Text 13514, 85 rader
Skriven 2005-06-10 15:15:58 av Alan Hess
Ärende: religious intolerance at AFA
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washingtonpost.com
Flying Over the Line

By Richard Cohen
Post
Thursday, June 9, 2005; A21

We should all attend the Air Force Academy. We should do so not just to learn
about military flying but also -- actually, mainly -- to find out what happens
when religion is not kept in its place. At the academy, the result has been
utter contempt for separation of church and state and a form of religious
persecution. Its own top guy, Lt. Gen. John W. Rosa Jr., in an unintended
homage to the movie "Apollo 13," put it this way: "We have a problem." I'd
"roger" that.

The problem, as Rosa described it in a meeting last week with the
Anti-Defamation League, "is very insidious." He said it would take "probably
six years" to solve if only because until relatively recently the academy
itself did not realize that it had a problem. In other words, a culture of
militant Christianity, intimidation and outright bigotry was so entrenched and
so ordinary that no one, with the understandable exception of the occasional
victim, noticed that anything was amiss.

What, exactly, are we talking about? We are talking about what a former
chaplain at the academy called a "systematic and pervasive" effort at religious
proselytizing in which both students and faculty participated. We are talking
about semi-official efforts to promote Mel Gibson's film "The Passion of the
Christ." We are talking about e-mails sent to the entire student body with
religious messages and classes that opened with a prayer and the intimidation
-- a form of hazing -- of secular or non-Christian students by others.

In his talk, Rosa quibbled with news accounts of what was happening at the
academy, so maybe it is best to just stick to what he himself acknowledged, in
a transcript the ADL posted on its Web site. The one that is probably the most
troubling has to do with a banner the football coach hung in the locker room.
It said, "I am a Christian first and last . . . I am a member of Team Jesus
Christ."

"It came down right after it went up, but clearly, clearly over the line," Rosa
told the ADL's national director, Abe Foxman, and his delegation. "I personally
sat down with the football coach. We talked and had a two-hour discussion."
Rosa said he told the coach, Fisher DeBerry, that the government was "paying
him to coach" football and not, by implication, religion. This must have been
news to the coach. His own posted bio emphasizes his religious faith.

The so-called "Competitor's Creed" can be found in plenty of locker rooms, but
the Air Force Academy is not just another school. It is an entirely
government-supported institution whose graduates go off to work for the
government -- which is to say you and me. It is downright impermissible for
anyone to, in effect, establish an authorized form of religion that makes
anyone else feel like an outsider. The Air Force Academy is not a Christian
institution. It is a military school, attended mostly by Christians. That's a
big difference.

Some blame the academy's troubles on its location, Colorado Springs. The city
is the headquarters of many fundamentalist Christian groups and churches.
That's bound to have an effect. But the real trouble is one of leadership.
DeBerry has been at the academy for more than 20 years. Last year cannot be the
first time he either hung such a banner or in some other way made known his
religious views. The same holds for whoever thought "The Passion of the Christ"
ought to be, in effect, a required course -- or the others who made Jews and
Catholics and moderate Protestants feel singled out. This is just the first
time all of this has come to the attention of outsiders.

If Rosa did not know what was happening at the academy -- he's been
superintendent less than two years -- then others on the faculty or in the
cadet corps certainly did. They took no action. By now, some of them are
important Air Force officers. Don't they know anything about the Bill of Rights
and separation of church and state? After all, little in life better
exemplifies the state and its power than a military academy. It simply cannot
be in the church business.

The next time anyone asserts that religion is being shoved around in America,
tell him to look at the Air Force Academy. And the next time anyone suggests
that courts have gone too far in protecting the rights of religious minorities,
tell him to look at the Air Force Academy. In the meantime, Congress ought to
look -- and look hard -- at the academy and the officers it has graduated. They
know how to fly, but maybe they don't know what they are flying for.

cohenr@washpost.com

+ 2005 The Washington Post Company

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