Why is the Air Force preaching Christina messages to its ROTC cadets? I don't know, but it has to stop -- there's absolutely no excuse for any government agency, much less a branch of the military, to be preaching or promoting any particular religion.
Unfortunately, I'm not surprised to see this happening with the Air Force. Right-wing evangelical Christians have done more to transform the Air Force into their own personal military wing than with any other branch of the military.
In a lesson designed to teach the Air Force's core values to ROTC cadets, Christian beliefs such as the Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount, and the Golden Rule are used as examples of ethical values, CNN has learned. Slides go on to explain what each of them are, for example listing 7 of the Ten Commandments.
An Air Force ROTC instructor came forward with the slides to the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, a watchdog group which tries to ensure religious freedom among the troops, after seeing a CNN report last Wednesday on Christian biblical references and saints' pictures included in ethics briefings for missile launch officers.
"I felt extremely uncomfortable briefing some of these slides, deleted them, and added what I felt were more relevant examples," the instructor said in an email to Mikey Weinstein, the foundation's president.
The instructor, who wishes to not be named due to fear of backlash from the military, claims the lesson was provided by the Air Education and Training Command (AETC), the same unit that oversees the training of the missile launch officers.
Source: CNN
It wouldn't be a problem to offer things like the Sermon on the Mount as an example of ethical values if they also offered examples from other religions as well as from secular philosophies. Indeed, given the likely religious background of most people in ROTC, it would only make sense to include a Christian example that they would be familiar with.
Using only Christian examples, though, is clearly wrong. First it suggests very strongly that those are the only sorts of examples that exist -- that ethics can only come from a Christian context. This is in fact something that many evangelical churches teach and the government has no business even vaguely reinforcing that message.
Second, it serves to single out Christian ethical ideas for special endorsement. Remember that these aren't a couple of examples among many in a list; instead, they are stand alone and are even explained in some detail.
The Air Force has admitted to what's been going on and say that they are "reviewing" the material. What, didn't they think to review it before? Or was it reviewed, but only by people who see no problem with singling out Christianity for special, favorable treatment? I'll bet it was the latter and that's precisely what's so troubling: there are too many people with too much power and authority in the Air Force who honestly and sincerely can't understand that it's wrong for the government -- and especially the military -- to endorse, support, or promote religion.
This isn't the only example of the Air Force promoting Christianity. They recently suspended an ethics course for new missile launch officers because it relied heavily -- if not exclusively -- on Christian "Just War" theory:
The briefings for missile launch officers, taught for nearly 20 years by military chaplains at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, are intended to train Air Force personnel to consider the ethics and morality of launching nuclear weapons - the ultimate doomsday machine.
Many of the slides in the 43 page presentation use a Christian justification for war, displaying pictures of saints like Saint Augustine and using biblical references.
"Abraham organized an Army to rescue Lot," one slide read, referring to the story of the Hebrew patriarch and his nephew found in the book of Genesis.
"Revelation 19:11 Jesus Christ is the mighty warrior," another slide read.
In this case the Air Force insists that they had no idea that religion generally or Christianity specifically was being taught in this ethics course. I'm not sure if that's good news or bad news -- it would probably be worse news if they knew about it and approved, but it's always bad news when military leaders are ignorant of what their own personnel are being taught.
One red flag is that this course has been taught for decades by chaplains. First, how can a course be taught for two decades without anyone in charge having any idea what the contents of the course are? Sounds fishy to me. Second, why would chaplains be put in charge of teaching this course? I could imagine the possibility of a chaplain contributing something, but not being the sole voice because that just reinforces the idea that ethical values require religion generally and/or Christianity in particular.
But that's just the status quo in the modern Air Force, right?
No comments:
Post a Comment