DoD Officially Drops 180 Faiths from Military's Recognized Religion List | Hacker News Reader

DoD Officially Drops 180 Faiths from Military's Recognized Religion List

military.com

70 pointsBalgair66 comments

What's the effect of this? I don't really understand why they have a "recognised" list at all or what the implications are.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_symbolism_in_the_Uni...

Various laws, regulations, and processes come with religious exceptions. In order to qualify for religious exceptions, you need to follow a qualified religion.

That does explain why Jehovah's Witnesses would be on here. They won multiple court cases to be excluded from military services.

They go on your dog tags to make sure that, if you're killed, your body is handled in a manner appropriate for your religious beliefs.

As I expected given who this is coming from, the choices are "Christian, Christian, Christian, Christian, Christian, Christian, Christian, Christian, Christian, Christian, and Leftovers".

> "The new list will provide chaplains with clear, readily available information that will better enable them to anticipate the religious support needs [...]"

Emphasis mine. In other words, "our master's degree level educated chaplains are confused by too long of a list".

We know what you are really doing and would appreciate more effort in these BS memos.

Here's the previous list: https://americanhumanist.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/Fait...

Got to love a system that recognizes both Eckankar and "Heathen".

Heathen is yet another term to describe Germanic paganism which has a similar etymology as the Latin originated word "pagan"[1]. It describes the people "of the heath"[2] — the rural folk who were the last to change their beliefs (as opposed to the city folk following the latest trends). English is unique among Germanic languages for preferring non-native vocabulary but the cognate of "heathen" is extant in every other Germanic language to describe pre-Christian belief. Among modern reconstructionists there is no consensus for a term to describe a belief system that never had a name (because prior to Christianity, it didn't need one).

That it is also a Christian pejorative term is irrelevant to the former DoD list.

[1]: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/paganus

[2]: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/heathen#English

It seems the deleted entries mainly consisted of Protestant denominations and Pagan groups. They also removed Atheist as a specific religion, and various entries like None Provided and Unknown. Many two-letter codes were changed, which may be confusing if you have groups of soldiers with a mix of old and new dog-tags.

My son reports a burst of 'Jewish' soldiers when deployed. Because the rabbi had a rather long service period and he let the soldiers sleep on the benches. He still has his camo yarmulke.

> 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.

FFS there is no such thing as "of war". It's still "of defense" until Congress actually passes a bill.

As for the rest of that topic... yeah. Fits the expectations one has these days when thinking about "how can the US Administration screw up the lives of anyone not fitting into the world view the average Fox News audience can squish in their brains".

Congress permitted them to create monikers, and they made one. It's not a hill to die on, especially because it's cringe to watch you crucify yourself

> It's not a hill to die on, especially because it's cringe to watch you crucify yourself

It absolutely is a hill to die on, because that is how fascism always starts and escalates. It's "tiny" and "petty" stuff that gets done first - think of the "Gulf of Mexico" renaming - and when that does not provoke meaningful resistance, the fascists see that as a sign to tighten the ratchet. And rather sooner than later, we see the East Wing of the White House torn down, dozens of people dead in ICE custody and Trump creating slush funds worth billions of dollars.

They don't recognize atheists anymore? Am I reading that right?

No religion on the list, I suppose that counts.

Ok I looked at the list. There are 31 entries, which are "no religion", "agnostic", Baha'i, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, Jewish, Sikh, and 22 different varities of Christian (Baptist, Catholic, etc.). Sheesh. At least they didn't get all the way to “Northern Conservative Baptist Great Lakes Region Council of 1912".

(explanation: https://www.fpcmarion.org/2024/04/die-heretic/ )

Here's the video of it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ANNX_XiuA78

Heh nothing like what I'd have guessed.

There's also this: https://theonion.com/various-deities-still-sorting-through-v...

Emo Phillips is a weird comedian.

Can be quite funny, though.

Ah yeah I missed that. Thanks

Uh, honest question: why would you put atheist on a list of religions?

Like…leave the religion off the dog tag and that communicates enough right? What’s there to recognize?

I’m super not trying to be antagonistic. I’m trying to understand why an atheist would be upset by this.

