There’s an old saying: There are no atheists in foxholes. Faith plays a large role in the lives of many service members (including, yes, uniformed atheists). The U.S. military has long provided religious support to service members who are naturally often far from home and their faith communities. Given that the First Amendment prohibits the government both from establishing a religion and from preventing its free exercise, the military’s formal provision of chaplains and religious services to those in uniform is understood to balance these competing constitutional demands.
Until now, that is. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth recently slashed the list of Pentagon-recognized religions and belief systems that service members can have reflected in their personnel records from more than 200 to just 31, with the majority of the remaining being Christian religions. Those who ascribe to one of the 180-plus now-deleted belief systems must instead list in their records either “no religion” or “other religion.” This change tilts military policy toward the unconstitutional establishment of religion and simultaneously limits its members’ free exercise of their chosen faith.
Religious resources aren’t merely a nice bonus for service members that the Pentagon chief can do away with just by snapping his fingers.
The list of recognized religions grew from 100 to more than 200 during the first Trump administration when the Pentagon’s board of chaplains “recommended adding new faith and belief groups to standardize and better identify religious preferences recognized by the Military Services” in response to legislation mandating improved religious liberty protections. Despite such rationale, Hegseth says this larger list was “infected by political correctness and secular humanism” under previous administrations.
The defense secretary is now using the Pentagon’s previous rationale for expanding the list to drastically shrink it instead, stating that his purge is about “giving chaplains clear, usable information so they can minister to service members in a way that aligns with that service member’s faith background and religious practice.” Echoing the secretary, the Pentagon says this massive cancellation of faiths is simply an administrative exercise, one designed to allow chaplains “to quickly look at the religious composition of their units and determine how they structure resources to best provide for warfighters of all faith groups,” and to “provide the best data to support our chaplains in that effort.” Yet how does no data — indeed, deliberate ignorance of service members’ faiths, if they ascribe to one of the 180 now-cancelled religions — equate to better support?
Religious resources aren’t merely a nice bonus for service members that the Pentagon chief can do away with by snapping his fingers. Reasonable access to well-rounded military chaplains is a traditional component of military life, allowing soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen to freely practice their religious beliefs even if deployed to foreign battlefields.
It’s impossible for the Pentagon to provide a specific “religious military professional” — the phrase military regulations use for chaplains — for every possible faith; service members don’t have a right to a chaplain of their particular belief system. But military chaplains are expected and required to support the spiritual needs of all service members, not just those who hold one of the faiths the Pentagon still recognizes.
Specifically, the Pentagon’s regulation governing military chaplains states that their primary mission is to “meet the religious requirements and care for the spiritual needs of Service members” (and others, including family members). This regulation is grounded in the First Amendment and explains that the position of military chaplain “directly and indirectly supports the free exercise of religion by all Service members.” Religious ministry professionals must be “able to personally meet the religious requirements of persons in their assigned military units, potentially in isolated or combat environments.”
The Pentagon is burying its head in the sand regarding the faiths of the U.S. fighting forces.
Yet how can military chaplains meet the religious needs of their units’ members when they won’t know what faiths are actually represented, outside of the recognized few? Among faiths no longer recognized by the Pentagon are the Unitarian Universalist religious movement (to which John Adams belonged), deism (to which Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson subscribed), atheism, the Dutch Reformed Church, paganism, the African Methodist Episcopal Church and the Native American Church. These faiths count millions of Americans among their members.
Since when is ignorance “the best data”? Resources can’t be adequately structured to support service members of all faiths when the Pentagon is burying its head in the sand regarding the faiths of the U.S. fighting forces. The lack of information does not equal “useful” information — except if the intended use is to stop supporting those service members’ minority faiths and practices.
While service members can reportedly still list their faith of choice on their dog tags, that doesn’t mean a chaplain can understand their spiritual needs while they’re still alive. As religious military professionals, chaplains can’t best support those they are being essentially ordered not to see. It’s also unclear how this policy cancellation will affect the qualifications of already serving chaplains; their eligibility depends on the endorsement of religiously affiliated organizations, and surely some of those organizations are tied to religions that have lost Pentagon recognition.
Couple Hegseth’s and the Pentagon’s nonsensical reasons for this new policy with the secretary’s penchant for proselytizing his Christian faith to service members, and it’s clear that this massive purge isn’t about streamlining data or structuring resources. It’s about the Trump administration’s desire to support only certain religions, and therefore only certain service members. This move hinders other service members’ free exercise of religion, at least compared with those whose beliefs are represented. And it takes a large step in the direction of unconstitutionally “establishing” (by discriminatorily supporting) the religions that remain recognized by the military.
The Pentagon’s new policy means that some military members are now sacrificing to ensure that their fellow Americans enjoy a freedom of religion they no longer fully possess. That is not just deeply ironic; it is morally and constitutionally repugnant. And it should be added to the ever-growing list of mistakes by this White House that a future president and Congress will need to rectify.
Rachel E. VanLandingham retired as a lieutenant colonel from the U.S. Air Force. She is the Irwin R. Buchalter professor of law at Southwestern Law School, Los Angeles, and president emerita of the National Institute of Military Justice.
