cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/47886949
Mormon leaders, military veterans and elected officials reacted with anger to a new Department of Defense policy that does not consider The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to be a Christian religion as part of a wider effort to cut down the U.S. military’s list of recognized faiths.
“The Pentagon’s decision to list The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints apart from other Christian faiths is wrong and needs to be corrected,” Republican Rep. Mike Kennedy, of heavily Mormon Utah, wrote on X on Sunday.
Why the fuck is the military of a country, especially one with supposedly separated church and state, maintaining an official list of religions??? Why is the defense secretary choosing religions???
Normally it’s so the armed forces can provide access to religious services as needed, and accommodate funeral rites if necessary. But just as with most other things this administration uses it for discrimination.
very specifically regarding the funerary rites: associated with the official list of religions is the official list of religious symbols. if you’ve never been to a US veteran’s cemetery, well based off the two i’ve been in they are beautiful. peaceful. every headstone is the same: name, branch, highest rank, birth and death dates, and some religious symbol (chosen from the official list). might be more, we haven’t actually looked at the graves in a while we just go to visit.
i don’t know how many symbols there were before, but if there were 30 to choose from among the 200 various “official” religions, the move would be at least a little plausible. but it’s really just easier to have a list of religions and a list of symbols to choose from and let folk choose whatever they want. having never enlisted, i would hope that’s already the process but i don’t know and i mean this is government we’re talking about. even when they’re acting in good faith they don’t always make any rational sense.
also, that sounds like a perfect bikeride out to visit Grandpas E and G (not related) tomorrow, maybe today. i could go get some scones.
Chaplains. The original chaplains were added to Roman military and were the official state religion. They’re been a staple of warfare since. Their official role is to serve as spiritual and moral support, like a therapist or counselor (particularly before those professions existed). It serves the soldier to have council in difficult times, it serves the state as a proper pep talk helps keeps desertion rates down (with a whole fun new layer of soft power to make the soldier more dedicated to the craft), and it gives the chaplain a fulfilling job.
In America, we have at times pretended that religious diversity is a virtue. Chaplains are less effective if the soldier cannot believe the chaplain shares their values. Thus to keep the tool effective, chaplains and soldiers register their faith beliefs, so that when crisis comes the leaders can pair chaplains in the most effective ways. Add a touch of bureaucracy and you get a list of codes and their associated faiths.
My understanding is that for a long time the list had six options, but in … 2016(?) they decided to get comprehensive and basically tried to document any spiritual/belief structure that a soldier could have. They got ~211. Even at peak usage, there were a good dozen options on the books that didn’t have any active practitioners in the military.
Of course, with the current MAGA in charge, all that diversity and inclusion is treated as a waste of taxpayer dollars and thus has to go. Personally, I think chaplain programs should be sunset in favor of said therapists and counselors, but I get why having a lever to shift soldier morality (not constrained by the science underpinning counseling) is simply too useful to let go.