Let’s get to the heart of the matter: a key aspect of Christian Nationalism is being able to exclude persons that those in power do not like from being given full rights and privileges as citizens. The whole point of fusing national identity with a given religion is to assert that only persons who adhere to the state’s preferred religious beliefs really belong. By definition, this means first dividing the world into “Christian” and “non-Christian,” then determining who and what “real” Christians are.

For those who are not particularly religious, or who have little direct experience with Christianity in the United States, that may sound odd. But just stop and think about the history of Protestants and Catholics in European history to remind oneself how these arguments can go. Or, if one needs a very contemporary example, look at how conservatives mock James Talarico’s faith as somehow not being real.

As I have noted before, I was raised Southern Baptist and spent a good deal of my life, well into adulthood, in either Baptist or non-denominational Evangelical churches. For much of my late teens, twenties, and into my thirties, I tried mightily to apply an intellectual understanding of the faith and the Bible, which included reading quite a lot about deviations from standing Christian orthodoxy as well as divisions within that orthodoxy. As such, I read quite a bit about things like Mormon theology v. basic protestant theology. There are some very important differences, for what it is worth. I say this as a matter of fact, not as anything else.

Beyond any of that, just sitting in various services over those decades, here are the kinds of things I was taught. In Baptist circles, Catholics were viewed on a scale from asserting”they were misguided in their theology” to people asking “are they really Christians?” to some who would say that they weren’t. I had a pastor at a Calvary Chapel in California repeatedly question the faith of mainline Protestants. And one thing was for sure: Mormons, Christian Scientists, and Jehovah’s Witnesses were members of cults. A prominent example of this can be found in the work of Walter Martin and his very influential (at the time) book, Kingdom of the Cults.

The point of bringing all of this up is that Christianity has a lot of internal division. And while, say, Evangelicals and others may be happy, in this moment, to see “Christian” as some big umbrella, once they get more power, don’t expect them to continue to operate that way.

Hegseth’s list that James Joyner noted a few days ago illustrates this principle. Eliminating 180 religions from the Defense Department’s list of recognized religions was a signal about what was “real” and what wasn’t. This was rather boldly reinforced by the fact that 21 of 31 religions listed (just over two-thirds of the list) are variations on “Christian.” As I stated in the comments of that post, I have no strong feeling about what the right number of religions should be, and can understand from a bureaucratic point of view that maybe 221 designations is unruly. But I will state, also, that I would prefer a system that errs more on the side of inclusion than exclusion.

At any rate, one of the designations still on the list, as James noted, was “Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (CJ)” but there is s a major difference between that listing and the 21 that precede it in the list. See if you can see it.

• Christian – Assemblies of God (AG)
• Christian – Baptist (BA)
• Christian – Brethren (BR)
• Christian – Catholic (CA)
• Christian – Church of Christ (CC)
• Christian – Church of God (CG)
• Christian – Church of the Nazarene (CN)
• Christian – Episcopal/Anglican (EA)
• Christian – Evangelical (EV)
• Christian – Jehovah’s Witnesses (JW)
• Christian – Lutheran (LU)
• Christian – Methodist (ME)
• Christian – Non Denominational (ND)
• Christian – Orthodox (OX)
• Christian – Other (CO)
• Christian – Pentecostal (PE)
• Christian – Presbyterian (PR)
• Christian – Quaker (QU)
• Christian – Reformed (RE)
• Christian – Scientist (SC)
• Christian – Seventh Day Adventist (SA)
• Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (CJ)

The Mormons are not classified as “Christian” but instead are classified on the list as being one of the other ten categories that aren’t “Christian” (e.g., Buddhists, Hindus, Sikhs).

This raised the ire of some of Utah’s members of Congress.

Here’s Representative Kennedy’s thoughts:

Senator Mike Lee is quite exercised, calling it “offensive” and “repugnant.”

He also seems to almost understand, at least when it is his ox being gored, why the US government shouldn’t be getting into making judgments about religion.

Once the government moves away from inclusivity and decides that, yes, being a Wiccan is just silly, or whatever, then you are not that far off from hardcore Evangelicals showing you that, in fact, they think Mormons are not a denomination but, in fact, a cult. Wait until the people who follow Doug Wilson tell you what they really think about Catholics.

