ARLINGTON, Va. (ABP) — A Pentagon report on the religious climate at the United States Air Force Academy concludes that an atmosphere of religious intolerance does not pervade the campus, but that there are problems nonetheless.
Air Force officials, led by the force's acting secretary, Michael Dominguez, released the report by a special study team in a June 22 press conference at the Pentagon. Shortly thereafter, some members of Congress called for more aggressive oversight of the military's religious atmosphere.
“Mutual respect is what enables us to do our job — defending freedom,” Dominguez told reporters, explaining why the issue was a high-level priority for the Air Force.
The report was compiled by a 16-member Air Force team that visited the academy's Colorado Springs, Colo., campus and interviewed hundreds of cadets, faculty and administrators. The team was appointed by Dominguez and led by Lt. Gen. Roger Brady, the Air Force's deputy chief of staff for personnel matters.
“[The Air Force Academy] is aggressively addressing a subject that continues to be widely debated in the public arena,” it read. “The root of this problem is not overt religious discrimination, but a failure to fully accommodate all members' needs and a lack of awareness over where the line is drawn between permissible and impermissible expression of beliefs.”
It concluded: “The Air Force's core values, founded on respect, provide the guide to ensuring all religious activities at USAFA reflect adherence to the First Amendment prohibition against denying the free exercise of religion or establishing a religion.”
Dominguez appointed the study committee shortly after allegations surfaced earlier this spring regarding the treatment of religious minorities at the school. A Washington-based watchdog group, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, catalogued the allegations. AU sent an April 28 letter to Pentagon officials complaining that there was a pervasive and systematic bias in favor of evangelical Christians at the government-run school.
The letter detailed incidents in which administrators, faculty and upperclass cadets at the academy promoted evangelical forms of Christianity. It also alleged incidents in which cadets of minority faiths were harassed or humiliated.
An outspoken parent of two Jewish academy students and a Lutheran chaplain at the school soon echoed AU's complaints. Capt. Melinda Morton announced June 21 that she would resign from the Air Force rather than stay on staff at the academy.
Among the allegations were several incidents in which faculty or administrators promoted evangelical groups or beliefs in ways the complainants found inappropriate or coercive — such as repeated attempts to proselytize non-evangelical cadets and prayers or religious promotions at events with cadets of differing faiths. The charges also included several incidents in which cadets of minority faiths were harassed or humiliated by fellow cadets.
But the report found those incidents were not pervasive, and many times simply are a fact of life at a military academy.
“There's the ongoing challenge of dealing with 18-to-22-year-olds,” Brady said, referring to the cadets. “Most of them [when they come to the academy] know how to behave; some of them need a little work.”
Of the complaints against faculty and administrators, Brady said the academy's superintendent, Lt. Gen. John Rosa, has been working aggressively for the past year to address them. Rosa counseled staffers after complaints of inappropriate behavior were made against them, he said — but more education is needed for faculty and staff.
“There was a lack of awareness… as to what constitutes appropriate expression of faith,” Brady told reporters. “I have no reason to believe that people who are doing things that I think were inappropriate were doing so maliciously,” he added.
Several of the allegations involved repeated offenses by Brig. Gen. Johnny Weida, an evangelical Christian who is the academy's commandant of cadets. Dominguez announced in early June that the Air Force inspector general's office would investigate specific complaints against him.
At the press conference, the inspector general's office released a two-page document, dated June 21, that cleared Weida of most of the charges. However, it said he was still under investigation for one complaint: “the area of the possible existence of a communicative code that could have been used [by Weida] to facilitate the proselytization of non-Christian cadets.”
The larger report — weighing in at 91 pages with attachments — requires the academy and Air Force officials to make several changes to improve education throughout the service on religious issues.
The report also said that the task force had found seven specific incidents it would refer to the Air Force's chain of command for further investigation and possible recriminations. Brady refused to elaborate on the charges, saying it would be inappropriate.
Shortly after the press conference, two members of Congress and the head of the group that publicized the allegations said the Air Force document was a good beginning — but only a beginning.
“This report, although it is helpful, simply threads the needle,” said Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.), at a Capitol Hill press conference. “This report doesn't go as far as it should have gone.”
Rep. Lois Capps (D-Calif.) said the document was a “step in the right direction,” but that it raises as many questions as it answers. “It speaks to a chain-of-command problem when a person in authority is proselytizing,” she said. “I believe that congressional oversight is necessary.”
But further oversight may be hard to come by. On June 20, the House voted down — on a mostly party-line vote — an amendment to a Pentagon appropriations bill that would have called on the Air Force to come up with a specific plan to address the allegations and report back to Congress within 60 days. One Republican — Rep. John Hostettler of Indiana — accused Democratic supporters of the amendment and other critics of the Air Force Academy of being part of a nationwide “war on Christianity.”
Some prominent Religious Right leaders have echoed Hostettler's views. But Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said the Air Force report validates his group's initial concerns. “I think the evidence in this report is more than strong enough to conclude that there is religious intolerance and religious discrimination at the Air Force Academy,” he told reporters.