It appeared Friday as though The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints wouldn’t be recognized as a Christian religion under the Pentagon’s faith codes.<\/p>\n
By Monday, the Pentagon has determined every Christian denomination will be listed individually rather than under a single umbrella code.<\/p>\n
The Pentagon uses what it calls faith codes to keep track of service members’ religions. An effort was made to reduce its 200 faith codes down to 31 after Defense Secretary Pete\u00a0Hegseth said most of the codes weren’t being used.<\/p>\n
Twenty-one of the codes are listed as Christian religions, but that list on Friday did not include the Latter-day Saints.<\/p>\n
The church’s religious leader for the Jacksonville region said he wasn’t offended by the Pentagon’s move \u2014 it’s par for the course to him.<\/p>\n
“We love all, we forgive all, we turn the other cheek,” said Bryan Leonard, president of the Springfield Stake of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.<\/p>\n
Come September, Leonard will have been a member of the church for 30 years.<\/p>\n
Leonard was “not necessarily shocked” by the Pentagon’s initial decision, he said, noting there often are “questions and misunderstandings” about the church. He’s not offended because people usually “quickly realize that we’re Christian,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I mean, it’s The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,” Leonard said, emphasizing the name “Jesus Christ.”<\/p>\n
Leonard’s stake represents between 750 and 800 Latter-day Saints members, with 80 to 100 of those in Jacksonville.<\/p>\n
Reaction to the news on Friday was quick, with some decrying the government for getting involved in religious debates.<\/p>\n
By Monday morning, the Pentagon announced there simply wouldn’t be an umbrella Christian designation, just individual denominations, such as Baptist or Methodist. After hearing about the change, Leonard said it was great news.<\/p>\n
“I completely understand that sometimes, for efficiency, categories can be helpful,” he said. “But as we just witnessed, they can separate rather than promote understanding and unity, intentionally or unintentionally.”<\/p>\n
As of 2019, about 1% of the military identified as a Latter-day Saints member, according to National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It appeared Friday as though The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints wouldn’t be recognized as a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":300602,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[116,118,117,115,105313,278],"class_list":["post-300601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news","tag-news","tag-onebig","tag-top-stories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=300601"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/300601\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/300602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=300601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=300601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=300601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}