Pentagon's New Religious Affairs Office Faces Watchdog Scrutiny
The Freedom From Religion Foundation is seeking transparency on funding, staffing and spiritual fitness assessments after Secretary of War Pete Hegseth created the Office of Religious Affairs.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation has announced it will investigate the Pentagon's newly created Office of Religious Affairs, seeking transparency on how the office is funded, staffed and how it plans to assess the spiritual fitness of service members. The Wisconsin-based nonprofit said it will use the Freedom of Information Act to obtain records from the Department of Defense.
The inquiry follows Secretary of War Pete Hegseth's announcement on Wednesday at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia that the Pentagon is establishing the office to address what he described as a decline in religious community in the military. In his State of the Force address, Hegseth said the office's head would serve as the chief adviser on religious affairs to the secretary and deputy secretary.
According to a memorandum signed by Hegseth earlier this week, the Office of Religious Affairs is tasked with aligning religious-affairs policy, overseeing the Armed Forces Chaplains Board, representing the department to civilian religious endorsing organizations, and sponsoring research and tools to support and assess what the memorandum calls spiritual fitness, spiritual readiness and spiritual resilience.
Hegseth argued that the military had previously prioritized political correctness and secular humanism over religion, with what he called secular careerists in cubicles and lawyers running around with red tape overseeing service members' spiritual lives instead of military chaplains.
The Freedom From Religion Foundation said its FOIA requests will cover the office's funding, budget and staffing, as well as how the Pentagon defines and plans to assess spiritual fitness, spiritual readiness and spiritual resilience, including any technologies or tools under consideration. The group also wants records on the office's ties to outside religious organizations and on how atheist, humanist and other nonreligious service members may be affected, including potential First Amendment issues.
Americans United for Separation of Church and State President and CEO Rachel Laser said Hegseth's new office would elevate Christianity's role in shaping US military policy. She accused him of using his position to advance what she described as a Christian Nationalist agenda in the military.
Hegseth's personal Christian beliefs have previously drawn media attention, with some analysis arguing they are increasingly influencing US military policy. In March, The Washington Post cited former senior military officials and experts on religion and law as saying that Hegseth's religious policies had challenged longstanding norms limiting the promotion of a particular faith. The war secretary reportedly held monthly evangelical services at the Pentagon at the time, while department employees were reluctant to discuss concerns related to his religious campaign.
Earlier this year, the Pentagon, at Hegseth's initiative, cut the number of recognized religious denominations and belief systems for service members from 211 to 31. The department's latest official breakdown from 2019 shows that about 70 percent of active-duty service members identified as Christian, 2 percent as atheist or agnostic, and 24 percent as having no religious affiliation or an unknown religious affiliation.
The creation of the Office of Religious Affairs and the watchdog challenge it has drawn reflect broader debates over the role of faith in public institutions and the balance between religious expression and constitutional limits in the armed forces.
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