The Pentagon has updated its list of verified religious affiliations for service members used in HR systems and removed the “Christian” designation from several faiths after facing backlash over the weekend that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was not designated as Christian.

Background

A list shared online last week by Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell formalized 31 religious categories that service members could identify as — 21 of which were identified as variations of Christianity. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was not identified as Christian, a fact immediately criticized by Mormon lawmakers including staunch Trump supporter Sen. Mike Lee.

Sen. Lee said in a video posted online on Sunday, “I think it’s very unfortunate that the Pentagon has chosen to identify basically every faith group in America that professes faith in Jesus Christ as Christian with one exception: that is those belonging to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”

Another Republican Utah lawmaker, Rep. Mike Kennedy, called the Pentagon’s list “wrong” and said it “needs to be corrected.”

Update

Monday, the Pentagon released a second version of the list, which removed the “Christian” identifier from the various faiths and denominations.

The Pentagon’s job is to ensure sincerely-held faith is respected and encouraged in our ranks, according to a post by the Pentagon’s rapid response account on X.

Sen. Lee welcomed the updated list of religious codes on Monday, saying he was “grateful” to Hegseth “for correcting the error.”

Context

The changes come as Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has vowed to overhaul the military’s chaplain corps, saying in a video on social media in December that the chaplain corps has been “degraded” and “minimized” in recent decades.

Hegseth said the number of codes used by service members to identify their faiths had “ballooned to well over 200 faith codes,” calling it “impractical and unusable.”

Original reporting: KTVZ (Central Oregon) — read the source article.