Too bad no one studies history, or even contemporary world politics, as they might discover that many of the bloodiest fights are not between different religions, but instead within a religion over who belongs to the true faith.

Ultimately, there are only two ways to guarantee that your faith, whatever it may be, is protected. There is the illiberal pathway of religious nationalism wherein your faith is the official faith, and other faiths (or lack of faith entirely) are either tolerated as the pleasure of the ruling elites or persecuted and outlawed.

The other route is a liberal, pluralistic democracy wherein everyone’s faith is legally protected by a neutral, secular state.

Once you move away from neutrality, someone has to decide what is “proper” religion and what isn’t. And the more the state becomes infused with the notion that it is the state’s job to determine which faiths are proper, the more power will be wielded against the improper.

This whole issue of listing religious affiliation for the DoD is, on one level, small potatoes, but it is a small peeling away of the curtain to see how these people think.

But while it is true that Evangelicals have been more accepting of Mormons as belonging in their club since at least Romney’s run at the presidency, I don’t think that they really, truly accept that notion. Yes, they all believe in Christ, as Lee states, but their versions are rather different. And when you think you know the truth, you tend not to be in the mood to tolerate people whose version of the truth deviates from your own. Indeed, history shows that the greatest intolerance is often not Religion A versus Religion B, but it is the fight within Religion A over their view of God.

I will end with a family anecdote that illustrates the point. I learned as a small child that one of my aunts was estranged from the rest of my family because her denomination (I think it was the Church of Christ) thought that the rest of the family (mostly, if not all, Baptists) were going to Hell because the Church of Christ was the correct approach to Christian beliefs.

All of which is to say that we need to find our way back, as a country, to liberal pluralism before this gets ugly and we aren’t just fighting over bureaucratic lists.

UPDATE (James Joyner, 1544): It appears the Department got the message.

Planet Of The Apes was a classic. Beneath The Planet Of The Apes was supposed to be the sequel to end all ape sequels, just as World War I was supposed to be the war to end all wars. How did both of those efforts work out?

Beneath The Planet Of The Apes carried the deep distrust of human nature into another film. But now, with another astronaut (who looked a lot like the first astronaut), a first act that looked a lot like the first film, and then, it added psionic mutants and a sacred doomsday weapon. Were they enough to make a good sequel?

Return to Ape City! Voyages into the Forbidden Zone! An underground city that was once above ground! Near-identical men with beards fight to the death! Giant gorilla headpieces! The final confrontation between Taylor and Dr. Zaius! It’s all here.

Ancient Geeks is a podcast about two geeks of a certain age re-visiting their youth. We were there when things like science fiction, fantasy, Tolkien, Star Trek, Star Wars, D&D, Marvel and DC comics, Doctor Who, and many, many other threads of modern geek culture were still on the fringes of popular culture. We were geeks before it was chic!

For feedback, contact so**************@***il.com. You can also find us on Facebook, Reddit, and Bluesky. Also, check out the Ancient Geeks blog on Substack! And if you like what you hear, please tell a friend. Also, we always appreciate a review on the podcast platform of your choice.

© 2026 Tom Grant and Steven Taylor

Axios (“Trump tells Netanyahu not to strike Iran“):

President Trump told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Sunday not to retaliate against Iran’s missile attack and allow more time for diplomacy, according to a senior U.S. official and an Israeli source familiar with details of the call.

[…]

Trump told Netanyahu during the call to hold off because “we are close to doing something good in terms of a deal,” according to the U.S. official. Netanyahu pushed back but ultimately “pseudo agreed” to stand down, the official said.

The official said Sunday’s call was calmer than last week’s tense exchange between the leaders and that Trump did not raise his voice at Netanyahu. “We think the president bought a little bit of time. He is pretty adamant that we are close to a deal with Iran. I don’t think anything is imminent in terms of an Israeli strike,” the U.S. official said.

[…]

Trump told the Financial Times that Netanyahu “won’t have any choice” but to accept any deal the U.S. secures from negotiations with Iran. “I call the shots. I call all the shots. He doesn’t call the shots,” Trump said of Netanyahu.

