An Air Force Academy chaplain said Tuesday that a religious tolerance program she helped create was watered down after it was shown to officers, including the major general who is the Air Force’s chief chaplain.
Capt. Melinda Morton spoke publicly for the first time as an Air Force task force arrived in Colorado Springs on Tuesday to investigate charges that officers and others inappropriately used their positions to urge their evangelical Christian beliefs on Air Force cadets.
The academy began developing the tolerance program, called Respecting the Spiritual Values of all People, or RSVP, in response to a survey last year that found that more than half of the cadets said they had heard derogatory religious comments or jokes at the academy.
Morton said the RSVP program was significantly altered after it was screened last fall for an audience of 300 staff members and officers at the academy.
Among those at the screening was Maj. Gen. Charles Baldwin, chief of chaplains for the entire Air Force, who approached Morton after the screening, she said, and asked her, “Why is it that the Christians never win?” in response to some of the dramatizations in the program of interactions between cadets of different religions.
Morton said, “It was obvious to us that he had missed the point of the entire presentation here. It wasn’t about winning or losing some kind of cosmic battle; it was about helping our folks at the Air Force Academy understand the wonders of the whole range of religious experiences.”
Wednesday, Baldwin acknowledged making that comment and said he had objected because too many scenes in the original program had portrayed Christians as being at fault.
“In every scenario … every time it was the Christian who had to apologize and say, ‘I’m sorry, I wasn’t sensitive to your needs,”‘ Baldwin said. “I said, ‘That’s not balanced, and the Christians will turn you off if every time they were the ones who made the mistake.”‘