Yes, it does. That's how a religion receives tax exempt status. The religion must be recognized by the government.
What is your issue with when Wicca began? Would you feel better if it was simply called Paganism? For that absolutely does predate Christianity, and Wicca is a denomination thereof. Unless you're Catholic, your denomination didn't begin in 30AD. You plan on holding that against Protestants?
If you don't have an issue with what symbol they use, why don't you honor the sacrifice of the soldier, get off your timeline soapbox, and go on with your life? You are dishonoring these soldiers with your petty argument.
A religion receives tax exempt status by submitting paperwork to the government claiming to be tax exempt as a 501(c)(3). This covers non-profit religious, charitable, scientific and other sorts of organizations. The government does not opine one way or the other as to whether any specific 501(c)(3) is a religion or not.
What is your issue with when Wicca began? Would you feel better if it was simply called Paganism?
There is existing paganism in the world today, as practiced in Africa, Micronesia, etc. It bears almost no relation to Wicca.
Why not simply tell the truth and say: "Wicca is religion invented in the 1950s by Gerald Gardner."
Wicca is a denomination thereof.
Paganism is not organized into denominations. That is a retrojection of Christianity onto a religion which never possessed such a concept.
Unless you're Catholic, your denomination didn't begin in 30AD. You plan on holding that against Protestants?
Well, as a Catholic, I don't much hold it against Protestants. I do find it amusing when certain individual Protestants claim that their particular denomination always existed from the beginning of Christianity and was just in hiding until it popped up on the historical map a millenium later.
But Protestants usually acknowledge the historical origin of their religion: Lutherans acknowledge Luther, Calvinists and Presbyterians acknowledge Calvinism and his presbyteral form of church government, etc.
If you don't have an issue with what symbol they use, why don't you honor the sacrifice of the soldier, get off your timeline soapbox, and go on with your life?
Because I want to point out to those who take this decision by the military as some kind of affirmation of Wicca's bizarrely ahistorical claims that this decision is not a validation of the authenticity of those claims.
You are dishonoring these soldiers with your petty argument.
I'm dishonoring no one. You're getting emotional for no reason.