Reuters (“Israel hits Iran petrochemical plant in new strikes after Trump reprimand“):

Israel said on Monday it hit a petrochemical plant in Iran’s southwest, along with strikes elsewhere on military targets, after U.S. President Donald Trump ​reportedly told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to refrain from further attacks.

The escalation complicates U.S.-led efforts to broker a broader deal with Iran, driving oil prices up by nearly 5%, with benchmark Brent ‌futures back above $97 a barrel.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps blamed the U.S. for the latest exchange of fire with Israel and said further attacks on non-military and energy targets would have consequences for the global economy.

Donald J. Trump, Truth Social, earlier this morning:

For some reason, I’m reminded of a memorable line from Zathras. (Or was it Zathras?)

Great war. Terrible war. Much killings. Everyone fighting. A great darkness. It is the end of everything. Zathras warn, but no, no one listens to poor Zathras, no.

When I saw the AP headline “More than half of Latin Americans deported from US to Congo are now back home,” I thought something good had happened. Alas, not so much.

More than half of the 15 Latin Americans deported in April to Congo under the Trump administration’s widely criticized crackdown on migrants have returned to their countries of origin, the Congolese government and one of their lawyers said Friday.

U.S. immigration judges have ruled they were likely to face persecution back home.

Congo is one of at least eight African nations with which the U.S. has struck third-country deportation deals.

Under a series of often-secret agreements, the Trump administration has deported thousands of people to nearly two dozen countries that are not their own, advocates say. Immigration lawyers said the administration uses deportations to third countries as a legal loophole to indirectly force asylum seekers back to their home countries.

Alma David, a U.S.-based attorney representing one of the 15 migrants, said eight deportees have returned to their home countries in recent weeks.

Granting that the number here is small, this is quite troubling. Judges have ruled that these individuals are eligible for asylum in the United States because they faced a risk of persecution in their home countries. So we instead deport them to Congo? Where, apparently, it’s so bad that they’d rather take their chances back home.

Four Peruvians and three Colombians returned home earlier this week, assisted by the International Organization for Migration, a U.N.-affiliated agency, David said.

They returned via the IOM’s Assisted Voluntary Return program, in which the IOM covers travel costs and logistics for migrants who consent to go back to their home countries, as an alternative to forced deportation.

The lawyer said the migrants had been granted protections against removal to their home country by U.S. federal courts, which ruled they were likely to face persecution if they returned.

“The fact that they chose to return there anyway raises serious concerns that they likely felt backed into a corner because no viable alternative was presented to them,” David said.

The IOM has said assisted voluntary returns are “strictly voluntary and based on free, prior and informed consent.”

A Colombian man returned to his home country on his own in recent days, David said.

“These developments confirm the strictly transitional, temporary, and time-limited nature of this mechanism, as announced from its launch,” the Congolese government said in the statement. “Further departures will take place shortly as part of the implementation of the arrangement.”

And, apparently, it’s not just Congo.

The announcement comes on the same day as rights lawyers filed a case against Equatorial Guinea before Africa’s top human rights body, accusing the central African nation of forcing deportees from the U.S. back to their home countries in violation of their rights.

This is reminiscent of the shameful practice euphemistically called “extraordinary rendition” during the so-called Global War on Terror. Began under the Clinton administration, greatly expanded under the Bush administration, and continued well into the Obama administration despite Obama’s Executive Order prohibiting the practice, those suspected of terrorism were sent to countries with autocratic regimes to be interrogated, often under torture. While illegal under international law, including treaties to which the United States is a signatory, and numerous U.S. laws, it ostensibly gave plausible deniability.

While odious, it was at least under the guise of national security. Al Qaeda had murdered a significant number of Americans even before 9/11, and it was easy to rationalize extraordinary means. As Obama put it at the program’s end,

People did not know whether more attacks were imminent. And there was enormous pressure on our law enforcement and our national security teams to try to deal with this. It’s important for us not to feel too sanctimonious in retrospect about the tough job that those folks had. A lot of those folks were working hard under enormous pressure and are real patriots.

It’s much harder to justify in the case of those who are simply in the United States illegally. Even if they have been convicted of violent crimes, we have the means to detain them under due process.

