In response to a request from Republican lawmakers, the Pentagon has again revised its list of religious categories that military service members can identify with in their personnel records.
A Pentagon policy memo signed on May 20 and reported last week had excluded the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, whose adherents are often referred to as Mormons, from being categorized as Christian. The move surfaced fears that the Defense Department was adopting a view held by some Protestant groups that members of the faith are heretical and should not be considered Christian.
But on Monday, the Defense Department posted a revised list of religious categories on social media that eliminated a “Christian” prefix that had been applied to 21 other religious traditions — but not to Latter-day Saints — after lawmakers in Congress objected.
Utah Republican senators Mike Lee and John Curtis, who are members of the church, were among those who informed the White House and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth of their concerns that the new policy was unfairly exclusionary.
“Senator Lee spoke with President Trump and Secretary Hegseth over the weekend and received their assurance that the Pentagon’s religious classifications would be fixed,” Billy Gribbin, a spokesman for the senator, said on Monday. “He appreciates the administration’s action to address this issue.”
The public discussion about the categorization of the Latter-day Saints began on Thursday, when Military.com published portions of a Pentagon memo signed on May 20 that said the Defense Department would no longer recognize 180 religious faith traditions in troops’ service records. That left just 31 religious categories for uniformed personnel to choose — including the category of “No Religion.”
The move to shrink the number of recognized faiths was presented as an administrative action that a Pentagon spokesman on Friday said was “long overdue.”
However, the number of faiths troops could select from expanded less than a decade ago, in March 2017, during the first Trump administration. That growth happened at the recommendation of the Armed Forces Chaplains Board, which provides advice and recommendations to senior civilian leaders in the Defense Department on “policies and issues related to the free exercise of religion” as well as “all matters concerning religion, spiritual readiness, morality, ethics, morale, and military chaplains.”
The longer list of more than 210 faiths, the 2017 policy memo said, was intended to “standardize and better identify religious preferences recognized by military services” and would enable “better planning for religious support” to uniformed personnel.
It is a justification that is strikingly similar to the language used in the March 20 memo, signed by the Pentagon’s personnel chief Anthony Tata, which said the consolidation of religious faith categories would “provide chaplains with clear, readily available information that will better enable them to anticipate the religious support needs of service members.”
“Latter-day Saints are among the most patriotic, service-oriented individuals in our country,” Mr. Curtis said in a social media post on Saturday.
“They are also unequivocally Christian — just look at who is in the name of the Church,” he 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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