Trump Secretary of State Pick Is Part of Secret, Global Christian Network

Sen. Marco Rubio has helped the group advance right-wing theocracy in other countries

You can read this article in tomorrow’s TFN newsletter by becoming a free subscriber or read it now by becoming a paid subscriber. Thanks for your support!

---

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), right, with Ukrainian evangelical prayer breakfast leader Pavlo Unguryan in an undated photograph posted online last year. (Uncredited photo / Facebook.)

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), reportedly America’s next top diplomat, has for years been a member of a secretive Christian organization that leverages Washington connections to cultivate right-wing networks around the world.

Reports have named Rubio as President-elect Donald Trump’s choice to run the State Department. His diplomatic experience already includes years as an insider at the Fellowship Foundation, aka The Family, which runs the National Prayer Breakfast.

The Fellowship has conducted shadow diplomacy for decades, sometimes with positive outcomes, but more often backing antidemocratic movements and leaders overseas long before the Big Lie, which some Fellowship leaders and right-wing funders also supported.

The State Department has worked with The Fellowship discreetly in the past, especially in pursuit of peace deals. But having one of their own running the entire department would open new doors to boost The Fellowship’s global network and export its ideas about Jesus and The Bible under cover of the U.S. flag.

European groups have warned that The Fellowship uses prayer breakfasts to pull politicians rightward and whittle away LGBTQ+ and reproductive rights. For years, the Washington prayer breakfast was secretly bankrolled by Franklin Graham, as I revealed in 2021.

Just last year, The Fellowship paid to fly a member of Congress to Uganda, where he sided with Uganda’s president against global outrage over his new LGBTQ+ death penalty.

Pressed by Congressional Equality Caucus Chair Rep. Mark Pocan (D-WI), The Fellowship refused to disown the remarks or Uganda’s new law.

There’s no public record of how Rubio first entered The Fellowship. But I’ve pieced together details, including records I’ve obtained, of his connections to Fellowship insiders and his work with Fellowship allies overseas.