On Friday, February 7th, President Trump signed an Executive Order formally re-establishing a White House office for faith-based initiatives. Announced at the National Prayer Breakfast, this office was framed as a way for the federal government to empower faith-based and community organizations, emphasizing their unique role, different and more effective than government, in strengthening families and revitalizing communities. According to the executive order, the administration “wants faith-based entities, community organizations, and houses of worship, to the fullest extent permitted by law, to compete on a level playing field for grants, contracts, programs, and other Federal funding opportunities.”
The establishment of this office continues a long tradition of federal engagement with faith-based and community groups that spans both Democratic and Republican administrations. The first of these initiatives, created under President George W. Bush, aimed to ensure that religious organizations could compete on equal footing with secular nonprofits for government funds. This set the stage for future administrations to maintain and expand faith-based partnerships in public service efforts.
President Obama carried this forward, renaming the office the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. While he initially campaigned on prohibiting religious staffing for federally funded faith-based organizations, his administration largely upheld the Bush-era approach. Obama also expanded LGBTG rights through executive actions, creating new challenges for theologically conservative faith-based organizations seeking to partner with the federal government.
The first Trump administration did not establish a White House faith-based advisor until its second year but ultimately continued many of the same policies, maintaining faith-based Centers in federal agencies to facilitate partnerships with religious and secular nonprofits.
The Biden administration reestablished a White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships, continuing federal engagement with faith-based and community-based organizations–not only with large secular nonprofits. The Biden administration also placed a great emphasis on racial equity and social justice, including expanding LGBTQ rights, which could be challenging for theologically conservative religious organizations.
Despite their ideological differences, both the first Trump administration and the Biden administration often used their faith-based offices as tools for mobilizing religious organizations in support of their broader political agendas rather than as spaces for genuine, reciprocal engagement with a diverse array of faith-based and community leaders. This reveals a persistent challenge in faith-government partnerships: Do these offices truly seek collaboration, or are they primarily looking for religious endorsements of the administration’s policies?
Both of Trump’s administrations have shown a concerning pattern in how they structure faith-based engagement. Each time, he has entrusted leadership of the White House faith office to a televangelist and prosperity gospel preacher with close ties to conservative Christian pastors, along with some rabbis and other religious leaders. While the office is officially meant to serve all faith-based and secular community organizations, there are legitimate concerns that its leadership and direction reflect political alliances more than a broad, principled commitment to the role of faith in public life.
The challenges and the hope of a federal faith-based initiative
Yet, the creation of a White House Faith Office—or any government engagement with religious groups—raises questions far bigger than the political agenda of a single administration. Even as this office offers new opportunities for government partnerships with faith-based organizations, it also presents a challenge that every religious nonprofit must consider for itself:
What does it take to engage with government in a way that aligns with religious integrity rather than political expediency?
This leads to two interrelated concerns that should guide how faith-based organizations approach their public role, regardless of which party is in power:
- How much should the federal government invest in civil society partnerships, and in what areas? Government funding is not neutral. Where money flows determines which social issues are prioritized, which organizations gain influence, and which communities are left behind. Should faith-based organizations simply align with government priorities, or does following government funding risk diverting them from the concerns their traditions uniquely equip them to address?
- When—and under what conditions—should faith-based organizations partner with government? Public funding can expand an organization’s reach and impact, but it also brings oversight, compliance requirements, and the risk of mission drift. Should religious nonprofits structure their finances to avoid dependency on government grants? If they do choose to partner, how do they ensure their religious mission remains intact?
These are not abstract policy questions. They are matters of discernment, requiring faith-based leaders to weigh financial opportunity against spiritual integrity. Government funding can be a means of serving the common good or a slow erosion of an institution’s purpose—an entanglement that reshapes the organization more than it reshapes the world.
Faith-based organizations must move beyond short-term calculations about funding access or political influence. The real question is not whether they can secure government dollars, but whether they should, and on what terms.
