Washington, D.C. — In response to reporting that the Pentagon has removed 180 recognized religious faiths and belief systems from a list of options available to American service members to designate for themselves, American Atheists president Nick Fish released the following statement.
This is nothing more than Pete Hegseth inflicting his Christian Nationalist ideology on our service members yet again. His attempts to erase Americans whose beliefs don’t fit into his narrow, divisive worldview are disgusting — and entirely unsurprising.
As much as Hegseth wants to push the lie that the U.S. is a Christian Nation, repeating a lie doesn’t make it true. This is a nation with hundreds of faith and belief systems and our military reflects that simple fact. That Hegseth apparently believes numbers larger than 30 are just too complicated to handle says a lot about his management of the Pentagon.
If reports are accurate, his decision to remove the atheist designation makes it clear this has nothing to do with “streamlining” anything. The exclusion of millions of Americans and countless members of our military sends a message about who counts as a “real” American to Hegseth and the extremists aligned with him.
No matter how hard White Christian Nationalists like Hegseth try, they will never succeed in writing us out of our history or in silencing us. Atheist soldiers, sailors, airmen, marines, and guardians are patriots committed to protecting our nation and our Constitution. It’s a shame we can’t say the same thing about Hegseth.
