US Air Force Academy Removes Christian Banner

[Placebo]

The Air Force Academy's longtime football coach has agreed to remove a Christian banner from the team's locker room after school administrators announced they would do more to fight religious intolerance.

Coach Fisher DeBerry agreed Friday to remove the banner, which displayed the "Competitor's Creed," including the lines "I am a Christian first and last ... I am a member of Team Jesus Christ."

DeBerry put the banner up Wednesday to encourage the team, which has experienced one of its worst seasons in recent years, academy spokesman Lt. Col. Laurent Fox said.

A day earlier, academy Superintendent Lt. Gen. John W. Rosa announced the school would do more religious tolerance training after some nonreligious cadets reported on a survey that they felt ostracized. Others reported hearing religious slurs or jokes.

full article may be found here: http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/11/20/academy.religion.ap/index.html

[NVMojo]

1. What? Zealots with a conscience?

[dhinojosa]

2. Team Jesus Christ?

Sounds like a team I wanna crucify in the next matchup.

[Placebo]

3. HaHa!

Touche.

[jsw_81]

4. Good

A banner promoting a particular religion (or atheism, for that matter) simply does not belong in a public institution like the Air Force Academy. We have a separation of church and state in this country, and if the red-state fundies have a problem with that I suggest they move to a nice theocracy. Like Iran. Or Afghanistan.

[Journeyman]

5. When I was in the Air Force religious services were "optional". . .

during basic training, however, those of us who did not choose to join the squad at chapel were obliged to clean the latrine. The first week, there were three non-attendees. The second, myself alone.

I made it a point to clean the latrines as best I could, more so than the church-goers would have done had they pulled the detail. After the service concluded, we had free time for the rest of the afternoon. I made it a point to continue to clean. At first, the church attendees didn't notice. But as the weeks passed, they became concerned, then upset, then quite agitated that I devoted myself to the latrine duty so religiously. Eventually, some of the more compassionate approached the squad leader and asked that I not have to pull latrine detail when they were in chapel. He was a staunch religionist though, and refused to budge. This drove a wedge between the compassionate ones and the hellfire breathers.

Me? I just cleaned up their shit, much as I fear we're going to have to do in the coming years when the pendulum swings and their madness becomes evident to even the willfully blind.

[Placebo]

6. That's quite a story.

One that definitely must be told.