WASHINGTON: The Pentagon has cut the number of recognised religious affiliations in military personnel records from more than 180 down to just 31.
The Defence Department will no longer allow military service members to claim roughly 180 different religious traditions in their personnel records, leaving just 31 to choose from — 22 of which are Christian denominations, New York Times reported.
The change, which was reported earlier by Military.com, was announced on Friday afternoon in a statement posted to social media by Sean Parnell, a Pentagon spokesman, who called it “a long overdue move.”
Parnell framed the change as a largely administrative exercise, intended to simplify data collection for military leaders and chaplains.
According to the memo, the new system 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.”
The change 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,” Parnell said. “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.” Aside from the Christian faiths, the newly consolidated “religious affiliation codes” will allow soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, and Coast Guard and Space Force personnel to identify in their records as agnostic, Baha’i, Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, Jewish or Sikh. Wicca, paganism, humanism and atheism are among those that were removed from the list. Those who had identified with one of the 180 eliminated faith groups will have just two options under the new policy: “no religion” or “other religions.”
