NOTE: This piece was originally published at our newsletter A Public Witness.
After five months of Christian worship services inside the headquarters building of the U.S. Department of Labor, the May service was quietly canceled following the ouster of Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer late last month amid allegations of sexual and financial misconduct. Meanwhile, the new practice of official government worship services in federal agencies recently spread to the Small Business Administration.
The controversial services at DoL, which have sparked a lawsuit and complaints from DoL employees, started in December after Chavez-DeRemer attended a similar service at the Pentagon in October. Inspired by that initiative, which Pete Hegseth started in May 2025, Chavez-DeRemer decided the DoL should also organize and host monthly services, which were branded each month as the “Secretary’s Prayer Service.”
“I thought that this would be something important for the Department of Labor,” she explained during the first service in December. “And as we celebrate 250 years in 2026, [this country] will probably need a little more prayer.”
The services, which have been explicitly Christian, have centered a Catholic approach to faith, prayer, and Scripture. Chavez-DeRemer and the leaders of the DoL’s new Center for Faith are Catholic. Guest preachers have criticized nonbelievers, argued that DoL employees are working for God and Trump, and evangelistically urged employees to follow Jesus. (I reported on all five services, each time being the only reporter to watch and write about the service.)
The services occurred in the Cesar Chavez Memorial Auditorium of the DoL headquarters in Washington, D.C., though the April event instead referred to the room as the FPB Auditorium (for Francis Perkins Building) after an explosive New York Times exposé of allegations of sexual abuse and rape committed by the late labor activist Cesar Chavez. DoL leaders reacted to the news by removing a portrait of Chavez and hanging an American flag over the engraving of his name outside the auditorium. Meanwhile, a massive banner of President Donald Trump, who has also been accused of sexual abuse and rape by multiple women, still hangs on the outside of the Francis Perkins Building that serves as the DoL headquarters next to the National Mall.
A banner with an image of President Donald Trump hangs on the building of the U.S. Department of Labor in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 14, 2025. (Carolyn Kaster/Associated Press)
At the end of the service on April 8, DoL Center for Faith Director Kenneth Wolfe, who has led each service, announced that the next one would occur on May 13 with a sermon by Father James Searby of the Basilica of Saint Mary in Alexandria, Virginia.
In addition to a familiar liturgy and format during the services, the timing and promotion of them also followed a pattern each month. All five services were held on the second Wednesday of the month, which this month was May 13. Additionally, DoL employees each month received an email invite a week before, and fliers advertising the service were posted around the DoL headquarters building. None of these things have occurred in May. Officials in the DoL’s Center for Faith and Office of Pubic Affairs refused to comment or even acknowledge the service had been canceled.
Less than two weeks after the April service, DoL Secretary Chavez-DeRemer was ousted after just 13 months on the job. She had been dogged for months by various scandals, including allegations she was having an affair with a member of her security team and that she had used department resources for personal trips. Some of her top aides resigned during an investigation into her conduct and how they assisted her. Additionally, her husband was barred from the DoL headquarters in D.C. after at least two female DoL employees claimed he acted improperly toward them.
Trump has yet to nominate a new Labor secretary. In the meantime, Keith Sonderling is serving as acting secretary after being confirmed last year as deputy secretary under Chavez-DeRemer. Sonderling, who is Jewish and has spoken about the workplace discrimination his grandparents faced because of their faith, is largely seen as a policy wonk who was already running the main operations of the DoL while Chavez-DeRemer sought to be a figurehead who traveled.
Sonderling briefly spoke at the January worship service, which Chavez-DeRemer missed due to travels. He said that Chavez-DeRemer “envisioned [the service] as a time for people of all faiths to reflect and recenter amid our very busy schedules.”
“It’s important we all are here today to come together, to take a moment, to take a pause, to reflect on the work we’re doing and our mission here, which is, of course, putting the American worker first,” he added. “So regardless of your beliefs, we hope you leave here today feeling encouraged and reminded of the important role you all play in serving the American people.”
Although Sonderling spoke of bringing people together regardless of their beliefs, the service was entirely Christian and guest preacher Alveda King, an anti-abortion activist who serves as senior advisor on faith and community outreach for the U.S. Department of Agriculture in that agency’s Center for Faith, used her sermon to criticize those who are not religious.
While there wasn’t a worship service inside the DoL this week, the agency is helping promote the “worship” rally on the National Mall this Sunday that Trump announced to supposedly celebrate the 250th anniversary of the United States. DoL’s Center for Faith has an advertisement on its website for “Rededicate 250,” though it uses an image of George Washington praying in the snow at Valley Forge despite that being a myth. Additionally, Sonderling filmed a short social media video to encourage people to attend on Sunday. Other than one Trump-backing rabbi, all of the announced speakers are MAGA Christian politicians and preachers.
A poster (left) from the website of the Department of Labor’s Center for Faith and a screengrab (right) of a video of Acting Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling inviting people to attend Rededicate 250.
