Miracle? or Mirage? Veracity? or Falsity?

Brooke Rollins [born 1972] is the 33rd U.S. Secretary of Agriculture, a Texas A&M University graduate with a degree in agricultural development, and a graduate of the University of Texas School of Law. She was sworn in by Justice Clarence Thomas on February 13, 2025, following Senate confirmation by a 72-28 vote.

The Christian Post reported last week that the National Federation of Federal Employees and seven USDA employees filed suit in federal court on May 13, 2026, alleging that Rollins used official agency-wide communications to send ‘proselytizing Christian’ Easter and Christmas messages to USDA employees.¹ The plaintiffs seek a declaration that the practice is unconstitutional, along with an injunction barring future messages.

Our best guess is that Justice Thomas was no random ceremonial choice for the Secretary. He represents the originalist wing of the Court and stands as perhaps the clearest living rebuke to the radical secularized overreach of the Warren Court [1953-1969], which Georgetown Law professor David Luban described as “not just the most liberal Supreme Court in American history, but arguably the only liberal Supreme Court in American history.”

For Rollins - a Texas conservative, former aide to Texas Governor Rick Perry in policy and legal counsel, former Trump domestic-policy official, and outspoken Evangelical Christian - being sworn in by Justice Thomas was meant to send a signal. Her swearing-in marked her entry into office under the banner of constitutional originalism and moral seriousness, establishing a marker against the century-old secular-progressive, cradle-to-grave, profane administrative nanny state.

At its deepest level in America, the culture war is a clash between 1776 and 1789, between the Founders’ Bible-based Revolution and the unhallowed heirs of the French Revolution. It is, ultimately, a war between the eternal and immutable God Jehovah and the transient, mutable golden calf of religious secularism.

Os Guinness defined it perfectly in a 2017 conversation with Albert Mohler: “The culture war now at its deepest roots is actually a clash between 1776, what was the American Revolution, and 1789 and the heirs of the French Revolution.” In other words, Guinness connected the contemporary clash over political correctness, the sexual revolution of the 1960s, and the sweeping repudiation of the Founders’ inherited moral order, instituted through the 17th and 18th centuries, to a deeper war between Biblical liberty and secular sedition.

The outlandish lawsuit against Rollins is not really about protecting conscience. It is about policing which faith may officially speak in America’s public square and, by doing so, bullying Evangelical and pro-life Catholic Christians into staying hidden behind the four walls of the church building. Secularism may catechize federal bureaucrats and state-sponsored public education around the clock, but let a Cabinet secretary say “He is Risen” and suddenly the Republic is said to be in imminent peril.

In reality, the modern schoolhouse did not stop teaching ultimate beliefs in the mid-1960s. It simply exchanged a Biblical moral order for a set of secular notions - from Scripture, sin, virtue, duty, and God to self-centeredness, self-expression, progression, behaviorism, and the omnipotence of the State.

Until roughly the last 50 to 75 years, the American government was never religiously mute. From Washington’s Thanksgiving Proclamation to Lincoln’s Second Inaugural to legislative prayer, the nation’s constitutional order has always distinguished between coercing belief and acknowledging God. The former is prohibited. The latter was woven into the Republic’s warp and woof by America’s Founders.

In the lawsuit now aimed at Secretary Rollins’ Easter and Christmas messages, the deeper conflict is precisely this: whether America will be governed by the constitutional world of 1776, where rights come from the Creator and government is restrained by moral law, or by the secular Left’s revolutionary phantasm of 1789, where man is enthroned, God is exiled, and the State becomes the final arbiter of truth.

As proof for the latter it again may be repeated that

∞ prayer to Jehovah was banished from public schools in 1962 [Engel v. Vitale];

∞ the Bible was driven from public education in 1963 [Abington School District v. Schempp];

∞ a constitutional ‘right’ to kill unborn children was discovered in 1973 [Roe v. Wade];

∞ the public display of the Ten Commandments in public-school classrooms was prohibited in 1980 [Stone v. Graham];

∞ homosexual intercourse and same-sex marriage were exalted, normalized, and canonized into law in 2015 [Obergefell v. Hodges];

∞ ‘special rights’ for homosexuals and transgenders were officially proclaimed in 2020 [Bostock v. Clayton County].

Os Guinness had it right: at its deepest level, the culture war is a clash between 1776 and 1789, between the American Revolution and the scions of the French Revolution.

What the Rollins lawsuit has done is bring that war into view. The clash between 1776 and 1789 - between the Living God and the man-made god of secularism - has long been waged in faculty lounges, federal agencies, law schools, and appellate courts.

Now it stands in the open, stripped of its academic camouflage: a naked contest over who will command the public square, define America’s moral vocabulary, and control the cultural levers of power.

1776 gave us the miracle of a republic under God, with rights anchored in the Creator and government restrained by moral law.

1789 gave us the mirage of a secular state remaking man, society, and public life in its own image.

Miracle or Mirage. Veracity or Falsity.

That is why “He is Risen” now provokes litigation.

The issue is not really about proselytizing. The issue is sovereignty. Will God be acknowledged as the source of liberty, or will the State claim final authority over the public square?

And now, in the face of that question, a Rahab has stood - a woman inside the walls who recognizes where true sovereignty rests and refuses to bow before the pet subjects of the age.

David Lane

American Renewal Project

1. www.christianpost.com/news/employees-sue-usda-brooke-rollins-over-proselytizing-emails.html?utm_source=Daily&utm_campaign=Daily&utm_medium=newsletter