Originally published at: What the Pentagon’s Snub of Mormons Was Really All About - TPM – Talking Points Memo
In Church, Merch, and State, Sarah Posner writes about the intersection of religion and politics in the United States. This column is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis. Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT), an ardent Trump loyalist, recently got a taste of what it’s like to be a disfavored religion in the Christian nationalist world of…
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It’s getting really hard to pick out the biggest asshole in this “Administration.” As always, a fish rots from the head.
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This article reminds me of one of the philosophical roads I went down to which was one of the biggest mistakes of my life: new atheism. I was wrong, on a lot of levels, but the fundamental mistake I made was the same mistake that American Protestant Christians make: I assumed every religion was basically American Protestant Christianity. I assumed that all religions were a personal choice, a sort of creed or code, decided upon, deliberated upon, and chosen because they represent fundamental beliefs about reality. In the end, the only cultural institution that meets all of those criteria, essentially, is Protestant Christianity. In other words, the fundamental problem with being anti-religious was that religion is so poorly defined.
Religion means something else to my daughter’s friend who grew up Mormon then it does to her friends who grew up Catholic. They fundamentally approach their faith differently, and what faith is is different to them. That’s fundamentally different than Evangelical kids.
The effort by The defense department to define religion, and especially to define Christianity, and to put boundaries on these cultural institutions is inherently fraught. It’s a fundamental mistake, and I would argue a violation of the spirit, if not the letter of the first amendment.
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The Pentagon then released a new list, which did not classify any religion as Christian. Was it a win? A win would have been for the LDS Church to have been included among the Christian faiths. Convincing the public that, yes, a religion that has the words Church of Jesus Christ in its name was actually Christian had been at the top of the senator’s to-do list this weekend. That the Pentagon chose to excise the Christian label entirely rather than apply it to Lee’s church was quite telling.
Turns out no religion is Christian according to Drunknamara’s Pentagon. 
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I see no reason why documenting a soldier’s religion is any more or less relevant than their stance on Star Trek vs Star Wars, or what their favourite flower is.
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Not all soldiers are observant, but a hell of a lot of them are, and they need to be ministered to in accordance with the tenets of their faith, both on base and in the field. Military chaplains are trained to do that, and it becomes especially important when members get injured or killed.
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But “adjudicating theological debates” is precisely what the Pentagon has done. Hegseth has made no secret of his religious agenda, as evidenced by his monthly prayer meetings on government property, at which his religious mentor, the Christian nationalist Doug Wilson, has preached. Wilson is not shy about his antipathy to the LDS Church. He has written that “Mormonism is not Christian” and is “a false gospel.”
I love it when the nutjobs start going on about a false gospel, since the gospel itself is based on lies, bad translations and political/historical machinations. Hard to imagine two bigger dicks than Hegseth and Lee arguing about who is “Christian”.
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Mike Lee pleading with a bunch of bigoted conservative evangelical posters online to read the Book of Mormon is very funny. Sometimes in this rotten world you just need to laugh.
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But, hey, at least we’re done with all those distracting “culture wars” in the military, keeping the troops from their true mission … serving as missile fodder and/or a manly backdrop to the bestest prez ever, whichever is needed on any given day.
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Many years ago a Jesuit trained colleague (who did not take final vows for reasons he never divulged) told me that the modern Catholic church was actually pretty liberal in defining and accepting a church as “Christian” whether or not they agreed with its particular canon but that did not include the Latter Day Saints (Mormanism)
I’ve forgotten the main reasons for this but recalled one of the issues was that the Book of Mormon didn’t really focus on the teachings of Christ, biblical revelation, heavenly messengers etc so much as employ these as stamps of legitimacy for Joseph Smith and his revelations.
As a backsliding atheist I had no particular reaction to this and currently no idea what the stance of Rome is these days although I assume it still has one. Certainly the evangelical strands of Catholicism which presumably inform JD Vance, Hegseth and his merry macho bretheren, et al have a stance toward it but, then, they are bigoted, fascistic asshats so how not; it is their being.
IOW Mike Lee is not very bright or at least is not paying sufficient attention to the message; i.e., he and his volk will be in line for the ovens along with everyone else on that great and glorious day when America becomes Great again.
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The antipathy that protestants have shown members of the Latter Day Saints goes back to jump. Who can forget the Mormon War in 1838? That led to the The Extermination Order (October 27, 1838): Following the escalating violence and the skirmish at Crooked River, Missouri Governor Lilburn Boggs issued Executive Order 44. The order declared that Mormons were in a state of open rebellion and “must be exterminated or driven from the state”. If memory serves that order is still in place even though several Mormon variants are headquartered in Independence, Missouri. The Mormon war of 1838 was just one story. In 1857 Mormon gunmen wiped out a protestant wagon train passing through Utah in the famous Mountain Meadows Massacre. The President sent in the Army and the Mormons punished a few of their members who took part in the Massacre. Religious history is pretty damn bloody. Protestant Christians kill Mormans (and visa versa) in the name of God just like they kill Catholics, Muslims and Jews.
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It’s also important when the nearest chaplain is of a different faith, as often happens. Chaplains must provide support to all military members, including the non-religious, and be knowledgeable and respectul of other belief systems.
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Precisely. During WWII Chaplins often did their best to serve the needs of people of other faiths. That is not what Kegsbreath and Pastor Doug Wilson have in mind.
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Or at least see the musical.
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Trump is always going to step in it when it comes to matters of strongly-held beliefs. He is incapable of understanding such feelings, so he tends to blunder through matters of the heart, or let his underlings do it due to his blatant ignorance. This is clearly coming from Hegseth, but Trump wouldn’t have understood that it would upset some of his followers, so he would have given it the green light without a second thought.
Then, when Lee comes whining, Trump would be nonplussed because why would the “Christian” identifier be so critical to someone? But because he hates being hated by his simps, he would have told Hegseth to fix it, which of course leads to the half-measure “solution” of just removing the designation entirely to sidestep the issue without being forced to acknowledge the original point.
The current “leaders” on the right today are so petty and childish. It defies credulity how pathetic they all are. If this is what “masculinity” looks like, I want no part of it.
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At one time it was a requirement that to be a military chaplain, the person had to agree to minister to all religions, without imposing their own faith on others, and if the chaplain or the dictates of his faith didn’t permit that, they couldn’t be a chaplain. Not sure if that’s still the case in Kegsbreath’s Dept of War.
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Hey Based Mike Lee, there’s a poem out there that you may want to read. I kinda forget the name but it’s got his little warning at the end that might apply to where you stand.
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me
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And there’s definitely a lot that’s fishy about this administration.
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Yup. The job of a chaplain isn’t to proselytize, it’s to provide service to members to support the member’s religious need. On another topic when I was in the Navy about a million years ago I knew a helo pilot who was a smart, capable leader that got passed over for O-4. It was “up or out” at the time and the Navy lost a dedicated officer - I remain convinced it was because he was Mormon.
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