By Anders Hagstrom | Fox News
The Department of War has officially removed 180 faiths from its list of recognized religions, acting on a change previously announced by War Secretary Pete Hegseth.
The U.S. Military Chaplain Corps previously recognized over 200 faith codes that servicemembers could claim affiliation with. That number now sits at just 31 as of a Thursday memo from Undersecretary of Defense Anthony Tata, according to Military.com.
Tata’s memo says the change will “streamline the DoW collection of religious preferences for service members to enhance the delivery of targeted religious support from the Chaplaincy.”
“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,” he added.
The new list includes Agnostics, Buddhists, Hindus, Islam (Muslims), Judaism, Sikh, and a wide range of Christian-based groups like Baptists, Catholics, Lutherans and Methodists, the outlet reported.
Hegseth had announced the intention to trim the list of faiths earlier this year.
“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 said in March. He went on to note that the vast majority of military members fit under just six of the faith codes.
Alongside that change, the Pentagon also directed serving chaplains to replace their rank insignia with their religious insignia.
“A chaplain is first and foremost a chaplain, and an officer second. This change is a visual representation of that fact,” Hegseth said in a statement in March.
“Specifically unique to the role of a chaplain, they are first and foremost called and ordained by God. And, while they will retain rank as an officer to those they serve, their rank will not be visible,” he added.
The Office of the Secretary of War is announcing a significant change to the Department’s categorization of religious affiliation. In a long overdue move, we reduced the list from over 200 unmanageable categories to 31. With this move, we are returning to the original intent of… https://t.co/dgHX5ytzjJ pic.twitter.com/eho537O08J
— Sean Parnell (@SeanParnellASW) June 5, 2026
FULL TEXT: “The Office of the Secretary of War is announcing a significant change to the Department’s categorization of religious affiliation. In a long overdue move, we reduced the list from over 200 unmanageable categories to 31. With this move, we are returning to the original intent of collecting this data – to allow our chaplains and religious support personnel to provide the best spiritual care to our warfighters.
This decrease in religious affiliation codes is not designed to make any claims on the legitimacy of any faith or religious belief, nor is it intended to provide a list of “officially approved” religions. Rather, it is 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.
The Department of War places a high value on the First Amendment and the free exercise of religion. Chaplains play an instrumental role in providing spiritual care and facilitating the Warfighters’ ability to freely exercise their religion of choice, or no religion at all. With this new change, we believe we can provide the best data to support our chaplains in that effort.”
DOD Officially Drops 180 Faiths From Military’s Recognized Religion List (Military.com)
. . . .This restructuring of faith codes, which help identify service members as well as the military in planning for appropriated religious coverage to include them, has now excluded minority faith/worldview groups:
Atheists
Asatru
Deists
Druids
Eckankar
Heathens
Humanists
Magick
New Age churches
Pagan
Rosicrucianism
Shamans
Spiritualists
Troth
Unitarian Universalists
various Wiccans
etc. . . .
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