On God's Own "Evangelical" Party

E. J. Dionne has written an outstanding essay about the debate over Wisconsin Congressman David Obey's amendment to the military appropriations bill that called for a plan to end religious discrimination at the Air Force Academy.

During the debate Indiana Congressman John Hostettler accused Obey, a Catholic, of being part of a "long war against Christianity in America." Obey demanded that Hostettler's words be stricken from the record and, eventually, they were.

Obey said that when he first came to Congress, "there would have been universal condemnation of Hostettler by both parties." In this case, Obey said he was approached afterward by a single sympathetic Republican. Obey was comforted that Jewish House members "appreciated that a Christian would speak out."

The problems at the Air Force Academy are serious. The Academy's former Superintendant admitted that the problems were severe. Dionne ably summarized the issues:

Let's be clear: the academy's brass are not in trouble because they allowed evangelical Christian cadets to speak of their faith to other cadets. That is their right. The issue is whether officers higher in the chain of command used their positions of authority to promote their faith. That is coercion, and it is neither right nor just. It is also about whether evangelical Christian students were allowed to create an atmosphere in which students who did not share their faith were, to be charitable, marginalized. (One father of a cadet said his son was called "a filthy Jew.") Since Jews, Hindus, Muslims and atheists -- not to mention Christians who are not evangelicals -- all proudly serve in the armed forces of the United States, there are few institutions in which the imperative for religious liberty is more important.