Christianity’s Steady Creep Into the U.S. Federal Workplace Under the Second Trump Administration
On Easter Sunday 2025, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Brooke Rollins sent an agency-wide mass email with the subject line “He has risen!” In the note, Rollins called the story of Jesus Christ “the greatest story ever told, the foundation of our faith, and the abiding hope of all mankind.”
One USDA employee described the communication as “grotesque,” telling WIRED the awkward wording led them to suspect it had been generated by artificial intelligence.
“This has never happened before,” said the employee, who, like all other workers interviewed for this story, requested anonymity over fears of professional retaliation. “I have never gotten a message like this from anyone in agency leadership.” The employee added that even military chaplains—for whom faith is a core part of their official job—would not normally distribute such an overtly religious message to all personnel.
The email prompted a formal internal complaint to the U.S. Office of Special Counsel filed by USDA employee Ethan Roberts, who also serves as president of a local federal employee union. According to CNN, Roberts alleges the message “eroded the separation of church and state.”
“The secretary is within her rights to send a message to employees and the public on the Easter holiday. Just like secretaries of agriculture and presidents have in the past,” a USDA spokesperson told WIRED in response to questions about the incident.
USDA is not the only federal agency pushing overtly religious rhetoric in official government spaces. Since Donald Trump’s return to the presidency, federal employees across the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Small Business Administration (SBA), and Department of Labor (DOL) have raised alarms about the growing normalization of Christianity in day-to-day government operations.
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vittoria89.82. |On February 7, 2025, Trump signed an executive order formally establishing the White House Faith Office, along with parallel faith-focused offices across every major federal agency. The White House office is led by Paula White-Cain, a prominent pastor and televangelist known for her controversial public prayers throughout Trump’s past presidential campaigns.
In the months since the executive order was signed, faith offices have launched across agencies, and explicitly Christian practice has become increasingly visible in federal workplace culture. A July 2025 memo from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), titled “Protecting Religious Expression in the Federal Workplace,” allows federal employees to proselytize to their colleagues, as long as efforts to “persuade others of the correctness of their own religious views” do not cross the line into unlawful harassment. The memo also explicitly permits staff to “encourage” their coworkers “to participate in religious expressions of faith, such as prayer.” When contacted for comment, an OPM spokesperson directed WIRED to the full text of the July 2025 memo.
At the Department of Labor, Kenneth Wolfe, director of the agency’s new faith center, hosts monthly formal worship services for staff. One anonymous DOL employee told WIRED the regular prayer gatherings are “very abnormal.”
“Generally, people who are working for the government understand that their job is to work on behalf of all Americans,” they said. “And this is something very different. This is very explicitly Christian, and even within the realm of Christianity, a very narrow representation of that.”
On January 12, Alveda King—niece of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., former Georgia state representative, and senior advisor for faith and community outreach at USDA—addressed DOL’s monthly worship service, telling attendees: “We have different denominations, different faiths, and some have no faith—and those are the ones I would be more concerned about.”
“People are uncomfortable. I know several who are offended and angry,” the DOL employee said. “These [worship services] are very Christian in nature.”
On February 11, DOL hosted pastor Leon Benjamin, who leads two U.S. churches and previously ran for Congress as a Republican, to speak at the monthly prayer gathering. “The word labor is actually mentioned in the Bible 100 times … But the word work is mentioned—which is labor—800 times,” Benjamin told attendees. “So you guys, you have your work cut out for you in getting America to understand that this is something that God expects us to do.”
“I've thought about complaining, but I would worry about some form of retaliation if I were to do that, to be honest,” the first DOL employee said. Their fear is backed by recent federal workforce data: in 2025, only 22.5 percent of federal workers reported believing they could report misconduct without fear of retaliation, a sharp drop from 71.9 percent in 2024.
A second anonymous DOL employee, also granted anonymity over retaliation fears, said the religious focus has left the agency with a toxic cultural vibe that most staff resent.
“They always spend a lot of time carrying on like, ‘No one's forcing you to pray, these are voluntary,’” the employee said. “But it's happening in the middle of a government workplace.” They added that they were particularly troubled by King’s comments about atheists and non-religious people, saying King implied non-believers are destined for hell.
