Various laws, regulations, and processes come with religious exceptions. In order to qualify for religious exceptions, you need to follow a qualified religion.
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.
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".
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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".
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.
(explanation: https://www.fpcmarion.org/2024/04/die-heretic/ )
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.
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
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.
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.
It being a "list of religions" is just a semantic distraction, like saying "bald" shouldn't be on a list of hair colors.
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.
( no vested interest here, I've got Wagyl riding shotgun on the stagecoach of my life )
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".