The Department of Defense has slashed its official list of recognized religious faiths and belief systems from 211 to 31, the first revision to the military's faith codes in nearly a decade. The overhaul, directed by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, eliminates roughly 180 categories, including Atheists, Pagans, Wiccans, Druids, Humanists, and Unitarian Universalists, while retaining major Christian denominations, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism, and a handful of other groups.

A May 20, 2026, memorandum signed by Anthony Tata, under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness, laid out the changes. Military.com obtained the memo and reported the scope of the cuts. The directive gives the services 60 days to implement the revised codes.

The move follows months of signaling from Hegseth that he intended to reshape the military chaplaincy. Whether it amounts to a reasonable administrative cleanup or a constitutional problem depends on what happens next, specifically, whether service members in minority faith traditions lose access to the pastoral care the chaplain corps is supposed to provide.

What the new list includes, and what it drops

The 31 surviving codes lean heavily Christian. Seventeen of the entries are Christian sub-categories: Assemblies of God, Baptist, Brethren, Catholic, Church of Christ, Church of God, Church of the Nazarene, Episcopal/Anglican, Evangelical, Jehovah's Witnesses, Lutheran, Methodist, Non-Denominational, Orthodox, Pentecostal, Presbyterian, Quaker, Reformed, Scientist, and Seventh Day Adventist. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints gets its own line. A catch-all "Christian, Other" code rounds out the Christian section.

Non-Christian faiths that survived: Agnostic, Bahá'í, Buddhism, Hindu, Islam (Muslim), Judaism, and Sikh. Two generic buckets, "No Religion" and "Other Religions", close the list.

Gone entirely are codes for Asatru, Deists, Druids, Eckankar, Heathens, Humanists, Magick, New Age churches, Pagans, Rosicrucianism, Shamans, Spiritualists, Troth, and multiple Wiccan sub-groups, among others. Atheists, distinct from Agnostics, also lost their dedicated code.

Hegseth's rationale: too many codes, too little use

Hegseth previewed the consolidation in March 2026 when he announced broader chaplain reforms. His argument was blunt and data-driven in its framing.

"The previous system had ballooned to well over 200 faith codes.... It was impractical and unusable, and many codes were never used at all."

He added that 82 percent of service members who identify as religious use only six of those codes. That statistic suggests the vast majority of troops will notice no change at all.

The Tata memo echoed the efficiency argument, stating the streamlined list would "enhance the delivery of targeted religious support from the Chaplaincy" and give chaplains "clear, readily available information" to anticipate service members' needs. Tata also noted that troops will not be limited to the 31 codes when choosing what goes on their dog tags, a detail that may matter to individual service members even if it does nothing to change how the chaplain corps allocates resources.

A longer trajectory

The last major revision to the faith code list came on March 27, 2017, during Trump's first term. That update moved in the opposite direction, expanding the list to standardize and better identify religious preferences across the services. The Armed Forces Chaplains Board endorsed the expansion at the time, citing improved demographic tracking, better planning for religious support, and a clearer picture of each service's chaplain requirements.

Hegseth signaled his own direction in December 2025, when he announced plans to "make the Chaplain Corps great again." He described a "top-down cultural shift, putting spiritual well-being on the same footing as physical and mental health" and prioritizing religious liberty and practice.

The March 2026 chaplain reforms went further, including a separate change to replace rank insignia on chaplains' work uniforms with religious insignia. Hegseth said at the time that chaplains "are first and foremost called and ordained by God."

The constitutional question

Critics have framed the consolidation as part of a broader drift toward favoring one religious tradition inside the Pentagon. Hegseth has hosted Christian prayer services in the Pentagon auditorium with speakers who drew controversy. He has publicly invoked Scripture when describing the ongoing military operation in Iran.

A former U.S. Army chaplain who now serves as an endorser called the revised list "horrible" in comments to Military.com. The individual, who spoke anonymously, pointed directly at the First Amendment.

