DENVER — A team from the Yale Divinity School says it has found lingering problems among chaplains at the Air Force Academy, where commanders face allegations that evangelical Christians wield too much influence among cadets and leaders.

A copy of a new report obtained by The Associated Press yesterday says the chaplains' activities may conflict with the goals of school leaders and the Air Force overall.

The report was based on a visit to the school in July, a month before the Air Force issued new guidelines on religious tolerance.

"These inconsistencies confuse expectations and may encourage inappropriate pastoral reactions," the Yale group said.

Watchdog groups have accused the academy of allowing evangelical Christians to harass cadets of different faiths. Americans United for the Separation of Church and State said its own investigation of the academy revealed the school required cadets to pray at certain functions and that some chaplains had pressured cadets to become born-again Christians.

An Air Force task force set up to investigate the claims said in June that it found no overt religious discrimination but observed a lack of sensitivity among some and confusion over what is permissible in sharing one's faith.

Yale also sent a team to observe the religious climate at the academy last year.

The Rev. Kristen Leslie, leader of the group, said the academy invited the team to return in July, but school officials controlled members' activities so tightly that they didn't get to see many examples of chaplains in action.

"I recognized the sensitivity of the situation, in some ways an untenable situation, because the Air Force Academy didn't trust me. And yet they extended the invitation to come nonetheless," she said in a telephone interview.

Leslie's report on the team's 2004 visit said an evangelical Christian chaplain had urged cadets in his congregation to confront other cadets and tell them they would burn in hell if they didn't become born again.

The new Air Force guidelines, issued Aug. 29, discourage public prayer at official functions and urge commanders to be sensitive about personal expressions of religious faith. The guidelines, which apply to the entire Air Force, are expected to become permanent later this year.

Leslie said the guidelines haven't cleared up questions about whether proselytizing is acceptable because the Pentagon has sent conflicting messages.

"There's only pressure — in the midst of no guidance — from Focus on the Family and other groups to try to rescind some of these guidelines," she said. (Focus on the Family, a conservative Christian group based in Colorado Springs, called on President Bush this month to revise the guidelines on grounds they interfered with the right to religious expression.)

Mikey Weinstein, an academy graduate and outspoken critic of the academy's handling of religion, provided a copy of the Yale report to the AP.

He said the report confirms that chaplains continue to aggressively evangelize.

"I am readying a federal lawsuit against the Air Force. Obviously that is all that is left. They swore to defend the U.S. Constitution, not the New Testament," said Weinstein, who served as a lawyer in the Reagan administration.

Leslie's report says her team observed one instance of abuse of power by a chaplain, who was demanding answers from cadets in a very rough way.