Last week, the Pentagon released a new list of 31 religions officially recognized by the US Department of Defense, edited down from more than 200 that had previously been accepted. The purpose of streamlining, Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said in a statement, was not to delegitimize any one religion, but rather “to allow chaplains to quickly look at the religious composition of their units and determine how they structure resources to best provide for warfighters of all faith groups.”

But to some religious groups, the new list looked biased. Of the 31 groups listed, 22 were Christian. Atheists, pagans, and humanists, which had all been on the original list, were excluded. But the loudest complaints were about its structure. Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints noted that while their faith was included, it had been sequestered from other Christian faiths—which they saw as part of a pattern of some denominations refusing to recognize LDS members as fellow Christians.

Indeed, Samuel Perry, a professor of rhetoric at Baylor University who studies Christian nationalism, noted that it wasn’t until evangelicals rallied around LDS politician Mitt Romney during his run for president in 2008 that mainline Christians accepted LDS as a Christian faith. That was, said Perry, “completely a political change in order to be able........

© Mother Jones