The One True Religion in the Military‪.‬

OVER THE PAST SEVERAL YEARS, the U.S. Air Force Academy (USAFA) has been under scrutiny for issues of religious tolerance that have caused many to wonder, "What on earth is going on at that place?" On the one hand, the same thing is happening at USAFA that's happening at colleges across the United States. Students are leaving home (many for the first time) and embarking on individual journeys of self-discovery to meet new people from different backgrounds with different perspectives and to engage with trained faculty who will strive to motivate each of them to discover life's truths for themselves. On the other hand, unit cohesion, morale, and the U.S. Constitution have all been challenged at USAFA by a growing evangelical Christian community that espouses a duty to proselytize to non-Christians and to the "unchurched." The media has done a fairly thorough job identifying cases of religiously intolerant behavior at USAFA and also on the military's response and official findings. (Examples also listed in accompanying timeline.) In the popular press, Mikey Weinstein's 2006 book With God on Our Side ("One man's war against an evangelical coup in America's military") offers a very personal and impassioned portrayal of the evolution of the Academy's evangelical climate. Our aim here isn't to retell the stories that brought us here, but rather provide a larger context to help explain why these issues occurred and suggest appropriate action.