A recent streamlining effort in the U.S. military turned into a headache after it threw the Pentagon into the middle of a longstanding religious controversy. However, the U.S. Department of Defense found a solution to escape the controversy in short order, with a tactic both refreshing and surprising from a government agency. The U.S. Defense Department acknowledged the limits of its own authority.

In a move “to clarify the work of chaplains,” the U.S. Department of Defense last week shrunk the list of religious affiliation categories for servicemembers from a bloated 200 down to a more manageable size of 31. The new list still retained categories such as “Hindu (HI),” “Muslim (IS),” and “Jewish (JU),” as well as Christian subcategories, such as “Christian – Baptist (BA),” or “Christian - Pentecostal (PE),” which were all grouped together.

But one group was highly dissatisfied with the result. Mormons were listed simply as the “Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (CJ),” with no “Christian” prefix. This omission drew instant criticism from Mormon legislators, including both senators from Utah. “Can anyone tell me why The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints was left out of the list of Christian churches?” tweeted Senator Mike Lee (R-Utah).

Whether or not such an omission was justified is beside the point. The new list of religious affiliation categories could not appeal to creedal orthodoxy or universal recognition as its standard, as it still classified Jehovah’s Witnesses, Quakers, Christian Scientists, and Seventh Day Adventists as “Christian” groups.

The point is, the Pentagon had inadvertently stepped into a religious controversy with no easy escape. If it kept the new list unchanged, it would be singling out Mormons, who were already aggressively lobbying for change — a fight the Pentagon was not trying to pick. On the other hand, if the Pentagon simply added the “Christian” designation before the name of the Mormon church, it would be siding with the Mormons and risked angering many orthodox Christian groups.

Instead of either option, the Pentagon did something brilliant — and profoundly in accord with America’s founding principles. Since the prefix “Christian -” was unnecessary to the religious affiliation codes, it simply removed them. Furthermore, instead of grouping Christian subcategories together, the Pentagon arranged the entire list alphabetically. The result is that the Pentagon stated no opinion at all about whether Mormonism was Christian.

“Last week, a proposed list of simplified faith codes was released to the media. The Pentagon list included redundant and unnecessary labeling, and the mistake has been fixed,” explained the Defense Department on Monday. “The Pentagon’s job is not to adjudicate theological debates, but instead to ensure sincerely-held faith is respected and encouraged in our ranks.”

This solution is deeply satisfying because it accords with centuries of thought on religious liberty, which is premised in part on the notion that civil government is simply not competent to “adjudicate theological debates” — or indeed to hold any jurisdiction whatsoever over the souls of men.

An early proponent of this notion was the philosopher John Locke, who wrote in “A Letter Concerning Toleration” (published 1689) that “the whole Jurisdiction of the Magistrate reaches only to these civil Concernments,” and “it neither can nor ought in any manner to be extended to the Salvation of Souls.”

Locke gives three reasons for this claim. “First, Because the Care of Souls is not committed to the Civil Magistrate any more than to other Men,” he continued. “It is not committed unto him, I say, by God; because it appears not that God has ever given any such Authority to one Man over another, as to compel any one to his Religion.”

Second, “The care of Souls cannot belong to the Civil Magistrate, because his Power consists only in outward force: But true and saving Religion consists in the inward persuasion of the Mind; without which nothing can be acceptable to God. And such is the nature of the Understanding, that it cannot be compelled to the belief of any thing by outward Force,” Locke went on.

Third, even granting, for the sake of argument, that the state could force someone to change their mind, Locke wrote: “Yet would not that help at all to the Salvation of their Souls.” For there is one way to heaven, but every ruler would have his own religion, in which his subjects would be forced to believe. The result, he concluded, would be that “One Country alone would be in the right, and all the rest of the World would be put under an Obligation of following their Princes in the ways that lead to Destruction.”

