[A]lthough the religious right doesn’t have the capacity to impose its views on the rest of the country, it certainly has the intent to do so. Conservatives may dismiss fears of a Christian theocracy as liberal hysteria. Theocracy, though, is not an inaccurate description of life at the Air Force Academy.
- Jonathan Chait
The American military has long been a very Conservative and highly religious organization. After all, there are no atheists in foxholes, right? The idea of religion and military discipline co-existing is as old as our history. No reasonable person would deny soldiers the right to their religious beliefs. The problem, though, is when a taxpayer-funded military academy becomes a vehicle for pushing religion on those future officers it is charged with training.
Colorado Springs, the home of the US Air Force Academy, has a well-earned reputation as one of the most Conservative places on the face of the Earth. There’s nothing wrong with this, certainly. People are free to believe as they choose. The larger problem is that USAFA has taken on the character of it’s home city, and a taxpayer-funded institution of higher learning has become an institution of lock-step Right-wing theology.
Your tax dollars at work, eh?
CONSERVATIVES have been arguing for years that the religious right is simply misunderstood. These vilified godly folks don’t want to impose their beliefs on anybody else, we’re told. They simply want to defend their traditional beliefs and practices against the aggressive impositions of a secular culture. Therefore any suggestion to the contrary is liberal hysteria or, worse, discrimination against “people of faith.”
So how do conservatives explain what’s been going on at the Air Force Academy?
As a number of newspapers have documented, the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colo., has essentially established evangelical Christianity as its official religion.
The examples are legion. Last season, the football coach hung a banner in the locker room laying out a “Competitor’s Creed,” including the lines “I am a Christian first and last” and “I am a member of Team Jesus Christ.”
And here are other examples among those noted in an April report by the Washington-based Americans United for Separation of Church and State: Campus chaplains have encouraged proselytizing among the students, and younger cadets who skipped out on prayer services have been forced by their seniors to march back to their dorms in a ritual called “heathen flight.” On one occasion, every seat in the dining hall was covered with a flier advertising a showing of The Passion of the Christ, including the tagline, “This is an officially sponsored USAFA event.”
These are just a few examples among many. Non-evangelicals have described an atmosphere of pervasive religious pressure. A top academy chaplain was discharged for speaking out against this state of affairs.
In this day and age of the never-ending war on terror, it would seem more important than ever that a military academy focus on equipping future officers with the tools and skills necessary to protect the Homeland from those who would do us harm. Instead we have the US Air Force Academy, which has essentially established evangelical Christianity as the official school religion.
You’d think that Conservatives, who tend to worry about Homeland Security more than your average bear, might be concerned that USAFA is focusing on something that is hardly mission-critical. Au contraire….
When asked about the allegations, a spokesman for Focus on the Family replied, “If 90 percent of cadets identify themselves as Christian, it is common sense that Christianity will be in evidence on the campus. … I think a witch hunt is under way to root out Christian beliefs.”
This comment is telling, because it basically jibes with what religious conservatives have been saying for a long time. Most Americans are Christian, therefore the United States is a Christian country. Therefore, the institutions of the state ought to promote the religious views of the majority, and everybody else ought to shut up and take it.
If USAFA were a private institution, this might well be a matter of free speech. The problem, though, is that our tax dollars are being used to force students to practice evangelical Christianity. Pervasive religious pressure? Shouldn’t we be focusing on USAFA’s mission- training future officers to protect and defend the United States?
Welcome to the United States of Jesus….
No atheists in foxholes? Maybe...but since when has the Air Force been in foxholes?!?
The only pilot in a foxhole dug one with his plane. So maybe these guys should spend more time learning not to dig $55,000,000 foxholes, and less time on 2000-year-old fantasies.
Honestly, just because our nuclear arsenal is being put in the hands of people who think that world conflagration is the Lord's will, what's the worst that can happen? Okay, so maybe there's a big war and everybody dies... all that means is the bad people go away and the good people spend eternity going on pony rides with Jesus and Grandma up in heaven! Really, I wish you people would stop being such worry-warts.
As an (enlisted) USAF vet, I find this not merely disturbing but enraging. It flies in the face of everything I learned firsthand in the service; it denies the respect and equality out of which a disparate workforce is forged into a fighting weapon worthy of this nation's defense. It sows discord between officer and enlisted, between faith and faith, between rank and rank; it deliberately breaks down unit cohesiveness and esprit d' corps, and it does so in the name of Jesus, which is the biggest crock of all.
The enlisted ranks in my day showed by training, practice, example, expectation and everyday operations, a huge openness toward one's fellow airmen's faiths, whatsoever those might be, just as the UCMJ and the code of conduct expected of enlisted airmen and noncoms both enforced the practice that one treat one's colleagues well without regard for the shade of the skin or the shape of the plumbing systems enclosed thereby.
The Self-identified evangelical Christians behind this whole movement may not all realize it, but their leadership is pure unadulterated kkk and once they force you to profess faith in Christ they will have no qualms about forcing you to act on that faith by discriminating against the heathen.
The heathen being Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Confucians, Mormons, Catholics, Unitarians, pagans, wiccans, atheists, agnostics ... and anybody who doesn't bow to this week's chosen hellfire-and-brimstone exploiter of the dumber, the weaker, and the conformists in the community at large -- or anybody whose skin isn't lily-white, hair straight, gender identity traditional, sex married, and eyes blue.
Make no mistake. They want to undo everything back to the 1870s. EVERYTHING. They'll bring back lynching if they're not stopped.
I don't usually hate people. But I do hate evil, and the exploitive nature of these scumsucking freeloaders is nothing more, less or other than evil. That they spread their lies in the name of Christ is more evil still, and I hope they find the fate they deserve as blasphemers.