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.
“And you get a planet, and you get a planet. But not you, until 1978.”
It’s fan-fic all the way down.
Bro, all of Christianity is a fan-fic.
Jesus never once sought out a literate person to write down his teachings in his lifetime. Everything we know about him was written by his fans quite a while after his death. The New Testament was cobbled together by several different writers and then attributed to the apostles.
If that ain’t fan-fic, I don’t know what is.
Comparatively, Mohammed had three scribes take down his words. If the story of Moses is to be believed, he delivered the Ten Commandments on a stone tablet with his own hands. Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Mormon himself (or translated it himself from golden tablets if you believe that). Aleister Crowley wrote his own holy books and graded them with a system to let readers know which documents were sacred and which ones were commentary. The teachings of Buddha are similar to Jesus in that they were passed down orally for generations before they were written down, but nobody is claiming that those documents were penned by the Buddha or anyone who knew him in his lifetime.
So, as far as claimed prophets go, the story of Jesus is one of the most fan created documents of them all.
It’s all bullshit, my dude. Do you really want to go down that road?