Engaging these questions requires something deeper than strategy. It demands a sacred-centered approach to public life—one that ensures faith communities remain rooted in their sacred commitments rather than becoming instruments of shifting political priorities.
Government Prioritization and the Impact of Funding Cuts on Faith-Based Organizations
Government partnerships with faith-based organizations are always contingent on political priorities. Even as the Trump administration has expanded some forms of faith-based engagement, it has also implemented massive funding cuts that have disproportionately affected certain faith-based organizations.
The most dramatic example is the administration’s decision to restructure and reduce United States Agency for International Development (USAID) funding, leading to severe financial losses for faith-based humanitarian efforts. Catholic Relief Services, one of the largest religious humanitarian organizations, has announced that it will be forced to cut half of its workforce, endangering essential initiatives such as providing seeds to struggling farmers in Haiti and treating malnourished children in South Sudan.
The precipitousness of this change in federal policy has created both human and organizational crises and has rightly drawn fierce criticism. But criticism is not enough. Faith leaders, just as citizens generally, must ask themselves how the government should prioritize funding when needs here and abroad are so varied and vast. We also encourage faith-based and nonprofit leaders to carefully and prayerfully reflect on how dependent their organizations should become on any one source of funding, including government funding. I recently heard a clergy member express deep dismay over an organization she was involved with that had lost 95 percent of its funding due to government budget cuts. My first reaction was shock and empathy. My second reaction was more critical: Why on earth would any organization put 95% of its eggs in the government’s basket?
For any nonprofit, reliance on government funding is a strategic risk. But for faith-based organizations, it is also a spiritual and moral question. Ensuring financial sustainability apart from government support is not just good planning—it is essential to maintaining mission integrity.
What Should Government Fund?
Beyond concerns over defunding, there is a broader question: Should the government be funding everything it currently funds? And if not, who decides where government responsibility ends and civil society’s responsibility begins?
There is no consensus, even among faith leaders. Some argue that the government has a duty to provide essential social services—food aid, disaster relief, refugee assistance. Others believe these responsibilities should fall primarily to religious and private institutions, which can often respond more flexibly and effectively than bureaucratic government programs.
The Center for Public Justice offers a compelling framework: The government should be neither omnipresent nor absent in social services. Some responsibilities—such as public health, disaster relief, and equal protection—require government action. Others are better handled by civil society, where localized engagement and moral formation can thrive.
Navigating Government Funding Without Losing Mission
Stephen Monsma, in Pluralism and Freedom: Faith-Based Organizations in a Democratic Society, argues that government funding policies have long favored secular nonprofits, creating an uneven playing field for faith-based organizations. Excluding religious groups from public funding opportunities, he contends, is both unjust and unconstitutional.
Yet Monsma also warns that government funding often comes with restrictions that can erode religious identity. Even when faith-based organizations are legally permitted to maintain their religious character, the realities of compliance and political pressure often push them toward mission drift.
This is why the fundamental question for faith-based organizations should not simply be whether they can access government funding—but whether they should.
Each faith-based nonprofit must now ask:
- Have we allowed government funding to reshape our mission?
- Are we engaging with government in ways that strengthen or dilute our sacred commitments?
- How do we remain resilient amid political change?
The right answer is not simply “we’ve kept our funding.” Faith-based organizations must measure success not by financial stability or political access, but by faithfulness to their core mission. That requires wisdom, courage, and an unwavering commitment to sacred purpose in the public square.
Conclusion
Faith-based organizations must navigate government partnerships without losing sight of what makes them distinct. The real danger is not just political entanglement but the quiet pressure to conform to secular expectations that sideline the spiritual identity at the heart of their work. Engaging public life should not require religious organizations to translate themselves into purely functional or neutral terms. Their value lies precisely in their sacred commitments, which must remain the foundation of their public engagement—not an afterthought or an obstacle to overcome.
Chelsea Langston Bombino is a believer in sacred communities, a wife, and a mother. She serves as a program officer with the Fetzer Institute and a fellow with the Center for Public Justice.
