A followup to the story of Captain MeLinda Morton, a Lutheran chaplain at the Air Force Academy; she had complained about excessive evangelical influence and an opressive religious atmosphere there. As she predicted, she’s “toast.” And she’s being redeployed to Okinawa, surely a comedown from being chief of the chaplain unit at the Academy:
Air Force Removes Chaplain From Post>After several “reasonably tense” days among the academy chaplains, Morton said, she received an e-mail on May 4 from Whittington. It said a new executive officer would be named, effective immediately.
Fox, the academy spokesman, said this change was made because Whittington is retiring from the Air Force in June and Morton is due for a transfer in July to Okinawa. But Morton said the normal procedure would be to keep her in the number two post until she departs, so that she could help the unit’s new commanding officer settle in.
Morton said the cadet wing at the Air Force Academy is about 90 percent Christian. She said that group is roughly one-third Catholic, one-third mainstream Protestant and one-third evangelical. But the evangelicals have a much bigger voice among the chaplains, she said.
“The predominance of evangelical Christians reflects the chaplain corps of the Air Force overall,” Morton said. “The major mainstream Protestant divinity schools are no longer sending many graduates into the armed forces. And so the concentration of evangelicals among chaplains is strong through the whole service.”
Morton, 48, said that, having criticized the religious atmosphere at the academy, “I may be toast” in terms of an Air Force career. She said her next duty station is said to be a pleasant spot. “But serving in Okinawa as the most hated chaplain in the Air Force might not be so great.”
I hope she’s wrong about being “the most hated chaplain.” And I hope that it’s better when she gets away from the Academy, out in the “real world” of a post outside the continental U.S., but I’m still glad she spoke out. Hope T.R. Reid (author of the Washington Post article) gives her some friendly contacts for her time in Japan; he used to be the Japan correspondent for NPR several years ago.
