Throughout this past year, something far more consequential than a funding crisis has taken shape across faith-based civil society. Public partnerships that once allowed churches, synagogues, mosques, and faith-rooted nonprofits to accompany vulnerable neighbors have narrowed, stalled, or been recast under political conditions that many sacred institutions simply cannot accept without compromising who they are. These shifts surface a deeper question of public justice: whether our society is willing to safeguard the institutional freedom religious communities need to live out their sacred callings without coercion, and whether government will honor the rightful role of civil society rather than bending it toward its own priorities.
When the state constrains institutional religious freedom—whether by suspending cooperative agreements, attaching conditions that blunt moral witness, or forcing organizations into a choice between integrity and access—it does more than frustrate institutional leaders. It frays the mediating structures that hold communities together, weakens the protections surrounding the most vulnerable, and narrows the pluralistic landscape that a healthy democracy depends upon. And yet, even as these pressures intensify, something generative is happening: communities across traditions are returning to the deep, resilient power of their own people, strengthening the internal bonds that carry ministries forward, and forming creative, often unexpected collaborations when public partnerships become impossible. What emerges is a renewed picture of institutional responsibility—one grounded not in the permission of the state, but in the enduring force of sacred calling.
Recent Challenges in Faith-Based and Government Partnerships
For example, in April the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) ended its long partnership with the federal government on refugee aid and children’s services. Archbishop Timothy Broglio, responding to the administration’s suspension of cooperative agreements, made plain that the Church had to reevaluate how best to serve those fleeing religious persecution, political violence, and the layered physical and spiritual harms that push people across borders. He spoke of a century of partnership—rooted in pastoral care, charity, and the support of the people of God—now suddenly constrained by governmental limits. Yet he also emphasized that their commitment would not end. The USCCB would seek “alternative means of support” for migrant children and refugees already accepted into government programs, and redouble its advocacy for just immigration policies and protections for victims of trafficking. Their work, he insisted, remains guided by the Gospel’s call to care for the least among us—a reminder that sacred commitments cannot be reduced to—or constrained by—the changing posture of the state.
A similar recalibration happened in May, when the Episcopal Church announced it would end its more than 40-year partnership with the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program and wind down the resettlement work housed within Episcopal Migration Ministries. The administration’s effective shutdown of refugee arrivals and suspension of funding collapsed what had been a decades-long public-private partnership, removing more than $50 million annually from an ecosystem built on trust and coordinated care. Once the hard reality settled—that the partnership had become impossible to sustain—the wider body of the Episcopal Church began returning to the work that exists outside federal frameworks. Across dioceses, communities continued accompanying migrants in the ways that never depended on contracts: teaching English, showing up at appointments, supporting childcare needs, advocating in local and national spaces, and tending to the thousands of families already here. These ministries did not disappear with the loss of funding; they simply became more visible and more honest about what can be carried forward.
The Church’s global work continued as well. Through long-standing partnerships in Central America and through the Convocation of Episcopal Churches in Europe—which has supported more than 140,000 displaced people in recent years—the Church held onto the threads of mission never dependent on federal appropriations. These ties endure because they are rooted in relationship, mutual presence, and shared commitment rather than governmental permission. And even as new refugee arrivals were halted, the Church invited its own people to meet the needs of previously resettled families through the ordinary, human work of accompaniment: tutoring, job support, continuing education, childcare, and the patient presence that helps families root themselves in new soil. The Church was candid about limits: no congregation can replace tens of millions in annual federal dollars. But they lifted up what they could sustain, trusting that the deepest parts of their work were never meant to be subcontracted to federal programs in the first place.
HIAS—the historic Jewish refugee organization that has anchored the American Jewish community’s moral and spiritual memory of exile and welcome—experienced its own rupture when refugee admissions were suspended and congressionally appropriated funds were frozen. More than half of its nearly $200 million annual budget disappeared almost overnight, triggering layoffs, paused programs, and a forced reckoning with what it means to remain faithful to sacred commitments when government partnership collapses. Yet HIAS responded much like the Catholic and Episcopal examples: by turning toward its own community of synagogues, lay leaders, and Jewish institutions that stepped in to shoulder the work no longer backed by federal resources. They began rebuilding a model grounded in private philanthropy, synagogue partnerships, and community-based support for asylum seekers and refugees already here. Their global work—legal aid, humanitarian response, protection programs—continued even as foreign-aid freezes introduced new instability. What stands out is how quickly the Jewish communal ecosystem rose to uphold work that had once relied heavily on federal funding, demonstrating again that sacred-centered commitments have long roots that reach deeper than any government budget line.
