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Panel Finds No Overt Religious Intolerance at Air Force
By MARIA NEWMAN

A military panel looking into complaints of religious intolerance at the Air Force Academy found no instances of overt discrimination, officials said today, but concluded that the academy failed to accommodate the diverse religious needs of cadets and staff.

At a Pentagon news conference, Michael Dominguez, the acting secretary of the Air Force, said that he had ordered a review of practices at the academy after hearing allegations of religious disrespect at the campus, located in Colorado Springs.

"Instances of disrespect, no matter how unintentional or limited, toward other cadets, staff or airmen are wrong and incompatible with what we do for this nation," he said.

A report by the 16-member panel, released today by the Pentagon, will require academy leaders to clarify their policies on what is appropriate religious expression. The report also cited a perception of intolerance among some cadets and staff.

"The team found a religious climate that does not involve overt religious discrimination, but a failure to fully accommodate all members' needs and a lack of awareness where the line is drawn between permissible and impermissible expression of beliefs," the report says.

The inquiry was ordered after an Air Force Academy chaplain accused superiors of improperly promoting evangelical Christianity among cadets. The Lutheran chaplain, Capt. MeLinda S. Morton, submitted her resignation from the military on Tuesday.

Captain Morton has said she was fired from an administrative job because of her public criticism and was ordered to deploy to Japan.

"Chaplain Morton has been an outspoken critic of the academy's willingness to tolerate a pervasive evangelical climate that is threatening to members of other faith groups and disregards the constitutional separation of church and state," her lawyer, Eugene R. Fidell, said in a statement issued on Tuesday.

In April, the Yale Divinity School issued a report that said some academy chaplains were insensitive to religious diversity among cadets. Captain Morton helped with that report.

Among the incidents reported by the Yale study, which said evangelical proselytizing was rife at the academy, was one involving a campus chaplain who warned cadets that if they were "not born again" they would "burn in the fires of hell."

Others have complained that members of the chaplains' office frequently pressured cadets to attend chapel and receive religious instruction. Still others have said prayers were frequently conducted before official events.

Lt. Gen. Roger A. Brady, Air Force deputy chief of staff for personnel, who headed the 16-member team, said they had found seven specific incidents of intolerance that would be referred to higher military officials for possible investigation. He did not provide any details, saying that "we were not there to investigate individual behavior per se."

But, he said, the problem seemed to lie more in the academy failing to clarify what is acceptable religious expression on campus, and what is not.

"I have no reason to believe that people who are doing things that I think were inappropriate were doing so maliciously," he said. "In fact, I think they thought they had the best intentions toward the cadets. I think in some cases they were wrong.

"But we have not provided guidance in that area," he said.

General Brady said the team met in open sessions with more than 300 people including staff, faculty and cadets. He told the Air Force Link, the news service of the Air Force, that the academy was in some cases not accommodating to cadets of other faiths.

"The academy was not addressing the issue up front, such as including holy days on the calendar," he said. "So in some cases, it made cadets feel like the academy was not as sensitive to those needs, and was putting the burden on the cadet to ask for the accommodation."

He also said that the team found instances of religious slurs, jokes and disparaging remarks among the youngest members of the student body.

"That is neither surprising nor acceptable," the general said. "We bring about 1,300 new young Americans into the academy every year. Some come from very diverse environments, but some of them have never lived with anybody who sounds different or looks different or believes differently than they do."

The general said that those instances had decreased in recent years, and is expected to be addressed even further by a new program put into place recently called "Respecting Spiritual Values of all People."

"This program, which is new, tells cadets that people believe different things and come from different places," the general told the Link. "We must respect that diversity in our force and use it as a strength in our force."

Religious and cultural diversity becomes even more important, General Brady said in his remarks, as the United States continues its war on terror that has taken its forces into parts of the world where people practice different religions.

"We must respect each other and respect and understand our coalition partners who may be of different cultures," he said. "It is not only the right thing to do, it's an operational imperative."