• Via NR’s The Corner: President Trump Endorses Cops Using the Punisher Logo. Nothing disturbing about this iconography, now is there? Who could possibly object to the usage of a symbol associated with vigilante violence, including extrajudicial murder, especially when it is personalized to be associated with the sitting president?

The NYT: Police Remove Diabetes Experts From Conference for Distributing Critique of Trump Administration.

Several diabetes experts were escorted out of an influential medical conference by the police on Friday after they handed out copies of an editorial criticizing the Trump administration’s attacks on scientific research.

The incident took place Friday morning at a meeting of the American Diabetes Association in New Orleans, shortly before Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, director of the National Institutes of Health, was scheduled to speak. An organizer announced just before Dr. Bhattacharya’s session that he would no longer be speaking; a senior adviser at the N.I.H. took his place.

The researchers were handing out copies of the editorial, recently published in the association’s flagship journal, which detailed the effects of N.I.H. cuts and other Trump administration actions on diabetes research and outcomes, when security staff asked them to step outside and tried to take away the papers, said Aaron Kelly, a professor of pediatrics at the University of Minnesota who was among the researchers escorted out. A video taken by MedPage Today, which first reported the news, shows a tense confrontation, including a man in uniform putting his hands on an expert.

The researchers re-entered the convention center from another entrance, but were confronted again by security staff and police officers.

My interpretation is that the ADA’s leadership didn’t want to upset the Trump administration or hurt Bhattacharya’s feelings (or something). But, of course, if having a bunch of older academics hand out copies of an editorial from an academic journal is threatening to you, well, you might be a thin-skinned authoritarian.

Based on what has been reported, I can see absolutely no justification for calling in the police. This is a legitimate example of censorship.

In the latest example of the Streisand Effect, here’s the editorial, published in the flagship journal in the field, Diabetes Care, Misguided Brushes of a Pen Continue to Dismantle and Destroy Biomedical Research in the United States: We Can No Longer Afford Complacency and Fear. We Must All Act Now! The authors were Steven E. Kahn, Cheryl A.M. Anderson, John B. Buse, and Elizabeth Selvin.

Kahn is the editor-in-chief of the journal, which makes it rather unlikely he is some crank, shall we say (indeed, his bio hardly screams “radical disruptor!).

I can see nothing, by the way, in the ADA’s code of conduct that would prohibit the distribution of an article from the discipline’s flagship journal. Indeed, the notion that trying to do that act would get one banned from the conference is utterly absurd on its face. People have tried to distribute flyers and other information at events I have attended over the decades. If I don’t want it, I have two killer moves. The first is that I take it and then throw it away or leave it on a chair in the conference room. Or, if I am feeling really salty, I politely decline taking the object in the first place.

Seriously, this is absurd on any number of levels.

Worse than the absurdity of it all, this is an academic organization calling the police on its own members to silence and punish them for daring to speak out, in the quietest and most academic of ways (here, please read this thing I wrote!), because it fears the administration.

This is the America Trump and MAGA want.

Some video:

Two recent stories at the Atlantic, “The DOGE-ing of the Humanities Is Being Reversed” and “Trump’s Name Is Disappearing From More Than Just the Kennedy Center” illustrate the imbalance in our system of checks and balances.

A federal court [in May] ruled that the grant cancellations were unconstitutional, potentially reversing, for now, one of the many moves made by the Trump administration to influence how experts uncover—and then tell—the country’s story. Despite Trump officials’ efforts to impose their values and version of American history on knowledge-making institutions, doing so may not be as simple as they thought, particularly given their slapdash methods that have now been called out by a federal judge.

U.S. District Court Judge Colleen McMahon ruled in favor of plaintiffs, Kadetsky among them, finding that DOGE personnel didn’t have authority to terminate NEH grants and that the cuts violated the First and Fifth Amendments. The NEH, responsible for funding research, education programming, and restoration work, “was not created as a vehicle for government expression,” McMahon wrote in her ruling, but rather to “support the intellectual and cultural work of private citizens, scholars, teachers, writers, and institutions.”

and

When a board packed with Donald Trump’s allies voted in December to add the president’s name to the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the transformation happened almost immediately. By the following morning, crews had worked quickly to fasten 18 letters to the institution’s marble facade.

