On April 28, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State released a report on Religious Coercion and Endorsement of Religion at the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. The organization investigated complaints from a variety of sources from people of different religious backgrounds and concluded that the USAF Academy was involved in coerced religious practice, discrimination against non-Christians and non-religious cadets, and failing to adequately handle complaints of religious intolerance. The report concludes that the abuses come down from the top of the military hierarchy at the Academy.
Among the abuses:
- Academy chaplains Major Warren "Chappy" Watties instructed cadets who attended his protestant worship service to return to their tents and proselytize to cadets who hadn't attended; failure to accept this proselytizing would cause cadets to "burn in the fires of hell."
- Cadets who did not attend a chapel service after dinner were forced to march in a "Heathen Flight" back to their dorms.
- Head-football-coach Fisher DeBerry informed his team he expected to see them in church on Easter. He also hung a banner in the locker room proclaiming "I am a Christian first and last * * * I am a member of Team Jesus Christ"
- Many mandatory events (meals, awards ceremonies, training) were opened with Christian prayer.
- Instructors introduced themselves as born-again Christians and encouraged students to also become born-again during the course of the term.
- One instructor told his students to pray before taking a history exam.
- Signs were placed on every dining plate announcing a Christian-themed program related to the movie The Passion of the Christ. Flyers of a similar nature bore the message, "This is an officially sponsored USAFA event please do not take this flyer down."
- Non-Christian, lower-class cadets have been subjected to religious harassment and proselytizing by more senior cadets and are not punished for their inappropriate conduct. (Senior cadets hold authority over more junior cadets amounting to virtually complete control.)
- Commander of Cadets General Johnny Weida emailed cadets endorsing National Prayer Week and saying "[a]sk the Lord to give us the wisdom to discover the right, the courage to choose it, and the strength to make it endure." In an official "Commander's Guidance" document, General Weida instructed cadets that they "are accountable first to your God."
- Christian students wishing to leave campus to attend religious worship services are issued "non-chargeable passes" which don't count against leave. Those who practice other religions are not able to obtain these passes.
This summer I hear the drumming, four dead in Ohio.
Gotta get down to it, soldiers are cutting us down. Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her and found her dead on the ground?
How can you run when you know?
Gotta get down to it, soldiers are cutting us down. Should have been done long ago.
What if you knew her and found her dead on the ground?
How can you run when you know?
Tin soldiers and Nixon's coming, we're finally on our own.
This summer I hear the drumming, four dead in Ohio,
four dead in Ohio, four dead in Ohio, four dead in Ohio, how many more?
Four dead in Ohio, four dead in Ohio, four dead in Ohio, home many more?
Now we have grey cadets and Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld coming.. killing thousands and destroy the lives of hundreds of thousands. Where is the outrage, where is the anger?? So successful has the TV campaign been to distance the US population from reality, that even when presented with the clearest of all possible evidence, the citizens shrug their shoulders and kiss their own asses good bye. Well i hope they discover before too long how seriously misguided and wrong they have been.