"When I raised my hand to become an Army chaplain, I swore that I would support and defend the Constitution. The First Amendment is the free exercise of religion for everybody. That's what I was buying into."

The former chaplain described the new list as "an excuse for the failure to provide the free exercise of religion for all people" and called it "a tragedy and travesty" and "a violation of the United States Constitution." They warned that chaplains could use the shortened list to turn away troops whose faith doesn't appear on it.

"All it takes is the chaplain to say, 'Well, I don't see them on this list. I don't know how I can help you. Maybe go off the installation and see if you can find anybody who can work with you. Goodbye.' And that's it. That's not the American way."

That concern is worth taking seriously, not because the list reduction is inherently unconstitutional, but because implementation matters. If a chaplain uses the absence of a code as a reason to deny pastoral support, the problem shifts from administrative housekeeping to a potential free-exercise violation.

A veteran's experience

A second individual who spoke anonymously to Military.com, a U.S. Army veteran who served from 2000 to 2010, including three tours in Iraq, offered a grimmer picture rooted in personal history. The veteran is ordained in Wicca as a cleric priest, in Asatru as a Gothi, and as a Druid. On the academic side, they hold a master's in clinical mental health counseling, a divinity degree, and a doctorate of ministry in interreligious chaplaincy.

During their first deployment to Iraq as a junior enlisted infantryman, the veteran sought guidance from a unit chaplain while struggling with what they were seeing and doing in combat. What followed, they said, was eight months of a chaplain who "took every opportunity to use their rank to try and evangelize and convert me." Chaplain recruiting offices would hang up when they learned the caller was Pagan. It wasn't until 2007 that the veteran was allowed to have "Pagan" identified on enlisted records and dog tags.

Learning of the new code changes rekindled that anger, the veteran told Military.com.

"One of the distinctive religious group leaders that I mentor came across the memorandum and forwarded it to me, and that rekindled that anger that I felt when I was actively discriminated against that started the path towards me becoming a civilian chaplain."

The veteran, who has endorsed and mentored 26 lay leaders on different military posts, said their research found that spiritual abuse or trauma connected to religious beliefs affects more than eight in ten service members and can produce negative outcomes comparable to post-traumatic stress disorder. "Having appropriate spiritual care is paramount for their well-being," they said.

The veteran said they have attempted to correspond up the chain to the chief of chaplains and to Hegseth himself. Military.com reported that the DOD did not respond to its inquiry about what led to the changes, whether service members or chaplains expressed concern, or whether the loss of individual faith codes could hurt morale.

The conservative case, and the conservative risk

Hegseth's efficiency argument is not frivolous. A system with more than 200 codes, most of them unused, creates bureaucratic noise. If 82 percent of religiously identified service members cluster around six codes, the administrative case for consolidation is straightforward. The "Other Religions" catch-all and the dog-tag exception are meant to preserve individual expression even as the tracking system narrows.

But conservatives who champion religious liberty should be the first to insist that the principle applies uniformly. The free-exercise clause does not protect only faiths that fill large pews. A Druid infantryman on a forward operating base in Iraq has the same constitutional claim to pastoral care as a Baptist tanker at Fort Cavazos. The question is not whether the Pentagon should maintain a sprawling spreadsheet. The question is whether shrinking the spreadsheet gives chaplains a bureaucratic excuse to stop providing for troops whose faith falls outside the 31 lines.

The DOD's silence on that question is not reassuring. When Military.com asked whether the changes could hurt morale or whether any concerns were raised, the department offered no response. That is a missed opportunity. A confident policy survives scrutiny. A policy that dodges questions invites the worst interpretation.

Hegseth has the authority to reorganize administrative codes. He does not have the authority to narrow the scope of the chaplaincy's constitutional obligation. If the 31-code list is paired with clear guidance that chaplains must still perform or provide for every service member's free exercise, regardless of whether their faith appears on the list, then this is a defensible reform. If it is not, it is a liability.

Religious liberty is either a universal principle or a preference. The Pentagon should not have to be reminded which one conservatives claim to defend.