In the end this mostly boils down to a 2 letter code on the dog tags. Not much else to it.
Out of 31 choices, 22 seem to be variations of Christianity.
Check those vs percentage of Americans in those faiths and you’ll have your answers.
So most people could say “I was not shamanist so I did not speak out”. Sounds fine, not something that could ever cause problems in the future
There are so many bigger threats to our Democracy, a 2 letter code on a dog tag seems like a minor issue or RO.
I disagree. When it’s done by a defense secretary plastered with Christian nationalist tattoos, this is clearly a case of “we can do this without anyone complaining, because seriously who is really a shaman? That will make it easier when we make our move on the Sikhs”
Personally I would remove all the codes. Separation of State and Church would be nice.
And that one is probably #12 above, Evangelical Christian.
Yeah, it’s petty, and as we all know, this administration has no floor to how petty they’re willing to go.
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Historically they are quite pacifist when it gets down to less than 5 they will pull out their church of the Lord high Trump, and demand personal allegiance (to the living or dead body of the Lord high Excellency)
I think you’re missing the point, which is that they didn’t have to do this in the first place.
Yeah, they’ll pull a Henry VIII.
Separation of church and state should always take precedence over everything.
In our real world, symbolism takes eyeballs away from everything else. For decades now, the left has tried to recognize the enormous range of human behavior, from the variety of sexual preferences and physical identities to the disparate cultures that Americans represent to the foods that are boosted to the mainstream. Clearly, the spiritual dimension of belief structures is part of that.
And it seems to drive the right utterly insane. The more the left expands what is to be considered “normal” behavior the more the right wants to constrict “normality” to the narrowest possible set of behaviors. Two sexes. European ancestry. White skin. One religion, with footnotes. To be as reductive as a MAGA, the entirety of the culture war is a manifestation of the limitations vs. enlargement of allowable normality.
Hegseth’s actions cannot be read as a bureaucratic simplification of overly inflated categories, which might be true and reasonable in other administrations. He had loudly insisted on WASP normality as the only identity that will be recognized in the military. This symbolic act will resonate with every member of the service who is not reducible to protestant, with footnotes. Keep telling people they are not wanted because they are not normal and the end is always a totalitarian nightmare of ins vs. outs. This is not nothing. It will loom.
Looks like Jefferson, Franklin, and other Deist founding fathers wouldn’t be welcome in Kegsbreath’s military.
I agree but if you a member of the military who is killed or injured in action, the two-digit code tells them what sort of faith leader (if any) should be called for you.
And the previous list failed to do that?
Well, the previous list required them to stockpile 200+ faith leaders. Reducing the list makes the storage requirements easier.
When what gets down to less than 5?
The Pew Research Center lumps atheists into the No Religion category along with those who are spiritual but not a member of an organized religion. Does this new set of religions do the same?
How efficient.
Number of officially approved religions and denominations by the DoD.
SOME of them are more than happy to double up, or more.
Google is pleased to inform me that “Yes, a Unitarian Universalist (UU) can absolutely be a Wiccan shaman and an atheist.”