Let’s take another example. Executive Order 14151, issued on January 20, 2025, directs federal agencies to end internal DEI and environmental-justice programs and to identify all contractors and grantees that have engaged in DEI-related materials or programming since January 20, 2021. While the order presents itself as administrative reform, its broad scope and lack of definitions have generated uncertainty for many organizations—including faith-based organizations that partner with the federal government. For these institutions, the question is not partisan; it is whether the federal government will respect the integrity of their religious identity when compliance categories shift.
The order does more than terminate DEI efforts within federal agencies. It sets up a review mechanism, both backward-looking and forward-looking, requiring agencies to compile lists of any grantee or contractor that has engaged in activities labeled “DEI-related.” Because the order does not define what “DEI” or “environmental justice” mean in this context, compliance depends heavily on agency interpretation.
Faith-based organizations vary widely in how they situate DEI. Some intentionally incorporate DEI frameworks into their ministries in the name of reconciliation, hospitality or communal care. Others avoid the language of DEI entirely, grounding their work in scripture, tradition or formation practices. Many maintain federal partnerships to serve the common good—providing housing support, youth enrichment, recovery ministries, workforce development—motivated by theological convictions about human dignity and neighbor-love (Matt. 25:40–45). Their mission is spiritual, even when it overlaps with public-policy categories.
The ambiguity of the order creates practical and theological challenges. Since “DEI” and “environmental justice” are not defined, faith-based organizations cannot easily tell whether long-standing practices might become subject to review. For example: a Black Church ministry engaged in scriptural reconciliation, an Indigenous-led community offering culturally-rooted spiritual care, or an immigrant-serving faith group practicing hospitality might all find themselves asked to demonstrate whether their work is merely formation or part of a federal DEI program. For many communities, such practices are not ideological or programmatic; they are expressions of faith, memory, and sacred calling.
This uncertainty brings a deeper question to the fore: What should the relationship be between faith-based organizations and public funding?
Some believe that federal partnerships enable religious institutions to advance their mission by serving neighbors more effectively and contributing to the common good. Others raise the question whether maintaining distance from federal funding can better preserve the integrity, independence, and spiritual character of their work. EO 14151 does not resolve this tension—but it forces communities to engage it more clearly.
The theological lens of the imago Dei adds further texture. Many Christian communities understand human diversity as a reflection of God’s image. It is noteworthy to some that the Latin word Dei—meaning “of God”—shares the same letters as the acronym DEI. For these faith traditions, attending to the dignity, difference, and particularity of human persons is not a bureaucratic program; it is a spiritual conviction grounded in creation.
The example of Georgetown University Law Center illustrates how institutions are navigating this terrain. When federal officials warned that its DEI-related programming might jeopardize student eligibility for federal internships, the dean responded by invoking both First Amendment protections and the school’s Jesuit Catholic mission, stating that engagement across difference is “intellectual, ethical, and spiritual” in purpose.
For many faith-based organizations—especially those rooted in communities that have long carried burdens of exclusion or marginalization—the challenge is more than regulatory compliance. It is a question of remaining faithful to their deepest convictions: the imago Dei, neighbor-love, and spiritual formation of community. The risk is that those convictions might be framed as ideological or transactional rather than spiritual. Executive Order 14151 prompts the question: not only how to comply, but how to sustain faithfulness in public partnership.
For many leaders, the central concern is not partisan alignment but institutional religious freedom: the capacity of a congregation or faith-based nonprofit to live out its most sacred precepts without fear of losing access to security resources for which it is otherwise qualified. For religious communities that hold religious commitments to equity shaped by their own sacred histories, these new requirements are not abstract policy questions. They touch the most basic responsibilities they bear toward one another — responsibilities that cannot be subordinated to fluctuating administrative priorities.
