Outside the Beltway

Defense Department Drops 180 Denominations

180 faiths are now "Other" or "None."

James Joyner · Saturday, June 6, 2026 · 6 comments

Military.com (“DOD Officially Drops 180 Faiths From Military’s Recognized Religion List“):

Military.com has learned that the Department of Defense, for the first time in almost 10 years, has dramatically reduced its number of recognized religious faiths and belief systems by approximately 180.

The reforms mark the first time the list has been officially revised since a memo was issued March 27, 2017, decreasing the total number of faiths from 211 to its new number of 31. The changes were iterated in a May 20, 2026, memorandum issued by the Under Secretary of War and signed by Anthony Tata, under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness of the United States, and obtained by Military.com.

Those paragraphs are in severe need of editing.

It turns out that the March 2017 instruction—published under Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis in the first Trump administration—nearly doubled the list of recognized religions, from “just over 100” to 221. Among those added were “earth-based faiths, such as heathens and Asatru, and an additional eight Protestant groups, including the International Communion of the Charismatic Christian Church.” Additionally, “Jewish” was broken down into Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform.

So, this policy not only reverses a move made during the first Trump administration (in order, among other reasons, to comply with the intent of the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act) but goes in the radically opposite direction.

The stated rationale is efficiency:

This latest revision to the faith codes comes at the direction of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, according to the Tata-signed memo, done to “streamline the DoW collection of religious preferences collection for service members to enhance the delivery of targeted religious support from the Chaplaincy.” It calls for the previously instituted faith and belief codes to be revised within a 60-day period from the issuance of the memorandum.

“The new list will provide chaplains with clear, readily available information that will better enable them to anticipate the religious support needs of service members and to provide religious support activities that align with service members’ personal faith and practices,” Tata wrote.

[…]

The faith and belief coding system, renamed to “religious affiliation codes,” was simply due to a system that had become too big, according to the secretary.

“The previous system had ballooned to well over 200 faith codes. … It was impractical and unusable, and many codes were never used at all,” Hegseth said in March, adding that 82% of members who identify as religious use only six of the codes.

But, if simplicity is the goal, it would be easy to consolidate the revised list

• Agnostic (AN)
• Baha’i faith (BH)
• Buddhism (BU)
• Christian – Assemblies of God (AG)
• Christian – Baptist (BA)
• Christian – Brethren (BR)
• Christian – Catholic (CA)
• Christian – Church of Christ (CC)
• Christian – Church of God (CG)
• Christian – Church of the Nazarene (CN)
• Christian – Episcopal/Anglican (EA)
• Christian – Evangelical (EV)
• Christian – Jehovah’s Witnesses (JW)
• Christian – Lutheran (LU)
• Christian – Methodist (ME)
• Christian – Non Denominational (ND)
• Christian – Orthodox (OX)
• Christian – Other (CO)
• Christian – Pentecostal (PE)
• Christian – Presbyterian (PR)
• Christian – Quaker (QU)
• Christian – Reformed (RE)
• Christian – Scientist (SC)
• Christian – Seventh Day Adventist (SA)
• Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (CJ)
• Hindu (HI)
• Islam (Muslim) (IS)
• Judaism (Jewish) (JU)
• No Religion (NR)
• Other Religions (OR)
• Sikh (SI)

considerably. Astute readers will note that 21 of the 31 religions listed are variants of Christianity, and a 22nd, LDS, has Christ’s name right in the name.

I have no objection to eliminating Atheist (my own non-faith) and instead labeling it No Religion. Indeed, I’d not object to lumping Agnostic in there, too, dropping the list to an even 30. But I’d guess there are at least as many Unitarian Universalists, who are now lumped into “Other Religions,” serving in our armed forces as there are Christian Brethren.

My recollection of my time in service, from 1984 to 1992, including cadet and Reserve time, was that there were only a handful of recognized religions then. It may well have been limited to Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish. I haven’t found an accessible history online, but I gather DOD first added Muslim chaplains in 1994. (Steven and I had a good chuckle when our university chancellor marveled at that fact in a convocation speech.) Hindus and Buddhists were added in 2004 and 2011.

