Washington – The Air Force, facing a lawsuit over alleged proselytizing, has withdrawn a document that permitted chaplains to evangelize military personnel who were not affiliated with any faith, Pentagon officials said Monday.
The document was circulated at the Air Force Chaplain School until eight weeks ago. It was a “code of ethics” for chaplains that included the statement, “I will not proselytize from other religious bodies, but I retain the right to evangelize those who are not affiliated.”
The code was written by the National Conference on Ministry to the Armed Forces (NCMAF), a private association of religious bodies that provide chaplains to the military. It was never an official directive of the Defense Department, but the fact that it was handed out at the chaplain’s school at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Ala., “might have given the impression that it was Air Force policy,” said Rabbi Arnold Resnicoff, a retired Navy chaplain who is a special adviser to the secretary of the Air Force.
The Air Force distanced itself from the code of ethics after complaints by Michael Weinstein, a 1977 Air Force Academy graduate who has accused the academy’s current leaders of fostering pressure on cadets to convert to evangelical Christianity.
Last week, Weinstein filed suit in federal court in New Mexico, alleging “severe, systemic and pervasive” religious discrimination in the Air Force.
Among other evidence, the suit cited a July 12 article in The New York Times that quoted Brig. Gen. Cecil Richardson, the Air Force’s deputy chief of chaplains, as saying: “We will not proselytize, but we reserve the right to evangelize the unchurched.”
Mary Walker, the Air Force’s general counsel, responded to Weinstein in an Oct. 5 letter. “There is no existing Air Force policy endorsing ‘proselytizing’ or ‘evangelizing’ ‘the unchurched.’ An earlier Chaplain Service document that might have been understood to represent such a policy statement was withdrawn from use by the Chaplain Service beginning on Aug. 10,” she wrote.
Because of the Columbus Day holiday, Walker could not be reached for comment Monday. An Air Force official said her letter was referring both to the NCMAF code of ethics and to a draft version of a possible Air Force code of ethics that was withdrawn at the same time.
