Talking Points Memo

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 MAGA. He was triggered by the news, broken by the defense news site Military.com, that the Pentagon had eliminated 180 recognized religious faiths in order to “streamline the DoW [sic] collection of religious preferences collection [sic] for service members to enhance the delivery of targeted religious support from the Chaplaincy.” The Pentagon’s new list of what it calls Religious Affiliation Codes classified a number of religions, like Methodists and Baptists, as Christian. But Lee’s Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints was not listed among the “Christian” faiths. He demanded — on X, of course, because United States Senators have no other means of either commanding attention or acquiring information — 

“why The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was left out of the list of Christian churches.”

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