The U.S. State Department has released a 45-second video that mixes Jesus’ Great Commission to the church with American foreign policy.
The video is narrated by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who begins: “Our faith calls us outwards into the limitless darkness of the unknown. It tells us to go forth and preach the gospel to the world as a witness unto all nations unto the ends of the earth.”
Rubio is an advocate for Christian nationalism, the belief that America was founded as a “Christian nation” and evangelical Christians ought to run the government based on their religious views.
Marco Rubio (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
The opening line of the video is a direct reference to the Great Commission, recorded in the New Testament Gospels urging early Christians to go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature or to the ends of the earth.
Rubio then links this command of Jesus to American history: “From that command came America. Our nation, more than any other in history, was shaped by this Christian idea. This is who we are. And from the beginning, we have carried the belief that our country represents something new in the world. But the soul of our nation has always been rooted in an ancient faith.”
While Rubio’s display of Christian nationalism raised alarms with church-state separationists, it was praised by Focus on the Family.
“Critics of the State Department video object to Secretary Rubio’s emphasis on Christianity rather than giving equal attention to religious freedom for people of other faiths,” Focus said on its Daily Citizen website. “But such concern ignores reality. As the Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh wrote on X, “It is simply a matter of historical fact that the American government from its founding was expressly in the business of promoting, defending and promulgating Christianity. You might wish that had not been the case, but it was. And should still be.”
Walsh and others like him have been routinely and soundly criticized by historians and religious leaders for misrepresenting the nation’s founding.
Rubio’s taxpayer-funded video was created for International Religious Freedom Day, even though its focus was on the U.S.
Christian author Matthew Paul Turner shared the video on Instagram with his commentary: “The fact that our secretary of state is doing the voiceover of a video that very much puts America at the center of the gospel is so wildly inappropriate and so wildly incorrect. There’s so many things you could say that’s wrong about this, but this is where we are, and this is why y’all need to vote This is why we need some accountability.”
Focus on the Family, on the other hand, praised Rubio for his “principled pronouncement” and said the video demonstrates “why America remains the world’s leader in championing religious freedom.”