The Pentagon has cut its recognized religious faith and belief codes from 211 to 31, removing about 180 entries in a memo issued May 20, 2026 and signed by Anthony Tata. The revised list was ordered within 60 days at the direction of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
The change matters now because service members’ religious preferences are tracked through those codes, and the Defense Department says the reset is meant to streamline that system so chaplains can better deliver targeted support. Tata said the new list would give chaplains clear, readily available information to anticipate the religious support needs of service members and to provide activities that align with their personal faith and practices.
The military’s code system is not new, but the scale of this revision is. Military.com reported that the Pentagon had not officially updated the list since a March 27, 2017 memo, which also reduced the total to 31 and was endorsed by the Armed Forces Chaplains Board to standardize how religious preferences were identified across the services. This latest version replaces that framework with another pared-down list, and the memo says the revision should be completed within 60 days.
What is missing from the new list is the point that gives the order its force. The revised codes include Agnostics, Buddhists, Hindus, Islam, Judaism, Sikh and several Christian-based groups, but they exclude minority faith and worldview categories including Atheists, Asatru, Deists, Druids, Eckankar, Heathens, Humanists, Magick, New Age churches, Pagan, Rosicrucianism, Shaman, Spiritualists, Troth, Unitarian Universalists and various Wiccans. That leaves open how service members in those groups will record their beliefs and whether the chaplaincy will still be able to support them in the same way the Pentagon says it intends to help.
The memo presents the overhaul as an administrative fix. Its effect is broader than that, because faith codes are used to identify service members and to plan appropriated religious coverage. The result is a smaller official list at a moment when the Pentagon is already under scrutiny for a wider shift in its internal culture, and this one will be measured not by the memo’s language but by what happens to the people whose beliefs no longer fit inside it.
