| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"PagCal" |
| Date: |
06 Jun 2005 05:14:23 AM |
| Object: |
I Want You for the U.S. Air Force (but you'd better believe in Jesus) |
I Want You for the U.S. Air Force (but you'd better believe in Jesus)
By Nathan Guttman
WASHINGTON - Mikey Weinstein and his family are proud of their history
in the American armed forces. His father graduated from the U.S. Naval
Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, Weinstein is a graduate of the U.S. Air
Force Academy in Colorado, as are his oldest son and future
daughter-in-law, and his younger son is currently enrolled there. Given
this sort of background, it goes without saying that Weinstein, who now
lives in New Mexico, is extremely proud of the Air Force Academy, which
trains the future pilots of the USAF. Yet along with this pride,
Weinstein also harbors an intense rage that has turned him into a leader
of the battle against the religious coercion he discovered in the
institution he so reveres.
Weinstein began to suspect something was wrong at the academy last
February, when Mel Gibson's "Passion of the Christ" was released.
Friends who knew of his feelings for the institution informed him that
the dining hall for pilot cadets was filled to the brim with posters for
the film. Weinstein telephoned the base commander and told him this
constituted a violation of the constitutional prohibition against the
state's promoting religion in an institutional manner. The commander
looked into the issue and the following day dispatched his second in
command to read out a letter of apology in front of the cadets.
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But evidence of what was going on at the Academy only continued to
amass. Last July, Weinstein met his son Curtis during a visit to the
campus. The son, looking disconsolate, asked to speak with his father
outside of the base. There, in a nearby McDonald's, he told his father,
"I think I'm going to get into trouble." When Weinstein senior asked the
meaning of this, his son explained: "Dad, I'm going to beat up the next
one who calls me a fuckin' Jew or says that we killed Jesus." He told
his father that he had had to endure this abuse on several occasions,
and didn't know how to handle the issue.
The enraged father called back the general, who promised to deal with
the matter, and at the same time initiated a public campaign to expose
harassment at the prestigious military institution. The campaign, which
has reached Congress and the highest echelons of the Pentagon, exposed
an intentional policy going back several years of religious guidance
from above, active encouragement of Christian evangelism by senior
officers and prejudicial discrimination against members of other
religions. Hundreds of families have approached Weinstein, and to date
117 people have filed official complaints through him. Only eight are
Jews. The majority are Christians who feel persecuted by the policy of
promoting evangelical Christianity on an institutional basis while
employing the power of military authority. "I'm at war now, at war
against my own school," says Mikey Weinstein, an attorney who has served
in Ronald Reagan's White House, in a conversation from his home in Santa
Fe. He does not hold back from strong language as he discusses what he
sees as the evangelical takeover of the most prestigious training
institution of the United States Air Force.
Coerced prayers
An organization called Americans United for Separation of Church and
State has documented what is happening inside the academy's walls. A
14-page report issued by the group enumerates numerous incidents, all of
which share a common denominator - promotion of religion by the academy
and its highest-ranking officers. In one case, the coach of the
academy's football team hung a large sign in the locker room reading, "I
am a Christian first and last - I am a member of Team Jesus Christ." In
another case, a chaplain at the base gave a lecture to a group of
cadets. At the lecture's conclusion, he dispatched them to their friends
who had not attended and instructed them to proselyte them (including
lobbying Christians to "rediscover" Jesus). He also said they had to
tell their friends that if they did not do so, they would "burn in the
fires of Hell."
More examples: Soldiers who did not agree to take part in prayer
services after dinner were marched outside the dining hall, with other
cadets issuing orders to them; numerous mandatory events opened with the
recitation of Protestant prayers; the back cover of the base newspaper's
Christmas edition featured a large advertisement signed by 300 people,
including many of the academy's highest-ranking officers, stating: "We
believe that Jesus Christ is the only real hope for the world" and
"There is salvation in no one else."
Aside from the systematic promotion of Christianity, and its evangelical
denomination in particular, on the grounds of the Air Force Academy, the
group also reported cases of discrimination against non-Christian pilot
cadets. For instance, when Christian cadets wished to leave campus on
Sunday and attend church or religious classes, the request was granted
without difficulty and without the cadets losing vacation days; when
under similar circumstances Jews asked to leave the base, they were not
permitted, or had the days deducted from their vacation time. Moreover,
Jews on the base reported that the strain of training activity on
Saturdays was so intense that they often had no opportunity to attend
services.
It should be mentioned that the U.S. Constitution forbids the promotion
of religion by the state or its institutions, including the army. This
prohibition is the basis of the separation between church and state, and
is supposed to guarantee freedom to every citizen against religious
coercion by the state.