The result has been a quiet but significant rethinking of how sacred institutions relate to this particular public partnership. Some synagogues, mosques, and churches have discerned that they cannot accept the grants if doing so would expose even one member of their community to harm or require them to restrain ministries central to their mission.
How Religious Communities Are Adapting
Across these varied communities, what stands out is not simply refusal but rediscovery. When government assistance becomes conditional in ways sacred institutions cannot accept, faith communities return to the deeper resources that have always sustained them: their people, their memory, their sacred commitments, and their interdependence with one another. They lean into relationships within and even across traditions — not to erase theological distinctiveness, but to honor the shared responsibilities of civil society when public partnerships no longer align with the moral integrity of sacred work. In doing so, they reveal again the quiet, enduring strength of communities whose primary allegiance is God and to the people and callings entrusted to their care, not to the shifting terms of governmental programs.
These are not fallback strategies. They are signs of what faith-based civil society can become when governmental structures limit their religious freedom and their capacity to serve. These communities lean inward for strength and outward for partnership, creating a form of interdependence that is not merely reactive but deeply rooted in their sacred commitments. And in moments when the state constrains their ability to carry out their mission, they find again that the work was never sustained by federal appropriations alone—it was always sustained by the communities, the relationships, and the sacred callings that formed them.
Taken together, these stories demonstrate a profound truth about public justice: religious organizations cannot outsource their deepest moral and theological commitments to the federal government. When government partnerships narrow or collapse—whether through funding cuts, restrictive conditions, or political partisanship—faith-based institutions remember who they are and whom they serve. Their sacred commitments do not disappear when public funding does. Instead, these institutions turn again to the communities that formed them, and to each other, sharing resources, creativity, and moral courage in ways that reveal a deeper, older ecosystem of care that has never depended on government alone.
This is the heart of institutional religious freedom: not the freedom to retreat into private life, but the freedom to carry out public missions formed by sacred convictions without violating one’s most central spiritual precepts or traditions. And it is also the heart of institutional responsibility: faith-based organizations stepping forward—amid uncertainty, loss, and the fraying of long-standing partnerships—to sustain the vulnerable, advocate for justice, and build interdependent relationships across civil society. When government limits their capacity to serve, these faith-based organizations show again and again that the sacred work of civil society will endure long after political winds shift. Their response is not only adaptive; it is a witness to what a pluralistic democracy requires: institutions free enough to be faithful, and faithful enough to act when the state falls short.
Practical Steps for Faith-Based Organizations When Public Partnerships Become Impossible
1. Policy
- Engage government from the steadiness of your sacred mission, not from the volatility of political cycles: speak plainly when the terms of a public partnership would compromise your ability to carry out your religious commitments.
- Call policymakers into a more faithful vision of public justice: one that honors the rightful, limited role of government and protects the institutional space civil society needs to carry out its diverse sacred callings without being folded into the priorities of any administration.
2. Practice
- Strengthen and clarify the spiritual commitments of your FBO so that its external programming arises from covenantal responsibility rather than external scaffolding: cultivate the forms of giving, shared leadership, and mutual care that allow your community to sustain what is core even when public partnerships constrict.
- Deepen spiritual formation in deliberate ways: establish rhythms of prayer, study, reflection, and pastoral grounding that keep the institution centered in its sacred identity and able to discern faithfully in times of public funding deficits or political pressure.
3. Public Witness
- Speak truthfully and without dramatics about what your FBO can and cannot accept based on its religious precepts: explain—pastorally and with moral clarity—how certain public partnership terms undermine your faith commitments.
- Make visible the continuity of your ministry beyond public approval or resourcing: show that the work persists because it is who you are, rooted in a calling that precedes and outlasts the shifting conditions of political priorities.
4. Partnerships
- Discern opportunities to cultivate interdependence across faith-based civil society, where possible, in ways that honor each community’s distinctive sacred approach: build relationships—within your own tradition and across traditions—that allow you to share human capital, purpose, respect for religious difference, and practical support to serve religious and spiritually diverse members of your community.
- Pursue collaborations that reinforce, rather than dilute, your sacred commitments: whether through local congregations, faith-rooted nonprofits, community coalitions, or global associations, seek partnerships that expand your capacity to serve while respecting the theological, cultural, and vocational distinctiveness that animates your work.
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.
