Unitarian Universalism no longer officially recognized by Defense Department

[edschweppe]

Per the Associated Press, Defense Department slashes its religious designations list from more than 200 choices to 31:

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Department of Defense announced on Friday a significant reduction in the number of religious affiliations it officially recognizes.

The new list of 31 is down from more than 200 previously recognized traditions that troops could choose from. The list no longer includes atheists, Unitarian Universalists, pagans and Wiccans.

“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,” Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said in a statement. “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.”

Parnell added the department values the free exercise of religion and chaplains facilitate service members’ “ability to freely exercise their religion of choice, or no religion at all.”

The list creates broad categories of some Christian traditions — Baptist, Presbyterian, Methodist — without specifying denominations within those traditions, which can span the theological and ideological spectrum.

Service members can choose to identify as “no religion,” “other religions” or agnostic. Also included are Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Sikhism, the Baha’i faith and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

The Unitarian Universalist Association, which was cut from the list, said in a statement, “This may make it more difficult for our uniformed UUs to access the spiritual care that they need.” The denomination said it is working on a strategic response to support UU service members.

As a veteran of the United States Navy, and as a member of a Unitarian Universalist congregation, I am ... displeased, to put things mildly. As near as I can tell, the practical effects of this decision will be (a) belittling faiths rejected from the official list and (b) making it more difficult for chaplains of those faiths to reach out and minister to their co-religionists. Neither of those are what I'd call a good reason to pull a stunt like this.

[1] No, I'm not going to call it the Department of War on Donald Trump's say-so. Maybe if Congress actually passes a law renaming the department ...

Comments

[lauradi7dw]

My impression is that having a denomination be recognized meant that one's symbol could be on a headstone in a military cemetary. Are they going to scrape off the chalices now?

[edschweppe]

Veteran's headstones are governed by the Department of Veterans Affairs, not the Department of Defense, and their official list of "emblems of belief" still includes the Unitarian chalice (along with eighty-some-odd others).

So, no scraping. (Until Hegseth gets another wild hair up his ass, of course.)