Biden turned the Pentagon into a bureaucratic circus – DEI offices, diversity consultants pulling $200,000 salaries, and a chaplain system bloated with over 200 religious codes that almost nobody used.
Now Pete Hegseth just signed the paperwork making it official.
The Pentagon dropped 180 faiths from its military recognition list – and what they found along the way tells you everything about what Biden actually did to your armed forces.
82% of Religious Troops Were Sharing Six Codes
Undersecretary of Defense Anthony Tata signed the memo Thursday making Hegseth's March announcement official policy.
The old system had ballooned to over 211 faith codes.
Your military was officially tracking Druids.
And Shamans.
And Rosicrucians, and Eckankar practitioners, and assorted New Age classifications that chaplains essentially never touched.
Meanwhile, 82% of service members who identified as religious – the ones actually requesting spiritual support, the ones heading into combat zones – used just six of those codes.
https://twitter.com/CharlieSue_USA/status/2062887964179378339?s=20
Hegseth put it plainly in March: "The previous system had ballooned to well over 200 faith codes. It was impractical and unusable, and many codes were never used at all."
The new list of 31 keeps what actually matters: Christians across major denominations, Catholics, Baptists, Lutherans, Methodists, plus Agnostics, Buddhists, Hindus, Muslims, Jews, and Sikhs.
Chaplains now have clear, actionable information.
The ones who need spiritual care can actually get it.
This Is What Biden Bureaucracy Looks Like in Practice
Biden signed an executive order on his first day in office directing every military branch to create DEI offices, produce strategic equity plans, and build bureaucratic reporting structures to track progress.
Pentagon DEI spending hit $86.5 million in fiscal year 2023 – up from $68 million the year before.
By 2024, the request had climbed to $114.7 million.
By the time Biden left office, the Pentagon was spending $114.7 million a year on DEI programs – and nobody had bothered to audit a chaplain system that included codes for Druids and Shamans that no soldier had ever claimed.
https://twitter.com/Dr_TheHistories/status/2038701832898560230?s=20
The faith code explosion followed the same pattern – someone added categories for fringe belief systems, nobody checked whether any soldier claimed them, and the list kept growing because the Biden Pentagon treated cultural sprawl as institutional virtue.
Hegseth is treating it as institutional failure.
He announced in December 2025 his intention to "make the Chaplain Corps great again" – framing spiritual health as equal to physical and mental readiness.
That announcement followed a Department of Justice Religious Liberty Commission hearing where testimony documented systemic failures in delivering spiritual care to troops who needed it.
Chaplains Are Chaplains Again
The second part of Hegseth's reform drew less attention but may matter more.
Military chaplains will now wear their religious insignia on their uniforms instead of rank insignia.
From the chaplaincy's founding in 1775 until 1914, chaplains served without rank at all.
After 1926, rank badges became standard.
Hegseth is reversing that drift.
"A chaplain is first and foremost a chaplain, and an officer second," he said in March. "Specifically unique to the role of a chaplain, they are first and foremost called and ordained by God."
https://twitter.com/ModernTrailhead/status/2062883430640107836?s=20
His broader statement to the force sharpened the mission: "In combat, in crisis, and in loss, a war fighter needs more than a coping mechanism. They need truth. They need conviction."
That is not the language of a Pentagon that exists to check DEI boxes.
It's the language of one that exists to win wars.
Biden spent years teaching the military to celebrate its own complexity.
Hegseth just asked a simpler question: are the chaplains actually reaching the troops?
The answer required cutting 180 codes nobody used – and the left is furious he did it.
Sources:
- Anders Hagstrom, "Pentagon Drops 180 Faiths from Military's Recognized Religions List," Fox News, June 4, 2026.
- "Hegseth Announces Reforms to Chaplain Corps," MilitarySpot.com, March 26, 2026.
- "Hegseth Announces Changes to Faith Codes, Uniforms for Military Chaplains," Baptist Press, March 26, 2026.
- "DEI Is Distracting Our Military From Its Primary Task," The Heritage Foundation, July 19, 2024.
- "Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing," WhiteHouse.gov, January 21, 2025.