Religion provides certain benefits in the military. If you are say a Christian, you get assigned time to go to a (hopefully) air conditioned church and relax and recover. Even if it’s short, it can be beneficial to collect yourself in a high stress situation like basic training/boot camp.

If you elect not to go to a religious service, you typically have to keep doing whatever you are doing. Atheists or other less organized religions should be treated equally under the law. If a Christian gets a 90 minute religious service, an atheist should also get 90 minutes to do whatever they want.

You also see this reflected with something like The Satanic Temple advocating for human rights under the guise of religion.

In my opinion, religious organizations should not have any more rights or privileges than businesses.

This was true 20 years ago (not sure about now). As an atheist/agnostic in basic training I used to try different church services to get away from the barracks on Sundays. If you didn’t you were definitely assigned some cleaning detail instead of having down time. At the time it didn’t come across as discrimination and felt more like a way to keep control. At various times when control was lax bad stuff happened, e.g. fighting, sex, awol, etc. In a new light this does seem like it has a disparate impact.

Got it, that helps me understand.

I am curious how the variety of faith based practices could be handled…I’m super on board with providing a universal spiritual/mental health space regardless of your affiliation. That gets very weird when you start having to account for the variety of schedules and practices.

I am pretty sure I disagree on religious orgs having no more rights than a business. I think that seriously under accounts for the degree of identity that folks get from their religious affiliations and the types of activities businesses and religious groups tend to do.

A business and religious group are pretty fundamentally different…I’d have to reflect a lot longer and harder to come up with a more stable and coherent stance on that. I can definitely think of valid arguments on either side.

> I’m super on board with providing a universal spiritual/mental health space regardless of your affiliation.

This is what was happening in the Army's Chaplain Corps[1] prior to this administration: Seeking to emphasize and credential Chaplains as mental health specialists in an organization with a consistent track record of personnel with pervasive mental health problems.

It seems that has all been scrapped and we're going to fix mental health problems with "good ol' religion".

[1]: I can't speak for the other services but probably the same.

I guess my question is does it make sense for the US government to spend money providing church services for people who just want mental health benefits, and a break? I think believing a religion is very different from creating a religion so that you can maximize government benefits.

As somebody who works with data and humans, I know it's not a good idea to use the absence of information as information. Then you need confidence that the absence was on purpose, and means a specific thing. Whereas you could simply not omit the information.

It being a "list of religions" is just a semantic distraction, like saying "bald" shouldn't be on a list of hair colors.

Is "no religion" atheist? Or is "Atheism" an organized religion now?

No religion = atheism

That’s what was officially on my docs, the whole time while in the Air Force

Athiesm continues to not be a religion despite religious people trying to make it stick

I don't know... The null set is still a set.

Yes but that’s only half of the atheist equation

It’s saying I don’t know and also saying I do not have a belief in any particular thing

So it’s accurately:

“I don’t know what set it is and I don’t even believe in the concept of a set”

So for me I reject the concept because nobody has ever offered their definition of god with a falsifiable hypothesis

Atheism is not a religion, and someone who is religious can also be atheist (and some religions are not theistic), although having no religion does not necessarily make you atheist either (although many atheists are not religious). (However, considering that, putting "agnostic" in there seems to be strange compared to this.)

Howveer, when knowing what should be in the list, there is the question of what the information is used for, in order to know what divisions are helpful for this purpose.

> someone who is religious can also be atheist

Technically true but I don't see the word used like that much.

Yes it looks that way

They're not tracking atheists or working to measure and expand chaplaincy services for "atheists" separate from "no religion".

The religion list doesn't mean that much. The religious respect requirements for the armed forces are codified in law; the DoD can't alter them.

On the contrary I would expect that the most immediate effect is the impossibility of commissioning chaplains for any of the 180 faiths removed from the list. Good luck with that if you're a chaplain candidate who is an ordained minister of "Other".

No doubt there are other concrete effects that are buried in reams of DoD policy.

However, the message being sent is far clearer. Expect that the goal is to pare down the current list even further in due time.

There are lots of problems with this, but taking off UU is sort of ironic and shortsighted in particular, given that the UU community is probably a good source of chaplains given the nature of the religion. You can see this in the comments.

