Rubio Rankles Staff with Easter Proselytizing
Upset workers include one long-timer “outraged” at Christian messaging by Rubio and an official department account
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A State Department employee says some colleagues were upset by the department’s and Secretary Marco Rubio’s sectarian Easter messages.
On the X.com social-media platform, Rubio and the State Department’s official account shared the traditional Christian Easter exchange known as the Paschal greeting or Easter acclamation.
At 9am eastern time, Rubio posted on his account, “He is Risen.” Within seconds, the State Department responded, “He is Risen, Indeed!”
The State Department employee, a long-timer who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation, said they were “outraged” and told me that other workers expressed dismay when they learned about the posts.
Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF) Founder and President Mikey Weinstein, whose organization assists State Department workers in certain categories, called the posts “disgusting” and “repellent.”
The State Department did not immediately respond to my questions or request for comment. It is not the first government agency in which Trump administration officials have alarmed workers with sectarian proselytizing.
As I reported last month, the MRFF says it received complaints after some commanders characterized the Iran War as a holy war fulfilling biblical prophecy. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s proselytizing has become so overt it’s now drawing mainstream media attention.
Rubio’s post Sunday included a video of unclear origin that concluded with an image of the Great Seal of the United States, which is restricted by law for official use only. The audio, of Rubio speaking, appears to come from his remarks at last year’s memorial for Charlie Kirk.
The video does not disclose that Rubio was addressing Kirk’s Sept. 21, 2025, memorial event. The video overlays Rubio’s 2025 audio with some generic video and some explicitly Christian, a crown of thorns and crucifix.
The video does not include Rubio’s preceding comments, from 2025, in which he explained that this was what Kirk wanted people to believe. Here’s the text of the section of Rubio’s audio, which appears to be unedited, used in today’s video:
“[W]e were all created, every single one of us, before the beginning of time, by the hands of the God of the universe, an all-powerful God who loves us and created us for the purpose of living with Him in eternity. But then sin entered the world and separated us from our creator, and so God took on the form of a man and came down and lived among us, and He suffered like men and He died like a man. But on the third day He rose unlike any mortal man, and then [sic], and to prove any doubters wrong, He ate with His disciples so they could see. And they touched His wounds. He didn’t rise as a ghost or as a spirit, but as flesh. And then He rose to Heaven, but He promised He would return. And He will. And when He returns — because He took on that death, because He carried that cross, we were freed from the sin that separated us from Him — and when He returns, there will be a new Heaven and a new Earth, and we will all be together and we are going to have a great reunion there again…”
The video’s audio fades out just before Rubio says “…with Charlie and all the people we love.”
As Weinstein noted, the Constitution doesn’t just separate church and state, barring the government from respecting an establishment of religion. It also prohibits religious tests. Weinstein called the Easter greeting posts a “poster-child example” of a religious test and said they violate “a vast ocean” of regulations.
The centuries-old Easter greeting is believed to have originated from similar phrases in the New Testament. Its meaning goes beyond mere well wishes like “Merry Christmas” and “Happy Easter.”
Pres. Donald Trump campaigned against ecumenical seasonal messages, such as “Happy Holidays,” falsely implying that businesses were barred from naming specific holidays, like Christmas. He has falsely claimed his election led to people saying “Merry Christmas” again.
But the Easter greeting goes even further than “Merry Christmas.” While referring to specific Christian holidays can exclude non-Christians, the Easter greeting negates them. It’s an assertion that Christianity’s defining claims are factually correct.
The Christian Bible, in other words, is correct, according to the government. The implication is that other, conflicting religious beliefs are false.
Muslims and Jews, for instance, believe a messiah is yet to come. Some religions, not to mention secularists, don’t believe in messiahs at all.
But as of today, the State Department and its secretary have used their official platforms to declare that non-Christians have it wrong.
Accordingly, under Rubio, other religions don’t get the same treatment in their respective holiday wishes. For instance, the overlapping Passover holiday got no official statement that Judaism is correct.
Last week, on the first day of Passover, the State Department marked the holiday without parroting Jewish claims that Passover miracles were real. Instead, the agency said “We” share “their” — the Jewish people’s — hope for peace.
The “we” was apparently not Jewish people. The Passover post, unlike the Easter messages, was addressed “to all who celebrate.”
The Hebrew phrase “Chag Sameach” translates roughly as “Happy Holidays.”
And even some Christians are left out by today’s posts. Orthodox Christianity observes Easter this year on April 12, a week from today.
The longtime State Department employee told me, “I’m outraged at the blatant cooption of official USG [U.S. government] and especially Department of State channels to push a specific religious credo of belief.”
The employee described themselves as atheist, and said they were planning to enjoy a secular Easter brunch on Sunday. They said:
“It’s normal for State and diplomats to wish groups a happy religious or secular holiday from official accounts - that’s called being polite, respectful, and decent human beings. The difference here is that this isn’t offering a positive statement to believers of a certain group; it’s an explicit statement of faith, and that is grossly inappropriate for a federal employer to say officially, in official channels. Let alone for a federal agency to say that!”
Weinstein of the MRFF said:
“These violations clearly show a pernicious and pervasive pattern and practice of wholly illicit, immoral and unethical Christian nationalist exceptionalism, domination, superiority and triumphalism in abject defiance of this foundational aspect of our country’s Constitution.”
Rubio has a history of using his official positions to push his personal religious beliefs. But a member of Congress, which Rubio was, is typically understood to be speaking for themselves.
As the secretary of State, Rubio is America’s top diplomat, representing the entire nation on the world stage and leading a diplomatic corps that consists of people of every religious stripe, dealing with national governments both secular and of diverse religions.
Sixty-five percent of Americans identify as Christian. One out of three does not.
The State Department’s own Office of International Religious Freedom says it encourages governments to “to respect their international obligations to safeguard freedom of religion or belief. This includes reforming laws, [and] ending abusive or discriminatory practices…”
Rubio has in the past been active with the Fellowship Foundation, a private, secretive group that seeks to inject right-wing Christianity into politics. Rubio helped The Fellowship, also known as The Family, destroy a UN anti-corruption task force before it could zero in on Guatemala’s allegedly corrupt evangelical president.
The State Department last year erased Uganda’s LGBTQ+ death penalty from its annual human-rights report. The Fellowship abetted the new legislation.
Last April, in response to a Trump executive order, Rubio, who is Catholic, ordered department employees to report “anti-Christian bias.” There was no evidence of significant, let alone systemic, anti-Christian bias at the State Department or anywhere else in government.
Rubio’s order also condemned bias against other religions as discriminatory and unconstitutional, but acknowledged that Trump’s order “focuses on anti-Christian bias.”
Trump’s examples of putative anti-Christian bias under Pres. Joe Biden included things like not funding non-profits that refuse to serve LGBTQ+ people. (Funding was denied to any charity that discriminated against LGBTQ+ people, regardless of religious justification.)
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This is exactly why separation of church and state is imperative to maintain a democracy. Christianity is a death cult based on fiction preached as fact to separate its believers from their money and to control them.
I've become so much of a heathen that I didn't even know it was Easter until I turned the calendar page to April and happened to notice it written on the 5th. Regardless, as far as I'm concerned this "holiday" is about hard-boiled eggs, bunnies, and hollow chocolate figurines. BOY, was I pissed the first time I got a chocolate bunny and found out it was hollow! What kind of nonsense is that to do to a kid? Happy Bunny Day, everyone!