MRFF In Box
MRFF's Inbox

January 30, 2009

Hunters,

A recent incident in which a flyer was sent out to all of you, referencing a specific chapel program, has brought to light the care and sensitivity we all must display to our fellow Airmen surrounding issues involving religion. While it resulted in a complaint by an outside organization, I am more concerned that it also resulted in complaints by some of you who felt offended by it personally. While I am absolutely convinced that it was sent with the best intentions by all, I am also convinced that the message, as well as its method of delivery, did not live up to the care for sensitivity to others I mentioned earlier. You all should know, I take full responsibility for the incident, and sincerely apologize to those of you in our Hunter community who were offended. I want to share a couple of lessons learned from this episode, so that you all know I am dedicated to ensuring something like this does not happen again;

Word choice counts--the content of the flyer, while perhaps Biblically accurate, was offensive to some. Contextually, since there was a US Army soldier recently beaten to the point of hospitalization at Ft Benning, allegedly for being the "whiney Jew," you can see where the interest level was raised. We will make sure we take the extra moment to think through this process.

Method of delivery-although I did not send out the email, it did come from a wing HQ mailbox. The use of that type of address may have implied to some an endorsement of the content of the program or a particular religion. Of course, there can be no official or governmental endorsement of any particular system of belief or matter of consciousness. We will brief up overarching Chapel programs at stand up, in the Hunter Roll Call, paper, etc. combined with other announcements of general interest to the public at large. I personally want to endorse all of our chapel programs to those of you who are inclined to use them, no matter if you are religious or not, or if you are, no matter what particular faith you may belong to, the Chaplain and his team are ready to assist in any way they can across a broad spectrum of programs, secular and religious.

We can all learn from everyday events in life, this is one, and your leadership, and me, will move forward from here with greater sensitivity to everyone in our wing, and to our supporters here at Creech.

Hunter 1
Col Chris Chambliss
Commander, 432d Wing / 432 AEW
Creech AFB DSN 38-136


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