First up from this week’s God machine is the latest in a series of twists for evangelism and religious coercion problems at the Air Force Academy. After a year of back-and-forth wrangling, and evidence of school-sponsored proselytizing, the Air Force released new guidelines for religious expression this week — which no longer caution top officers about promoting their personal religious views.
The original guidelines were created after allegations that evangelical Christians at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs were imposing their views on others. Some Christian chaplains were accused of telling cadets to warn nonbelievers they would go to hell if they were not born-again Christians.
The revised guidelines say nothing should be understood to limit the substance of voluntary discussions of religion where it is reasonably clear that the discussions are personal, not official, and can be reasonably free of potential coercion.
They also omit a statement in the earlier version that chaplains “should respect the rights of others to their own religious beliefs, including the right to hold no beliefs.”
Right, because taxpayer-financed chaplains at an official military academy that has already harassed religious minorities shouldn’t have to worry about the “rights” of those who aren’t evangelical Christians.
In the first set of guidelines, the Air Force stressed that, “Chaplains are commissioned to provide ministry to those of their own faiths, to facilitate ministry to those of other faiths, and to provide care for all service members, including those who claim no religious faith.” The revised guidelines contain no such language. Like most Bush administration policies that relate to separation of church and state, this is another step backwards.
And in related church-state news, a public school in Mineral Ridge, Ohio, recently discovered that it’s not 1961 anymore.
A public high school has stopped opening the school day with a prayer, after a newspaper questioned school officials about whether the practice was appropriate.
Until this week, the Lord’s Prayer was recited over the public address system at Mineral Ridge High School before the Pledge of Allegiance and morning announcements.
The Warren, Ohio, Tribune Chronicle had questioned Weathersfield Local School District officials about whether the prayer violates the First Amendment’s separation of church and state. The newspaper reported the school district’s decision but has not expressed an editorial opinion.
No student at the school, which enrolls about 300 students in northeast Ohio, was required to say the prayer and none had complained, Superintendent Mike Hanshaw said.
“We’re now in compliance with the law,” he said.
I know sometimes school bureaucracies aren’t as efficient as we’d like, but it’s worth noting that the Supreme Court ruled on this exact issue 43 years ago. The school is “in compliance with the law” now, but it’s not altogether clear why it took so long.
And in international This-Week-in-God news, the cartoon-related violence in the Muslim world has led to a series of crises in Europe and the Middle East, some of them violent, some of them political, and some of them just bizarre.
The worldwide fuss over 12 cartoon images of the Prophet Mohammed (some mocking, some benign) that ran in a Danish newspaper has already killed at least 10 people. Many self-styled voices of Islam have made the bizarre comparison between showing pictures of the Prophet Mohammed and expressing doubt about the Holocaust. A government-controlled Tehran newspaper announced a contest for cartoons about the Holocaust, asking “whether freedom of expression” applies to “the crimes committed by the United States and Israel.” In a spirit of “see how you like it,” a European Muslim group posted on the Web a cartoon of Anne Frank in bed with Hitler.
I wish had something insightful or productive to say about the cartoon travesty, but I don’t. Some offensive cartoons pissed off millions, many of whom became needlessly violent, and many of whom have been manipulated by political forces that see an opportunity to exploit unrest for personal gain. It’s a mess and a tragedy.