The United States government published an official list of real religions. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — 17 million Americans, the fourth largest Christian denomination in the country — was not on it. Jehovah’s Witnesses made the cut. Mormons did not. The government has officially ruled that 17 million American Christians are not Christians.
The man who wrote the list belongs to the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches — a denomination that believes slavery was scripturally justified, women should not have the right to vote, and homosexuality should be a crime. Pete Hegseth is its most prominent member. He now runs the Department of Defense. His theology just became the standard by which the United States military decides whose faith is real.
This is not new. Colonial America ran this experiment repeatedly and the results were always the same.
The Puritans of Massachusetts Bay Colony did not consider Quakers Christians. They banned them, whipped them, and when that failed hanged four of them on Boston Common between 1659 and 1661. Roger Williams was expelled from Massachusetts for holding the wrong Baptist interpretation of scripture and founded Rhode Island to escape the colony’s official Christianity. Catholics were banned from settling in Massachusetts entirely — the colony considered Roman Catholicism a false religion and a political threat. Anglicans persecuted Baptists in Virginia so severely that Baptist preachers were jailed for preaching without a license from the Anglican Church. In Maryland, which was founded as a Catholic refuge, Protestants seized control and passed laws making it a capital offense to deny the Trinity — a law aimed directly at groups whose Christianity they considered insufficient.
Every single one of those persecuted groups considered themselves Christians. Every single one was told by the government of the day that they were wrong. Every single one watched the group in power draw the line just far enough to exclude them.
The Mormons are today’s Quakers. Hegseth’s church drew the line just far enough to exclude them — close enough to mainstream Christianity to seem like a technicality, far enough to establish the principle that the government decides. Once the principle is established the line moves. It has always moved. It moved in Massachusetts. It moved in Virginia. It moved in Maryland.
You supported this movement. You handed this government the power to make this list. The Mormons didn’t see it coming.
You’re next.