Guess I haven’t been paying attention. I thought the issue of unwanted religious proselytizing at the US Air Force Academy came up, and had been dealt with, during the first George W. Bush administration. But a friend sent me a link to a military-issues blog post that says it’s still going on and is as bad as ever.
Some of my colleagues in the military were evangelical types, but no one ever pushed religion on me to the extent I hear it’s being pushed at the Academy. I never made a secret of my atheism, but I didn’t flaunt it either. I never felt discriminated against, and I certainly never felt there was an inner circle of evangelical religious leaders secretly running things (although there were certainly many in senior positions).
I’m disturbed, though, that after all the commotion that’s been raised about it in recent years, Christianist officers, civilian faculty members, and peers are still proselytizing cadets at the Academy.
Once you’re an officer you can tell your fellow officers … even senior officers … that you have your own beliefs, but when you’re a cadet you do what you’re told and keep your private doubts and thoughts to yourself. The Academy is a coercive environment, and the evangelicals, like bullies anywhere, are taking advantage of that.
Religion should be strictly off-limits at the Academy, and I can’t believe no one in the USAF leadership has the balls to make it so.
Meanwhile, the good Christians at the US Air Force Academy are poisoning their critics’ seeing-eye dogs. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions on that. I certainly have drawn mine.