The U.S. Air Force Academy is embroiled in a growing scandal over alleged religious coercion, following an investigation triggered by complaints from a Jewish student distressed over evangelical Christian proselytizing.
Earlier this year, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a Washington-based advocacy group launched an investigation. Its report alleges that academy leaders, including faculty, chaplains and senior cadets, have created an environment inhospitable to those who are not evangelical Christians.
<snip>
The report alleges that while Christian cadets are routinely given special permission to attend off-campus prayers services on Sundays, Jews and other Saturday Sabbath observers are not given similar dispensations, and are forced instead to attend training exercises, parades and football games scheduled as official Saturday activities. It also alleges that some of the academy’s senior leadership have insinuated their faith, which is often a form of evangelical Christianity, into their professional duties: A number of faculty members, it claims, have introduced themselves to their classes as born-again Christians and encouraged students to become born-again. Officials have allegedly opened mandatory meals, trainings and ceremonies with prayer.
<snip>
“It was really not a good situation,” said Casey Weinstein, 22, who touched off the Americans United investigation when he shared such stories with his father, Mikey, an attorney who served in the Reagan administration. “The best way I can put it is that a large vocal minority had their way at the academy with nobody to hold them in check from crossing the line between church and state.”
<snip>
In a conversation with the Forward, a spokesperson at the academy said leaders are facing issues of religious intolerance head on by asking students to come forward with complaints, and by mandating that all cadets and staff watch a 50-minute video on diverse values and beliefs. The video was produced last year after the academy surveyed cadets about these issues and found that over half had heard derogatory comments or jokes of a religious nature. The 16-person task force deployed by the Air Force to assess the academy’s religious issues is expected to present its findings to acting Air Force Secretary Michael Dominguez on May 23.
Despite these efforts, critics of the Air Force Academy say that its attempts at reform are disingenuous. The Americans United report asserts that last fall, weeks after the academy began the religious sensitivity program, head football coach Fisher DeBerry hung a banner in the locker room that read, “I am a Christian first and last; I am a member of Team Jesus Christ.” The report also alleges that the very officer in charge of the academy’s equal-opportunity office, Captain Joseph Bland, refused to recognize the complaint of a self-described atheist cadet and instead attempted to proselytize the student into Catholicism.
Several observers contacted by the Forward connected the rise in religious intolerance at the Air Force Academy to the increasing numbers of evangelical Christians within its leadership, as well as to the growth of the movement’s overall size and political muscle. A central tenet of evangelical sects is the belief in proselytizing nonbelievers.
“Evangelical Christians and those who are affiliated with the religious right have been gaining a great deal of confidence in various political activities and pushing their agenda on the cultural front,” said Randall Balmer, a Columbia University professor of religion. “They have a real sense that they have enough clout to force real change.”
