Why The Pentagon’s Count Of Religious Groups Plunged From 216 to Just 31
(ANALYSIS) Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has kept busy. He’s dealing with the Iran conflict, the Venezuela raid, the killing of sailors thought to be shipping drugs, feuds within the NATO alliance, and his unprecedented campaign of dismissals among the top brass.
Surprisingly, he has also plunged into the complex problem of how to comprehend American religions, concluding with a dramatic military overhaul that went into effect in mid-July.
The Pentagon needs to define America’s religious categories due to chaplains’ responsibility to handle the spiritual needs of troops as effectively as possible. The listing of officially recognized faiths affects each soldier’s records, military identification (“dog tags”), access to chaplain services, requests for religious accommodations such as diet and observances and other matters. There’s also the politically sensitive cultural aspect of bestowing recognition and status upon a particular faith.
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Problem is, Americans’ religious choices are pretty much uncountable. The most comprehensive resource is J. Gordon Melton's “Encyclopedia of American Religions” (currently out of print but available online), with capsule descriptions for several thousand primary faith affiliations, with many groups tiny or defunct.
The U.S. Religion Census, less exhaustive but comprehensive and authoritative, has been conducted each decade starting in 1990. This survey is tabulated for the county, state and national levels by experts in religious statistics.
On-the-ground evidence for the 2020 census, more extensive than with prior rounds, identified 368 separate U.S. religious bodies.
The Pew Research Center, a major source of information and polling on U.S. and international religion, lists 244 groups as developed from research by Infogroup (now Data Axle). Pew’s polling is particularly important because it can identify Protestant respondents by their specific affiliations under the categories of Evangelical, Historically Black and Mainline churches.
In 2017, early in the first Trump Administration, the Department of Defense issued a revised religion breakdown — now being erased under Hegseth – with 216 “recognized faith groups” in what was called an expanded and thus “more accurate” list for chaplains. It specified coding even for small denominations such as the Seventh Day Baptists (with 4,512 members per the Religion Census) and Schwenkfelders (with 2,471).
The 2026 Hegseth plan will “streamline” new Religious Affiliation Codes, slashed to a mere 31 that are said to provide chaplains “clear, readily available information.” A case could be made for some consolidation from the Pentagon’s former 216, but such sudden and huge shrinkage is obviously debatable.
The Hegseth system totally eliminates such formerly designated groups as Atheism, Asatru, Deism, Druidry, Eckankar, Heathens, Humanism, Magick, New Age, Paganism, Rosicrucianism, Shamanism, Spiritualism, The Troth, Wicca, even the venerable Unitarian Universalist Association with its 202,000 members. Soldiers with such outsider identities will now be classified under “Other Religions” and atheists under “No Religion.”
The Pentagon made a major blunder in its original 2026 version. Groups that consider themselves Christian but reject historic Christian beliefs are listed as “Christian” categories, such as the Jehovah’s Witnesses and Christian Science. But The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Pentagon slightly botched that official name for the group formerly nicknamed “Mormon”) was offended when it was categorized as a separate religion apart from all “Christian” groups. This denomination has long fought for Christian legitimacy and believes it alone restores the authentic religion of Jesus.
The other recognized (and debatable) “Christian” labels that soldiers must now choose among are: Assemblies of God, Baptists, Brethren, Catholic, Church of Christ, Church of God, Church of the Nazarene, Episcopal/Anglican, Evangelical, Lutheran, Methodist, Non-Denominational, Orthodox, Pentecostal, Presbyterian, Quaker, Reformed, Seventh Day Adventist (sic) and Other.
In other words, numerous seemingly similar groups are lumped together. Hegseth explains that most enlistees fit just a handful of categories. However, there’s considerable doctrinal daylight between, say, Hegseth’s own hard-right Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches and the mainline Reformed Church in America, or PCA vs. PC(USA) Presbyterians, or LC-MS vs. ELCA Lutherans, or Anglicans vs. Episcopalians, or Global vs. United Methodists.
The non-Christian options are now radically reduced to seven — Agnostic, Baha’i, Buddhism, Hindu, Islam, Judaism and Sikh — plus Other Religions and No Religion. Yet consider how, for instance, chaplains need to serve adherents of Judaism’s several branches differently.
The amalgamated categories accompany Hegseth’s desire to “make the Chaplain Corps great again,” with “a top-down cultural shift, putting spiritual well-being on the same footing as physical and mental health.” Military.com, which broke news of the new setup, reports Hegseth wants more focus on God and less on therapeutic “self-help,” which is an increasing demand upon chaplains.
The National Council of Churches, which represents Mainline Protestant and Orthodox denominations, insists that the military must revert to its former long listing. The Council believes having so few recognized religions marginalizes “unique spiritual identities, leaving them unacknowledged and disrespected,” and distinctions on affiliation that seem “inconsequential” to outsiders can be “essential” to their followers. “Streamlining categories of faith traditions for administrative efficiency” suggests a lack of respect that could erode troops’ “morale, cohesion and resilience.”
Interfaith America notes that 80-plus belief symbols appear on headstones at Arlington National Cemetery. This organization says Hegseth’s policies in general “emphasize Christianity and downplay the contributions of other faith traditions.”
According to this interfaith organization, radically narrowed recognitions of faiths can “stoke divisions” between Christian denominations and “undermine the service of non-Christians: whereas the military should avoid religious rivalries and “lines of exclusion.”
Richard N. Ostling was a longtime religion writer with The Associated Press and with Time magazine, where he produced 23 cover stories, as well as a Time senior correspondent providing field reportage for dozens of major articles. He is a recipient of the Religion News Association's Lifetime Achievement Award. He has interviewed such personalities as Billy Graham, the Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa and Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI); ranking rabbis and Muslim leaders; and authorities on other faiths; as well as numerous ordinary believers. He writes a bi-weekly column for Religion Unplugged.