The Department of Defense has cut its recognized religious faith and belief codes from 211 to 31, a sweeping change ordered in a May 20, 2026 memorandum signed by Anthony Tata. The revised list is meant to streamline how the military records service members’ religious preferences and to improve the delivery of targeted religious support from the chaplaincy.
The change matters now because it resets the official list used to guide religious planning across the force and gives commanders and a military chaplain a much narrower set of categories to work from. Tata, acting at the direction of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, ordered the previously used codes revised within 60 days, making the memo the trigger for the new system rather than a distant policy review.
The revised list keeps Agnostics, Buddhists, Hindus, Islam, Judaism, Sikh and a range of Christian-based groups. But it drops many minority faith and worldview groups that had been recognized before, including Atheists, Asatru, Deists, Druids, Eckankar, Heathens, Humanists, Magick, New Age churches, Pagan, Rosicrucianism, Shaman, Spiritualists, Troth, Unitarian Universalists and various Wiccans. That narrowing sits uneasily beside the memo’s promise that the overhaul will help chaplains provide better support.
The faith-code list has been changed before. The last official revision came in a March 27, 2017 memo that had also reduced the total number of faiths from 211 and was endorsed by the Armed Forces Chaplains Board. At the time, the military said the update would improve religious planning, produce more accurate demographic data and give a better read on chaplain corps capabilities and needs.
This time, the memo does not spell out the criteria used to remove roughly 180 faiths from the roster. It says the goal is to improve the military’s collection of religious preferences and sharpen chaplain support, but the practical result is a far smaller list that leaves many service members outside the categories the Pentagon now plans to track.
What happens next is plain enough: the revised codes were to be completed within 60 days of May 20, 2026. What remains unresolved is how the department will handle the service members and religious communities that have been taken off the official list, and whether the narrower categories can still match the variety of beliefs now serving in uniform.
