Since World War II, as refugees fled Europe, Christian charity groups have delivered lifesaving American assistance around the world.
Catholic Relief Services has fed those who are suffering during famines. World Vision, an evangelical group, has given tens of millions of people access to clean water and found donors to sponsor hungry children. Lutheran and Episcopal organizations have resettled refugees in the United States.
Throughout the decades, these faith-based groups worked hand in hand with the federal government. Agencies like the State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Department of Health and Human Services eventually funded them with hundreds of millions of dollars every year. Many of these groups believed helping the poor and vulnerable expressed their values not only as Christians, but also as Americans.
Now, that legacy — and the very survival of these organizations and the values they represent — is in existential crisis.
Over only a few weeks, President Trump has frozen foreign aid, tried to place thousands of U.S.A.I.D. workers on administrative leave and pushed ahead with his mass deportation plans. Elon Musk bragged he was “feeding U.S.A.I.D. into the wood chipper” and claimed without evidence that it was a “criminal organization.”
The sudden upheaval has left faith-based humanitarian groups with gaping funding deficits, hastily shuttered programs and unfolding layoffs.
Last week, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops laid off 50 people, or about a third of its office for migration and refugee services. The group sent a memo to bishops, informing them that subcontractors and local Catholic Charities groups will face delayed payments until further notice.
Catholic Relief Services expects layoffs and cuts to programs of up to 50 percent, according to the National Catholic Reporter. The group received about 64 percent of its nearly $1.5 billion revenue from government contributions in 2022.
“We are experiencing immediate and critical gaps in our ability to bring lifesaving programs across all areas of our work,” the organization said in an online plea for private funding.
World Vision, an evangelical group that seeks to alleviate poverty, is working to keep its programs alive. In 2022, government contributions made up about 44 percent of its $1.5 billion revenue.
Neither relief organization made leaders available for interviews.
At a congressional hearing on Thursday, Andrew Natsios, who led U.S.A.I.D. during the George W. Bush administration, testified to the dire situation of Christian aid groups. He asked Congress to restore funding for Christian nonprofits doing humanitarian work, and to keep them out of political culture wars.
“All those programs are now frozen, they’ve laid off the staff,” he said. “It is damaging the church’s mission in the world.”
Mr. Trump’s priorities have for years now split churches, as many conservatives fuse their faith and religious values with his political mission.
Mr. Trump’s vow to fight “anti-Christian bias,” has been most visible in his support for faith-based anti-abortion groups and others who believe there are only two sexes, male and female.
Vice President JD Vance, who converted to Roman Catholicism as an adult, has criticized some humanitarian groups. At the International Religious Freedom Summit on Feb. 5, he accused them of “spreading atheism all over the globe.” He later suggested without evidence that the Catholic bishops whose work supports immigrants may be prioritizing their bottom lines instead of humanitarian aid.
And Mr. Vance has defended Mr. Trump’s agenda with what he described as an ancient Christian principle.
“You love your family, and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens in your own country,” he said in a recent Fox News interview. “And then after that, you can focus and prioritize the rest of the world.”
He defended his positions on X: “Just google ‘ordo amoris,’” he wrote, using a Latin phrase that translates to “order of love” or “order of charity.”
Pope Francis on Tuesday appeared to correct Mr. Vance’s theology in an open letter to the U.S. Catholic bishops. The true ordo amoris is found in the parable of the good Samaritan, he said, “by meditating on the love that builds a fraternity open to all, without exception.”
“Christian love is not a concentric expansion of interests that little by little extend to other persons and groups,” Pope Francis wrote.
This division has existed within conservative Christian circles for nearly a decade. When Mr. Trump won the presidency in 2016, many evangelicals doing mission work abroad saw his America First agenda and vulgar description of Africa as harmful to their cause. There were even some splits between missionaries and their sponsor churches stateside, where many congregants were attracted to Mr. Trump’s vow to give Christians power in his administration.
One faith-based aid group that appears to be surviving Mr. Trump’s drastic cuts is Samaritan’s Purse, the behemoth evangelical disaster-relief organization run by Franklin Graham, a longtime defender of Mr. Trump. Samaritan’s Purse sees humanitarian work as a project to share the gospel.
Unlike the groups facing steep losses, Samaritan’s Purse received only about 5 percent of its revenue in 2023 from government contributions — more than a billion dollars came from private sources.
Mr. Graham recommends that Christian groups “look to the churches, not the government” for funding.
Government money, he said, can corrupt the faith of Christian groups.
“It’s probably good for things to be shaken up,” Mr. Graham said of the U.S.A.I.D. cuts. “I’m not saying it all needs to be thrown out, but it needs to be reviewed.”
Some Christian organizations that were founded as explicitly religious have grown more ecumenical and interfaith throughout the decades.
Global Refuge, for instance, was formerly known as Lutheran Immigrant and Relief Services. It started as a Lutheran group in 1939, helping German Lutheran refugees fleeing the Nazi regime. Around 1972, it expanded to become an independent, immigrant-focused organization separate from church bodies.
In 2023, nearly all of Global Refuge’s revenue — about 97 percent, or $221 million — came from government funding.
But the nonprofit’s work “couldn’t be done without support of congregations and faith leaders,” said Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, the president of Global Refuge.
Her group funds smaller, explicitly faith-based groups like Lutheran Social Services of the National Capital Area, which helps resettle refugees in the Washington, D.C., region.
That local group has helped welcome some 6,500 Afghans since the fall of Kabul, and in 2023 provided assistance to 3,000 others fleeing persecution from 46 countries, like Cameroon and Syria.
But by Wednesday, it had laid off 42 workers, and furloughed another 26, totaling a quarter of its staff.
Kristyn Peck, the group’s chief executive, said the freeze left them waiting for $2.5 million in reimbursements. On Friday, they were unable to make payroll for their 117 salaried employees.
“These decisions,” Ms. Peck, a Unitarian Universalist, said, “seem really out of line with our country’s legacy and heritage.”
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