6.05.2005
'Team Jesus Christ' (WashingtonPost.com)
EDITORIAL
Saturday, June 4, 2005; Page A16
THE REPORTS OF the religious climate at the Air Force Academy are unsettling: A chaplain instructs cadets to try to convert classmates by warning that they "will burn in the fires of hell" if they do not accept Christ. During basic training, freshman cadets who decline to attend after-dinner chapel are marched back to their dormitories in "heathen flights" organized by upperclassmen. A Jewish student is taunted as a Christ killer and told that the Holocaust was the just punishment for that offense. The academy's head football coach posts a banner in the locker room that proclaims, "I am a Christian first and last. . . . I am a member of Team Jesus Christ."
Though there are disputes over the specifics of some of these cases, academy officials don't disagree that there has been a problem on campus with religious tolerance. They argue that they recognized and responded to it promptly, instituting training programs for students and faculty alike. But critics say the response was belated and grudging, treating the problem as one of a few instances of insensitivity by out-of-line cadets rather than, as they see it, a broader culture of intolerance fostered from the top down.
A task force appointed by the Pentagon to examine the religious climate on campus reported last week to acting Air Force Secretary Michael L. Dominguez about its findings, and a public report is due soon. Although the task force's work should not be judged in advance, it is of concern that the group doesn't seem to have spent much time with those who have been most outspoken about the issue. Mikey Weinstein, a 1977 academy graduate who says his cadet son has been harassed for being Jewish, said his only contact with the task force was a phone call asking him to stop criticizing it. Capt. MeLinda Morton, a chaplain who spoke out against what she considers strident evangelizing on campus, said she was interviewed for a scant 15 minutes on the task force's last day of investigation. A Yale Divinity School professor who helped flag the religious problems at the academy was never contacted.
(More ... 'Team Jesus Christ') ¶ 16:41
Saturday, June 4, 2005; Page A16
THE REPORTS OF the religious climate at the Air Force Academy are unsettling: A chaplain instructs cadets to try to convert classmates by warning that they "will burn in the fires of hell" if they do not accept Christ. During basic training, freshman cadets who decline to attend after-dinner chapel are marched back to their dormitories in "heathen flights" organized by upperclassmen. A Jewish student is taunted as a Christ killer and told that the Holocaust was the just punishment for that offense. The academy's head football coach posts a banner in the locker room that proclaims, "I am a Christian first and last. . . . I am a member of Team Jesus Christ."
Though there are disputes over the specifics of some of these cases, academy officials don't disagree that there has been a problem on campus with religious tolerance. They argue that they recognized and responded to it promptly, instituting training programs for students and faculty alike. But critics say the response was belated and grudging, treating the problem as one of a few instances of insensitivity by out-of-line cadets rather than, as they see it, a broader culture of intolerance fostered from the top down.
A task force appointed by the Pentagon to examine the religious climate on campus reported last week to acting Air Force Secretary Michael L. Dominguez about its findings, and a public report is due soon. Although the task force's work should not be judged in advance, it is of concern that the group doesn't seem to have spent much time with those who have been most outspoken about the issue. Mikey Weinstein, a 1977 academy graduate who says his cadet son has been harassed for being Jewish, said his only contact with the task force was a phone call asking him to stop criticizing it. Capt. MeLinda Morton, a chaplain who spoke out against what she considers strident evangelizing on campus, said she was interviewed for a scant 15 minutes on the task force's last day of investigation. A Yale Divinity School professor who helped flag the religious problems at the academy was never contacted.
(More ... 'Team Jesus Christ') ¶ 16:41
