Air Force Bans
Leaders' Promotion of Religion
By LAURIE GOODSTEIN,
NYTimes on the Web, August 30, 2005
The Air Force issued new religion
guidelines to its commanders yesterday that caution against promoting any
particular faith -- or even "the idea of religion over nonreligion" -- in
official communications or functions like meetings, sports events and
ceremonies.
The guidelines discourage public prayers at official Air Force events or
meetings other than worship services, one of the most contentious issues for
many commanders. But they allow for "a brief nonsectarian prayer" at
special ceremonies like those honoring promotions, or in "extraordinary
circumstances" like "mass casualties, preparation for imminent combat and
natural disasters."
The Air Force developed the guidelines after complaints from cadets at the Air
Force Academy in Colorado Springs that evangelical Christians leaders were using
their positions to promote their faith.
The guidelines apply not just to the academy, but also to the entire Air Force.
They will be made final later this year after Air Force generals meet and
consider recommendations from their commanders.
"We support free exercise of religion, but we do not push religion," said Rabbi
Arnold E. Resnicoff, a Navy veteran who was hired this year as a special
assistant to the secretary and chief of staff of the Air Force, and who helped
write the guidelines. "I think many of the people I spoke to maybe should
have known this already, but they were operating based on misperceptions."
Rabbi Resnicoff said some Air Force members he had spoken with "mistakenly
assumed" that because the military encouraged "spiritual strength as a pillar of
leadership," they were given license to promote strong belief in Christianity
within it.
Two Congressional Democrats who had criticized the Air Force Academy,
Representatives Steve Israel of New York and Lois Capps of California,
cautiously welcomed the guidelines in a statement.
"It's actually a refreshing acknowledgment by the Air Force that it had real
problems that needed to be corrected," Mr. Israel, a member of the House Armed
Services Committee, said later in an interview. "It's a good step
forward."
But one outspoken critic, Mikey Weinstein, an academy graduate from Albuquerque,
said the guidelines meant nothing because the Air Force had refused to
discipline officers who overstepped the boundaries.
"All this does is increase the level of confusion," Mr. Weinstein said.
The guidelines try to balance the Constitutional requirement of free religious
expression with limits on government endorsement of religion.
The guidelines say, "Supervisors, commanders and leaders at every level bear a
special responsibility to ensure their words and actions cannot reasonably be
construed as either official endorsement or disapproval of the decisions of
individuals to hold particular religious beliefs or to hold no religious
beliefs."
Commanders are reminded of the need to accommodate the rights of Air Force
members to practice their religion, either with the clothes they wear or the
foods they eat, or by having time off to attend worship services or to observe
holy days.
Lt. Gen. Roger A. Brady, Air Force deputy chief of staff for personnel, said the
military's religious diversity was one of its strengths, "at a time when many
nations are torn apart by religious strife."
Marci Hamilton, a church-state scholar at Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at
Yeshiva University, said the guidelines gave commanders a lot of "wiggle room"
to turn down requests from believers to accommodate their needs.
"Commanders can continue what they've been doing before, but what the Air Force
is saying to them is, You need to be fair, and you need to appear fair," said
Professor Hamilton, the author of "God vs. the Gavel" (Cambridge University
Press, 2005).
Professor Hamilton said of the new guidelines, "What I liked about them is they
went so far out of their way to say the government should not be endorsing
religion, because that's not always been true in the military."
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