# Institutions Can Govern Membership Without Owning a Religious Identity ## Claim An institution can define membership in its own body without acquiring authority to define the boundary of an entire religious identity. <!-- atomicity: 1 idea ✓ --> ## Evidence **Source:** [[3. Resources/Readwise/Articles/The Pentagon Decided Mormons Aren't Christian]] — Dan McClellan and Dan Beecher use the Pentagon's religious-category changes to distinguish a church's authority over its membership from any claimed authority over who may identify as Christian across traditions. Their proposed scholarly default gives self-identification primary but not exclusive weight. That preserves room for historical and sociological criteria without turning one government, denomination, or coalition into the owner of the category. ## Scope & conditions - Institutions still need operational categories for law, chaplaincy, research, and governance. - Self-identification doesn't settle every doctrinal or historical question about a tradition. - A community may define its own communion boundaries without converting them into universal identity law. ## Links - [[3. Resources/Permanent Notes/Religious Literacy Starts by Refusing the Fiction of a Monolithic Faith]] — extends: internal diversity also limits who can speak for the whole category. - [[3. Resources/Permanent Notes/The Guru Model - Single-Mediator Authority Persists Despite Protestant Reforms]] — contrasts: category ownership repeats the single-mediator problem at the level of group identity. - [[Faith & Theology MOC]] — applies-in: ecumenical and interfaith description requires bounded institutional authority. ## Source - [[3. Resources/Readwise/Articles/The Pentagon Decided Mormons Aren't Christian]] — discussion of LDS classification and authority over Christian identity boundaries.