The attempted takeover of the Air Force Academy by Evangelicals has been covered by main stream media. Just yesterday, the
LA Times had this to say.
For more background check this CNN article
This is a great Dailykos diary by Newsie8200
Last year a tipping point may have been reached when The Passion of the Christ was released. It seems that this event emboldened evangelicals as some sort of a battle cry.
This account at
The Jewish Week comes from a recent graduate;
Weinstein, 22, who graduated from the academy last year in a class of 1,000 — 20 of whom were Jewish — said “a large vocal minority has had their way at the academy and they are creating a hostile environment.”
“The support we needed from the leadership of the academy to stop the gradual poisoning of the environment wasn’t there,” he said.
Weinstein said that when Gibson’s “The Passion” was released, “there was a barrage of ‘Passion’ paraphernalia everywhere, and there was a ‘Passion’ party at the academy. No one was there to stop it. There were cadet-only screenings at a reduced admission price. … There was a lot of pressure not to say anything about all the flyers and posters [about the movie] in the academic building.
“I sat down with a teacher who asked me if I was handling it OK,” he recalled. “I said no.”
He told his father, who graduated from the academy in 1977, about it. Mikey Weinstein, whose youngest son, Curtis, is now a sophomore at the academy, worked with Americans United to examine conditions at the academy and piece together examples of intolerance.
“What the academy has is a lusty and thriving intolerance, objectively manifesting itself in unconstitutional discrimination and prejudice,” Mikey Weinstein said he found. “It’s in the very air conditioning of the academy; it’s like gravity there.”
“It’s not a Christian-Jew thing, it’s Evangelical Christian vs. everybody else,” he stressed. “The viciousness is as bad against mainline Protestants as it is against Catholics as it is against Jews. … For the last 10 to 15 years, maybe more, [the academy] ignored this growing cancer of Evangelical intrusion.”
Mikey Weinstein said he learned that it “might be very common” for a professor to introduce himself at the beginning of the school year, announce that he is a born-again Christian and say that by the end of the semester he hoped they would be, too.
“This is not Brandeis,” he said.
That was 2004, and then Mel Gibson’s “The Passion” was the box office phenomenon. This is 2005, now comes George Lucas’ “Star Wars-Revenge of the Sith”.
I bet you that theaters in Colorado Springs and Denver will be visited by more than a thousand cadets. These cadets will enjoy a great film (I did), one were Jedi Knights represent a moral backbone that is based on tolerance, freedom and democracy while they fight the imperial wishes of a power hungry conspiracy.
I have not seen “The Passion”, I have no interest, to me the teachings of Christ and his choice of death vs. the betrayal of his principles is what matters rather than the details of his suffering at the hands of the Romans, for whom this was standard operating procedure. I think going to see “The Passion” is voyeurism bordering into vicarious sado-masochism. I am not interesting in any more images of torture polluting my brain. Enough with Abu Grahib in 2004.
I propose that the Air Force Academy is a “canary in the mine”, alerting us to what could happen if the theocons (theocrats, fundies, religious right, as you wish) take over America.
The proximity to many of the most influential evangelical PACs and other organizations based 20 miles south in Colorado Springs such as James Dobson’s Focus on the Family seems to have facilitated this process.
The excerpt below comes from here
Colorado Springs is a military town, home to the US Air Force Academy, NORAD Headquarters, Air Force Space Command, multiple Air Force Bases, and numerous other military installations. There is, however, one additional compound being used to launch, not a military, but a cultural offensive against what evangelical extremists believe to be the deterioration of America's "traditional" values.
As one writer put it, "Colorado Springs [is] a testing ground not just for new artillery but for ideas, as if the mental frontier of America is still up for grabs."
One of the many casualties of this "war on culture" has been the US Air Force Academy, which has traveled through a door in the wall that is supposed to separate church from state . . . a door that has been installed by a group of "Theocons" called Focus on the Family.
After the Colorado-based Savings and Loan scandal erupted in the late 1980s, Colorado Springs became known as "the forfeiture capital of America." The city council and a local foundation, in an effort to boost the economy and diminished spirit, turned to and offered Focus on the Family—a highly influential radio-based evangelical ministry—a generous grant and land deal. A new Focus on the Family headquarters was opened in 1993, located just across the highway from the Air Force Academy.
Today, the majority of Colorado Springs' evangelical organizations, churches, and people fall under Focus on the Family's web of evangelical influence, which extends from Colorado Springs to Washington, DC, and beyond.
Focus on the Family's radio show, hosted by the organization's founder James Dobson, has about 200 million listeners in over 170 countries. In a recent survey of Protestant pastors, Dobson was voted one of the four most influential Christians in the world, placing him well ahead of former Pope John Paul II.
I also propose that in their arrogant haste, the militant evangelicals may have jumped the gun. Timing is everything in war, even cultural wars.
I count on the majority of cadets and Air Force officers, who are still representative of the religious makeup of America, to put a stop to the takeover. If they fail, there will be less and less non-evangelical young Americans who sign up to attend. If they fail, eventually, the most powerful military force on earth, capable of killing anyone anywhere at anytime, will be controlled by “true believers”.
I count on George Lucas being more in tune with America than Mel Gibson.
The cultural battle lines are drawn, the “force is with us.”