Richard Cohen: Militantly Christian
Religious hazing has no place at academy
10:04 PM CDT on Sunday, June 12, 2005
We should all attend the U.S. Air Force Academy, 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., doing an unintended homage to the movie Apollo 13, put it this way: "We have a problem."
I'd "roger" that.
The problem, as Gen. Rosa himself described it in a meeting earlier this month with the Anti-Defamation League, "is very insidious" and will take "probably six years" to solve, partly because until recently he didn't realize the academy had a problem.
The culture of militant Christianity, of intimidation and outright bigotry, was so entrenched that no one, except an occasional victim, noticed anything was amiss.
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 of secular or non-Christian students by others.
In his talk, Gen. Rosa quibbled with some news reports, so let's stick to what he himself acknowledged. 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 ... and a member of Team Jesus Christ."
"It came down right after it went up, but clearly, clearly over the line," Gen. Rosa told the ADL. "I personally sat down with the football coach. We talked and had a two-hour discussion." Gen. Rosa said he told the coach, Fisher DeBerry, that the government was "paying him to coach" football, not religion.
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's an entirely government-supported institution whose graduates go off and work for the government – which is to say you and me.
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.
Coach DeBerry has been at the academy for more than 20 years. Last year cannot be the first time he hung such a banner. 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 Gen. Rosa did not know what was happening at the academy – he's been superintendent less than two years – others certainly did.
Don't they know anything about the Bill of Rights and separation of church and state? Little in life better exemplifies the state and its power than a military academy.
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.
Richard Cohen writes for The Washington Post. His e-mail address is
cohenr@washpost.com.
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Originally Posted by Hari_Om
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