Cross posted: Proseltyzing and Religious Intolerance at Air Force Academy
NYT tried to bury this in the education section online.
Air Force Chaplain Tells of Academy Proselytizing
A chaplain at the Air Force Academy has described a “systemic and pervasive” problem of religious proselytizing at the academy and says a religious tolerance program she helped create to deal with the problem was watered down after it was shown to officers, including the major general who is the Air Force’s chief chaplain.
The academy chaplain, Capt. MeLinda Morton, 48, spoke publicly for the first time as an Air Force task force arrived at the academy in Colorado Springs on Tuesday to investigate accusations that officers, staff members and senior cadets inappropriately used their positions to push their evangelical Christian beliefs on Air Force cadets.
The academy began developing the tolerance program, called Respecting the Spiritual Values of all People, or R.S.V.P., in response to a survey it took last year. The survey found that more than half of the cadets said they had heard derogatory religious comments or jokes at the academy.
[…]
Maj. Gen. Charles C. Baldwin, the chief of chaplains for the entire Air Force, screened the R.S.V.P. program in October, Captain Morton said, and afterward asked her, “Why is it that the Christians never win?” in response to some of the program’s dramatizations of interactions between cadets of different religions.
She said: “It was obvious to us that he had missed the point of the entire presentation here. It wasn’t about winning or losing, some kind of cosmic battle, it was about helping our folks at the Air Force Academy understand the wonders of the whole range of religious experiences.”
[…]
Captain Morton responded in an interview that it was “patently untrue” that all the segments portrayed Christians in error. She says that in most cases there was no religious identifier at all. “And I’ve got the film to prove it.”
General Baldwin said he asked that the Air Force cut out segments in the program on non-Christian religions like Buddhism, Judaism and Native American spirituality, as well as a clip from “Schindler’s List,” the 1993 movie on the Holocaust. The R.S.V.P. program was cut from 90 minutes to 50. Captain Morton said that instead of educating about other religions, it had been reworked to emphasize a more neutral message: that cadets should respect one another’s differences.
[…]
Fliers advertising a showing of the movie “The Passion of the Christ” were placed at every seat in the dining hall, with the tagline, “This is an officially sponsored USAFA event,” according to the report.
Last summer, a team from the Yale Divinity School was invited to spend a week at the academy’s basic training program assessing the chaplains’ pastoral care. It found what it called in a report “challenges to pluralism.”
[…]
One staff member who spoke on condition of anonymity said on Wednesday: “There’s certainly an impression that evangelicals here have that the leadership is kind of on their side. And there’s a feeling among people who are atheists or people who are other varieties of Christian that the leadership does not really accept them.”
Captain Morton said she had decided to step forward without authorization from the public affairs office because: “It’s the Constitution, not just a nice rule we can follow or not follow. We all raised our hands and said we’d follow it, and that includes the First Amendment, that includes not using your power to advance your religious agenda.”
She added, “I realize this is the end of my Air Force career.”
Everyone can express religion as he/she sees fit. Just don’t be insensitive to it.
Cheers to Captain Morton for doing the right thing. It’s unacceptable that this nitwit Baldwin can’t see the value in religious tolerance. The right wingnuts feel as though they are under attack, when it’s is them who show intolerance towards other faiths. (Right wingnuts as opposed to reasonable evangelicals and other reasonable people of faith.)
