In God they trust

From battling sexuality in the media, to challenging the scientific notion of evolution, to fighting to display the Ten Commandments in government buildings— religious conservatives are front and center in what they see as an ongoing war over the culture of America.

But to many of their critics, the Evangelical agenda has the appearance of a single-minded, intolerant crusade.  

Controversy at the U.S. Air Force Academy
In Colorado Springs, proselytizing by evangelical Christians at the U.S. Air Force Academy has become a flashpoint.

Mikey Weinstein, U.S. Air Force Academy graduate: Other than my family which is assembled here today, I love nothing more than our country, the military and in particular the military academies. And that’s why this is so extremely, wretchedly painful right now.

Weinstein is an academy graduate, and an attorney who formerly served in the Reagan White House. His sons Casey and Curtis are the third generation in his family to attend a military academy. But now he has gone from a passionate supporter of the academy to being one of its most vocal critics. 

Mikey Weinstein: How hard is this? It’s the separation of church and state. This is not Notre Dame, this is not Abilene Christian University or Bob Jones University or Liberty University. It’s the United States Air Force Academy. What is going on?

The Weinstein family is Jewish, and Mikey is outraged by what he sees as an aggressive evangelical Christian culture at a government institution.  

Mikey Weinstein: "Unless you accept Jesus you are going to burn eternally in hell"— which both my kids told me they’ve been told numerous times.

Casey and Curtis say they were troubled by the persistent evangelizing of their peers.

Casey Weinstein: Especially in uniform. Don’t corner me and talk to me and tell me what I believe is wrong and what you believe is right and you want to teach me the right way.

The Weinstein brothers also say that as Jewish cadets, they found it difficult to practice their religion or even get basic respect from some of the other cadets.  

Curtis Weinstein: They’re like, “How do you feel about killing Jesus?” or something like that and I’ll take them aside and be like, “You know what, I didn’t personally kill Jesus, right?”  

And Casey was also bothered last spring, by cadets who blanketed the campus with fliers promoting Mel Gibson’s movie “The Passion of the Christ.”

Casey Weinstein: All 4,000 of the cadet wing eat lunch together at the same time.  For at least  three days in a row, we had fliers for “The Passion of the Christ” sitting on the table and at every single place setting.

The fliers were removed, but Casey was not alone in his concerns about the atmosphere on campus.  A team from the Yale Divinity School observed what it called “stridently evangelical themes” at a service for new cadets.

Mikey Weinstein worries about the ripple effects of the controversy.

Mikey Weinstein: I got a wonderful e-mail from one of my classmates who's a general in Iraq. He said, "Mikey, we cannot dare lose religious neutrality. If we lose religious neutrality at the Air Force Academy, then in the military, all we're doing is giving an undeserved shot in the arm to the people we're fighting here. All the terrorists that are out there, they view this as a crusade.

In June, a report from an Air Force task force concluded that the problems at the academy were not pervasive, but that a “perception of religious intolerance” did exist.

And in August, the Air Force released new guidelines on religion that call for:

• accomodation for all denominations,
• a limit on public prayer and
• avoiding the “perception... that the Air Force supports any one religion over other religions."

But Mikey Weinstein recently filed a lawsuit demanding that members of the Air Force, while on duty, be banned from pressuring fellow members to change their religious beliefs. The Department of Justice is reviewing the suit.

God’s political party?
Jim Wallis, evangelical minister: Religion shouldn’t be a wedge to divide us or a weapon to destroy us. But it should be a bridge to bring us together on the big things. 

Jim Wallis is an evangelical minister and the author of a book called “God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It.” 

Wallis: God is not a Republican or a Democrat. To put God in the pocket of any party is bad theology. It’s bad religion. It’s politicizing faith.

Brokaw: But there are those who would say in response to that we have a right to have in the natural fabric of our lives our fundamental beliefs when it comes to morality or the sanctity of life.

Wallis: I agree with that. And I’m a person of faith. I want to bring my faith to politics.  But God is not in the pocket of one party or in the pocket of one nation.     

Wallis criticizes conservative Christians for focusing too narrowly on social issues, saying Christians must work much harder to apply their faith to a broader range of issues. 

Wallis: The sanctity of life is important to me too, but I want a consistent ethic of life where abortion isn’t the only issue but capital punishment — poverty is, HIV/AIDS are, nuclear weapons are— a whole range of things that threaten human life.

And Wallis also faults the current administration for marrying religion to foreign policy.

Wallis: To say, “They’re evil and we are good,” is bad theology. “God bless America” is not found anywhere in my Bible.

At New Life Church, Pastor Ted Haggard denies that he has any interest in imposing his views on others.

Haggard: We are in the business of trying to spread the love of God and help people live a good life. And we want the freedom to be advocates. Let people argue their best point. Let people try to persuade others.

But the strong and unapologetic message from Haggard and others at New Life is that democracy and Christianity do go hand-in-hand.

Haggard: There’s the theological basis for freely elected government. There’s a theological basis for the rule of law. There’s a theologial basis for many of the ideas that we look and we say “Oh that’s one of the tenants of western civilization.” So when we say the “Christianization,” we don’t mean dipping the infidels in water to try to get them to believe the way we believe. That’s all gone. We haven’t done that for hundreds of years. But instead, we believe there’s an ideology that comes from the scripture that is good for all people. 

Is church the right forum?
Newcomer Tom Monroe finds some of the political overtones at New Life Church troubling. Since we met them a few months ago, the Monroes have become regular churchgoers at New Life, they were in attendance one Sunday when the church hosted guest speaker Dnesh Dsouza, a former Ronald Reagan adviser.

Brokaw: Dnesh Dsouza is a well-known, intellectual, and neo-conservative. With a big political agenda.

Tom Monroe: Yes. My first thought when he came up, I thought, “Is this the right forum for this?  And then where’s the other view? Where’s the other side?” So it is a one-sided perspective. I was truly taken back. I was shocked. I was looking around going whose going to walk out?  Will anybody walk out? 

Brokaw: But most of the congregation probably welcomes his presence there, no?

Tom Monroe: The applause afterwards wasn’t as thunderous as i’ve seen in the past.

Tom Monroe says that while he considers himself to be a political conservative, he’s still not sure he wants to talk politics in church.

Tom Monroe: When you go there, you expect to hear, you know, a sermon about the book of the Bible. The word of Christ. And I kinda question, is this the forum?  And maybe it is. I don’t know.

Tom’s questions are an important part of the struggle to define what it means be a fervent Christian in America today. But how much success in converting others to their point of view will evangelical Christians have— personally and in the larger political arena?

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