Jesus is coming back — to the walls of the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy.
In a sharp reversal of the Biden administration’s campaign to scrub religious symbols from public institutions, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced last week that a painting of Jesus covered up in 2023 would be restored to public view. The announcement drew cheers from merchant mariners gathered at the academy.
Under the previous administration, erasing Jesus from the walls was just the beginning. But that all changed the moment President Trump took office.
The painting, titled “Christ on the Water,” dates to the 1940s and was created to honor mariners lost at sea during World War II. But in early 2023, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation sent a letter to then-Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, calling the artwork a “sectarian painting illustrating the supremacy of Jesus Christ” and demanding that it be removed as an unconstitutional endorsement of religion.
Naturally, Buttigieg complied. Joanna Nunan, the academy superintendent — whose biography boasted of her efforts to expand “diversity and inclusion” in the Coast Guard and Merchant Marine — ordered the painting covered.
U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and then-Rep. Jim Banks (R-Ind.) slammed Nunan for her “flawed understanding” of the First Amendment and called on the academy to keep the painting on display. At the time, academy midshipmen warned that “woke” ideology had “seeped into the school” — and that its spread had only accelerated under Biden and Buttigieg.
Duffy’s announcement marks a clear break from that era and shows just how dramatically things have shifted under President Trump.
Last week’s announcement isn’t the only recent move by the administration to defend America’s religious heritage.
Earlier this month, U.S. Secretary of Veterans Affairs Doug Collins announced that his office intervened to stop a speech code threatening chaplains at a Pennsylvania VA hospital.
The action came after First Liberty Institute and the Independence Law Center sent a letter to Collins on behalf of Chaplain Rusty Trubey. An Army Reserve chaplain, veteran, and former missionary, Trubey has served at the Coatesville VA Medical Center for nearly a decade.
In June 2024, as part of his regular duties, Trubey led a chapel service and preached from the first chapter of Romans. After the service, while cleaning up, he was approached by a VA police officer who said complaints had been filed about his sermon.
After the incident, the VA removed Chaplain Trubey from his duties, launched a months-long investigation, and threatened to mark his permanent record. Though the VA eventually dropped the reprimand, his supervisor pushed to impose a sermon review process and revise the Chaplain SOP and Performance Plan to limit what topics chaplains could preach on. Had those changes taken effect, chaplains could have faced punishment for preaching in accordance with their religious convictions.
Secretary Collins reversed course, stating clearly: “There is no national or local policy or standard operating procedure which inhibits Chaplain sermons. To the extent that there have been any proposed changes to any existing policy, those proposals will not move forward and have been rescinded.”
He emphasized, “It is undisputed and well-settled law that constitutional protections and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act safeguard statements made by all VA chaplains while delivering sermons in line with their ecclesiastical endorsers.”
Under the previous administration, erasing Jesus from the walls was just the beginning. Erasing faith from the pulpit soon followed. We can only imagine what the landscape would look like if the November election had gone the other way.
But that all changed the moment President Trump took office.
In his first days, Trump issued executive orders to restore religious liberty and end the weaponization of the federal government against political dissent — a tactic increasingly common in the left’s push to enforce its woke ideology. From the start, the administration made clear that faith would not be silenced.
That mission hasn’t let up. The fight to restore our first freedom has been relentless.
And to that, many Americans say amen.
