On Easter Sunday, US Department of Agriculture secretary Brooke Rollins sent out an email titled “He has risen!” to the entire agency. In the email, Rollins calls 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 called the email “grotesque” and said the wording made them think it had been written by AI.
“This has never happened before,” says the employee, who, like others WIRED spoke to for this article, was granted anonymity due to fear of retaliation. “I have never gotten a message like this from anyone.” The employee says that this behavior would not even be normal for military chaplains, for whom faith is part of their work.
The email sparked an internal complaint to the Office of Special Counsel by USDA employee Ethan Roberts. In his complaint, Roberts, who is also the president of a local union for federal employees, alleged that the email “eroded the separation of church and state,” according to CNN.
“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.
The USDA is not the only agency espousing overtly religious rhetoric: At the Department of Health and Human Services, the Small Business Administration, and the Department of Labor, federal employees have been alarmed to watch Christianity’s creep into the government since President Donald Trump’s return to office.
Got a Tip?Are you a current or former government employee who wants to talk about what's happening? We'd like to hear from you. Using a nonwork phone or computer, contact the reporter securely on Signal at vittoria89.82.On February 7, 2025, Trump signed an executive order establishing the official White House Faith Office as well as faith offices across government agencies. The White House Faith Office is led by Paula White-Cain, a pastor and televangelist known for her controversial invocations throughout Trump’s various presidential campaigns.
Since then, faith offices have sprung up across agencies, and Christianity has started appearing in office life. A July 2025 memo from the Office of Personnel Management titled “Protecting Religious Expression in the Federal Workplace” permits federal employees to essentially proselytize to their colleagues, so long as trying to “persuade others of the correctness of their own religious views” doesn’t cross the line into harassment. The memo also permits workers to “encourage” their colleagues “to participate in religious expressions of faith, such as prayer.” In response to a request for comment, an OPM spokesperson referred WIRED to the July 2025 memo.
At the Department of Labor, Kenneth Wolfe, the director of the agency’s faith center, hosts monthly worship services. A DOL employee, who spoke to WIRED on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, says that these prayer services are “very abnormal.”
“Generally, people who are working for the government understand that their job is to work on behalf of all Americans,” they say. “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, the niece of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., a former state representative from Georgia, and a senior adviser on faith and community outreach at the USDA, told DOL employees during a monthly worship service, “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 employee says. “These [worship services] are very Christian in nature.”
On February 11, the DOL hosted pastor Leon Benjamin, who runs two churches and previously ran for Congress as a Republican, to speak to employees during the monthly prayer service. “The word labor is actually mentioned in the Bible 100 times … But the word work is mentioned—which is labor—800 times,” said Benjamin. “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 employee says. Recent data shows that in 2025 only 22.5 percent of federal workers believed they could report wrongdoing without fear of retaliation, down from 71.9 percent in 2024.
Another DOL employee who spoke to WIRED, also on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, says that “the vibes are bad and people don’t like it,” with regard to the focus on religion.
“They always spend a lot of time carrying on like, ‘No one's forcing you to pray, these are voluntary,’” says the employee. “But it's happening in the middle of a government workplace.” The employee says they were particularly concerned about King’s comments concerning atheists and nonreligious people, saying they felt King had implied atheists are for sure going to hell.
“People have a choice what to believe; and what to doubt,” King told WIRED following 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 says 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 email sent to 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,” says an SBA employee who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. “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 says the emails instructed workers not to share the invitation or the link to a video of the service with anyone outside the agency. “There were no faith services under Biden,” says the SBA employee.
“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,” says SBA spokesperson Maggie Clemmons. “This administration strongly supports religious freedom and will continue to defend those who wish to celebrate their faith.”
At Health and Human Services, employees have felt a religious undercurrent throughout secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s reign at the agency. Last year, HHS lent full support to religious exemptions for vaccines; in February, the agency announced the expansion of funding for “faith-based” addiction treatments. In his announcement, Kennedy called addiction a “spiritual disease.”
Kennedy recently authorized HHS employees to leave work early on April 3 “in observance of Good Friday,” according to an email viewed 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,” says one HHS employee who was granted anonymity due to fear 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 tells WIRED.
The move towards religion in government has been most apparent at the Department of Defense. Under secretary of defense Pete Hegseth, the Pentagon has hosted a monthly prayer service featuring well-known evangelicals like Franklin Graham and his son Edward Graham, as well as Doug Wilson, a Christian Nationalist preacher who has argued for the establishment of a theocracy and said that women should lose the right to vote.
In a sermon delivered before Christmas, Franklin Graham told members of the military that “God is also a god of war.” On Good Friday, the DOD hosted a prayer service only for Protestants. A Pentagon spokesperson later told HuffPo that the “Pentagon Chaplain Office’s priest is not in town.” Hegseth has repeatedly framed the US war in Iran as a “holy war,” calling Iranians “barbaric savages” and called on Americans to pray for victory “in the name of Jesus Christ.”
Hegseth, who has controversial religious tattoos, attends a church that is part of the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC), a group of ultra-conservative congregations where Wilson is a cofounder. The church’s pastor, Brooks Potteiger, has also spoken at the Pentagon. (Last month, while speaking on a podcast, Potteiger called for James Talarico, the Texas Democratic nominee for Senate, 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 be a violation of the distinction between church and state.
While presidents from all parties have long attended religious events like the annual National Prayer Breakfast, Don Moynihan, a professor of public policy at the University of Michigan, says that this differs from the way religion—and specifically Christianity—is showing up in the federal workplace.
“The Trump administration has opened a new chapter in the integration of Christianity into the daily work of government,” says Moynihan.
Leah Feiger contributed reporting.