“People have a choice what to believe and what to doubt,” King told WIRED in response to a request for comment. "While I do believe in heaven and hell, I am not the judge of souls. I'm only a bearer of the good news of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”
DOL spokesperson Courtney Parella said that “the department hosted uplifting and voluntary nondenominational prayer services. Those who weren’t interested simply continued their day. Our team continues advancing the president’s agenda to support the American worker.”
On March 12, the Small Business Administration also invited King to speak at a “newly launched Faith and Fellowship Prayer Service,” according to an internal email sent to all SBA staff by Janna Bowman.
“I definitely thought it was weird and a bit uncomfortable and that’s the vibe I got from my colleagues as well,” an anonymous SBA employee told WIRED. “Honestly, I don’t know anyone who actually went to them because they are optional but it’s still uncomfortable to know that there’s a Christian prayer service happening in a government building, which is supposed to be religiously neutral.”
The employee added that internal instructions warned staff not to share the event invitation or a recording of King’s speech with anyone outside the agency, and noted no such faith services were offered during the Biden administration.
“SBA is proud to offer optional monthly prayer services to all employees and continues to leverage its new Office of Faith to increase outreach to religious Americans, who were openly targeted and attacked during the Biden administration,” said SBA spokesperson Maggie Clemmons. “This administration strongly supports religious freedom and will continue to defend those who wish to celebrate their faith.”
At the Department of Health and Human Services, employees have reported a persistent religious undercurrent running through agency policy and culture under Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Last year, HHS issued full support for religious exemptions to vaccine requirements; in February 2025, the agency announced expanded funding for “faith-based” addiction treatment programs. In his public announcement of the funding expansion, Kennedy called addiction a “spiritual disease.”
Kennedy recently authorized all HHS employees to leave work early on April 3 “in observance of Good Friday,” according to an internal email reviewed by WIRED. “From executive orders to agency-wide directives to even early dismissal emails, it is abundantly clear that this administration is not so much proudly Christian as it is belligerently so,” said one anonymous HHS employee, granted anonymity over fears of retaliation. “There exists a clear throughline of transgressive delight in violating the separation of church and state, of a similar corruptive mindset as the joy they take in forcing our agency to reduce services to the public whose mission it is for us to serve.”
“HHS supports a range of evidence-based and community-informed approaches, including partnerships with faith-based and community organizations, consistent with federal law,” HHS spokesperson Emily Hilliard told WIRED.
The push to integrate religion into government work is most visible at the Department of Defense (DOD). Under Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, the Pentagon hosts monthly public prayer services featuring high-profile evangelical leaders including Franklin Graham, his son Edward Graham, and Doug Wilson, a self-identified Christian nationalist preacher who has publicly argued for the establishment of a Christian theocracy and has claimed women should lose the right to vote.
In a pre-Christmas sermon delivered at the Pentagon, Franklin Graham told service members that “God is also a god of war.” On this year’s Good Friday, DOD hosted a prayer service open only to Protestant Christians. A Pentagon spokesperson later told HuffPost that the service’s planned Catholic priest was out of town for the holiday. Hegseth has repeatedly framed the ongoing U.S. war in Iran as a “holy war,” calling Iranians “barbaric savages” and urging Americans to pray for victory “in the name of Jesus Christ.”
Hegseth, who is known for his controversial religious tattoos, attends a congregation affiliated with the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC), an ultra-conservative denominational network co-founded by Wilson. His congregation’s lead pastor, Brooks Potteiger, has also spoken at the Pentagon. Last month, while appearing on a podcast, Potteiger called for Texas Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico to be “crucified with Christ.”
“Prayer services at the Pentagon are 100 percent voluntary and are not mandated whatsoever,” DOD press secretary Kingsley Wilson told WIRED in response to a request for comment. “Anyone at the Pentagon is welcome to attend. It is not against the law to worship Christ voluntarily anywhere in the United States.” Wilson added that Hegseth is a “proud Christian” and that the Pentagon does not consider the prayer services to violate the constitutional separation of church and state.
While presidents from both major U.S. political parties have long participated in mainstream national religious events such as the annual National Prayer Breakfast, Don Moynihan, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan, says the current integration of Christianity into routine federal workplace operations represents an unprecedented shift.
“The Trump administration has opened a new chapter in the integration of Christianity into the daily work of government,” Moynihan said.
Leah Feiger contributed reporting.