Now that work is being quietly dismantled.

In a memo obtained by The Atlantic, the Kennedy Center’s lawyers today directed employees to remove references to the center being named for anyone other than President John F. Kennedy. The note seems to suggest that Trump will accept a judge’s recent order to remove his name from the center.

“This includes email signatures, email communications, letterhead, website, brochures, promotional materials, press releases, signs, references in contracts, MOUs, and other agreements, and every other reference to the ‘Trump Kennedy Center,’ the Donald J. Trump and the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts, or similar name,” read the email, which I obtained.

Less than a week ago, a federal judge ordered the institution to remove all references suggesting the center had been renamed for Trump within 14 days, restoring its formal title as The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

“The Court ruled that the Board acted beyond its authority in adding President Trump’s name to the Center and gave the Center 14 days from May 29 to remove all references to the Center being named for anyone other than John F. Kennedy,” lawyers informed staff.

The memo offers the clearest sign yet that the institution intends to comply with the ruling, despite the board’s aggressive efforts in recent months to rebrand the center under Trump’s leadership.

While there have been some high-profile wins, many of the attention-grabbing actions taken in the Trump 47 administration have been overturned. It’s just that an aggressive Executive can move much more quickly than the relatively slow-moving Judiciary. Administrations can, if they so choose, issue orders hastily. With rare exception, court cases take time. Plaintiffs have to gather evidence, draft briefs, get on a judge’s docket, go through hearings, and wait for judges to write and issue opinions. And multiple rounds of appeals and delays may ensue.

Even though Trump wields unprecedented control over his copartisans in Congress, they, too, have undone many of his cuts. A lot of what DOGE did got undone. Ditto many of the high-profile budget recissions.

Of course, even when the administration is reined in, real harm has been done. People who were fired, lost grants, or whathaveyou underwent severe stress and financial harm, even if they ultimately got their jobs and grants back. Who knows how much money was wasted re-naming and then un-renaming the Kennedy Center?

Because the Executive can simply act, it is more powerful than its ostensibly coequal counterparts. Alexander Hamilton famously described the Judiciary as “the least dangerous” branch of government. The Executive is doubtless the most.

Military.com (“DOD Officially Drops 180 Faiths From Military’s Recognized Religion List“):

Military.com has learned that the Department of Defense, for the first time in almost 10 years, has dramatically reduced its number of recognized religious faiths and belief systems by approximately 180.

The reforms mark the first time the list has been officially revised since a memo was issued March 27, 2017, decreasing the total number of faiths from 211 to its new number of 31. The changes were iterated in a May 20, 2026, memorandum issued by the Under Secretary of War and signed by Anthony Tata, under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness of the United States, and obtained by Military.com.

Those paragraphs are in severe need of editing.

It turns out that the March 2017 instruction—published under Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis in the first Trump administration—nearly doubled the list of recognized religions, from “just over 100” to 221. Among those added were “earth-based faiths, such as heathens and Asatru, and an additional eight Protestant groups, including the International Communion of the Charismatic Christian Church.” Additionally, “Jewish” was broken down into Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform.

So, this policy not only reverses a move made during the first Trump administration (in order, among other reasons, to comply with the intent of the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act) but goes in the radically opposite direction.

The stated rationale is efficiency:

This latest revision to the faith codes comes at the direction of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, according to the Tata-signed memo, done to “streamline the DoW collection of religious preferences collection for service members to enhance the delivery of targeted religious support from the Chaplaincy.” It calls for the previously instituted faith and belief codes to be revised within a 60-day period from the issuance of the memorandum.

“The new list will provide chaplains with clear, readily available information that will better enable them to anticipate the religious support needs of service members and to provide religious support activities that align with service members’ personal faith and practices,” Tata wrote.

[…]

The faith and belief coding system, renamed to “religious affiliation codes,” was simply due to a system that had become too big, according to the secretary.

“The previous system had ballooned to well over 200 faith codes. … It was impractical and unusable, and many codes were never used at all,” Hegseth said in March, adding that 82% of members who identify as religious use only six of the codes.

