Can Christian Charities Serve Both God and Trump?

The U.S. government and faith-based organizations have worked together since the dawn of the United States. The same Congress that prevented the government from endorsing or becoming too involved in religious activities through the First Amendment also set aside land for churches in the Northwest Territory, later Ohio, in the 1780s. Funds to support recently emancipated people after the Civil War were often channeled through Christian schools and agencies.

In the wake of World War II, faith-based relief organizations worked hand-in-hand with the U.S. government to deliver aid and address hunger, poverty, and displacement around the world. In the early 2000s, the George W. Bush administration created its “faith-based initiatives” program, which made religious social-service providers—including evangelical groups—institutionalized partners of the U.S. government.

But in his second term, President Donald Trump has quickly signaled a drastic shift in this relationship. In executive orders, Trump froze federal grants flowing to religious nonprofits; terminated refugee resettlement programs, most of which are run by religious organizations; and suspended foreign aid pending review. The Trump administration effectively dismantled the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), which partners with an array of religious charities and communities.

The administration’s efforts face legal challenges on multiple fronts. A federal judge in Washington ordered a temporarily lift to the funding freeze that halted U.S. foreign aid. Meanwhile, religious groups have challenged the administration’s cuts, arguing that they disproportionately harm vulnerable populations. In separate suits, multiple faith-based organizations have challenged what they say is the unlawful suspension of refugee resettlement programs.

Faith leaders fear that such measures are just the beginning of a larger realignment of the U.S. government’s relationship with religious groups toward an aggressive attitude of brute force and domination.

Education and church-state separation under Trump

In June 2024, Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry signed a law requiring Ten Commandments displays in that state’s public classrooms. At a press event the same day, Landry said, “If you want to respect the rule of law, you’ve got to start from the original lawgiver, which was Moses.” 

Critics say the law contradicts long-standing United States Supreme Court precedents. Those precedents include the 1980 Stone v. Graham decision, when SCOTUS ruled that a Kentucky law requiring a copy of the Ten Commandments in the state’s public classrooms was an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment’s establishment clause, which states that “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.”

Also in June, Oklahoma’s top education official ordered public schools there to incorporate the Bible into lessons, while the Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled unconstitutional what would have been the nation’s first state-funded Catholic charter school. Later, in November, Texas’ State Board of Education allowed Bible-infused teachings in elementary schools. Officials in other states have also been under pressure to introduce Bible lessons into state education curricula or to ban books and subjects related to race, sexual orientation and gender identification. Meanwhile, the case over whether an effort to establish the first taxpayer-funded charter school in Oklahoma can go ahead is headed to the Supreme Court.

Such moves have outraged civil rights and minority faith and values groups, such as Interfaith Alliance or the Freedom From Religion Foundation, which is part of a coalition suing Louisiana over its Ten Commandments law and which has taken action to block Bible lessons in Oklahoma. 

Though there is no U.S. federal law stopping public schools from including the Bible as part of children’s education — and the federal government, in turn, cannot mandate what states teach — opponents fear such initiatives not only violate the Constitution but are “part of a larger push to increase the presence of Christianity in the public sphere and to challenge constitutional protections for religious freedom.” 

In this edition of ReligionLink, we share relevant stories, sources and resources to help you report on the separation of church and state as it relates to education, Christian nationalism and parental rights in the U.S. 

Chaos and confusion: Faith-based nonprofits plan for uncertain futures at federal fund freezes

“It was chaos,” sighed Stacey Hall Burge, CEO of Found House Interfaith Housing Network, which provides emergency shelter and programs for families dealing with housing loss and insecurity in the Cincinnati area.

“From Monday to Friday, we had no specifics, no clarity,” said Burge, recounting the past week at her organization. “There are rents and supports for hundreds of families I am not sure how to pay right now. Families that worked hard to get off the streets, who may go right back. Many of them working, but unable to fully afford rent in the current housing crisis,” she told Sojourners in an interview over Zoom.

“At any given time, we could be letting down a couple of hundred families who would be left on their own to figure out their housing,” she said.

