Friday, May 06, 2005
The Air Force Academy and Evangelical Christianity - Where’s the scandal?
If you have followed the new lately you may have heard that the Air Force Academy has become a bastion of Evangelical Christianity. Does this represent a crisis?
In 2004 a Yale Divinity team came to monitor the Academy to see how the religious climate was handled. Their report based on their one week of review has raised major issues. This report has created a crisis at the Academy and has raised the issue of religion and the academy to new heights. But...is the issue as serious as it has been made out to be? The American’s United for Church and State ceratainly believe so. They have published a report that would indicate that indeed this is a crisis situation. However, upon further reviw, the major crisis may be the result of the military acting on this report. Hugh Hewitt, talk show host, lawyer and columnist has written a great response
to the AU report, and I have written a response to Hugh’s piece.
The American’s United report can be found at:
http://www.au.org/pdf/050428AirForceReport.pdf
Hugh Hewitt’s article at the Weekly Standard can be found at:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/005/573iewnz.asp
My response appears below:
Hugh,
Once again you are dead on talking about the Air Force Academy “scandal.” Living here in Colorado Springs there has been a lot of hubbub about this, with accusations flying around with no substantial proof, aside that is from the Yale Divinity School team (as a Fuller Seminary graduate, I must admit that there is a certain amount of friendly rivalry with Yale, so I don’t hold Yale Divinity grads and students too highly).
As the actual report of the incidents in question came to light it was discovered that the main charge, that Major Watties was encouraging students to “proselytize” their classmates. In other word, the Major was guilty of encouraging evangelical Christians, individuals who attend the sessions on their own free will, to simply do what their faith calls them to do. It would seem that the primary issue is that Dr. Leslie doesn’t approve of evangelical theology, which she is free and entitled to do, but she has not right to make the U.S. government an advocate for her pluralistic version of the Christian faith.
This is of course the age-old modernist viewpoint of religious faith. Its fine for you to hold that belief in your heart, but to act upon it in the public arena is an act of violence. Of course, placing such limitations on the execution of religious faith (and it should be noted that with the exception of most forms of Judaism, all of the major faiths have an evangelistic component) means in the end that you are not allowed to practice your faith – which perhaps to the surprise of the secularist community, actually does violate the 1st Amendment provisions regarding religion.
You are quite right to say that the Air Force Secretary should not have given in to Mr. Lynn’s request. My question to Mr. Lynn is what kind of an environment does he see to be correct at the Academy? Are we to have an institution where no one is able to discuss and attempt to persuade any fellow student on controversial issues? Or is it just religion that is not open to discussion? Are we to create an entire generation of military leaders who do not have the ability to withstand people holding opposing viewpoints? This is not the Dutch army of the 1970s, this is the United States military and it is called on by its nation to serve and die, to deal with the challenges of combat and psychological warfare.
I raise this last issue because the reality is (and again this comes from over 25 years of living in Colorado Springs, growing up here and knowing literally thousands of cadets in that time) that the vast majority of students coming to the Academy come from religious homes. For whatever reason religious homes do inculcate a greater sense of duty, loyalty and patriotism (we can debate whether this should be the case, but it is simply an observable fact). The non-religious students who come to the Academy should not be (and there is not account have been) pressured to engage in religious activity by superiors or by way of an order. But they also can not expect the student body at the Academy to suppress their faith (be that Evangelical or Catholic Christianity, Islam, Judaism, etc) in order to make a more secular environment in the living quarters of the Academy. As Francis Schaeffer noted years ago, secularism is a faith as potent as any other. The environment at the Academy should not encourage as part of its mission any faith – mine or Mr. Lynn’s. But, he and we should not be surprised that the cadets who are giving up 9 years of their lives to the service of this country do desire to share their most deeply held beliefs. Rather than criticizing the Academy, Mr. Lynn should be praising an environment where the student body actually has interchanges among passionate believers of all faiths, including the secular.
That is my 2 cent worth.
Christopher Morton
http://www.rovingtheologian.com
