Jenna Carson
Jenna Carson is the first female military chaplain endorsed by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. She was set apart by Elder Jeremy R. Jaggi on July 7, 2022. Her uncle, Greg Carson, a retired Air Force officer, administered the military oath of office that same day. She began her service as a first lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force.
Jenna, the daughter of Rupert and Karri Carson, served as a full-time missionary for the Church in the Florida Tampa Mission.
She earned her bachelor’s degree in English from Brigham Young University and holds a graduate degree from Harvard Divinity School. While studying at Harvard, she anticipated that her degree would put her on a path to a legal or academic career. “But during my first semester, in the fall of 2015, I learned what chaplaincy was,” she said. “Once again, I received a strong revelation from the Spirit. . . . I felt God was calling me to be a military chaplain.”[1]
Both of Jenna’s grandfathers and an uncle were Air Force pilots. Her father served in the U.S. Army. But joining the military had not been something she had previously considered.
Jenna contacted the Church’s Military Relations and Chaplain Services office, expressing her desire to become a Church-endorsed military chaplain.
A chaplain in the U.S. armed forces is a non-combatant commissioned officer charged with providing religious services and spiritual support to fellow soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, and Coast Guardsmen. A chaplain is also responsible for advising commanders on moral and religious issues.
On the U.S. military side, chaplain candidates must earn a master’s degree in theology or a related field of study. The U.S. Department of Defense and the Church have established faith-based requirements that candidates must complete to receive Church endorsement for selection into the chaplaincy.
The Church has selected and endorsed chaplains in the U.S. armed forces for over a century, and many Latter-day Saints have served their country and fellow military personnel in both times of peace and conflict.
But until Carson’s recent endorsement, none in the Latter-day Saint chaplain ranks has been a woman.
Her endorsement process took several years, from 2015 to 2022. At the beginning of her journey, Latter-day Saints women could obtain endorsements to serve as chaplains in hospitals, education, hospice care, and prisons — but not the military. Jenna believed that God was calling her to this service, so she continued to petition the director of the Church’s Military Relations and Chaplain Services division. She was invited to send her request directly to President Russell M. Nelson. So she mailed her letter in September 2018. In December she received a phone call indicating that President Nelson had approved her request.
But a “second message from the director quickly cut her celebration short. He explained that while her gender was no longer a disqualifier, the fact that she was no longer married was (Carson had been married when she wrote the letter but divorced by the time she received a response).”[2]
- Devastated, she slowly weighed whether the time had to come “to let it all go.” For a year she distracted herself with yoga and writing classes but, at the end of it, the feeling returned, adamant and persistent, that the time had come to try once more.[3]
In early 2020, she again sought endorsement from the Church to the military chaplaincy. Her request was sidelined by the COVID pandemic. So Jenna worked as a hospital chaplain. Later, in May 2021, she found full-time employment as a Church-endorsed federal prison chaplain, the first Latter-day Saint to serve in the federal prison system.
In November 2021, she received a call from Tami Harris, who at the time volunteered for the Church mentoring other Latter-day Saint women seeking and working in positions of chaplaincy. She told Carson that single men and women could now be considered for endorsement for active-duty military chaplaincy. Six months later, Jenna received news that the Air Force had approved her application.
She then finished a nine-week officer training course in Alabama and began her chaplaincy at Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Mississippi.
