{"id":64239,"date":"2026-06-08T13:47:05","date_gmt":"2026-06-08T17:47:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=64239"},"modified":"2026-06-08T13:47:05","modified_gmt":"2026-06-08T17:47:05","slug":"changes-in-the-military-chaplaincy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/?p=64239","title":{"rendered":"Changes In The Military Chaplaincy"},"content":{"rendered":"

On June 4th, Military.com<\/a> posted an article about the changes made to the military’s recognized religion list.<\/p>\n

The article reports:<\/p>\n

Military.com<\/a> 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.<\/strong><\/p>\n

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.<\/strong><\/p>\n

This latest revision to the faith codes comes at the direction of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, according to the Tata-signed memo, done to \u201cstreamline the DoW collection of religious preferences collection for service members to enhance the delivery of targeted religious support from the Chaplaincy.\u201d It calls for the previously instituted faith and belief codes to be revised within a 60-day period from the issuance of the memorandum.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThe 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\u2019 personal faith and practices,\u201d Tata wrote.<\/strong><\/p>\n

He added that members will not be limited to the list of \u201creligious affiliation codes\u201d when selecting information for their dog tags. The revised list, according to documents obtained by Military.com<\/a>, includes Agnostics, Buddhists, Hindus, Islam (Muslims), Judaism, Sikh, and a wide range of Christian-based groups like Baptists, Catholics, Lutherans and Methodists.<\/strong><\/p>\n

…This restructuring of faith codes, which help identify service members as well as the military in planning for appropriated religious coverage to include them, has now excluded minority faith\/worldview groups including Atheists, Asatru, Deists, Druids, Eckankar, Heathens, Humanists, Magick, New Age churches, Pagan, Rosicrucianism, Shaman, Spiritualists, Troth, Unitarian Universalists and various Wiccans.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The First Amendment prevents a government-sponsored religion; it provides freedom for Americans to worship as they please. That being said, however, America was founded on a Judeo-Christian legal system and was at one point declared a Christian nation by the Supreme Court. Some of the religions no longer recognized involve practices that are illegal in the United States–such as animal sacrifice.<\/p>\n

I think this move will make life much easier for military chaplains.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On June 4th, Military.com posted an article about the changes made to the military’s recognized religion list. The article reports: Military.com has learned that the Department of Defense, for the first time in almost 10 years, has dramatically reduced its … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[9396,2105,19607],"class_list":["post-64239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-military-chaplains","tag-military-com","tag-recognized-religious-faiths"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=64239"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64239\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64241,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64239\/revisions\/64241"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=64239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=64239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rightwinggranny.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=64239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}