“An Evolution From Cynicism to Sadness to Utter Outrage and Disgust”

Hi Mikey,

As I get ready to finish a four-year teaching tour at USAFA, I wanted to share some perspectives with you. I am a (1990’s decade) USAFA grad who teaches (USAF Academy Faculty academic disciplines withheld) here. My family (wife and age-withheld girl) are Catholic.

I was very happy to have finally met you during the 2010 NCLS conference where you literally “rocked the house” when you spoke to a standing room only crowd. I was here as a cadet from 199X to 199X, and my last two years were under General Gamble’s watch as Commandant. As a new third class cadet, I was told by my AOC and his cadet cronies from the New Life Church that I “could not be saved” for being Catholic. When this AOC introduced himself for the first time to the entire cadet squadron, he talked about his happy party life as a an FB-111 crew member until “he became a Christian”. Between myself having thick skin and being too busy trying to survive the workload, I did not make much of it. Before I was told of my terrible future in Hades if I did not join them, I innocently attended Bible Studies thinking they wanted to share a positive Christian message, but I soon found out the passages they were sharing were stressing the idea of not having other idols (i.e. my crucifix, the Virgin Mary, etc.) I saw them more as pests and was not mature enough to understand the seriousness of the problem. If they felt like that about other Christians, I never thought how much more worse it could be for Jews, Muslims, Atheists, etc. During the lead-up to Recognition Training in 1992, one of our Muslim cadets, who was on exchange from Pakistan went through very tough all-day without eating or drinking during the daylight hours because this period coincided with Ramadan. The same AOC made an off-handed remark along the lines of “these crazy third-rate religions”, essentially ridiculing this cadet’s spirit.

I became more sensitized to the issue, as I ran into obnoxious evangelicals during every assignment, the worse was watching U.S. Army Lt General Benjamin Mixon pushing his faith on us during a retirement ceremony at U.S. Southern Command in Miami in 2003. When you and your courageous sons and daughter-in-law came forward a few years ago, I finally realized the seriousness. I read all about it in your book, “With God on Our Side” and this only reinforced my outrage as I had personally observed and endured many of the same terrible things your sons and daughter-in-law experienced. In 200X I deployed to Ali Al Salem Air Base from May to November. I overlapped with the 386th Air Expeditionary Wing Commander, Mark Hale (also an AOC during my time at USAFA) during three months from May to July. He proudly identified as a “Christian Warrior”, but he never once pushed his faith on me. My roommate was a his Executive Officer, who proudly shared with me how happy he was that Colonel Hale identified him as a Christian brother, and often had long chats with him about their faith. He also showed me some Christian memorabilia the Colonel had personally given him before departure. I think it was a very propagandistic book by an author who had served in the military. My time in the desert made me realize how some of these fundamentalists perverted the tragedy of 9/11 by turning it into a message of war between their idea of Christianity versus the Muslim world. At the same time I was becoming aware of the “Passion of the Christ” impact on your sons and daughter-in-law, and other disgusting things that were happening here at USAFA.

In 200X I found out I was coming here to teach, something that I had set as a personal goal, and moved in June 200X. I arrived with a guarded attitude, but at the same time, I did not want to assume everyone here was going to cause trouble with unsolicited proselytizing. During the new faculty orientation, they barely touched on the history of problems here and made very vague statements about religious respect. Some of my fellow new faculty were familiar with the past and found it outrageous that they could not share their faith with others. I asked one of them why it bothered her so much, and she said it was her duty to share the gospel with everyone. She also invited my wife, a civilian, for a female gathering, and I interpreted it as a friendly gesture. My wife later told me that the gathering was Bible Study, and they even gave her a workbook of materials that would prepare her to be a “Christian.” My wife is tough and she held her tongue, but she later shared her outrage with me. This faculty member was never friendly to us again after my wife politely declined other invitations. My poor wife has patiently endured unsolicited critiques of her medallion of the Virgin of Guadalupe from some of our “friendly” locals, but I know this falls outside the scope of the problems in the military. I just want to make the point that the overall mentality in Colorado Springs has not only damaged USAFA, but it can take a huge toll on dependents too. The head of my department is from the New Life Church, and the only time he mentioned faith was when he publicly thanked God during his investiture ceremony as a Permanent Professor, which was fine by me.

