Talk:Sky Pilot

American West remarks

(Transcribed remarks originally placed in article sapce, 13 June and 29 July, 2012.)

The Dates as to the origin of the term "Sky Pilot" may be correct but the original concept as to the meaning is not. There were no airplanes in 1880. A book that motivated my father to be a lifelong missionay was "Sky Pilot to San Blas" by Anna Coope, a single lady missionary to the San Blas Islands and the Kuna Indians off of Panama in the early 1920s. The term "pilot" referred to a "harbor pilot" whose responsibility was to bring the ships into "safe haven". A silent movie was filmed in 1921 title: "The Sky Pilot", about a frontier preacher who came to town and saved it. My father referred to himself all his life as a "Sky Pilot". At present I am working on a book of "missionary stories" that actually happened to my parents and myself (I was a missionary for 34 years) and I plan to call it "Tales of a Sky Pilot". The term has been used extensively in all of our recent wars in reference to military chaplines. There are also several books about missionaries in Alaska that refer to them as "Sky Pilots".

From "burlesonbill":

The term "Sky Pilot" was in use in the American West, referencing "pilot" as a harbor or ship's pilot, and applied to frontier preachers or clergy. It was used in that context in the first notable American Western novel "The Virginian" by Owen Wister in 1902. Previous written references have been found in journals, diaries and newspaper articles of the period 1860-1900, all using the term in the same context. In more recent years however, the term has most often been applied to military chaplains.

Trimming (Jan 2011)

I edited this page and also removed about half the entries. Removed material was:

• British Army appointment title (callsign) on radio for a padre

This seems just a detailed instance of the meaning of sky pilot as "military chaplain". Also unreferenced.

• A nickname for a missionary

Unreferenced. Not in the dictionaries I looked at.

• A dismissive or critical nickname for a religious figure who counsels passive acceptance of unfair or difficult life circumstances. Specifically, one who is seen to be aiding existing social structures by using religion to suppress dissent.

• From the lingo of Labor movements -- A preacher who states that workers should not complain (see: Wobbly lingo). The concept possibly originated in Joe Hill's 1911 song "The Preacher and the Slave" in which he coined the term "pie in the sky" as preachers' replies to questions about hunger.

Too long, and unreferenced. This may be true, but I have never heard of it, and this doesn't come up in the dictionaries or immediately in Google. No particular reason to credit any confluence between "pie in the sky" and "sky pilot".

• Sky Pilot is a mozilla classic theme which is also available for Firefox.

Unnotable. Herostratus (talk) 04:22, 16 January 2011 (UTC)

Restored the labor movement's Wobbly lingo: immediate Google results are available. SteveStrummer (talk) 16:02, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

OK, that seems reasonable, thanks. Herostratus (talk) 19:34, 6 November 2012 (UTC)

FWIW here is a Google Ngram. Looks like it came into use around 1885ish, grew quite rapidly, and has been slowly fading since. That's in books, which probably lags common usage I suppose. Herostratus (talk) 19:42, 6 November 2012 (UTC)