For Found House, the saga began when the White House’s Office of Management and Budget issued a memo freezing all federal grants and loans on Jan. 27, following an executive order from President Donald Trump requiring all federal agencies to “temporarily pause all activities related to … disbursement of all Federal financial assistance.”

Legal experts argue the executive order directly violated Article I of the Constitution and decades of legal opinion. Cerin Lindgrensavage and William Ford, staff for the nonpartisan, anti-authoritarian nonprofit Protect Democracy wrote the Trump administration was trying “to wrest the spending power away from Congress and into the hands of the president and his appointees.”

“The system of checks and balances the Founders designed does not give the president unchecked power to execute only the laws passed by Congress that he agrees with,” they wrote. “When Congress appropriates funds, the president must spend them.”

The order put a temporary freeze on hundreds of billions of dollars, impacting a vast array of services provided by thousands of nonprofits working in education, social services, science research, health care, or refugee resettlement, who were unable to access federal government systems used to withdraw funds as last week began.

Though judges have ordered a temporary pause on the administration’s efforts to freeze federal fundingand the OMB memo was rescinded by a two-sentence notice on Jan. 29, uncertainty continues for faith-inspired and faith-based nonprofits like Found House.

Compounding the fear across the faith-based services sector, the back-and-forth with federal funding comes as the Trump administration also put a 90-day freeze on almost all foreign aid and Elon Musk’s “Department of Government Efficiency” is shutting down payments to federal contractors.

On Sunday, Musk shared a post by Michael Flynn on X, Trump’s former national security adviser who previously plead guilty to lying to the FBI, listing what purported to be payments to Lutheran charities that receive government funding, ranging from Lutheran Social Services to Global Refuge — formerly Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services.

Musk tweeted, “corruption and waste is being rooted out in real-time” and claimed DOGE is “rapidly shutting down” payments to the charities.

Though the OMB memo was rescinded, nonprofit leaders remain nervous, anxious about what the future holds for their organizations, staff, and the families and individuals they serve.

“The question becomes: What do we actually have to work with?” said Burge.

Found House’s current contracts with the Department of Housing and Urban Development go through the end of June, but Burge and colleagues are openly questioning if those are safe. “The honest answer is: We are not sure.”

Faith & Politics: Your Religion Guide to the 2024 Elections

With just a few months to go until the U.S. holds elections on Nov. 5, 2024, reporters covering the intersections of religion and politics will face a common challenge: how to write about the varied politics of people of faith and cover the diverse roles religion(s) will play in this election.

White evangelicals, and the conflation of their faith with political conservatism in general, tend to dominate religion-related election news, to the neglect of other religious communities — Christian and otherwise.

In this edition of ReligionLink, we take a different approach. Rather than focusing on any one tradition, we break down ideas, sources and resources for reporting on the top issues at stake in the 2024 election(s).

Looking at seven issues from the perspective of diverse faith traditions in the U.S. — and the particular intersection of identifications, institutions and ideals they represent — helps us better get a sense of how religion may, or may not, play a role in determining the shape and outcome of this year’s vote.

U.S. Presidential Primaries: The Religion Source Guide

Buckle up, cause presidential primary season is about to really get underway.

With Iowa Republicans gathering to caucus on Jan. 15, New Hampshire’s controversial primaries coming for both parties on Jan. 23 and a flurry of primaries and caucuses following in quick succession after that, U.S. presidential politics are going to take an increasingly prime spot in our news coverage.

The road to 270 Electoral College votes next year will likely careen back-and-forth on a range of issues, from Social Security and Medicare to abortion and immigration. Along the way, it is important not to lose sight of the critical role the faith factor will play in how voters view each issue, potentially deciding who voters will choose in 2024. 

As many (re)learned in the last two elections, we ignore religion’s role in presidential elections at our peril.  

With next year unlikely to prove an exception to the rule of religion’s influence in presidential politics, this source guide provides an overview of several candidates’ faith backgrounds and angles on how religion may influence their electability in the year to come. 

