Airmen are expressing “outrage” over Pete Hegseth’s exclusion of atheism from a revamped list of religious identities service members can identify with.
The Military Religious Freedom Foundation, a nonprofit that advocates for service members’ constitutional right to religious freedom, shared excerpts from a letter it received from an airman who said he couldn’t register as an atheist when directed to update his personal record.
“If my previous (withheld) years of service while being an atheist was good enough, why is it no longer?” the airman said in their statement on Saturday. As of Saturday afternoon, the MRFF said it had received 38 similar complaints, Military.com reported.
The United States Air Force announced Friday that it was updating its data systems to “align” with the Defense Department’s revamped list of Religious Affiliation codes. The public affairs office press release included a photo of a chaplain with a cross inscribed on his uniform.
A former military chaplain and devout Christian told Military.com that the photo of the chaplain’s uniform made it “crystal clear” that the move was an “attempt to push Christianity onto the troops, and there’s implicit intimidation there.”
“Our commitment to the spiritual readiness and religious freedom of every Airman and Guardian remains steadfast,” Richard Anderson, assistant secretary of the Air Force for Manpower and Reserve Affairs, said in a statement.
“I attempted to update my code this afternoon and to my outrage found that atheist is no longer an option, an option I have chosen for my previous [withheld] years of service,” the airman wrote in a statement to the MRFF.
Under the system, atheists can choose “no religion” or “other religion,” the airman wrote. “That is not the point,” they continued.
“I along with many other service members, are atheists that do not believe in god,” they said.
A Department of Defense spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Daily Beast.
Dozens of airmen and Guardians have also complained about the new system, Military.com reported on Saturday, with one telling the outlet the move was an “infringement on my religious liberty.”
The Defense Department announced in June that it would cut down the number of religious identities service members can register on their personnel records from more than 200 to just 31.
At the time, DOD spokesperson Sean Parnell cast it as a way to streamline support for religious servicemembers, calling it a “long overdue move.”
The move immediately drew the ire of several Republican lawmakers after Mormonism was initially excluded from the list. Sen. Mike Lee criticized the changes as “repugnant to any sense of decency, any sense of our common heritage and our common belief that the government needs to not weigh in on doctrinal disputes between various religious denominations.”
Since his appointment, Hegseth has been repeatedly accused of eroding the separation of Church and State.
In May, for example, the MRFF said it had received more than 200 calls from active-duty personnel across 50 military installations after the U.S. struck Iran in coordination with Israel overnight Saturday. Callers said their commanders had likened Trump’s war on Iran to a holy war.
Hegseth, a former Fox News anchor who has been married three times, has also launched a monthly Christian worship series at the Pentagon, where he invited his self-described Christian nationalist pastor, Doug Wilson. The pastor, who has supported repealing women’s right to vote and criminalizing homosexuality, delivered a sermon in the Pentagon auditorium.
