Air Force Academy Controlled by Evangelicals

(1 pm. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

This essay is a companion piece to the “Atheists and Agnostics Need Not Apply” essay by The MomCat yesterday. It’s also a followup to a comment I made near the bottom of the threads.

It’s actually fairly common knowledge that RW evangelicals have been turning the USAF academy into a hell hole for non-evangelicals. Cadets are forced to pretend they are evangelicals or face harassment and /or expulsion.

A lot of what I’ll be quoting here goes to Thruthout. Here is their link. This essay was published 30 Sep 2010. It’s recent.

Like I said, the news is old. Here’s an article Air Force Removes Chaplain From Post –

Officer Decried Evangelicals’ Influence from WaPo dated 13 May 2005. That’s a five year time span. that’s a long term plan and a concerted effort to hijack the USAF, the Strategic Air Command and the Missile Command. This includes “Looking Glass” the nuclear super hardened command center deep in the bowels of Cheyenne Mountain.

I’m going to toss out some blockquotes so you can get a sense of what’s going on. Truthout and WaPo will be the origins. I don’t need to go any further than two articles five years apart. For now. Note the one cadet quote going back to 1977.

There’s a veteran’s group, the MRFF, that follows this closely. Here’s their cred: MRFF Nominated for Nobel Peace Prize

October 27, 2009

The USAF Academy is located in Colorado Springs. It’s nick name is “the Evangelical Vatican”. Some small background via Wiki:

The military boom continued and in 1963, NORAD’s main facility was built in Cheyenne Mountain. This placed NORAD directly next to Colorado Springs and permanently secured the city’s military presence. During the Cold War the city greatly expanded due to increased revenue from various industries and the prevailing military presence in the city. In the mid 1970s, Ent Air Force Base was shut down and later converted into the United States Olympic Training Center. Military presence was further increased in 1983 with the founding of Falcon Air Force Base (later changed to Schriever Air Force Base), a base primarily tasked with missile defense and satellite control. Fort Carson and Peterson are still growing and continue to contribute to the city’s growth. Air Force Space Command is located on Peterson AFB.

Religious institutions

Focus on the Family Visitors Center

Although houses of worship of almost every major religion can be found in the city, Colorado Springs has attracted a large influx of Evangelical Christians and Christian organizations in recent years. At one time Colorado Springs was counted to be the national headquarters for 81 different religious organizations, earning the city the tongue-in-cheek nickname “the Evangelical Vatican”[48] and “The Christian Mecca”[citation needed]. Religious groups with regional or international headquarters in Colorado Springs include: the Association of Christian Schools International, the Christian and Missionary Alliance, Compassion International, Every Home for Christ, Focus on the Family, HCJB, the International Bible Society, The Navigators, the Roman Catholic Diocese of Colorado Springs, WAY-FM Media Group, Andrew Wommack Ministries, and Young Life.

Italics mine.

The BQs are after the jump. Enjoy. And be sure to follow the link to the last on and read the full article. If you don’t, you’ll be leaving yourself very ignorant and vulnerable  to a Fifth Column effort in the USAF.

WaPo:

DENVER, May 12 — An Air Force chaplain who complained that evangelical Christians were trying to “subvert the system” by winning converts among cadets at the Air Force Academy was removed from administrative duties last week, just as the Pentagon began an in-depth study of alleged religious intolerance among cadets and commanders at the school.

“They fired me,” said Capt. MeLinda Morton, a Lutheran minister who was removed as executive officer of the chaplain unit on May 4. “They said I should be angry about these outside groups who reported on the strident evangelicalism at the academy. The problem is, I agreed with those reports.”

Surveys of present and former cadets have shown that some students said they felt a heavy and sometimes offensive emphasis on evangelical Christianity, with praise for cadets who pronounce their “born-again” status and insults aimed at Jews, Roman Catholics and non-evangelical cadets.

One staff chaplain reportedly told newly arrived freshmen last summer that anyone not born again “will burn in the fires of hell.”

Such slurs have been heard for decades on the campus, according to Mikey Weinstein of Albuquerque, a 1977 academy graduate who said he has repeatedly complained to the Air Force brass about the “religious pressure” on cadets. “This is not Christian versus Jew,” Weinstein said. “This is the evangelical Christians against everybody else.”

“The evangelicals want to subvert the system,” Morton said. “They have a very clear social and political agenda. The evangelical tone is pervasive at the academy, and it’s aimed at converting these young people who are under intense pressure anyway.”

When a two-page summary of the “Yale Report” became public this spring, Morton said, the academy’s chief chaplain, Col. Michael Whittington, responded angrily. But Morton said she agreed with the criticism in the report.

“The predominance of evangelical Christians reflects the chaplain corps of the Air Force overall,” Morton said. “The major mainstream Protestant divinity schools are no longer sending many graduates into the armed forces. And so the concentration of evangelicals among chaplains is strong through the whole service.”

Morton, 48, said that, having criticized the religious atmosphere at the academy, “I may be toast” in terms of an Air Force career. She said her next duty station is said to be a pleasant spot. “But serving in Okinawa as the most hated chaplain in the Air Force might not be so great.”

Truthout:

“The predominance of evangelical Christians reflects the chaplain corps of the Air Force overall,” Morton said. “The major mainstream Protestant divinity schools are no longer sending many graduates into the armed forces. And so the concentration of evangelicals among chaplains is strong through the whole service.”

Morton, 48, said that, having criticized the religious atmosphere at the academy, “I may be toast” in terms of an Air Force career. She said her next duty station is said to be a pleasant spot. “But serving in Okinawa as the most hated chaplain in the Air Force might not be so great.”

Academy leadership announced last month that the results would not be released, which angered the anonymous cadet who contacted the MRFF.

