The Defense Department has cut its recognized religious faith and belief codes from 211 to 31, a sweeping rewrite issued in a May 20, 2026 memorandum signed by Anthony Tata. The change removes about 180 categories from the defense department recognized religions list and gives the services 60 days to revise the codes they use.
The new list was ordered by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and is meant, the memorandum said, to streamline the department’s collection of religious preferences for service members and improve the delivery of targeted support from the Chaplaincy. That is why the search interest is surging now: this is not a proposal or a draft. It is the latest official revision after nearly a decade without one.
The memo lands hard because it changes what the military will formally recognize at a moment when service members still rely on those codes for identity, records and chaplain planning. The revised list keeps broad categories such as Agnostics, Buddhists, Hindus, Islam, Judaism, Sikh and a wide range of Christian-based groups, including Baptists, Catholics, Lutherans and Methodists. But it drops many other beliefs and worldviews, among them Atheists, Asatru, Deists, Druids, Eckankar, Heathens, Humanists, Magick, New Age churches, Pagan, Rosicrucianism, Shaman, Spiritualists, Troth, Unitarian Universalists and various Wiccans.
That exclusion is the friction point inside a policy written in the language of efficiency. Pentagon leaders have said the new structure will help chaplains anticipate needs and provide more targeted support, but the pared-down list leaves out a long roster of minority faith and worldview groups that had been recognized before. The military uses these codes to identify service members and plan for appropriated religious coverage, so changing the roster is not a clerical edit. It changes who is visible in the system.
This is also the first official revision since a March 27, 2017 memo that cut the total from 211 and was endorsed by the Armed Forces Chaplains Board. That earlier change was meant to standardize religious preferences, improve demographic tracking and help assess chaplain corps capabilities. The new memo reverses part of that logic by shrinking the menu sharply instead of widening it.
One thing the memo does not settle is how many service members will feel the loss of the excluded categories in day-to-day records or dog-tag selections. Members will not be limited to the list of religious affiliation codes when choosing information for dog tags, but the department’s official list for support planning is now much smaller, and the revised codes have to be in place within 60 days.
