Mormon leaders, military veterans and elected officials reacted with anger to a new Department of Defense policy that does not consider The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to be a Christian religion as part of a wider effort to cut down the U.S. military’s list of recognized faiths.
“The Pentagon’s decision to list The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints apart from other Christian faiths is wrong and needs to be corrected,” Republican Rep. Mike Kennedy, of heavily Mormon Utah, wrote on X on Sunday.
“No one needs to wonder where members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints stand,” he added. “We stand with Christ. We are Christians. On that ground, and on the much larger ground of shared faith, values, and purpose, Latter-day Saints stand alongside many Christians of every tradition in following the teachings of Christ. We only ask to be accurately portrayed. I strongly urge the Department to correct the record.”
In a separate X post, Sen. John Curtis of Utah said church members “are among the most patriotic, service-oriented individuals in our country.”
“They are also unequivocally Christian — just look at who is in the name of the Church,” he added. “It is unacceptable for a government entity to characterize a faith in a manner that contradicts the religion’s own foundational tenets. I am working now to ensure a correction is made.”
Eric Biggart, chair of the LDS Dems Caucus, told ABC4 that the change didn’t surprise him, and that his understanding of Christianity is far different than values enacted by members of the Trump administration.
“For us on the left, it’s like, yeah, of course the Trump Administration doesn’t believe in our version of Christianity,” he said. “That’s been clear to us for 10 years now.”
The Pentagon’s attempte to define Christianity “in modern American politics is pretty much a perfect summation of what the whole era of Trump has been for this last decade,” he added.
The LDS Church declined to comment.
The Independent has requested comment from the Pentagon.
Jenna Carson, a Latter-day Saint who served as an active-duty chaplain in the Air Force until 2025, told the Salt Lake Tribune she had never previously had any issues regarding her Christianity in the military.
“We’re all confused about it,” she said.
Pentagon’s list of recognized faith codes has been reduced from more than 200 to just 31, consolidating some religions into general categories such as Muslim or evangelical Christian, while eliminating numerous other faiths entirely from the list, lumping them into a general “other religions” category.
Defense Department official Sean Parnell defended the change in a post on X, arguing it was designed to aid chaplains as they gathered information on how to serve members of common religions within their units.
The policy was 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,” he wrote.
The change, first described in a May memo and reported by Military.com, nonetheless angered a wide variety of critics and faith leaders.
John Compere, a retired general and board member of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, argued the changes were not about efficiency but instead “partisan political purposes.”
“Such detrimental action damages the morale of our troops and degrades their freedom of religion provided by the United States Constitution, Department of Defense directives and Armed Forces regulations,” he wrote in a post on the foundation’s website.
The Pentagon under the direction of Secretary Pete Hegseth is “elevating one narrow religious worldview from the top of the chain of command,” according to Rev. Paul Raushenbush, a Baptist minister and head of the progressive Interfaith Alliance.
“The First Amendment does not allow the government to create a hierarchy of faiths, and it certainly does not allow the Pentagon to decide which beliefs are worthy of recognition,” he told the Associated Press.
Hegseth himself has spoken about his changes to the chaplain corps in political terms, describing the reforms as “making the Chaplain Corps Great Again,” a play on Trump’s MAGA campaign slogan.
“In an atmosphere of political correctness and secular humanism, chaplains have been minimized, viewed by many as therapists instead of ministers,” Hegseth said of religious leaders in the military in a December video.
Hegseth has incorporated his religion into his official actions unlike any defense secretary in modern American history.
An evangelical Christian, he has led Christian prayer services at the Pentagon and has suggested God is on the side of U.S. troops in the American war against Muslim-majority Iran, alarming religious freedom advocates.
“This is completely, totally unprecedented,” Michael Weinstein, the president and founder of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, previously told The Independent. “He’s making it clear that this is Jesus versus Muhammad.”
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