Lt. General John Rosa Jr., superintendent of the Air Force Academy has acknowledged that his campus is so permeated with evangelical proselytizing that it wwill take years to rid the institution of religious intolerance. He said he finds the problem of cadets unfairly pressured to adopt Christian beliefs and practices occurring throughout "my whole organization," with offenders among faculty, staff and students.
There have been numerous complaints that cadets' constitutional rights have been violated by militant evangelists weilding peer pressure with the blessing of authority figures in the chain of command. One campus chaplain went so far as to warn hundreds of cadets that those "not born again" would "burn in the fires of hell".
General Rosa said, "If everything goes well it will take six years to fix the problem." Reforms that were promised last year were compromised by heavy-handed editing from the Air Force's chief chaplain, When Capt. MeLinda Morton, a Lutheran chaplain, dared to complain of cadets being abused by "systemic and pervasive" proselytizing, the Air Force transferred her to Asia.
An inspector general's report is promised soon from the Air Force. Now here's the kicker that, in my opinion, is not going to make this an easy problem to solve. It will take much more prodding, especially civilian pressure from President Buch, Congress and taxpayers, to undo the damage and restore the separation of church and state at the academy.
Bush, Congress and taxpayers. One of those three can help, but when your government suffers from the same problem how could you expect them to have any effect solving this problem. I can see Bush approached with this and saying, WHAT PROBLEM???????
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