Pentagon waffles on bias investigation after firing whistle-blowing minister

From gazette.com (Colorado Springs)

An Air Force Academy chaplain said she was dismissed from an executive position after pointing out religious intolerance issues and contending that evangelical Christians have too much control at the school.

Capt. Melinda Morton,(above, teaching a class) a Lutheran minister, also accused academy officials of lying about faith bias issues, which arose more than a year ago but only recently have grabbed the national spotlight.

From The LA Times:

A Pentagon investigation of reported harassment by Christian cadets and teachers found that the U.S. Air Force Academy had failed to accommodate people of non-Christian beliefs but had not engaged in "overt religious discrimination," a report released Wednesday said.

The conclusions by a team from Air Force headquarters acknowledged that religious slurs, jokes and disparaging remarks directed at non-Christian cadets took place. It said Christian professors used their positions as officers and authority figures to promote their faith.

But the team said instances of religious intolerance were less malicious than misguided, and blamed a lack of guidelines that spelled out what was improper religious expression.

"Some cadets had been overly aggressive in the expression of their faith, offending some," said Lt. Gen. Roger A. Brady, Air Force deputy chief of staff for personnel. "Likewise, some members of the faculty and staff also have strong religious beliefs that have on occasion been expressed in ways that others found offensive"

For more on this story see Americans United

(Photo: Ed Andrieski, Associated Press)