After a weekend of pushback and proselytizing from Utah’s Latter-day Saint congressional delegation, the U.S. Department of Defense announced Monday morning a change to its list of recognized religious affiliations.

The roster, used by the Chaplain Corps, no longer excludes The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from those identified as Christian faiths, as was the case in a version released Friday. That’s because the directory no longer categorizes any faith groups as Christian.

“Last week, a proposed list of simplified faith codes was released to the media,” the department said in its social media post announcing the change. “The Pentagon list included redundant and unnecessary labeling, and the mistake has been fixed.”

It added: “The Pentagon’s job is not to adjudicate theological debates, but instead to ensure sincerely held faith is respected and encouraged in our ranks.”

Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah and a Latter-day Saint, has declared the change a victory — one for which he claims credit.

“I just got off the phone with President [Donald] Trump,” he posted to X roughly 12 hours before the change was announced. “We discussed the Pentagon’s ‘Christian list.’ I won’t speak for him, but I’m thrilled about where this is heading.”

He emphasized that the president “loves Latter-day Saints” and told followers at the time to “stay tuned.”

Lee’s fellow Utah senator, Republican John Curtis, also a Latter-day Saint, was similarly critical on social media of the seeming snub, writing on Saturday: “It is unacceptable for a government entity to characterize a faith in a manner that contradicts the religion’s own foundational tenets. I am working now to ensure a correction is made.”

Asked for a response Friday and Monday, a church spokesperson pointed both times to the church’s FAQ page on its website. The page’s first question asks, “Are Latter-day Saints Christian?”

The answer it provides? “Yes.”

“Neither Catholic nor Protestant,” the site adds, the Utah-based faith represents a “restoration of the church of Jesus Christ as originally established by the Savior in the New Testament.”

[Read The Tribune’s story about the Pentagon’s initial list of religions.]

Many conservative Christians disagree, unnerved by the Latter-day Saint belief that Jesus and God are distinct beings, that God was once a man and that humans can one day become like god.

“Mike Lee is free to believe every one of those things,” Texas pastor Joel Webbon posted on social media in response to the senator’s criticisms of the list. “What he is not free to do is pretend they are the same religion that produced the Apostles’ Creed.”

Utah politicians chime in

The Pentagon’s change came Monday after Lee spent the weekend posting more than a dozen times about the issue. Curtis also wrote on X that his office met with representatives from the Pentagon to discuss their concerns about the categorization.

U.S. Reps. Celeste Maloy, Burgess Owens and Mike Kennedy, all Latter-day Saint Republicans from Utah, also raised concerns before Monday morning’s announcement.

“Just last year, President Trump himself recognized Latter-day Saints as Christians,” Maloy posted. “As we learn more about the reasoning behind this change, I look forward to having conversations that will ensure all service members receive the religious support and First Amendment protections they deserve.”

Said Kennedy: “No one needs to wonder where members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints stand. We stand with Christ. We are Christians. We only ask to be accurately portrayed. I strongly urge the department to correct the record.”

Owens wrote about his own conversion to the church, sharing a post from Lee, though he did not directly call on the Pentagon to add the church to its Christian list.

“Our Lord & Savior, Jesus Christ, keeps every promise. I read, prayed, asked, and listened,” Owens wrote. “He answered.”

Lee preaches and proselytizes

But it was Lee who led the charge, expressing his outrage on social media all weekend.

“If only we, as Latter-day Saints, belonged to a church that had ‘Jesus Christ’ in its name and His image in its logo,” he wrote soon after the announcement, adding a photo of the church’s symbol. “Oh wait.”

Later, he quoted the faith’s signature scripture, the Book of Mormon, posting a passage that says the church’s adherents “talk of Christ, we rejoice in Christ, we preach of Christ, we prophesy of Christ.”

“My church membership is inextricably intertwined with my Christianity, as it is for [17.8 million] other Latter-day Saints,” he added. “Regardless of what the Pentagon thinks.”

The pushback against a Trump administration department is a rare break for Lee, who has closely allied himself with the president in recent years. In 2020, the Utah senator compared Trump to the Book of Mormon hero Captain Moroni.

“To my Mormon friends, my Latter-day Saint friends,” Lee said as he pointed to Trump at a rally, “think of him as Captain Moroni. He seeks not power but to pull it down.”

The Utah senator later walked back his Captain Moroni analogy, saying that he never meant to suggest that Trump was a prophet or “should be revered as a religious leader.”

When one poster said Lee’s “crusade” over the Defense Department’s “Christian list” was “irritating,” he responded, “I’m not talking about what individual Christians might think. I’m talking about the U.S. government. I can say confidently that the U.S. government has no business recognizing the Christianity of literally every other religious sect that worships Jesus Christ — with one exception.”

Lee called on his social media followers to read the Book of Mormon — which is subtitled “Another Testament of Jesus Christ” — from “cover to cover” and “pray about it, asking sincerely to know whether it’s true.”

He added: “Then tell me whether Latter-day Saints believe in Jesus Christ.”

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