Results of the so-called “Climate Study” leaked to the press, and “353 cadets (almost 1 out of every 5 survey participants) reported having been subjected to unwanted religious proselytizing, and 23 cadets (13 of them Christians) reported living ‘in fear of their physical safety’ because of their religious beliefs,” according to the MRFF.

Weinstein received the email from the anonymous cadet after this initial spat with the academy and Gould.

The email describes a group of cadets who don’t fit the Protestant evangelical stereotype; they’re Catholics, mainstream Protestants, LGBT, atheists or agnostic. They tell Weinstein that his earlier advice to “trust the system” and take their grievances up the chain of command has failed, and they are forced to pretend to be something they are not. In order to achieve and prosper in the academy, these cadets pretend to be evangelicals and even attend Bible studies to avoid being “outed.”

“Despite the Cadet Honor Code we all lie about our lives,” the anonymous cadet writes. “We have to. We don’t have a choice. Thus we are all ‘invisible’ to our tormentors. They will never find us. My own parents don’t know. Only my fiancée knows and he/she is one of my classmates and a fellow member of our underground group. I keep ‘Christian’ books and ‘Christian’ CD’s in my room so others will be fooled and leave me alone and not suspect that I’m not actually with the USAFA ‘Christianity is the Only Way’ program here, even though I consider myself to be a Christian.”

Cadets and graduates, as well as concerned parents of several cadets and graduates, have contacted the MRFF with serious concerns about Cadets for Christ, according to the letter to Gates.

The letters details the startling testimony of two Catholic parents of a 2010 graduate who, at first, were happy to hear that their daughter joined a Bible study group at the academy. That was before they discovered that their daughter was being taught that her “career should be that of a wife and mother,” and in Biblical terms, “the female is the sheep and the male is the shepherd.”

“Our daughter was methodically brain washed into believing that she was unsaved in the Catholic religion,” the anonymous parents wrote in an email to the MRFF. “During spring break 2009, she urgently asked that we read the Bible everyday in order to ‘receive the grace of God and be saved.’ This manner of speech took us completely off guard.”

“This invisible force has rocked our family to the core. Two sisters no longer talk to one another. A mother has been asked to no longer contact her daughter. A father tries very hard to keep some sense of equilibrium in the family. This is what our family has become. Nevertheless, we will continue our attempts to bring our daughter back to us – we will never give up hope.”

“As parents, it is very difficult to see your child change in a manner that you no longer recognize her as your own. We grossly underestimated the power of this group. Being at such a geographical distance, coupled with the rigors of the USAFA, it becomes more difficult to monitor behavioral changes until they have taken deep root. Do you have any idea how it feels to grieve the loss of a child who is alive and healthy? THE AIR FORCE ACADEMY ALLOWED THIS TO HAPPEN!”

The Christian Fighter Pilot blog claims the MRFF attack on Cadets for Christ for being a “cult” is hypocritical, and a cult has every right to be a cult as long as it does not break any civil or military laws.

And this is only the beginning of the problem. Colorado Springs is growing like a rocket (no pun):

Colorado Springs, CO – POPULATION GROWTH

You have to see the chart and numbers to believe it.

HuffPo:

Air Force Academy Chaplain Convinces Catholic League To End Call For Probe 02-24-2010

And here’s the best MUST READ of all on this subject; be ready to change your undies. From The Online Journal 01-04-2007. Here a just a few snippets for your delectation – and defecation, if so moved (sorry for that pun, it really was unintended). 😉

Evangelicals exploit Air Force Academy; military officials interlocked with local activists

…

‘Spiritual Gettysburg’

In addition to being headquarters for Air Force Space Command, Northern Command, NORAD, numerous Air Force bases, and the Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs is also home to the nation’s largest, most influential and politically active evangelical organizations: James Dobson’s Focus on the Family, which is so large that it maintains its own zip code, claims more than 200 million followers worldwide, and is located directly across the highway from the academy.

…

Focus on the Air Force Academy

The religious organizations of Colorado Springs, which literally surround the Air Force Academy, have been influencing school activities and interacting with academy officials and cadets for over a decade.

When the Focus on the Family headquarters opened in 1993, the academy’s parachute team, the Wings of Blue, participated in the opening ceremony by delivering “the keys of heaven” to James Dobson’s new facility — directly from the sky. [4]

During official Air Force Academy reunions, graduates are invited to the Focus on the Family headquarters for a tour that promotes James Dobson’s religious/political views and encompasses a video portraying Dobson as a hero receiving accolades from such figures as Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush.

…

‘Legally Actionable Violations’

This spring, Americans United — a Washington DC-based organization created in 1947 to protect the separation of church and state — issued a report concluding that religious “practices and policies” at the US Air Force Academy “constitute egregious, systemic, and legally actionable violations of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.”

“[C]omplaints from multiple sources make clear that violations of the Establishment Clause are not merely aberrant acts by a few rogue individuals, but instead are reflections of systematic and pervasive religious bias and intolerance at the highest levels of the Academy command structure.” (Their emphasis)

According to the report, numerous former and current cadets have issued complaints, which have been confirmed by academy officials, that the Cadet Wing has been regularly pressured by members of the faculty, staff, chaplains’ office, and upper class, to attend worship services, undertake evangelical religious instruction, and proselytize fellow students.

I hope this was a bit enlightening for those who had no idea how much and by who our country is being taken over. Hope this doesn’t spoil your day but ignorance is not bliss. We need to be as aware as possible of what the Right is doing and react, plan and act accordingly.

If you read everything this far, God Bless You. You now are a semi-authority on the subversion of our nuclear delivery system. Now, what are you going to do about it?

Shanti.