"Jesus is my co-pilot"

Surely, Dear Reader, you've heard that the United States Air Force Academy has been officially turned over to Christ.

AIR FORCE ACADEMY, Colo. -- Less than two years after it was plunged into a rape scandal, the Air Force Academy is scrambling to address complaints that evangelical Christians wield so much influence at the school that anti-Semitism and other forms of religious harassment have become pervasive.

There have been 55 complaints of religious discrimination at the academy in the past four years, including cases in which a Jewish cadet was told that the Holocaust was revenge for the death of Jesus. Another was called a Christ killer by a fellow cadet.

The 4,300-student school recently started requiring staff members and cadets to take a 50-minute religious-tolerance class.

''There are things that have happened that have been inappropriate. And they have been addressed and resolved," said Colonel Michael Whittington, the academy's chief chaplain.

More than 90 percent of the cadets identify themselves as Christian. A cadet survey in 2003 found that half had heard religious slurs and jokes, and that many non-Christians believed Christians get special treatment.

''There were people walking up to someone and basically they would get in a conversation and it would end with, 'If you don't believe what I believe you are going to hell,' " Colonel Debra Gray, vice commandant, said.

Critics of the academy say the sometimes-public endorsement of Christianity by high-ranking staff members has contributed to a climate of fear and violates the constitutional separation of church and state at a taxpayer-supported school whose mission is to produce Air Force leaders.

Apparently, this is so entrenched that adademy leadership doesn't feel they can do much of anything about it. I don't think religious tolerance classes are going to have much of an impact. Particularly if those same academy leaders are trying to minimize the story so that it doesn't blow up in their faces like the rape scandal that enveloped it a year or two ago.

The superintendent, Lt. Gen. John Rosa, conceded there was a problem during a recent meeting of the Board of Visitors, the civilian group that oversees the academy.

''The problem is people have been across the line for so many years when you try and come back in bounds, people get offended,'' he said.

The board chairman, former Virginia Gov. James Gilmore, warned Rosa that changing things could prove complicated. He said evangelical Christians ''do not check their religion at the door.''

Not only do they not check their religion at the door, but they cry "anti-Christian bigotry" when asked to tone it down a little.

Two of the nation's most influential evangelical Christian groups, Focus on the Family and New Life Church, are headquartered in nearby Colorado Springs. Tom Minnery, an official at Focus on the Family, disputed claims that evangelical Christians are pushing an agenda at the academy, and complained that ''there is an anti-Christian bigotry developing'' at the school.

Who was it that said, "Reason must now wear a veil when she goes out in public"?