According to the reports, the U.S. Air Force Academy saw things
differently. One theory is that because the academy is so close to
Colorado Springs, which has become a major center for evangelical
churches and nationwide organizations, this has had a strong effect on
the religious proclivities of senior officers, causing them to espouse
the evangelical doctrine and its obligation to promote belief in Jesus.
There were those within the academy who issued warnings of what was
going on. Melinda Morton, a Lutheran USAF chaplain reported the zealous
promotion of evangelical faith by ranking officers and cadets, and
discrimination against members of other religions and faiths. But not
only did they not listen to Morton's charges at the academy, they also
saw fit to transfer her to a distant base on the Japanese island of
Okinawa. A group from Yale Divinity School reached similar findings, but
the conclusions did not lead to any changes.
Nevertheless, as complaints piled up and the public campaign began to
gain momentum, commanders of the Air Force Academy decided to do
something. They devised a program to educate and train the faculty and
cadets toward tolerance and religious sensitivity. But the academy's
critics claim that the program, as well as several feeble apologies and
clarifications issued by high-ranking officers, has done little to help.
According to Americans United for Separation of Church and State, the
program's emphasis was flawed from the outset, since the problem at the
academy was not a lack of religious sensitivity, but a violation of the
constitutional ban on state promotion of religion. "Hello? Anyone hear
of Thomas Jefferson? Anyone see a problem here?" asks a cynical Mikey
Weinstein.
The affair long ago left the confines of the Colorado base and made its
way into the national media and to Washington, D.C. Numerous articles
have been devoted to the subject, and one group of legislators even
dispatched a letter to acting Air Force Secretary Michael Dominguez,
calling for an investigation of the events at the academy and the
prevention of any reoccurrence. The Air Force appointed an investigation
committee, scheduled to release its findings this week, but complaints
have already been voiced against the committee's proceedings, as some of
the key witnesses who complained of religious coercion and
discrimination at the academy have not even been interviewed by the
investigators.
Clinton intervenes
The affair is indicative not only of a specific problem at a single
military facility in the United States; it is indicative of the change
taking place in the United States in recent years - a rise in
evangelical Christians' strength in the national and political arenas.
It is sufficient to consider a hearing that took place in the House
Armed Services Committee last month. As part of the hearings on
approving the defense budget, Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.) sought to
attach an amendment to the law that would instruct the USAF to take
immediate action to correct the situation at its academy.
The hearing very quickly shifted from discussion of the problem at the
academy to complaints by Republicans that the party most hurt in the
affair was the Christians, who were being denied their constitutionally
guaranteed freedom of expression. Rep. Walter Jones, a Republican from
North Carolina, said that if there were any problem at the Air Force
Academy, it was one of political correctness. He argued that evangelical
officers do not receive promotions because of their religious beliefs
and that Christian chaplains say they are not permitted to hold prayers
mentioning Jesus. His party colleague, Joel Heffley of Colorado, said,
"To divorce all religion from anything that's public, I don't think
that's what the founding fathers intended at all," while Rep. John
Hostettler, a Republican from Indiana, warned that if the proposed
amendment regarding the Air Force Academy were accepted, it would "bring
the ACLU into the United States military, it would bring the silly
thinking of several of our judicial systems."
Steve Israel's proposal in the Armed Services Committee, as well as the
one submitted to the House Rules Committee, failed to pass. An irate
Israel issued a statement accusing the Republicans of voting a party
line, thus sending the message that Congress does not intend to
intercede when intolerance, coercion and discrimination are exposed in
the army's institutions.
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is now working to revive the issue on
Capitol Hill. In a meeting with key Jewish activists, she emphasized the
need for vigorous action to investigate and correct that which needs to
be corrected at the academy, and urged Jewish organizations to act on
this matter.
But even if the issue makes the rounds in Washington, the situation in
Colorado Springs continues nevertheless. As members of Congress were
debating the matter, to decide that there was no justification for
intervening in what was happening at the military academy, a new case of
religious advocacy was discovered there. One of the top graduating
cadets e-mailed a greeting card to the 3,000 students to mark the end of
the academic year, making free use of quotations from the New and Old
Testaments, including, for instance, the call "to bear one another's
burdens, and so you will fulfill the law of Christ." This is exactly the
sort of quote that critics of the academy believe should not appear in
correspondence sent to Air Force Academy cadets.
Last Friday, USAFA Superintendent Lieutenant-General John Rosa met with
Anti-Defamation League activists, and for the first time admitted to
them that there was a problem at the base. He said he is losing sleep
over it, but noted that it might take up to six years to correct.
Mikey Weinstein, the driving force behind the struggle, does not sound
like someone who intends to wait that long. "These are the people who
are going to hold the trigger to our nuclear bombs," he says, referring
to the pilots in training. "This should bother everyone, because all
over the world they'll be looking at the way we teach these people and
use it to reinforce their claim that America is on a religious war
against all who are not Christians."
.
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