FFRF Lifetime Member Joseph Cunningham, a veteran who served in World War II, standing beside FFRF’s monument to “atheists in foxholes and other freethinkers.”
Maintaining that there are indeed many “atheists in foxholes,” the Freedom From Religion Foundation is condemning a sweeping Pentagon directive that eliminates recognition for approximately 180 religious and nonreligious belief systems, including “atheist.”
According to a May 20 memorandum obtained and reported on by Military.com, the Department of Defense has reduced its list of recognized religious affiliation codes from roughly 211 categories to just 31. The new system continues to recognize many major religious groups, including various Christian denominations, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism and Sikhism. Those purged include atheists, humanists, pagans, Wiccans, Druids and Unitarians. For mysterious reasons known only to the Defense Department, it will continue to list “agnostic.” Categories for “No Religion” and “Other Religions” are available. The effacement was made at the direction of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, a Christian nationalist, and was justified as a way to “streamline” religious support services provided by military chaplains.
FFRF objected to Hegseth’s actions back in January and filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking all records related to the directives and internal communications about chaplaincy reform, but has been informed that the records won’t be provided until August at the earliest.
This erasure of atheists makes no demographic sense, contends FFRF, the nation’s largest association of atheists and agnostics. Eighteen percent of active military members are atheist/agnostic. Another 32 percent have no religious affiliation, according to researcher Ryan Burge, putting the “Nones” overall at half of current military members! (That is a far greater percentage of nonreligious than the U.S. adult population generally, at 29 percent.)
“There are indeed atheists in foxholes, as well as humanists and Unitarians,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “That trite old chestnut about no atheists in foxholes was never true, but it’s never been less true in the United States than today.”
FFRF has erected a monument to “Atheists in Foxholes” at Freethought Hall, its office building.
The deletion follows a series of troubling statements and actions by Hegseth to reshape military culture around his preferred religious beliefs. Hegseth has openly criticized secular humanism, pledged to make the Chaplain Corps “great again,” hosted sectarian prayer events at the Pentagon and promoted what he describes as a militarywide “cultural shift” centered on “spiritual readiness.”
The military’s religious affiliation system serves important administrative and pastoral functions. For the religious, it helps ensure that service members can receive appropriate religious accommodations. For the nonreligious and everyone else being expunged from the records, it means their religious or nonreligious identification will not be accurately reflected in military records and chaplains will not be provided with such information. By removing dozens of minority belief systems — or disbelief — from official recognition, the Pentagon has marginalized thousands of service members and has flouted its constitutional obligation to protect religious freedom for all of its personnel.
“It is unacceptable to think that many members of the armed services will not be permitted to properly identify as atheists,” Gaylor adds.
The First Amendment protects freedom of conscience for everyone, not just members of favored religions. The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that the government must maintain neutrality “between religion and religion, and between religion and nonreligion.” That principle is particularly important within the military, where service members operate within a hierarchical command structure and often have limited access to outside religious or secular support.
Gaylor charges that the Pentagon’s refusal to identify or recognize atheists, as well as the expunged religious groups, is “blatantly unconstitutional.”
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a U.S.-based nonprofit dedicated to defending the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and educating the public on matters relating to nontheism. With about 41,000 members, FFRF is the largest association of freethinkers (atheists, agnostics and humanists) in North America. For more information, visit ffrf.org.
