Pentagon reduces its number of recognized religions from 211 to 31

The Department of Defense has reduced its number of recognized religious affiliation categories from 211 to 31, marking the first major reduction in nearly a decade.

The change revises a policy established in 2017 during President Donald Trump’s first term. The update was outlined in a May 20 memo issued by Anthony Tata, the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness of the US, according to Military.com. 

According to the memo, the changes were made to “streamline the DoW collection of religious preferences collection for service members to enhance the delivery of targeted religious support from the Chaplaincy.” The directive called for the previous faith and belief codes to be revised within 60 days.

“The 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’ personal faith and practices,” Tata said.

Tata also noted that service members are not limited to the “religious affiliation codes” when selecting information for military dog tags. 

The revised list includes major faith traditions such as Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Sikhism, and Mormonism, along with a large number of Christian denominations, including Baptist, Catholic, Presbyterian, Lutheran, and others.

While agnosticism remains a recognized category, atheism is no longer among the listed affiliations. The revised system also removes a number of smaller categories, including Deists, Druids, Heathens, Humanists, Pagans, Shamans, Spiritualists, Unitarian Universalists, and Wiccans. 

The original expansion of faith and belief codes used during Trump’s first term was endorsed by the Armed Forces Chaplains Board and intended to “standardize and better identify religious preferences recognized by the military services.”  The expanded list was meant to assist with religious planning and demographic tracking.

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has previously criticized the larger number of faith codes, saying the system was overly complex.

"The previous system had ballooned to well over 200 faith codes. … It was impractical and unusable, and many codes were never used at all,” Hegseth back in March, noting that 82 percent of members who identify as religious use just six of the codes.