Washington – Air Force officials Wednesday reported finding “a perception of religious intolerance” in their probe of the Air Force Academy but denied any overt bias against cadets who are not evangelical Christians.
In a 93-page report on the school’s religious climate, and in responses to questions, however, officials conceded they found evidence of inappropriate behavior throughout the school.
Lt. Gen. Roger Brady, who led the Air Force team that reviewed the school’s religious climate, said that there is “certainly insensitivity” but that problems at the campus north of Colorado Springs are not widespread, and many already have been corrected.
“If we have one problem of religious discrimination, it’s too many,” said Lt. Gen. John Rosa, superintendent at the academy. He was among the first to voice concerns about the school’s religious climate when he addressed the academy’s Board of Visitors, an oversight group, in November.
“Some of our strongest critics, I agree with what they say,” Rosa said. “We’ve got a long way to go. We’re headed in the right direction.”
The Air Force launched an investigation into the religious climate at the school after the Americans United for Separation of Church and State delivered a report saying evangelical Christians harassed non-Christian cadets.
The team writing the report visited the academy May 10-13 and interviewed 300 people.
The report gives nine recommendations for reform, calling for guidelines defining permissible religious expression as well as a single point of contact at the school for students with complaints about religious culture.
Some members of Congress criticized what they described as the weak tone of the report.
“It is not a whitewash, but it does resemble milquetoast,” Rep. Steve Israel, D-N.Y., said.
Sen. Ken Salazar, D-Colo., said he would ask for a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the report so the findings can be shared with other senators and other military academies.
Salazar also has asked the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom to monitor the academy’s compliance with the recommendations and to conduct an independent assessment of the religious climate there. Denver Catholic Archbishop Charles Chaput is a commissioner.
Sen. Wayne Allard, R-Colo., said he wanted to “focus on the fact that the Air Force investigation found that the academy leadership is aggressively dealing with this issue and that a significant majority of individuals contacted expressed an opinion that the overall climate at the academy has improved over the past two years.”
Colorado Springs-based Focus on the Family lauded the report’s findings. “We fervently hope that this ridiculous bias of a few against the majority – Christianity – will now cease,” said Tom Minnery, vice president at Focus.
The Anti-Defamation League found the report “encouraging.”
“The report confirms many of ADL’s concerns … that a persistent pattern of religious intolerance exists at the academy, and that change is necessary,” said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL national director.
The task force examined about 50 events that it said led to a perception of religious bias, including an advertisement signed by 250 people, including key academy leaders, with the message: “We believe that Jesus Christ is the only real hope for the world”; ads and fliers encouraging cadets to see “The Passion of the Christ”; complaints by an atheist cadet that non-Christians who declined to attend voluntary worship services were placed into a so-called Heathen Flight to walk back to their rooms; and the posting of a “Team Jesus” banner in a football locker room.
“I am neither shy nor embarrassed about telling others about my God. I apologize to no one for what I believe,” football coach Fisher DeBerry said Wednesday in a written statement. “It’s apparent to me that my locker-room prayers to the ‘Master Coach’ and hanging the FCA (Fellowship of Christian Athletes) Competitors Creed banner crossed the line of acceptable practices. … I understand how those actions could have been misconstrued. That won’t happen again.”
Air Force review leader Brady categorized many religious incidents at the academy as a result of faculty not understanding appropriate boundaries. “I think there were cases where people have said some things – perhaps from a lectern – that were over-reaching, forgetting their position, that put cadets perhaps in an untenable position,” he said.
Asked whether the large number of evangelical Christian groups based in Colorado Springs affected the school’s religious atmosphere, Brady said, “It could have.”
At a news conference at the academy Wednesday, Rosa said the issue of religious tolerance is “bigger than the Air Force Academy. It’s a very emotional issue, and it’s a complex issue.”
But the number of cadets and staff who identify with organized religion, coupled with a career path that the report said requires “strength of character that is founded on their religious faith,” adds to the complexity at the academy.
In the Air Force, 80 percent of the airmen described their religion as Christian-based. At the academy, 85 percent of cadets consider themselves Christians.
In a survey of cadets, the academy found that 92 percent of Christians had no problems with the religious climate at the school. But when non-Christians were asked about the climate, only 50 percent said things were “going great,” Rosa said.
Asked whether the problem was one of people from a variety of faiths being intolerant of others, Rosa said: “To say it was only Christians would be incorrect.”
The task force report focused only on whether the actions of Christians were appropriate. Seven other cases of “questionable behavior” were reported to the task force and passed up the chain of command for follow-up, Rosa said. Air Force officials declined to comment on those reports.
Rosa said most of the insensitive comments or incidents outlined in the report were made because of ignorance.
“Of everything that we know, there’s probably one or two that were way over the line,” he said.
The academy launched religious tolerance training for faculty and cadets in March. Phase I of the program – called Respecting the Spiritual Values of All People, or RSVP – begins with an education on Air Force policies and directives, emphasizing that proselytizing and religious jokes and slurs are forbidden.
The academy is in the process of developing Phase II of the program, which will focus more on religious beliefs and cultures of people around the world.
Brady pointed out that a large part of the problem is that the academy is dealing with 4,000 18- to 22-year-olds. “Most of them know how to behave. Some of them need a little work.”
Aside from the sexual-assault scandal and religious-tolerance concerns at the academy, Rosa, who announced over the weekend that he would leave the Air Force after 32 years to become president of The Citadel, said that 70 percent of disciplinary problems involve alcohol.
Academy officials on Wednesday also announced that Brig. Gen. Irving L. Halter, currently based at the Pentagon, will become vice superintendent at the academy in July. Halter, currently responsible for ensuring and coordinating national space systems support for the Department of Defense, is a 1977 academy graduate.
Staff writer Mike Soraghan contributed to this report.
