Pete Hegseth has decreed that there are only 31 religions that will be officially recognized by the US military, in an effort to pare down and streamline the efficiency of their administration. Of the 31, 22 are hair-splitting variants of the Christian cult, which to my mind suggests that there are greater efficiencies to be achieved, if only this policy were administered by someone who doesn’t have Crusader tattoos all over his body, and isn’t a member of Doug Wilson’s white nationalist church.
But surprise, surprise, surprise, guess who is left off the list?
This restructuring of faith codes, which help identify service members as well as the military in planning for appropriated religious coverage to include them, has now excluded minority faith/worldview groups including Atheists, Asatru, Deists, Druids, Eckankar, Heathens, Humanists, Magick, New Age churches, Pagan, Rosicrucianism, Shaman, Spiritualists, Troth, Unitarian Universalists and various Wiccans.
I guess some of the founding fathers of this country, the ones who were Unitarians and deists, wouldn’t get any respect from our modern military. The ones who owned slaves would probably fit right in.
Hey, did I lose my audience with an ancient Gomer Pyle reference? I am old.
“Hey, did I lose my audience with an ancient Gomer Pyle reference? I am old.”
At least one person in your audience is old enough to think you are still young.
I never knew that Magick (the gathering) was considered a religion, but guess I should have.
The actual term “atheist” was removed, but “no religion” is still there, so this is minor from our perspective. Everyone who gets lumped into “Other Religion” and told that this is somehow to help them get “targeted religious support from the Chaplaincy” is in a much stronger position to complain. The ridiculous pile of variants for Christianity also really stands out relative to other religions; if baptist, Pentecostal, and evangelical are somehow distinct categories Sunni and Shia being lumped together has to sting.
I always watched Gomer.
Knabb @ 3
Spiritual but not religious would be considered No Religion too. It completely erases open atheists from the military. It’s not “minor”.
Whoa, this totally breaks my Noodle, blessed be he!
Pastafarians are NOT on the Do Not Pray list!
Praise be to his Exalted Holiness, the Flying Spaghetti Monster and the Noodley Host!
Ramen!
Now I’m just imagining a parallel world where Christians, Jews, and Muslims all get lumped under “Abrahamic faiths” while some other ascendant religion gets all its denominations respected.
Callng atheism a religion is like calling being healthy a disease…. so they at least got one thing right. Sadly, one can’t hope they don’t keep everyone but the “no religion” folks away from the guns.
Christians shouldn’t need a military anyway. Just find another true believer and pray at the enemy. Hypocrits
So it’s just the old Emo Philips joke all over again?
It should be easy to figure which religions should still be on the list. If a religions adherents hate and despise the adherents of other religions to the point where they’d slaughter each other for centuries, they obviously could never stand worshipping together. Hence, separate services would be necessary.
So, if i understood this correctly, it is allowed to worship the aztec pantheon, and bring to the frontlines a drum made of human skin, making “music” to inspire the soldiers?
Somehow, this doesn’t surprise me…
Given Sec. Hegseth’s overt devotion to “lethality”, the Department of War clearly needs to recognize Ares/Mars-ism, Thuggee, Mithraism, Molochism, or some other representation of Necrolatry.
@ ^ Pierce R. Butler : Sauronism.
Or Trumpism. Or Fascism. But I repeat myself. Same diff. In essence.
So, now the murderous magat administration, embodied in crusader pigseth, is also targeting people who don’t believe in the ‘pedophile approving sky fairy’? Everywhere I look responsible reports keep emphasizing, with FACTS, that this entire nation is becoming a ‘xtian terrorist magat billionaire owned trailer trash empire’.
Lumping us rational atheists (and maybe humanists and unitarian universalists, which are mostly benign and marginally superstitious) in with all the other crackpot superstitious religions is an ignorant insult.
Bobby Henderson had a great idea to combat the xtian terrorist regime in the kansas school system when he creating the Flying Spaghetti Monster church. I have to grant some respect to him and his pastafarians.
@ ^ shermanj : Ramen!
By definition, to be in a foxhole is to rely for salvation on physics to avoid attack, instead of relying on a deity. Thus, everyone in a foxhole is an atheist, and believers are apparently trying to leave the military by unaliving themselves. There are no sincere theists in foxholes, so all theists are unfit for military duty and should be dismissed. That’s just logic. So all military chaplains should be versions of atheists only.
By definition, to be in a foxhole is to rely for salvation on physics to avoid attack, instead of relying on a deity. Thus, everyone in a foxhole is an atheist, and believers are apparently trying to leave the military by unaliving themselves. There are no sincere theists in foxholes, so all theists are unfit for military duty and should be dismissed. That’s just logic. So all military chaplains should be versions of atheists only.