As long as the flying spaghetti monster is still on the list, I'm fine. First they came for the Buddhists, then they came for the Abrahamics, then the Zoroastrians, but it will be a while yet before they get to me.

It's notable that the original list with the extra 180 religions was from Trump's first term, so this is another example of the doubling down on white Christian identity politics that has come to define Trump's second term.

Also one small potentially controversial decision here that I find amusing in a narcissism of small differences kind of way, Mormons aren't considered Christian according to this list.

That is actually quite useful if you are wanting to drive a wedge between LDS and Trump - there goes Utah and eastern Idaho

Those places have never liked Trump, as immoral as he is perceived, but they consistently put their conservatism first when it comes time to vote. I don't see this situation changing any time soon.

The choice with Mormons is technically correct. Those who use theological considerations to define Christianity generally don't accept Mormons as Christians. For example, the Catholic Church sees Mormonism a non-Christian religion, because it rejects the Nicene Creed. People who base Christianity on cultural identity are more likely to include Mormons in the definition.

And yet Jehovah's Witnesses are denoted on the list as a Christian faith. So whatever the distinction that is being made here, it isn't simply rejection of the Nicene Creed.

It does seem to be common to make LDS not counted as Christianity, although the reason is unclear to me.

Another comment mentions that the rejection of the Nicene Creed does not seem to be the distinction.

I had thought that it is because they have the Book of Mormon, although that is unclear. Orthodox have additional books of the Bible that Catholics do not have, but are still Christian. (Although, I think the additional books that the Orthodox have are still a part of the Bible, and Book of Mormon is different.)

Something that I had heard is that it is because Mormons use a different baptism, which is not Trinitarian. However, it seems that it is Trinitarian, although this trinity is different from that of Christians (even though they still say "the Father", "the Son", and "the Holy Spirit").

Quakers (which are listed as Christian) also apparently do not use baptism (and reject other sacraments as well). Although the Religious Society of Friends is Christian, they do have differences and not all Quakers are necessarily Christian (or necessarily theists).

So, I don't know.

>> Something that I had heard is that it is because Mormons use a different baptism, which is not Trinitarian. However, it seems that it is Trinitarian, although this trinity is different from that of Christians (even though they still say "the Father", "the Son", and "the Holy Spirit").

I had not heard that so I looked it up:

-----------

Catholic baptism:

“I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.” The matter is the water poured over the head of the recipient. Traditionally, the one being baptized has water poured over them or is fully emerged in water three times.

Source: https://ascensionpress.com/blogs/articles/the-ultimate-guide...

(Some) Protestant baptism:

Each candidate is presented by name to the Celebrant, or to an assisting priest or deacon, who then immerses, or pours water upon, the candidate, saying

N., I baptize you in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Source: https://www.bcponline.org/Baptism/holybaptism.html

(Some groups do it differently, but this seems to be common.)

Mormon baptism:

73 The person who is called of God and has authority from Jesus Christ to baptize, shall go down into the water with the person who has presented himself or herself for baptism, and shall say, calling him or her by name: Having been commissioned of Jesus Christ, I baptize you in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.

74 Then shall he immerse him or her in the water, and come forth again out of the water.

Source: https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/scriptures/dc-test...

-----------

I am not an expert, but they all seem mostly the same to me?

Yes, I had seemed to remember something different but I looked it up and yes it is still trinitarian, although apparently the working of the trinity is different (although this different working of the trinity is not apparent by the words of the baptism) which allegedly makes it not a valid Christian baptism (according to some Christians, including the Catholic church).

Look at the text of the Nicene Creed. There is a phrase that reads, depending on the translation, something like "one holy catholic apostolic church". That is the core of the issue.

All mainstream Christian denominations are branches of that original church. Some may see each other heretical, but they still acknowledge the common heritage. If you now have a religion that takes some aspects of Christianity, adds something of its own, and rejects the part all those schismatic branches agree on, it does not look like you are a branch of that "one holy catholic apostolic church".

The same applies to Jehovah's Witnesses.

Your reasoning makes sense. However, it is not quite that simple.

As another comment mentioned, "and yet Jehovah's Witnesses are denoted on the list as a Christian faith".