Background

Despite a decline in overall religious adherence, faith continues to influence U.S. politics, not least because, in the shift from privilege to plurality, religious Americans — particularly of the evangelical variety — are not going quietly. The result is that the demographic change, where an increasing number of Americans identify as nonreligious and Christians might soon be a minority, has not meant more consensus, but increasingly polarized debates about the role of faith in U.S. public life.

The fault lines are many and include debates over access to, or restrictions on, abortion, and culture war and church-state separation issues such as banning materials dealing with sexuality and gender identity from schools or discussions of “critical race theory” from the classroom. Feeling ever more like a minority, conservative religious actors have embraced the mantle of “religious freedom,” positioning themselves as needing protection from the encroachments of a leftist agenda, led by a secular majority. All of this is cast against a background of increased “Christian nationalism,” the desire that the nation’s civic life be defined by Christianity — in its identification, history, symbols, values and public policies — and that the government take active steps to enforce this view and impose it on the populace.

At the same time, actors on the religious left can be seen at the front of protests and marches advocating for civil rights, gun control, access to abortion and immigration reform. And prominent Democrats such as Raphael Warnock and Joe Biden position their faith as a core component of their political platforms. The religious left, thought to be dormant for decades, has been quietly resurgent in recent years and may shape the 2024 elections in a significant way.

The impact of these demographic realities, debates and differing perspectives has been uneven, varying from state to state based on their respective populations, politics and histories. Some are asserting a kind of Christian identity and enacting policies that are in line with their interpretation thereof. Others are adopting what they see as more secular laws appropriate for a more plural society.

In any event, religion will — as it always has — play a prominent role in the primary season and, inevitably, during next autumn’s general elections. In fact, this year might feature one of the most religiously diverse batch of presidential candidates we have yet seen, reflecting the nation’s shifting, and increasingly plural, religious landscape.

When the Lord Closes One Base, Does He Open Another? Military Ministries Prepare for Potential US Troop Withdrawal From Germany

While the U.S. Congress debates President Donald Trump’s plans to pull out 9,500 troops —  roughly a third of the 34,500 troops in Germany — many evangelical ministries to American service members, civil staff, and their families, are getting ready to adapt if need be. 

Despite the upheaval a drop in personnel levels might cause, and the uncertainty about potential locations and placements, pastors and ministry leaders are staying optimistic and “Kingdom minded” through it all — looking for opportunities amidst the challenges of change. 

CEO and Co-Founder of The Warrior’s Journey — “an interactive online community for military members, veterans, and their families” — Kevin Weaver, an Air Force veteran with two sons in active duty, said, “we are poised and in position to serve in the wake of any movements or shutdowns.”  

Although President Trump approved the planned pull out in late June, according to the Pentagon,  there are, as of yet, no firm details on where the troops might be redeployed or exactly when this would happen, although The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump issued a September deadline.

The U.S. military presence in Germany — by far the largest in Europe, with both U.S. European and African commands currently based in the country — is a legacy of post-World War Two Allied occupation.

Over the intervening decades, multiple generations of American military members and their families have created strong ties with surrounding German communities as far afield as Heidelberg, Stuttgart, Bamberg, or Garmisch-Partenkirchen, in the far south of Bavaria. 

Therefore, the potential move has caused concern in Germany — economic, political, and ecclesial. 

A mass move not only means logistical challenges for the U.S. military — finding new homes for troops and their families, building up local infrastructure like schools and hospitals at smaller posts, and transferring civil servants to different missions — but also potential church closures, missionaries without active calls, and shifting church populations.

What is the Shia-Sunni Divide All About?

In his address in Saudi Arabia on Sunday, May 21, while calling on Muslim leaders to lead the fight against terrorism, President Donald Trump identified Iran as a despotic state giving safe harbor and financing terror in the Middle East. As Iran is a Shia state and Saudi Arabia a Sunni-led country, some media outlets criticized Trump for taking sides in the Shia-Sunni sectarian divide.

As a scholar of Islam and a public educator, I often field questions about Sunnis, Shias and the sects of Islam. What exactly is the Shia-Sunni divide? And what is its history?