For nearly a decade, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has been engaged in a top-down rebrand meant partly to solidify its focus and bona fides as a Christian religion.
The U.S. Department of Defense, led by conservative evangelical Pete Hegseth, appears unconvinced.
On Friday, spokesperson Sean Parnell confirmed on social media a report that the department had trimmed its list of recognized religious affiliations, used by its chaplains, from more than 200 to 31.
The Latter-day Saint faith was among those to make the cut. But there was a catch.
The list denotes 20 faiths as Christian, including Catholic, Orthodox Christian, Baptist and Jehovah’s Witnesses. Not, however, the Utah-based faith.
Asked by The Salt Lake Tribune if this omission was intentional, a member of the department’s press team pointed to the statement posted by Parnell.
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
“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,” he wrote. “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.”
However, an accompanying video by Hegseth seemed to suggest the change wasn’t entirely one of streamlining bureaucracy.
“In previous administrations, our Chaplain Corps was infected by political correctness and secular humanism,” he said. “…Faith and virtue were traded for self-help and self-care. We started correcting that drift [in December], and today we’re going further.”
Asked if the church planned to respond, a spokesperson for the faith pointed to the FAQ portion of its website. It reads: “Latter-day Saints believe God sent his son, Jesus Christ, to save all mankind from death and their individual sins. Jesus Christ is central to the lives of church members.”
Utah Sens. Mike Lee and John Curtis, both members of the church, took to social media Saturday to condemn the seeming snub, with Curtis stating he is “working now to ensure a correction is made.”
Among those eliminated were Unitarian Universalists, various Wiccans, deists, atheists and others, according to Military.com, the first to report the news.
Is that the only thing that matters in defining a Christian? Mormons have a whole other testament, which no other Christian denomination does.
Is it in continuity with Protestantism? Yes, but I think the addition of a whole other holy text is enough of a ruptural break from Protestantism to consider it something new
That’s why there are different denominations within the sect of Christianity. It’s all Christianity because it centers on Christ and his teachings. But it’s done in a million flavors.
Edit:I may have misused denomination and sect but point being there is a larger grouping of “people following Jesus and his teachings central to their religion” And dozens of smaller groupings that go about that process differently.
Yes, but when you add a whole other testament, featuring even more teachings of Christ, than surely there’s something distinct about that theological baseline of Mormons from your average Christian
How does having more scripture that centers on Christ make them less Christian? Is it really any different than just having a bunch more recorded sermons from any teachers of Christ? It all centers on Christ, so whether they have no scripture or infinite scripture their belief and their teachings are centered on Christ, which is what makes a religion christian.
In that case, why are protestents considered Christians when most of them also have a different Biblical cannon from the Catholic Church?
There’s no easy way to do it; I consider “Christian” the umbrella term for anyone who considers Jesus to be their savior, then get more specific about type from there.
This is the way. You’ll see some people get red-faced over the “Nicene creed” and so on.
Bringing up the Nicene creed is not really quite the flex that some xtians seemingly think that it is, though. If anything it only serves to highlight all the problems of trying to define something like “True Christianity”.
First of all, it’s clear the fractures were coming very early. Also, they apparently had to vote on what is alleged to be revealed holy scriptures, and what they mean.
This is all rather problematic. You’d think a divine creature(s) would be able to construct a way to know what is absolutely, without question and without debate, what is the real, unaltered true original texts (something like a digital signature for example) and how to interpret it.
We definitely do not have that. Instead we have endless centuries of scribblings from apologists, lots of violence and schisms and declarations of heresy and apostasy.