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