Small Business Administration Borrows the Idea
While the organizing and hosting of monthly worship services has been paused at DoL, such services continue at the Pentagon — with the May service, the first since Hegseth offered a violent prayer that borrowed from Pulp Fiction, planned for next week. Additionally, this trend has spread to at least one more federal agency.
Last month, Vittoria Elliott of Wired reported that the trend of government worship services had spread to the Small Business Administration. She noted they launched their “Faith and Fellowship Prayer Service” on March 12 with a sermon by Alveda King. An SBA employee told Wired that it made them “uncomfortable to know that there’s a Christian prayer service happening in a government building, which is supposed to be religiously neutral” and that “there were no faith services under Biden.” According to the SBA email inviting people to the service, they were told not to share it or the livestream link with people outside the agency.
“SBA is proud to offer optional monthly prayer services to all employees and continues to leverage its new Office of Faith to increase outreach to religious Americans, who were openly targeted and attacked during the Biden administration,” SBA spokesperson Maggie Clemmons told Wired. “This administration strongly supports religious freedom and will continue to defend those who wish to celebrate their faith.”
Help sustain the journalism of Word&Way by subscribing to A Public Witness!
Since the report by Wired, I’ve learned additional details not reported about the inaugural SBA worship service. During her sermon, King referred to Habakkuk 2:2, where God is recorded as saying, “Write the vision and make it plain.” She then applied that to how she thought SBA employees should do their jobs: “Keep making it plain. The red tape is too much. People can’t always comply. They don’t know how.”
Janna Bowman, director of Faith Outreach for the SBA and the head of the SBA’s Center for Faith, read a prayer of “general thanksgiving” from the Book of Common Prayer, a liturgical resource for worship in the Episcopal Church. The prayer includes declarations about Jesus and his death and resurrection: “Above all, we thank you for your Son Jesus Christ; for the truth of his Word and the example of his life; for his steadfast obedience, by which he overcame temptation; for his dying, through which he overcame death; and for his rising to life again, in which we are raised to the life of your kingdom.”
An SBA program analyst read Mathew 5:14-16, in the New King James Version, about Jesus’s followers being the light of the world. The passage is where the “city on a hill” language comes from, which is often co-opted by Christian Nationalist politicians to talk about the United States instead of the followers of Jesus. The service also included singing, such as when King and Bowman led those present in singing “This Little Light of Mine.” That’s King’s favorite anthem, which she often starts singing at events, including at DoL’s service in January and last week during a webinar hosted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Office of Partnerships and Public Engagement.
Screengrabs as Janna Bowman and Alveda King sing (left) and William Washington, an SBA program analyst, reads Scripture (right) during a March 12, 2026, service at the Small Business Administration.
Although the SBA said this would be a monthly effort, they did not answer my requests for comment about whether there had been a service in April or thus far in May. (Anyone with information about government worship services at SBA or other federal agencies can contact me by email or on Signal at BrianKaylor.12.)
Although the agency has not joined others in the Trump administration in posting numerous sectarian messages on social media, SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler, who briefly served as a U.S. senator from Georgia before losing to Rev. Raphael Warnock, has used her official accounts to do so. Earlier this month, she shared a social media message on the “National Day of Prayer” to encourage people to “offer daily prayers for our nation, leaders, military, and for God’s providence.” She attached to her prayer request a painting of the mythic moment of Washington supposedly praying at Valley Forge. Loeffler, who is Catholic, has also used her SBA accounts to share Scripture she heard in Mass and lessons from Trump-backing Catholic leaders. She quoted the Sermon on the Mount to call Trump a blessed peacemaker (a commonly misused verse in the administration) and on the anniversary of the assassination attempt of Trump in Pennsylvania, she invoked Ephesians 6:12 to suggest God saved Trump (based on an absurd reading of the verse number and a clock that I critiqued in The Bible According to Christian Nationalists).
Such sectarian messages are starting to face legal pushback. The worship services at the Pentagon and DoL have already sparked lawsuits from Americans United for Separation of Church and State (where I serve as vice chair of the national board of trustees). And yesterday (May 13), AU joined with Democracy Forward and Bryan Schwartz Law to file a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Agriculture on behalf of federal workers and the National Federation of Federal Employees. The suit focuses on sectarian messages by USAD Secretary Brooke Rollins, which the litigants insist violate the First Amendment and the Administrative Procedure Act.
“Trump is not Jesus, federal agencies are not churches, and cabinet secretaries are not government preachers,” AU President and CEO Rachel Laser said about the suit. “Secretary Rollins’s Easter message is a particularly egregious example of Trump administration officials abusing the power of public office to impose their beliefs on others and promote one narrow view of Christianity. And it’s only the tip of the iceberg. Across the federal government, this administration has misused taxpayer resources to preach, hold government-sponsored prayer services during work time, and broadcast Christian Nationalism on official social media channels. Not on our watch.”
As a public witness,
Brian Kaylor
By the way, during a trip to Washington, D.C., last month, I stopped by the Department of Labor headquarters in search of the “church” where they hold their monthly worship services. Here’s my short video report:
A Public Witness is a reader-supported publication of Word&Way. To receive new posts and support our journalism ministry, subscribe today.
