Pentagon reworks ‘offensive’ policy affecting LDS after Mormon lawmakers loudly protest
The revised list cuts more than 200 faith codes to 31 and drops Christian labels from 19 categories after Utah lawmakers objected.
- The Pentagon sharply revised its newly introduced list of recognized military religious codes on Monday, moving quickly to defuse a massive political backlash sparked over the weekend by members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
- The controversy began Friday when Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth slashed recognized faith categories from 211 down to 31, an administrative overhaul aimed at helping the chaplain corps streamline logistics. However, the system classified the LDS Church under a standalone category entirely separate from its 21 designated "Christian" sub-groups.
- Mormon lawmakers led a fierce, public rebellion against the policy, with Utah Republican Senators Mike Lee and John Curtis, alongside Idaho Senator Mike Crapo, blasting the omission as "unacceptable" and demanding Hegseth immediately fix a classification that explicitly defied the church's core identity.
- In modifying the policy, the Department of Defense completely removed the overarching "Christian" label from the tracking system, instead opting to list all 31 recognized faith groups—including specific Protestant denominations, Catholicism, Islam, Judaism, and the LDS Church—as flat, independent choices.
- Despite the adjustment, the wider policy remains under intense fire from civil liberties groups, who note that the streamlined layout completely erases the distinct identities of minor beliefs by pushing Unitarian Universalists, Wiccans, Pagans, and Atheists into broad "Agnostic" or "Other Religions" brackets.
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Pentagon Cuts Military Religion Categories From 220 to 31
NATO will continue its support to Europe but will prioritize U.S. security. Photo credit: Touch of Light Wikimedia Commons CC BY-SA 4.0 The Pentagon has sharply reduced the number of religion codes used by the U.S. military, replacing a list of about 220 faith groups and denominations with 31 broader religious categories. The updated system, which is expected to take effect in July, has sparked debate among veterans, chaplains, lawmakers, and re…
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Pentagon Religious Codes and Christian Identity
Download Print-Friendly Version Sometimes a controversy can be smaller than it first appears, but still worth taking seriously. The recent brouhaha over the Pentagon’s religious-affiliation codes fits into that category. You may have heard of this controversy from Latter-day Saint lawmakers pushing back against the new categorization. The Department of Defense revised an administrative list of religious-affiliation codes. These are codes used …
A new list of religions of the Pentagon is intended to support the work of U.S. military sailors. But the criticism does not remain.
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