Fighting Back the Growing Threat of Christian Nationalism
The Trump administration is imposing Christianity on 100,000 federal employees. Americans United is fighting back. So must we.
I have written before about what happens when government decides to meddle in religion—nothing good.
Last month I covered the case of Liz and Gabe Rutan-Ram—a Jewish couple denied the right to adopt a child through a taxpayer-funded Tennessee agency simply because of their faith. I traced this line of indefensible bigotry and antisemitism from General Grant’s 1862 expulsion of Jewish families from the Tennessee District all the way to 2026 in the State of Tennessee. And I argued then what I will argue again now: the principle that makes America worth defending is not any particular religion. It is the constitutional guarantee that the government belongs to people of all faiths—and no faith—equally.
That principle is under direct assault. And this time, the attack is coming from inside the federal government itself. This lawsuit involving the USDA won’t make headline news, but its implications are national if we lose this fight. Let’s Address This.
What Brooke Rollins Did—And Why It Matters
Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins emailed more than 100,000 USDA employees declaring that Jesus has risen from the dead and referred to Christianity as “Our Faith.”
Read that again. A cabinet official of the United States federal government, whose salary is paid by taxpayers of every faith and no faith—sent a mass communication to her entire workforce declaring a specific religious belief system to be our faith. Not her faith. Our faith. As if the tens of thousands of Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, atheist, agnostic, and otherwise non-Christian federal employees who received that email were somehow included in that “our.” As if the Constitution’s Establishment Clause did not exist.
It does exist. And Americans United for Separation of Church and State—the organization I have been proud to work alongside before—is now suing the Department of Agriculture and Secretary Rollins to defend it.
The Lawsuit
The lawsuit, filed in the Northern District of California, was brought by Americans United for Separation of Church and State, Democracy Forward, and Bryan Schwartz Law. The plaintiffs are seven federal workers and the National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE)—which represents 110,000 federal employees nationwide.
The legal claims are clear and grounded: Secretary Rollins’ actions violate both the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause—the constitutional prohibition against the government establishing or favoring a particular religion—and the Administrative Procedure Act.
But the lawsuit makes clear that this is not about one email. It is about a pattern.
Plaintiffs describe a broader, coordinated imposition of Christianity across federal agencies—including government-sponsored prayer services, Christian Nationalist messaging on official agency social media accounts, and proselytizing during work hours. All of it funded by your tax dollars. All of it directed at federal employees who had no choice but to receive it as part of their official workplace communications.
This is not an accident. It is a policy. And it is one of the most brazen violations of church-state separation in modern federal government history.
This Is Not Religious Freedom. It Is Religious Imposition.
As a human rights lawyer, I want to be precise about something, because this distinction matters enormously.
The First Amendment protects the right of every American to practice their faith freely, without government interference. Secretary Rollins is entirely free to believe that Jesus has risen from the dead. She is free to worship, to pray, to observe every tenet of her Christian faith in her private life and in her personal capacity.
What she is not free to do—what no government official is free to do—is use the power and resources of a federal agency to declare that Christianity is the shared faith of 100,000 employees who never consented to that declaration.
As I wrote in my piece on the Rutan-Ram case, religious freedom and religious imposition are not the same thing. One protects conscience. The other violates it. When the government uses public resources to advance a particular religious worldview, it is not protecting religious liberty. It is destroying it. For every employee who does not share that worldview, for every taxpayer whose dollars fund that imposition, and for every American who relies on the constitutional promise that their government serves all of them equally.
The Founders understood this. That is precisely why they built the Establishment Clause into the First Amendment. They had lived under governments that conflated religious authority with state power, and they knew where that path led. They built a wall between church and state not to diminish religion, but to protect it. And to protect every American, regardless of belief, from government-sponsored religious coercion.
Brooke Rollins tore a hole in that wall. Americans United is here to rebuild it.
Because beyond Rollins, this is a pattern. We have also seen this in the federal workplace prayer services organized by the Departments of Labor and Defense. This is why Americans United has already filed two federal FOIA lawsuits against those agencies to investigate the scope of those services and who is funding them. We have seen it in Christian Nationalist messaging appearing on official federal agency social media accounts. We have seen it in the systematic dismantling of programs designed to protect the rights of religious minorities, LGBTQ Americans, and anyone else who does not fit the preferred demographic profile of this administration’s ideological vision.
This Lawsuit Matters for Everyone
I want to speak directly to readers of every faith and no faith, because this case belongs to all of us.
If you are Christian, this lawsuit does not threaten your faith. It protects it. A government empowered to impose Christianity today is a government empowered to impose any particular strain of Christianity tomorrow—or to turn against your denomination, your interpretation, your community, the moment a different faction seizes power. The wall between church and state protects Christians too.
If you are Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, Buddhist, atheist, agnostic, or anything else—you already know what it feels like when the government signals that your faith, or your absence of faith, makes you a second-class participant in public life. This lawsuit is for you.
So how do we act to stop this onslaught of our rights?
What You Can Do
Americans United for Separation of Church and State is one of the few organizations in this country dedicated solely to defending the separation of church and state. They represented the Rutan-Rams in Tennessee. They are now representing seven federal workers and 110,000 union members in this new lawsuit against the USDA. They do this work on behalf of all of us. Here are three easy (and free) ways you can help.
Tell your story. If you or someone you know has experienced state-based or workplace religious discrimination, report it to Americans United directly here.
Share this article. Corporate media may cover this lawsuit as a procedural story. We must ensure people understand what is really at stake—not just one email, but the constitutional principle that protects every American’s freedom of conscience.
The Line We Cannot Afford to Cross
We are watching a federal cabinet secretary use the full institutional weight of her office to declare, to 100,000 employees, that one faith is our faith. We are watching prayer services organized across federal agencies. We are watching Christian Nationalist ideology embedded into official government communications. I reflect on this in the backdrop of the unanimously Senate Ratified Treaty of Tripoli, signed by President Adams, of which Article II declares, “The government of the United States of America is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.”
Constitutional principles are not self-executing. They depend on people willing to defend them—in the courts, in the public square, and in the court of public opinion.
Americans United is doing that work in the courts. I am doing it here in the public square. And I am asking you to do it by sharing this piece, supporting this lawsuit, and refusing to accept the slow normalization of what is happening, to ensure we continue to win the court of public opinion.
Because if we allow the government to declare “Our Faith” to its employees today, we will spend the rest of our lives wondering what it will declare tomorrow.
That is a line a just society cannot afford to cross.
My gratitude to Americans United for Separation of Church and State for their relentless defense of the constitutional principle that protects us all. Learn more and support their work at au.org.
Qasim Rashid is a human rights attorney, author, and host of Let’s Address This — a platform dedicated to human rights, religious freedom, and the accountability that corporate media refuses to deliver. Subscribe, share, and let’s remain relentless in our mission for a more perfect Union
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Hands down, the most misguided and delusional administration in American history.
I don’t believe it is possible to have a country where the entire population is one religious faith, with the possible exception of the Vatican, unless it is a repressive dictatorship.