Federal officials openly violate the U.S. Constitution by pushing Christian messaging on citizens

Anne Landman Blog
By Anne Landman

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Sarah Sanders stands up to atheists after shutting down state offices to celebrate ’Christ the Savior’

LifeSite
By Charles Richards

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Sanders Defends Faith, Reassures Atheists Jesus Loves Them

Spreely News
By Erica Carlin

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Officials respond after religious decoration removed from SC school

ABC 15 News (Conway, SC)
By Alex Kesler

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Here’s an easy 2026 resolution for Oklahoma lawmakers: Stop creating do-nothing advisory boards

News From the States
By Janelle Stecklein

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FFRF has S.C. school district remove nativity scene door decorations

A holiday season door-decorating contest in South Carolina’s York School District 1 was not hijacked for religious purposes, thanks to the Freedom From Religion Foundation.

A concerned district community member informed the state/church watchdog that for Hunter Street Elementary School’s holiday door-decorating contest, one teacher displayed a Christian nativity scene on her door along with the verse, “For Unto Us A Savior Is Born.”

FFRF wrote to the district to make certain that this First Amendment violation was corrected.

“To protect students’ First Amendment rights, the district must ensure this display is removed, as well as any other religious displays it becomes aware of in its schools,” FFRF Patrick O’Reiley Legal Fellow Charlotte R. Gude stated in the letter. “The district cannot allow promotion of religion on the walls of its schools.”

The district breached the Constitution when it allowed its schools to display religious symbols or messages, FFRF emphasized. It is well settled that public schools may not show favoritism toward or coerce belief or participation in religion. By permitting the display of explicitly religious imagery and a message declaring Jesus was born for “us,” York School District 1 violated this basic constitutional prohibition by signaling clear favoritism toward religion over nonreligion, and Christianity over all other faiths.

Nearly a quarter of the state’s population is not Christian, with 16 percent identifying as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular,” FFRF points out.

Thankfully, it did not take long for the district to listen to FFRF and rectify its mistake.

Just two days after FFRF’s letter, Superintendent Heath Branham emailed back, confirming that action had been taken.

“The display referenced in your letter has been removed,” Branham wrote. “We appreciate you notifying us and consider the matter resolved.”

FFRF is proud to see its work make another school district a more welcoming place for all students.

“By using the door-decorating contest as a means to push her religion, one teacher turned a fun event into a proselytizing environment that signaled Christian students were favored over all others,” FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor says. “Young and impressionable elementary school students are a captive audience whose right to be free from religious indoctrination in the public school setting must be scrupulously honored.”

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a national nonprofit organization with 42,000 members across the country, including hundreds of members in South Carolina. Our purposes are to protect the constitutional principle of separation between state and church, and to educate the public on matters relating to nontheism.

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The Wall or the Cross: America at the Tipping Point

This Ain’t No Culture War
Eric Lane

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Freethought Radio – January 1, 2026

Actor, comedian and broadcaster John Fugelsang describes his new book, Separation of Church and Hate.

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Can students fail an assignment if they cite God? Not if Florida Republicans get their way.

Friendly Atheist
By Hemant Mehta

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Trump administration crosses constitutional line with sectarian Christmas messages

The Freedom From Religion Foundation lambastes a wave of sectarian Christmas messages issued from government accounts by top officials in the Trump administration.

Multiple federal agencies and cabinet officials used official social media accounts for persuading Americans to observe Christmas as an official religious celebration of “our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.” These posts crossed a clear constitutional line by using the authority and platforms of the federal government to promote Christianity and specific Christian doctrine.

The Department of Homeland Security posted messages declaring “Rejoice America, Christ is born!” and stating, “We are blessed to share a nation and a Savior,” accompanied by videos featuring overtly religious imagery, including of Jesus, a manger and crosses. The Department of Labor posted: “Let Earth Receive Her King.”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s official social media read: “The joyous message of Christmas is the hope of Eternal Life through Christ,” with a graphic of a star and manger scene and a quotation from Isaiah 9:6: “For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given.”

“Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth posted a message saying, “Today we celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. May his light bring peace, hope, and joy to you and your families,” with the words “Merry Christmas” emblazoned over an American flag.

President Trump’s official White House Christmas message likewise crossed a constitutional line by transforming a presidential greeting into a sermon. Instead of offering an inclusive holiday message to all Americans, the statement repeatedly advanced Christian doctrine as government speech, describing Jesus as “our Lord and Savior,” “the living Son of God” and “the source of eternal salvation,” while invoking prayer and divine favor for the nation.

FFRF notes that these messages represent a sharp departure from the longstanding practice of issuing neutral, inclusive holiday greetings that focus on widely shared cultural themes rather than religious doctrine. Christmas trees, winter scenes and general well wishes have traditionally allowed government agencies to acknowledge the holiday without endorsing a particular faith.

The Trump administration’s decision to abandon that tradition — from Cabinet agencies to the White House itself — reveals a calculated decision to pander to its Christian nationalist base by misusing government authority to endorse and support Christian doctrine.

“These posts are not harmless greetings,” says FFRF Co-President Annie Laurie Gaylor. “They send a message that the federal government aligns itself with Christianity and that Americans of other faiths, or of no faith at all, are outsiders in their own country. That is divisive, unconstitutional and un-American.”

Gaylor points out that the largest single “denomination” by religious identification today in the United States is the religiously unaffiliated, at 29 percent of the population larger than any one sect, including Roman Catholic (at 19 percent) or evangelical Protestants (at 23 percent). Christians today make up 62 percent of the population, compared to about 90 percent in the 1990s.

FFRF emphasizes that the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause exists precisely to prevent the government from favoring one religion over others or religion over nonreligion. Federal officials remain free to celebrate and express their personal religious beliefs on their own time and on their personal platforms. What they may not do is use official government channels to proselytize.

“The promise of church-state separation is what allows religious freedom to flourish for everyone,” Gaylor says. “When government officials forget that, they undermine the very constitutional values they are sworn to uphold.”

The Freedom From Religion Foundation calls on the Trump administration to immediately cease issuing sectarian religious messages from official government accounts and to reaffirm its obligation to serve all Americans, regardless of belief.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation is a U.S.-based nonprofit dedicated to defending the constitutional principle of separation between state and church and educating the public on matters relating to nontheism. With about 42,000 members, FFRF is the largest association of freethinkers (atheists, agnostics and humanists) in North America. For more information, visit ffrf.org.

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