But, if simplicity is the goal, it would be easy to consolidate the revised list

• Agnostic (AN)
• Baha’i faith (BH)
• Buddhism (BU)
• Christian – Assemblies of God (AG)
• Christian – Baptist (BA)
• Christian – Brethren (BR)
• Christian – Catholic (CA)
• Christian – Church of Christ (CC)
• Christian – Church of God (CG)
• Christian – Church of the Nazarene (CN)
• Christian – Episcopal/Anglican (EA)
• Christian – Evangelical (EV)
• Christian – Jehovah’s Witnesses (JW)
• Christian – Lutheran (LU)
• Christian – Methodist (ME)
• Christian – Non Denominational (ND)
• Christian – Orthodox (OX)
• Christian – Other (CO)
• Christian – Pentecostal (PE)
• Christian – Presbyterian (PR)
• Christian – Quaker (QU)
• Christian – Reformed (RE)
• Christian – Scientist (SC)
• Christian – Seventh Day Adventist (SA)
• Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (CJ)
• Hindu (HI)
• Islam (Muslim) (IS)
• Judaism (Jewish) (JU)
• No Religion (NR)
• Other Religions (OR)
• Sikh (SI)

considerably. Astute readers will note that 21 of the 31 religions listed are variants of Christianity, and a 22nd, LDS, has Christ’s name right in the name.

I have no objection to eliminating Atheist (my own non-faith) and instead labeling it No Religion. Indeed, I’d not object to lumping Agnostic in there, too, dropping the list to an even 30. But I’d guess there are at least as many Unitarian Universalists, who are now lumped into “Other Religions,” serving in our armed forces as there are Christian Brethren.

My recollection of my time in service, from 1984 to 1992, including cadet and Reserve time, was that there were only a handful of recognized religions then. It may well have been limited to Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish. I haven’t found an accessible history online, but I gather DOD first added Muslim chaplains in 1994. (Steven and I had a good chuckle when our university chancellor marveled at that fact in a convocation speech.) Hindus and Buddhists were added in 2004 and 2011.

The move is, not shockingly, generating considerable consternation online. Even in this report, we get this:

The individuals who spoke with Military.com are two clients of among more than 100,000 represented by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), whose client base is roughly 95% Christian.

The organization’s co-founder, Mikey Weinstein, told Military.com that this new DOD list is a “middle finger to the United States Constitution’s separation of church and state.” The U.S. Air Force veteran said that codes like this have existed to perform services that sailors, soldiers, Marines, airmen or guardians want.

“Reducing the number of religious faiths from hundreds down to 31 is another absolute, clear, filthy and disgusting, unconstitutional, immoral and unethical attempt to force only the approved solution, getting closer and closer to Christian nationalism,” Weinstein said.

He compared the new list to the faiths and beliefs identified by the Department of Veterans Affairs, which recognizes more than 220 belief systems and has more than 80 emblems for headstones.

“So, if you’re dead, you’ll get your emblem,” Weinstein added. “But if you’re alive, you can’t even get it on your dog tags unless you qualify for one of these faith traditions that in the eyes of Hegseth and other Christian nationalists are worthy of recognition after years of all of the others being there.”

So, I don’t think this is in any way unconstitutional. And, apparently, this is more a data collection issue than anything substantive.

[Tata] added that members will not be limited to the list of “religious affiliation codes” when selecting information for their dog tags.

A NYT report (“Pentagon Cuts 180 Religious Identities From Military Personnel Records”) adds:

Mr. Parnell framed the change as a largely administrative exercise, intended to simplify data collection for military leaders and chaplains.

According to the memo, the new system will “provide chaplains with clear, readily available information that will better enable them to anticipate the religious support needs of service members and to provide religious support activities that align with service members’ personal faith and practices.”

Service members would not, however, be limited to the new policy’s 31 “religious affiliation codes” when choosing to include their religious preference on the stamped metal identification tags that are worn around the neck, commonly known as dog tags, the memo said.

The change is “not designed to make any claims on the legitimacy of any faith or religious belief, nor is it intended to provide a list of ‘officially approved’ religions,” Mr. Parnell said. “Rather, it is designed to allow chaplains to quickly look at the religious composition of their units and determine how they structure resources to best provide for war-fighters of all faith groups.”

