The Defense Department will no longer allow military service members to claim roughly 180 different religious traditions in their personnel records, leaving just 31 to choose from — 22 of which are Christian denominations.
The change, which was reported earlier by Military.com, was announced on Friday afternoon in a statement posted to social media by Sean Parnell, a Pentagon spokesman, who called it “a long overdue move.”
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.”
Aside from the Christian faiths, the newly consolidated “religious affiliation codes” will allow soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, and Coast Guard and Space Force personnel to identify in their records as agnostic, Baha’i, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, Jewish or Sikh.
Those who had identified with one of the 180 eliminated faith groups will have just two options under the new policy: “no religion” or “other religions.”
Mr. Parnell’s statement included a link to a video posted to social media by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on March 24, in which Mr. Hegseth said that the military’s chaplain corps had been “infected by political correctness and secular humanism” under previous administrations.
In response to the policy change, Rachel Laser of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a nonprofit religious freedom advocacy organization, said in a statement that Mr. Hegseth “can’t erase the religion of service members whose belief systems he finds less worthy without failing to honor his oath to support and defend the Constitution.”
“Our brave service members deserve better,” she added.
John Ismay is a reporter covering the Pentagon for The Times. He served as an explosive ordnance disposal officer in the U.S. Navy.
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