Nearly a century later, James Madison applied similar reasoning in his famous Memorial and Remonstrance (June 20, 1785) against a bill proposed in the Virginia state legislature. “That Religion or the duty which we owe to our Creator and the manner of discharging it, can be directed only by reason and conviction, not by force or violence,” he quoted from the Virginia Declaration of Rights. “Before any man can be considered as a member of Civil Society, he must be considered as a subject of the Governour of the Universe: And if a member of Civil Society, who enters into any subordinate Association, must always do it with a reservation of his duty to the General Authority; much more must every man who becomes a member of any particular Civil Society, do it with a saving of his allegiance to the Universal Sovereign.”

Madison rejected the implication “that the Civil Magistrate is a competent Judge of Religious Truth” as “an arrogant pretension falsified by the contradictory opinions of Rulers in all ages, and throughout the world.”

In almost every case, he argued, when secular rulers tried to judge religious debates and establish the best religion, true religion was the casualty. “Experience witnesseth that ecclesiastical establishments, instead of maintaining the purity and efficacy of Religion, have had a contrary operation,” he said. “During almost fifteen centuries has the legal establishment of Christianity been on trial. What have been its fruits? More or less in all places, pride and indolence in the Clergy, ignorance and servility in the laity, in both, superstition, bigotry and persecution.”

This principle has been carried forward in a variety of Supreme Court cases. In Thomas v. Review Board of the Indiana Employment Security Division (1981), a Jehovah’s Witness employed at a steel company refused to manufacture tank turrets due to his pacifist convictions, and the Supreme Court decided that “it is not for us to say that the line he drew was an unreasonable one.”

The same line occurred nearly verbatim in Burwell v. Hobby Lobby (2014). “The Hahns and Greens and their companies sincerely believe that providing the insurance coverage [for abortion] demanded by the HHS regulations lies on the forbidden side of the line, and it is not for us to say that their religious beliefs are mistaken or insubstantial.”

Likewise, in Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission (2017), the Supreme Court affirmed, “It hardly requires restating that government has no role in deciding or even suggesting whether the religious ground for [Christian baker Jack] Phillips’ conscience-based objection is legitimate or illegitimate.”

These precedents appeared in the COVID-era case, Capitol Hill Baptist Church v. Bowser (2020), where a large D.C. church challenged the city’s ban on large church gatherings. There, a district judge ruled, “‘it is not for [the District] to say that [the Church’s] religious beliefs’ about the need to meet together as one corporal body ‘are mistaken or insubstantial.’”

Civil governments have broad authority over many areas of life. But they don’t have authority over the religious beliefs of a person or a group. If that person expresses a religious belief, the government may not (indeed, cannot) engage in a debate over whether such a belief is legitimate. They must simply admit, “It is not for us to say.”

Of course, religious freedom advocates since Locke would readily grant that this principle does not prevent the government from enforcing laws for the public good, many of which inevitably legislate morality. But there is a big difference between the government implementing moral laws and the government wading into religious disputes.

This does not mean that religious belief is a field of anarchy, but rather that it is the province of the church, not the state. Historically, Christians have distinguished between two authorities, conceptualized in two instruments of rule. The state bears the sword, but the church bears the keys.

These images are drawn from Scripture. In Romans 13, the classic passage on government as God’s servant, Paul writes that the civil magistrate “does not bear the sword in vain” (Romans 13:4).

By contrast, Jesus has given his church “the keys of the kingdom of heaven,” so that “whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven” (Matthew 16:19). Although initially addressed to Peter, the same phrase, “whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven” is repeated shortly afterward in the context of church discipline, suggesting that the binding/loosing authority of the keys is not held by Peter alone but by the entire church (Matthew 18:17-18).

The point is, it is not government’s role to “adjudicate theological debates.” That is the church’s role, from the excommunication of second-century Gnostics down to the present day. The state’s role is to establish civil justice and stay out of the church’s lane on matters of religion. With so many administrations eager to infringe upon religious freedom, it’s refreshing to see a government department limit itself to its proper place.