Among the groups who are no longer on the list for data collection are “Atheists, Asatru, Deists, Druids, Eckankar, Heathens, Humanists, Magick, New Age churches, Pagan, Rosicrucianism, Shaman, Spiritualists, Troth, Unitarian Universalists and various Wiccans.” Presumably, they will have to list “No Religion” or “Other Religion” in their personnel file, but can still identify from the old list on their dog tags.

I simply have no idea from the reporting how many service members are impacted by the change, much less how they are impacted.

A 2021 RAND study of religion in the Army reported that the chaplain corps was overwhelmingly Protestant, comprising 80-90 percent of the corps between 2001 and 2019. Indeed, over 30 percent of the corps are Baptist, and just over 15 percent are Presbyterians. I’m not sure I’ve ever encountered a chaplain from outside the major faiths and every unit chaplain I’ve encountered has been from a Christian denomination.

The same RAND study found that,

While Protestants, Catholics, and“Nones” make up a large proportion of soldiers, all other religions consistently make up less than 1 percent of the [Regular Army] population. Even in cases where the proportion of small religious groups has increased (e.g.,
Muslims), the gains have been relatively modest, and we do not anticipate that [the U.S. Army Chaplain Corps] will need to make significant changes to account for this.

I have no reason to think the other services are wildly different. There just aren’t a lot of Wiccans and Druids serving in our forces, much less in our chaplain corps.

But, again, to the extent we’re trying to gain efficiency in “at a glance” reporting, it’s not at all clear to me why we need 22 categories for Christian faith groups. It certainly sends the signal that there’s a single approved religious tradition.

The unrelenting attempts to get things named after himself are truly remarkable. The crass egotism is off the charts.

Also, it may be some bias in the way I am consuming clips, but lately it seems he is mostly sitting at his desk with some set of sycophants behind him and with the press in front of him. It all feels like yet another ego feed.

“Light and Dark”

February 12, 2026

Pike Road, AL

[GUEST UPDATE (5 June, 1305… ish): Hey all, it’s Matt with a quick proof of life update for OTB (and me). We’ve successfully been able to access the site and are downloading backups. Once I have them to James, he’ll pass them to WordPress.com. Given all of our technical history, we make no promises after that. And I think the shift is going to definitely improve things once it’s live. Lite a votive for James and the site in the meantime.

UPDATE (4 June, 1751): Whatever is making the site so sluggish has made it impossible for them to get a clean migration their usual way. There’s an alternative solution, but I can’t get them working on that until tomorrow. The good news is that they should be able to import any posts and comments that come in.

UPDATE (2 June, 1200): The migration is underway, so any comments posted may disappear. Once the new site is up and running, we’ll repoint the outsidethebeltway.com domain to it, which will likely come with some latency.

Phase II will be to redesign the site with a new theme (the current one dates back to 2018!) on a development site. Once that’s done, which should be within a couple of weeks, we’ll again repoint the domain there.

Original post (Sunday 31 May, 0858):

Readers will likely have experienced frustrations loading the site of late. The combination of a 23-year-old site with some 58,000 posts and 1.5 million comments; a theme last updated in 2018; and years without outside technical support has caught up with us.

Matt Bernius made some fixes under the hood a year or so ago and moved us to a hosting plan that offered more company support, but that turned out to be a Band-Aid at best. And, having spent some $20,000 last year to fight and settle a lawsuit, I can’t justify throwing more money at the problem.

So, we’re going to try something radical. We’ve been self-hosted for all but the first three months of OTB’s existence, when we were on Google’s BlogSpot platform. Yesterday, I initiated the process of moving the site under the auspices of WordPress.com, whose software we’ve used for most of the site’s history.

Given the size of the database, I’m having them handle the migration, which they say usually takes 2-3 business days. They’ll migrate it to a test site and, once the bugs are worked out, we’ll redirect the URL. There may be a day or two in the interim where things are a bit wonky.

The upside should be a faster-loading, more modern site structure. My aim is to keep something close to the current look and feel, but on a modern theme infrastructure. We’ll keep you posted.