Air Force Religious-Expression

Guidelines Called ‘Hypocritical’

By Pete Winn

Base and unit commanders in the U.S. Air Force have new guidelines to follow when it comes to religion: no public prayers, period, except in “extraordinary circumstances.” The official pronouncement from Air Force high command cautions unit leaders against promoting faith — or even “the idea of religion over non-religion” — in any official way or venue, “including official communications or meetings, sports events or ceremonies.”

The guidelines came into being in the wake of a report compiled earlier this year in connection with an investigation into charges of religious intolerance at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, CO.

Academy spokesman Johnny Whitaker told Family News in Focus his base will be happy to comply. “We’re not banning anybody’s promotion of religion,” he said, “as long as it’s done at the right venues at the right time.”

But the guidelines essentially discourage public prayers at all official Air Force events other than worship services — except in “extraordinary circumstances,” which would include “mass casualties, preparation for imminent combat and natural disasters.”

Mat Staver, president of the Liberty Counsel, an Orlando, Fla.-based religious liberties law firm, said the regulations are outrageous. “To say that you can only have prayer in extraordinary circumstances, I think is hypocritical and certainly not consistent with our founding fathers and George Washington — our first general and first president,” Staver said.

Indeed, the idea that military personnel can get official approval to pray publicly only when disaster looms also troubles retired Army Lt. Col. Bob Maginnis. “We’re in a time of war,” he told CitizenLink. “We’re currently under unusual circumstances and have been since 9/11, and I think it is unfortunate that the Air Force has stomped on religious freedom and told commanders that they should chill any effort to express a faith in God, given that we have young men and woman that are dying every day on the battlefields.”

Maginnis said it was also ironic that, just Tuesday, he heard Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco call for a day of prayer in response to the devastation Hurricane Katrina left in New Orleans.

“You know, we shouldn’t have to get to a point where there is a disaster and bodies are lying before us before we invoke the name of God in a public way,” Maginnis said. “And yet, that’s the direction the Air Force seems to be going.”

An Air Force report issued earlier in the summer had indicated that while there was no systematic discrimination at the Air Force Academy, there had been some violations of religious pluralism by some evangelical Christians.

Grove City College sociology professor Steven Jones, an academic expert on religious freedom issues, said it is true that a pluralistic society like America must protect religious pluralism. But it also doesn’t follow that public institutions must somehow vouchsafe the so-called “freedom from religion.”

“The problem is, of course, that freedom from religion often is interpreted to mean that people with religious convictions cannot act on the basis of those religious convictions in the public sphere,” Jones said. “Well, that restricts their rights as citizens. I don’t think you get to disqualify people of faith, whatever that faith, simply because their motivations may be religious in nature.”

Staver was even more pointed: “Respecting religious pluralism doesn’t mean you have to become irreligious.” “Some people think,” he told CitizenLink, “that just because there are so many people with different religious views you simply can’t express any religious views at all in public. Religious pluralism then is being turned into atheism.”

Staver added that while we can respect the different religious persuasions of individuals, “this country was based upon Judeo-Christian principles — and upon a belief in God.” “Certainly, we can have religious views and we can protect people’s religious freedom without becoming an atheistic country.”

In July, Congress heard some of the same sentiments in hearings it held in response to the allegations of religious harassment at the Air Force Academy. Congressmen and top military brass alike cautioned that while respect for diverse viewpoints is always important, there was no need to implement drastic changes that were “antagonistic to religion.”

“We cannot expect to develop officers with the values and moral strength that we treasure in our military leaders,” said House Armed Services Subcommittee Chairwoman Rep. Thelma Drake, R-VA, “unless they openly engage views on faith with their peers and increase their awareness and respect for diverse cultures and beliefs.”

As Retired Air Force Chaplain Jack Williamson put it: “We (must) not allow a pendulum swing to go in an opposite direction, where we shut down the very good things that are happening to the exclusion of free expression of all.”

The U.S. Naval Academy, meanwhile, has indicated it has no plans to stop saying grace before its midshipmen’s lunch, regardless of the Air Force policy. Naval chaplains have been praying at lunch at the Annapolis, MD, service academy since its founding in 1845, and Naval Academy spokesman Cmdr. Rod Gibbons said there are no plans to change the tradition. Prayers, he said, are nondenominational and are led by Roman Catholic, Jewish or Protestant chaplains.

Staver, who applauded the Navy tradition, said Americans need to call upon the nation’s commander-in-chief, President Bush, to consider reviewing the Air Force guidelines. “We are a ‘nation under God,’ as our Pledge says,” Staver pointed out, “and once we forget that, we’ve forgotten our heritage. And once we do that, we’re no longer America.”

Take action now! Please contact President Bush and urge him to restore the right to religious expression in the Air Force. For contact information, including an easy-to-use e-mail form, visit the CitizenLink Action Center at http://www.citizenlink.org.

Pete Winn is the Associate Editor for CitizenLink the daily web based news service of Focus on the Family. For more information visit http://www.citizenlink.org.