An update to this post.

Army took the passive aggressive route and let his contract expire before saying yes or no. So he and his glorious beard are out.

Good dude, bearded redneck as fuck, good solider, good PSYOP solider even, multiple deployments, with multiple awards, including an ARCOM with V (which should have been a BSM with V but E-5's don't get BSM's you know), and solid leader.

He's exactly the kind of soldier the Army (on paper) should want to retain, promote, and use to train future soldiers...

But since he's not Muslim, Jewish, Pagan, Heathen, or taken the Nazarene vow, they Army opted to shrug it's collective shoulders and adopt the attitude of "well if he doesn't want to be here on our terms, we'll just replace him with another cog".

Or even worse, they couldn't be bothered to make a decision either way. They didn't actually say no, after all, they just kept saying "we are working on it" and his ETS paperwork came through before they "got done working on it".