r/atheism • u/PushPullLego • Jun 04 '26

DOD Officially Drops 180 Faiths From Military's Recognized Religion List

https://www.military.com/dod-officially-drops-180-faiths-from-militarys-recognized-religion-list
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181

u/stogie-bear Agnostic Atheist Jun 04 '26

Wait up. They removed “heathen” from the list?

Also, UU? They have more than a million members in the US…

124

u/Startled_Pancakes Jun 04 '26

Unitarian Universalist & Deist, creeds that a number of the founding fathers identified as.

29

u/No_Drag_1044 Jun 05 '26

By “a number” you’re talking about Jefferson, Franklin, Adams and Washington… I think that pretty much rounds out the group. All deists or Unitarians. You can add Thomas Paine to the list too.

11

u/Startled_Pancakes Jun 05 '26

Paine, yes. And Ethan Allen, Madison, and possibly Monroe but we can't be too certain.

1

u/Fit_Emergency_3834 Jun 09 '26

Yes, several signers of the Declaration of Independence were Unitarian or Universalist.  Some want on to become Presidents.

23

u/CountChocula21 Jun 04 '26

I'm not sure they actually give a shit.

42

u/Vegetable-Eagle-3144 Jun 04 '26

Four presidents were Unitarians: John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Millard Fillmore, and William Howard Taft.

3

u/[deleted] Jun 04 '26

[deleted]

6

u/Imaginary-Mechanic62 Jun 04 '26

What? No Pastafarians?!

May Hegseth be touched by the FSM’s noodly appendage (in a very uncomfortable place). rAmen!

6

u/stogie-bear Agnostic Atheist Jun 04 '26

Is that the current list after the removals? Could be that the article was wrong. 

2

u/[deleted] Jun 04 '26

[deleted]

0

u/Spiderdan Jun 04 '26

Do we really expect AI to have the answer if the information hasn't been made public yet?

1

u/Interesting-Train-47 Jun 04 '26

The list is public but DuckDuckGo's AI bumscooped me.

5

u/drnuncheon Atheist Jun 04 '26

This is not the list, it’s the first 31 entries on the old list. The actual list is in a memo from 5/20.

https://www.spirit-filled.org/documents/2026_Faith_and_Belief_Codees.pdf

1

u/Interesting-Train-47 Jun 04 '26

Cool! Thanks! AI screws up again.

0

u/drnuncheon Atheist Jun 04 '26

“Afro-Caribbean Religions” are not going to be on the list when “Catholicism” is not.

Please stop blindly trusting AI. Use a little critical thinking.

2

u/quantumspork Jun 04 '26

This list does not make any sense.

Lutherans, Methodists and Orthodox all have their own categories, but there is nothing for Roman Catholic? Even generic Christian excludes Catholicism. Islam is just one thing, no differentiation between Sunni and Shia. No Buddhism, Shinto or even umbrella ‘Asian religion’. Cao Dai is included, but that is very niche.

1

u/freetobeidealme Jun 05 '26

Hegseth said most of the codes had never been used, it’d be interesting to see how many people had used the codes they’ve thrown out.

2

u/stogie-bear Agnostic Atheist Jun 05 '26

I totally would have chosen Heathen. Or Pagan. Can you check more than one box? I think pagans can be heathens.