As you might imagine, we at the OHP are delighted by the news that ‘Heathen’ and ‘Asatru’ have been added to the DoD religious preferences list. It’s been a long fight to get this done.

Under the old system, we needed a sponsoring org to even submit a request. Well, we did that, and somehow ‘Troth’ got added as a preference.

However, more recently (in Ent time, of course), the system changed. Whether or not it was the level of noise they were getting or number of requests from groups who, just like ours, were trying to get their preference added, we don’t know. But it was changed, and we’re exceedingly thankful for that.

About those requests for ‘Heathen’ and ‘Asatru’ though? They were submitted by military service members who were working with us, and we don’t want their work to go unnoticed in all of this. So here is our Role Call of the service members who made all of this possible:

MSG Matt Walters – submitted and pursued the request that made ‘Heathen’ and ‘Asatru’ official religious preferences for AF personnel under the old system.
Omar Bailey
Daniel Head
Chris Gibat
Blaine Morton
And lastly, Daron Regan. Daron has been pushing the last leg of this journey the most. He was in regular contact with the Chaplains making this change. His efforts to keep our request in their sight cannot be understated.

We would also like to give special thanks to civilians like Vince Enlund, and for all of you who spread the word and joined our various letter-writing campaigns. Because while the requests had to be made by service members, civilian supporters played a key role in making sure there was also some degree of political pressure.

Further, we want to thank everyone that assisted with various documents we created to support this project. Including, Robert Creed, Luke Burroughs, and Jason Kelsall.

For those news sites and blogs that help publicized this, thank you. Bringing awareness to this case was highly beneficial to our success.

If you played a part in making this momentous change come to pass and do not see your name here, please do not hesitate to contact us so that we might add you. We want to add you! It is important to us at the Open Halls Project that everyone is given their proper recognition.

So with that said, please join us in recognizing and thanking these fine people!

Cat and Josh
Open Halls Project