{"id":7887,"date":"2010-11-05T00:30:30","date_gmt":"2010-11-05T06:30:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/?p=7887"},"modified":"2010-11-02T21:24:21","modified_gmt":"2010-11-03T03:24:21","slug":"usafa-cadets-discuss-faith-freedom-proselytizing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/2010\/11\/05\/usafa-cadets-discuss-faith-freedom-proselytizing\/","title":{"rendered":"USAFA Cadets Discuss Faith, Freedom, Proselytizing"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of the results of the religious “scandals” that have plagued the US Air Force Academy over the past few years was the creation of the Cadet Interfaith Council.\u00a0 The CIC was the subject of the latest USAFA news article on religious expression and diversity<\/a> at the Academy.<\/p>\n

The 20-member cadet group serves as a focal point for religious issues in the cadet wing.\u00a0 Current president Cadet 2nd Class Philicia Fahrenbruch notes the Council helped ‘protect’ the time set aside for SPIRE on Monday evenings last year, and has helped deal with other issues since then.<\/p>\n

Some of the topics noted in the article highlight the continued sensitivity of religion at the Air Force Academy:\u00a0 <\/p>\n

In August, the council addressed the use of e-mails to advertise religious activities. Such e-mails may only be sent to individuals who are interested, with exceptions requiring approval from the Cadet Wing chaplain. Chaplain (Capt.) Steven Cuneio said the chaplain’s office is drafting a policy that will balance cadets’ ability to advertise events while preserving other groups’ rights not to receive the e-mails.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That discussion is admirable in its effort but falls short in its result (or at least its explanation).\u00a0 With regard to official<\/em> functions, chapel activities are guaranteed the same access to email as any other staff function.\u00a0 With regard to personal<\/em> activities, the rules governing email are the same regardless of content.\u00a0 The Air Force has explicitly said there are no special rules for emails with religious content<\/em>, <\/em>as was previously discussed here<\/a>\u00a0and available in the Air Force Religious Guidelines\u00a0included here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Finally, there is no such thing as a “right” not to receive email of\u00a0religious content (or any other content).\u00a0 This inappropriate hypersensitivity may actually be negatively<\/em> training cadets for their active duty careers, where such creative tap dancing around religion doesn’t (generally) take place.\u00a0 That said, the Air Force Academy is both\u00a0an\u00a0educational institution and a leadership training laboratory;\u00a0hopefully, the cadets involved will get the opportunity to learn and experience the correct<\/em> responses.<\/p>\n

The council also had an interesting discussion on what “proselytizing” is — a very interesting subject, given the recent controversial survey that failed to define proselytizing<\/a> when asking if anyone had experienced it.<\/p>\n

Cadet Fahrenbruch defined [proselytizing] as pressuring someone to attend a religious service after they’ve already declined.<\/p>\n

“If someone comes up and says, ‘Can you please tell me about your religion,’ that’s just a conversation and doesn’t really cross the line into proselytizing,” she said, reflecting the council’s philosophy that the Academy is a “marketplace of free ideas.”<\/p>\n

“Proselytizing is when people have undue influence, like a senior telling a freshman, ‘You should go to church with me,'” she added. “On a peer-to-peer level, it’s okay, but not from an upperclassman to a freshman.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Again, while the openness of the discussion is admirable, it falls short in its accuracy.\u00a0 Fahrenbruch probably needs to know she\u00a0defined harassment<\/em>, not proselytizing<\/em>. In addition, “proselytizing”\u00a0is not related to\u00a0“undue influence;”\u00a0she should have said improper<\/em> proselytizing.\u00a0 Fahrenbruch seems to understand that, even if she doesn’t say it, as she seems to say peer-to-peer “proselytizing” is “okay,” which would be consistent with Air Force policy.<\/p>\n

It is likely the snippet of conversation captured in the short article left out much of the supporting discussion on both the email and proselytizing subjects.\u00a0 Even so, the quotations demonstrate how easily less-than-accurate ideas can be communicated about fairly simple, if sensitive, subjects.<\/p>\n

As has been the case before<\/a>, cadets at the Academy fail to see the institutional scandals those outside of it claim are happening:<\/p>\n

Cadets at the meeting agreed that the religious climate is good overall, and while a handful of cadets may break the rules, they are the exception. Their comments included observations that most people are curious, open-minded and respectful and that the Academy as an institution has supported them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The article is quite interesting in the efforts of the Academy to foster an appropriate spiritual atmosphere at USAFA, as well as the cadets’ contribution to that effort.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the results of the religious “scandals” that have plagued the US Air Force Academy over the past few years was the creation of the Cadet Interfaith Council.\u00a0 The CIC was the subject of the latest USAFA news article on religious expression and diversity at the Academy. The 20-member cadet group serves as a focal point for religious issues […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,9],"tags":[5284,70,2,1134,17,10,171,1135,65],"class_list":["post-7887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government-and-religion","category-military-academies","tag-chaplain","tag-evangelism","tag-military","tag-philicia-fahrenbruch","tag-religious-expression","tag-religion","tag-religious-freedom","tag-steven-cuneio","tag-usafa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7887"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7887\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/christianfighterpilot.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}