Mormon lawmakers protest ‘offensive’ Hegseth, Pentagon policy affecting LDS

Mormon lawmakers in Congress aren’t happy with the Defense Department’s new policy that does not put The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS) under the “Christian” designation.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth earlier this year declared the Pentagon would cut down the faith codes – the recognized faith groups meant to provide more accurate demographic data on religious beliefs held among service members – from 200 to just 31. He called the former system “impractical and unusable” with many codes never used at all. 

On Friday, the Pentagon announced service members can only register one of those 31 religions on their personnel records. But LDS was not listed under one of the 21 Christian denominations to choose from, upsetting several Utah lawmakers, including Sen. Mike Lee (R), who called the new designation “very unfortunate.”

“I find this offensive, not just because that happens to be my faith, and not just because that happens to be the faith of tens of thousands of U.S. military personnel, but it’s also just 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,”........

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