So are Quakers (also denoted on the list as Christian), which (as far as I can tell) have no creed ; and, furthermore, although the Religious Society of Friends is Christian, not all Quakers are necessarily Christian (there are people of other religions as well, as well as those of no religion).

This does not seem to be specific to the DoD list; I have seen this in other lists as well.

> although the reason is unclear to me

Not at all complicated, you don't get to add another book to the bible and claim to be the same religion.

I grew up in a very liberal christian church. Their take on mormons was "really nice people .. still heretics". Obviously there are bigger problems out there.

As I understand, LDS did not add another book to the Bible; Book of Mormon is not a part of the Bible, although (as far as I know) still considered a scripture according to LDS.

(Nevertheless it is the reason I had thought of too (many years ago), although other people have cited different reasons.)

Well, the New Testament (what Christians care about) is entirely set in the historical first century Roman Empire [0], all places are accurate and known to exist.

The Book of Mormon postulates some fantasy world perhaps not unlike Middle Earth? And also weird theological stuff from 19th century science-fiction? Sorry, that is a different religion.

[0] expect for the last book of revelations of the future.

Why do you feel it is outsiders role to tell them they are not Christians, surely it's their role to self-determine?

Why do you feel that most christian sects cannot decide they are heretics? We're not talking about some Lutheran Synod politics BS, they have this whole fantasy/scifi book and theology.

Obviously it's a free country, so they can say whatever they want.

Joseph smith claims to have had a new revelation and the book of Mormon is "another gospel". It's fan fiction for Americans and claims that the church became corrupted and are restoring the true church with their non biblical ideas. As such, their ideas are sufficiently divergent from biblical doctrine they are considered not part of the Christian church.

Curious if your stance extends to the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. Founded in 330AD, it predates all other canonization councils:

  The Council of Trent (1545–1563) - explicitly laid out the 73-book canon for the Catholic Church

  Council of Rome (382)

  Synod of Hippo (393)

  The two of the Councils of Carthage (397 and 419 respectively)

  Council of Florence (1431–1449)

Applying your standard literally, the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church and the Ethiopian Bible are the only true Christian religion and religious text because others have fewer or greater number of books.

Nah, from a more intellectual protestant tradition -- they were not fighting doctrine and I remember at least a couple of those from Sunday sermons.

None of that remotely resembles the Book of Mormon, so honestly you are just really shitty at whatever you are trying to do.

It sounds like you're ok with adding books to the bible so long as you're the one doing it. If you're not willing to accept the consequences of your own rules, they aren't rules, they're justifications.

Oh you totally got me, tips fedora.

Trinity means the 3 are 1.[1] Mormons believe the 3 are separate.[2]

Baptism does not mean water baptism exclusively.[3] What other sacraments did the Nicene creed mention?

The purpose of the new list was to exclude many groups. Christian Quakers exist does not mean non Christian Quakers do not exist. And the category was copied from an older list without much thought plausibly.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trinity

[2] https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/comeuntochrist/article/d...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baptism_with_the_Holy_Spirit

one core tenant of Christianity is that Christ the Messiah obviates prophecy. No denomination of Christianity (AFAIK) considers the LDS as true Christians...except for the LDS themselves

Just to clear this up, all the various "Christian" ministries that embrace modern prophecy and prophets are, therefore, not actually Christian?

  From the beginning of the Assemblies of God, prophecy has been affirmed as a spiritual gift for the Church today. Since the Day of Pentecost, the Church has functioned as a prophetic community. Any Spirit-filled believer may prophesy while discernment and judgment of prophecy belong to the full body of Christ.

~ https://ag.org/Beliefs/Position-Papers/Modern-Day-Prophecy

( no vested interest here, I've got Wagyl riding shotgun on the stagecoach of my life )

And to make it clear since you didn't say it, Assemblies of God is on the list categorized as Christian while the LDS Church isn't, so this doesn't appear to be the distinction the list makers had in mind.

Had to look Wagyl up. Thanks for teaching me something new!

Glad that was of interest, the works of Wagyl are held sacred to some: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djEqLRdqScM although many entities vie for riding shotgun: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThLdUGczSNw

Not a core tenet [note 1] at all - see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cessationism_versus_continuati...

[note 1] https://www.merriam-webster.com/grammar/tenant-vs-tenet-diff...

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