'Very Alarming,' Says Former Chaplain as Pentagon Cuts Military Religious Options From 211 to 31, Deadline Looms for Troops to Choose Faith Affiliation

Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, has drawn criticism for his overhaul of the way the military documents religious belief. As a deadline nears for service members to put their affiliations in order, former chaplains are voicing concerns over where his reforms are headed.

At the Pentagon, the number of codes for religious affiliation has been whittled down from 211 to 31. In doing so, they have done away with separate designations for atheists, humanists, and a number of minority faiths.

Howard Stendahl, a retired Air Force major general and the former chief of chaplains, is among those who think the changes may erode the military’s pledge to all personnel regardless of faith.

“The rise of Christian nationalism makes it a dangerous and precipitous possibility that an official preference could be established for one religion,” Stendahl said in a conversation with the American Homefront Project.

The Lutheran minister, with 30 years of chaplaincy behind him, made it his business to accommodate varying beliefs. He would seek out leaders of other traditions to back the troops, he said, because he had no desire for them to believe America was waging war in the name of Christianity.

By Friday, October 16, active duty in the Air Force and Space Force will need to have their records current. The Reserve and National Guard have until November 9. Failure to act by then means the new system will reassign their file automatically.

While the shortened list is not a prohibition and soldiers can still put whatever they like on an ID tag, American Atheists says the process is coercive. They contend that those who are atheist or humanist are being steered to check off “agnostic” or “no religion” and have asked for answers on how this is being handled.

William “Razz” Waff, an Episcopal priest and another former chaplain, is also sounding an alarm. The retired major general told the American Homefront Project he was “very concerned” about the sway evangelical Christianity is having.

He fears the troops might get only “one flavor” of instruction from the evangelical side, or feel they must conform to a particular approach to suit the administration.

For his part, Hegseth has set up an Office of Religious Affairs to manage the chaplains and report directly to him. In September, he spoke of the military’s vocation as both a physical and spiritual struggle, using biblical references to the armor of God.

Pentagon brass say the recoding is a matter of housekeeping to allow chaplains to better allocate resources and understand what their troops require. Richard Anderson of the Air Force puts it simply: the service is dedicated to the religious freedom and spiritual readiness of every Guardian and Airman.

However, to the critics, the issue is whether a man or woman in uniform can feel they are on equal footing.