The move is, not shockingly, generating considerable consternation online. Even in this report, we get this:

The individuals who spoke with Military.com are two clients of among more than 100,000 represented by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), whose client base is roughly 95% Christian.

The organization’s co-founder, Mikey Weinstein, told Military.com that this new DOD list is a “middle finger to the United States Constitution’s separation of church and state.” The U.S. Air Force veteran said that codes like this have existed to perform services that sailors, soldiers, Marines, airmen or guardians want.

“Reducing the number of religious faiths from hundreds down to 31 is another absolute, clear, filthy and disgusting, unconstitutional, immoral and unethical attempt to force only the approved solution, getting closer and closer to Christian nationalism,” Weinstein said.

He compared the new list to the faiths and beliefs identified by the Department of Veterans Affairs, which recognizes more than 220 belief systems and has more than 80 emblems for headstones.

“So, if you’re dead, you’ll get your emblem,” Weinstein added. “But if you’re alive, you can’t even get it on your dog tags unless you qualify for one of these faith traditions that in the eyes of Hegseth and other Christian nationalists are worthy of recognition after years of all of the others being there.”

So, I don’t think this is in any way unconstitutional. And, apparently, this is more a data collection issue than anything substantive.

[Tata] added that members will not be limited to the list of “religious affiliation codes” when selecting information for their dog tags.

A NYT report (“Pentagon Cuts 180 Religious Identities From Military Personnel Records”) adds:

Mr. Parnell framed the change as a largely administrative exercise, intended to simplify data collection for military leaders and chaplains.

According to the memo, the new system will “provide chaplains with clear, readily available information that will better enable them to anticipate the religious support needs of service members and to provide religious support activities that align with service members’ personal faith and practices.”

Service members would not, however, be limited to the new policy’s 31 “religious affiliation codes” when choosing to include their religious preference on the stamped metal identification tags that are worn around the neck, commonly known as dog tags, the memo said.

The change is “not designed to make any claims on the legitimacy of any faith or religious belief, nor is it intended to provide a list of ‘officially approved’ religions,” Mr. Parnell said. “Rather, it is designed to allow chaplains to quickly look at the religious composition of their units and determine how they structure resources to best provide for war-fighters of all faith groups.”

Among the groups who are no longer on the list for data collection are “Atheists, Asatru, Deists, Druids, Eckankar, Heathens, Humanists, Magick, New Age churches, Pagan, Rosicrucianism, Shaman, Spiritualists, Troth, Unitarian Universalists and various Wiccans.” Presumably, they will have to list “No Religion” or “Other Religion” in their personnel file, but can still identify from the old list on their dog tags.

I simply have no idea from the reporting how many service members are impacted by the change, much less how they are impacted.

A 2021 RAND study of religion in the Army reported that the chaplain corps was overwhelmingly Protestant, comprising 80-90 percent of the corps between 2001 and 2019. Indeed, over 30 percent of the corps are Baptist, and just over 15 percent are Presbyterians. I’m not sure I’ve ever encountered a chaplain from outside the major faiths and every unit chaplain I’ve encountered has been from a Christian denomination.

The same RAND study found that,

While Protestants, Catholics, and“Nones” make up a large proportion of soldiers, all other religions consistently make up less than 1 percent of the [Regular Army] population. Even in cases where the proportion of small religious groups has increased (e.g.,
Muslims), the gains have been relatively modest, and we do not anticipate that [the U.S. Army Chaplain Corps] will need to make significant changes to account for this.

I have no reason to think the other services are wildly different. There just aren’t a lot of Wiccans and Druids serving in our forces, much less in our chaplain corps.

But, again, to the extent we’re trying to gain efficiency in “at a glance” reporting, it’s not at all clear to me why we need 22 categories for Christian faith groups. It certainly sends the signal that there’s a single approved religious tradition.