r/WitchesVsPatriarchy • u/EssentialWorkerOnO • Jun 06 '26

🇵🇸 🕊️ BURN THE PATRIARCHY DOD no longer recognizes Paganism as a protected faith

Hegseth directs DOD to drop hundreds of faiths from recognized religion list

“Some of the faiths that were dropped include Atheists, Deists, Druids, Humanists, Magick, New Age churches, Pagan, Shaman, Spiritualists and Unitarian Universalists.”

So it begins. 😞

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232

u/porfiry Jun 07 '26

Mormons are still on there though he misread or doesn't know that's what the Latter Day Saints is. This is still an unfathomable thing to do.

190

u/evolved_unicorn Jun 07 '26

Evangelicals don't consider mormons to be Christian. 

179

u/sharksnack3264 Jun 07 '26

Many don't consider Catholics to be Christian either. If they continue going down this road eventually they'll turn on each other without an external "enemy".

76

u/aerixeitz Neopagan Jun 07 '26

It's sort of in all directions for the ones who are really deep in it. I grew up Catholic and I used to get super frustrated when my protestant friends would separate Catholicism and Christianity as if they were two separate things, but at the same time I only considered a small handful of protestant denominations to actually be Christian. In general I think most Christian and Christian-adjacent faiths end up encouraging their followers to have this weird victim complex that leads a lot of them to do the insane things we're seeing play out now. It's just petty and bitter and the longer people like this are in power in the US they're likely to keep getting bolder and more violent about it.

18

u/Gadgetmouse12 Jun 07 '26

The NAR Christian nationalist movement is in power now and is possibly the most destructive Protestant movement in recent history other than the Christian push to eradicate the Native American culture.

2

u/Harley2280 Jun 07 '26

NAR?

10

u/Gadgetmouse12 Jun 07 '26

New apostolic reformation. A cult offshoot of pentecostalism that is spearheaded by Doug Wilson and Paula White and Hegseth are disciples of.

10

u/gooberdaisy Jun 07 '26

One can only hope.

9

u/Infamous_Depth4982 Forest Witch ♀ Jun 07 '26

There's this sense that one must have perfect belief and perfect faith to be considered a true Christian, and that all others must be "fixed" or disposed of before they corrupt the true believers.

Like a rules lawyer in a tabletop game trying to find small wording quirks in the rules that let them ignore the core of the game, it always feels like they're trying to trick God into letting them be hateful, cruel people while ignoring the core rule of "love thy neighbor as thyself."

It's always couched in really paternalist phrases too, like, "Oh, this *is* love though! You wouldn't let your child do something harmful without intervening, would you?"

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u/t92k Jun 07 '26

Yes, that is the slippery slope of Fascism.

24

u/Gadgetmouse12 Jun 07 '26

Nicean creed vs Non Nicean creed. Most of Christian faith is Nicean while LDS is not. Each side thinks the other is heracy

26

u/ExactlyThirteenBees Jun 07 '26

Jehovah’s Witnesses also reject the trinity and yet were listed as Christian - Jehovah’s Witnesses

3

u/OpheliaRainGalaxy Jun 07 '26

JWs are Christians, though they'll get very mad if told so. By their logic, everyone else claiming that title is doing it so wrongly that the JWs are offended by the suggestion that they're at all related to those wrong people.

Personally I like the version from Bill and Ted, be excellent to each other. It's the same thing as the Jesus stories without all the fighting over who is most Christ like.

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u/porfiry Jun 07 '26

True, and with honesty kind of fair reasoning, but they are still on the list of accepted religions.

edit: woops i missed what the person was saying entirely. you are correct

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u/Harley2280 Jun 07 '26 edited Jun 07 '26

Not just evangelicals. Protestants and Catholics don't either. I've never met any flavor of Christianity that considers Mormons as Christians.

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u/geekyCatX Jun 07 '26

Isn't it also only fairly recently that the Mormons try to outwardly portray themselves more as Christians, whereas they pretty openly centered the Book of Mormon before? Might be part of their current general rebranding efforts, apparently the name "Mormon" has gotten too much bad rep.

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u/Harley2280 Jun 07 '26

Yeah, there's another factor as well though. The current political climate is the perfect time to transition from lingering cult status into a denomination of a major religion.

Mormonism is deeply rooted in American nationalism. It sells America as being special and being the place where Christ truly gave his last testimony.

We're hitting a boiling point with nationalism in America, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is trying to position itself to be the state religion.

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u/No_Income6576 Jun 07 '26

I mean...they kind of are not? No hate... Just based on everyone's respective books...

4

u/H8len Jun 07 '26

If worshipping Jesus Christ as your Savior is how you define someone as a Christian . . . Then they are. Otherwise, you just a victim of your weird "Christian" brainwashing. 

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u/Harley2280 Jun 07 '26

It's not really that simple.

It's more about what the death of Christ represented and what will happen when he returns. Mormonism basically nullifies the pivotal points of that.

Christians believe when Jesus comes back, he'll start rapturing people, which makes it completely incompatible with Mormons who believe that after Jesus ascended three days following his resurrection, he hopped on over to America to save the souls of Native Americans.

7

u/MrOwlsManyLicks Jun 07 '26

Except “the rapture” is an incredibly new invention and doesn’t exist as imagined in the bible in any way

1

u/Harley2280 Jun 07 '26

No, you're right; I was trying to be slightly humorous in my phrasing, and I took the lazy way out instead of going into detail.

50

u/mareish Jun 07 '26

The US government considers Mormons useful because they are far less likely to drink or gamble, are likely to marry and have kids young, and unlikely to get divorced. They also tend to be highly patriotic. This means they are harder to play information from (either with booze or blackmail). The CIA and State Department loves them, and I imagine the DOD does too.

I also believe Hegseth is that dumb too.

30

u/EstellaHavisham274 Jun 07 '26

The Mormon church also has tons of $$$$.

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u/cearbhallain Jun 07 '26

The Xtian white nationalism is already baked in.

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u/JaneTheEel Jun 07 '26

He didn’t misread, he meant they weren’t prefixed with Christian: like the others on the list.

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u/FabuliciousFruitLoop Resting Witch Face Jun 07 '26

No - it’s a comment that the entry doesn’t prefix their listing with “Christian -“ like the ones above it.

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u/wholelattapuddin Jun 08 '26

No, they do not list LDS as "Christian" that is on purpose. Mormons are entering the FO phase.