or whatever else it was, but he was never given that chance. Instead, a different situation developed within the program. Not only did situation become increasingly hostile toward him, but the female chaplain asked that he be forced out of the CPE program and also asserted that as a Black woman she “could not be racist”—which is, coincidently, a core tenant of CRT.
Being afraid of how the situation would affect his goal of becoming a chaplain, he sought help from the Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) office, but he claimed that several levels of the EEO staff seemed to regard the complaint as unprecedented and frivolous because he was a White man making a complaint. As he talked to the EEO officer, he alleged she looked at him and said, “you do realize I’m Black, right.” The message to him was clear; Blacks could not be racist according to CRT. Regardless, he requested to continue as an intern but was not afforded the opportunity to stay in the CPE program at that VA.
Rentz remained resolute and continued pursuing his “calling”. After applying to CPE residency programs across the country at dozens of VAMCs, in June 2020, he was finally accepted into another VAMC CPE program.
“Sadly,” he contends, “it was even more biased, woke and racist.” For example, an inpatient White male veteran divulged that he was considering joining or supporting Black Lives Matter (BLM), and Rentz advised him to steer clear of any such fringe organizations because they could get him in trouble, and this led to him being placed on probation by the CPE Educator and the Chief Chaplain of the VAMC.
The probation led him to being required to do additional assignments which, in his opinion, seemed like they were aimed at changing his pastoral identity and to give him an unsustainable retaliatory workload. He was later dismissed from the program in 2021 for “academic reasons” but rather, he contends, was only an excuse to dismiss him for not conforming to CRT and DEI woke ideologies in the VA ACPE CPE system.
“Yet, God had a vote in it as well,” Rentz reveals. “On the same day I was asked to leave the program, I was offered a job at another VA because I had earned enough CPE credits to be eligible.” About two years later, after becoming a board-certified Chaplain (BCC) by the National Association of Veteran’s Affairs Chaplains (NAVAC) and with the Association of Certified Christian Chaplains (ACCC), he decided that he was morally obligated to try to make a difference in the VA CPE system that was, in his estimation, racist and CRT-driven. He then applied for the VA’s National CPE bridge program so that he could gain enough credits to become a CPE Educator Candidate in the VA system.
A Corrupt System
Rentz found that the CPE program at the VA National level with VA National level CPE Certified Educators were not only more ideologically aligned with CRT and DEI than the local level VA CPE programs but realized that “they were corrupt and nepotistic as well which is apparent when you look at the demographics of VA chaplaincy”.
“It was horrible,” Rentz admits. “If you don’t change your beliefs to match their CRT brainwashing and gaslighting, you are blackballed.” In one example, he recounts an incident where a fellow CPE student was pressed to describe a disruptive and violent patient he was dealing with and he innocently described him as “an animal in a cage,” meaning the patient was extremely agitated and ready to attack him.
“Because this patient happened to be Black, the educator flipped out on him, accusing him of being a racist though it was clearly not the intent of the statement,” he explains. “By the time this experience was over, the White male chaplain was coerced into saying he was a racist.”
For Rentz, this was not reality, and it was contrary to what he hoped he would have experienced. “The educator even instructed us that there is no such thing as right or wrong,” he shares. “Instructing chaplains that there is no right or wrong leaves them ethically impotent at least.”
The “corruption” lies in the fact that the Association for Clinical Pastoral Education (ACPE) has been the only entity that has been the recipient of VA CPE education funds—currently about six million per year—for decades. Paid educators in the VA system are ACPE certified educators and belong to the Association of Professional Chaplains (ACP), some of whom are even board members, he noted.
“These VA compensated ACPE and APC VA CPE certified chaplain educators have actively thwarted other, more Christian friendly, CPE education organizations from being recognized by the VA,” Rentz claimed. “ACPE/APC therefore continues to be the only CPE organization that has access to the millions the VA allots for chaplain education in the VA system.” He argues that “if that isn’t a conflict of interests, then nothing is.”
According to him, it has become nearly impossible for more non-progressive Christ-centered chaplains and organizations to gain access to the VA and the VA funding. In fact, he points out an instance where an ACPE educator candidate was told by an ACPE educator that to become a certified ACPE CPE educator that he needed to do one last thing, “deny the belief that Jesus is the only way to the Father.”
The Big Picture
Rentz asserted, “One of the jobs of a VA Chaplain is to protect from proselytization, yet ACPE educators in the VA are doing just that as they coerce potential VA Chaplains into denying and changing their beliefs and confusing them in their morals and ethics.”
This is “only the tip of the proverbial iceberg,” he contends. “There are many other chaplains in the VA that have stories of this CRT/DEI racism and corruption.” However, he asserts, they are afraid that they will be persecuted and jeopardize their jobs if they speak out publicly. What’s more, Rentz says, many chaplains that are seeking to be VA chaplains are fearful that they will be denied getting a VA job if they don’t comply with the ACPE/APC CRT coercing.
As he navigates the tension between his faith and the prevailing VA culture of CRT, DEI and corruption, Rentz remains committed to his calling, seeking to foster a more authentic, Biblically grounded, Christocentric approach in his passion to care for veterans.
Retired Air Force Lt Col and military defense attorney Davis Younts was asked for his perspective based on his experience representing military members of the past two decades. Younts shared that the experiences of Rentz at the VA are “chillingly similar” to what many of his military clients have faced within the Department of War. “Progress has been made during this administration but there are still many senior military leaders who were indoctrinated with Marxist race theory in college before entering military service and that the indoctrination continued during the Obama and Biden administrations.”
Younts believes that it will take time to time to successful counter the efforts of progressives and Marxists to take over government agencies and believes that identifying and drawing attention to the “divisive and destructive indoctrination within government agencies is an important first step.”
While “DEI is DEAD at DOD,” according to War Secretary Pete Hegseth, this assertion does not appear to apply to Secretary of Veterans Affairs Doug Collins, who interestingly holds a Master of Divinity degree from the New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary and has served as a chaplain for the Navy and Air Force Reserve. Rentz hopes that Collins will act to end the ugly face of corruption and of CRT and DEI in the VA, much like Hegseth has done in the War Department.
Chaplain Rentz emphasized that his views are his own and do not reflect those of the Department of Veterans Affairs.
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