Pete Hegseth moves to make Army Chaplain Corps 'great again,' scraps woke Spiritual Fitness Guide

On Tuesday night, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said the US military will immediately stop using its Army Spiritual Fitness Guide, as part of a broader effort to restore chaplains as spiritual leaders rather than "therapists." 

Hegseth opened by calling the “weakening of our Chaplain Corps” a long-running problem that many Americans may not realize exists. He described chaplains as the “spiritual and moral backbone” of the armed forces and pointed to the Chaplain Corps’ Revolutionary War-era origins, citing George Washington’s 1775 establishment of chaplains for the Continental Army and Congress’s authorization of Navy chaplains that same year.

A central target of the announcement was the Army Spiritual Fitness Guide, which Hegseth criticized as overly secular and out of step with the beliefs of most service members. He argued that the guide, more than 100 pages, "mentions God one time,” while referencing “feelings” repeatedly and including concepts such as “playfulness.” He also faulted the guide for what he called “New Age notions,” saying it defines a soldier’s spirit in terms of “consciousness, creativity, and connection,” while offering “zero mention of virtue.”

Hegseth said the guide itself reports that roughly “82 percent of the military are religious,” and he contended the material “alienates our war fighters of faith by pushing secular humanism.” He said the guide is “unacceptable and unserious, so we’re tossing it.” He then announced he would sign a directive “today to eliminate the use of the Army Spiritual Fitness Guide effective immediately,” adding: “These types of training materials have no place in the War Department.”

Beyond removing the guide, Hegseth said the Army will change how it categorizes religious affiliation. He said the current faith and belief coding system has “ballooned to over 200” codes, even though “an overwhelming majority of the military population only uses six.” He added that “eleven are not used by anyone,” and said the system will be streamlined and moved to a new list of “religious affiliation codes” intended to make it easier for chaplains to “minister better to the flock.”

“Our chaplains are chaplains, not emotional support officers,” he said, arguing that chaplains have been “minimized” in recent decades and “viewed by many as therapists instead of ministers,” with “faith and virtue” replaced by “self-help and self-care.”

Hegseth closed by previewing additional changes “in the days and weeks ahead,” promising what he called a “top-down cultural shift” that puts “spiritual well-being on the same footing as mental and physical health.”

To underline his view of chaplains’ purpose, he quoted the 1956 Army Chaplain’s Manual: “The chaplain is the pastor and the shepherd of the souls entrusted to his care.” He argued the role only works, he said, if chaplains are given the “freedom to boldly guide and care for their flock.”

He ended with: “We are going to make the Chaplain Corps great again, and Merry Christmas.”