Brooke Rollins, US agriculture secretary, speaks to members of the media outside the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Friday, March 27, 2026.
Aaron Schwartz | Sipa | Bloomberg | Getty Images
U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins sent USDA staff an Easter email that emphasized the story of Jesus being crucified and resurrected, a message that some Christians said alienated them for its overt religiosity.
“Happy Easter — He is Risen indeed,” Rollins wrote in the email sent on Good Friday, which CNBC has reviewed and was first to report.
“From the foot of the Cross on Good Friday to the stone rolled away from the now empty tomb, sin has been destroyed,” Rollins wrote.
“Jesus has been raised from the dead. And God has granted each of us victory and new life. And where there is life — risen life — there is hope.”
The email included an illustration of a round stone rolled away from the entrance to Jesus’ tomb, with the words “Christ is Risen” written above the image.
A USDA staffer who spoke to CNBC said the email was offensive to them as a devout Christian, and as a department employee who works “with people of other faiths, Muslims, Hindus.”
The staffer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were worried about retaliation, said other USDA employees also were offended by Rollins’ message.
“People are not on board for her sort of brand from a Christian nationalist perspective,” the staffer said. “It misses the mark from a lot of angles.”
“I find it blasphemous, actually, because it’s contrasting Jesus’ message,” they said.
Asked for comment about Rollins’ email and reaction to it, a USDA spokesperson, in an email to CNBC, said, “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.”
The email was the subject of a thread on the social media site Reddit, where one commentator wrote, “I am a fed and a Christian and fully offended by this crap!!! It makes me want to puke how they use Christ as an excuse to behave so badly.”
Another commentator wrote: “Christ is Risen indeed. But, that’s as a Lutheran that I say that.”
“It’s disgraceful to advocate religion as a civil servant,” that commentator wrote. “My faith guides my life, it is immaterial for the service I provide as a government employee and I would be doing a disservice to the Warfigthers who believe differently than me if I were to actively advocate for Christianity.
Rollins, in an interview with the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association’s Decision magazine published in June 2025, said, “God’s hand has been the driving force in everything I’ve ever done. God has been, for as long as I can remember, such a massive part of everything, even in times when I didn’t really want to.”
The interview was headlined: “Q&A with Brooke Rollins: Fighting for the Soul of America: USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins builds policy on Biblical teaching.”
“Through all the years — as an agricultural major at Texas A&M and then earning a law degree at the University of Texas, I really thought I’d end up at seminary and be a youth minister, that’s where my heart was,” Rollins said in the interview.
In the same interview, Rollins talked about her participation in studying the Bible with other Cabinet members.
Asked if there was a passage from the Bible that she often thinks about, Rollins replied, “Right now, the one that’s really speaking to me is Romans 13:12, putting on the armor of light.”
“And I feel that very sincerely. There is just a lot of darkness — not with this White House or my current boss, President Trump, or our Cabinet, but with government in general, and with the other side fighting for the soul of America,” she said.
On Monday, President Donald Trump told reporters that he believed God supports the U.S. against Iran, which is predominantly Shiite Muslim.
“I do, because God is good,” Trump said at the White House in response to a reporter’s question. “And God wants to see people taken care of.”
At the same briefing, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had compared the rescue of a downed U.S. airman in Iran to the story of Jesus’s resurrection.
“You see, shot down on a Friday, Good Friday; hidden in a cave, a crevice, all of Saturday; and rescued on Sunday,” Hegseth said. “Flown out of Iran as the sun was rising on Easter Sunday, a pilot reborn.”
On Easter Sunday, Trump, in a Truth Social post, had warned Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz or “you’ll be living in Hell — JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah.”
Allah is the Arabic name for God in Islam.
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt opened a briefing on March 30 by telling reporters, “Could you hear our ‘amen’ in there?, We just had a little loud prayer as a team.”