Over the last one or two years, I noted some observations of activities biased toward one religion (evangelical, fundamentalist Christianity) during duty hours in our department. I waited until our annual climate survey, from earlier this year, to note them on the open comments section. Before the survey, our Department Head clearly said he would address any problems. The incident I noted on the survey was that a couple of my fellow faculty were having religious discussions with cadets from their same church during duty hours. The door was opened, and the talk was all about activities in the New Life Church. My comment simply was that this could create an image of favoritism, and that such talk could be saved for the SPIRE (“Special Programs in Religious Education”) period in the evening, or better yet, for Sunday in Church. The talk also questioned President Obama’s faith, and I mentioned that faculty can send a very bad message to young cadets by criticizing our political leaders. It’s okay for faculty and student to chitchat, but the time is usually reserved for Extra Instruction in academics. When it came time for the boss to reveal his findings, I was surprised and very disappointed that my observations were not mentioned. One funny thing about this survey that originated from the Dean of Faculty was that they asked rank and gender, but fortunately there was a box were you could say you did not wish to mention this data. Instead he focused on various comments by evangelicals who feel they were being targeted as victims of reverse-religious discrimination, and he seemed very upset about it. I’m sure their comments were aimed at efforts from people like you to ensure that everyone’s beliefs and non-beliefs are respected. I don’t know if the Dean of Faculty specifics of this latest climate survey will be released publicly, but I am confident that they will use this new “reverse religious decimation” tactic to hinder our efforts to ensure fairness. I don’t want to raise a stink over my comments not being mentioned, but I definitely want to make you aware of this new victimization ploy.

Some of my students have asked me about the history of religious intolerance in class, and I’ve mentioned what I’ve seen and also told them to talk to me if they feel there are problems. Overall their generation is more tolerant than ours, but the usual suspects still have a lot of influence on their young minds. A few were outraged at some of the past scandals, while most told me they feel better keeping their mouths shut. One of the cadets who is a member of the New Life Church told me they are a majority here, and they should be able to share their beliefs with the Cadet Wing. Despite my best efforts at mentoring, I was unable to get him to understand what we mean by tolerance and respect.

I chose not to go into one of the supposed confidential sessions with General Gamble’s team a few weeks ago simply because I had no confidence in the anonymity, and I also thought any observation I made would not be taken seriously. I think this was all an insincere initiative by the senior leadership to pretend they care about the problem which only makes the very real fundamentalist Christian oppression problems here only that much worse.

I am a very stoic, thick skinned person, but if I had to summarize my emotions over the last 17 years of observing, initially tolerating, and experiencing religious discrimination in the service, they would have to be an evolution from cynicism to sadness to utter outrage and disgust. I would be equally outraged if my fellow Catholics were openly trying to push our traditions on others. Before I left for USAFA, my dad who came to the U.S. from Colombia in his early 20s and served in the U.S. Army as a border guard on the Czechoslovakian border with Germany from 1962 to 1965 before getting his citizenship, aptly told me to remember that my only race and faith at USAFA and the AF would be the color blue. I never forgot that, but like I said, the survival mode here makes it difficult to get mad at some of the shenanigans that went on and continue to go on. Last year, General Schwartz eloquently put it when he said our faith is SERVICE. This is my personal opinion: I think that plenty of my fellow faculty prefer silence to outrage out of fear of retribution.

I’m off to (military installation withheld) in July to finish my last (number of years withheld) years before retirement, and want to take this time to thank you, Mikey, and the MRFF, for all the hard work. I can tell you that there is truly no place else to go to at USAFA for help other than you and the MRFF when faced with religious persecution, at least without facing serious consequences for standing up. I will continue to follow all your updates and will be happy to help in any way I can. I know that some people want to believe that these shocking e-mails to you and the MRFF are not from real people at the Academy, in the USAF or in other branches of DoD and are made up. If anyone wants to know who I am, please have them contact you and we may be able to arrange a face-to-face. I am prepared to take a polygraph test for all I have reported above. I wonder if “they” at USAFA, the USAF or the rest of DoD would commit to doing the same? I just made my first donation to MRFF, and plan on joining the Constitution Society. Keep fighting, MRFF and Mikey!

Sincerely,

(USAF Academy Faculty Member’s name, military rank, USAF Academy Faculty Dept. and Faculty Position withheld)