The command to Christians to take care of the poor is crystal clear throughout scripture from starting to finish. This is why many believers have expressed horror at President Donald Trump’s near-closure of USAID, the country’s international development arm, which had a $40bn annual budget ostensibly for humanitarian aid.
Those who work with the poorest of the world warn they will probably be seriously harmed. They have even challenged the church to make up the difference with private donations.
Yet following revelations that government departments have supported radical leftist ideologies, gay rights and abortion world wide, and even political organisations within the US and abroad, other Christians have shown support for the brand new administration’s actions.
Recent revelations
Trump has paused all foreign aid until reviewed and approved, saying that public money has been spent on partisan or political ends under previous administrations. “For many years, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has been unaccountable to taxpayers because it funnels massive sums of cash to the ridiculous — and, in lots of cases, malicious — pet projects of entrenched bureaucrats, with next-to-no oversight,” said an official statement from the White House in early February. “Under President Trump, the waste, fraud, and abuse ENDS NOW.”
This statement cited quite a few examples: $70,000 for production of a “DEI musical” in Ireland, $47,000 for a “transgender opera” in Colombia, $32,000 for a “transgender comic book” in Peru and $2 million for sex changes and “LGBT activism” in Guatemala.
It also alleged that supposed humanitarian aid has supported terrorists, been linked to the Wuhan lab, and funded contraception.
“USAID is a criminal organization,” wrote Trump’s head of presidency efficiency, Elon Musk, on X, the media platform owned by the billionaire. “Time for it to die.”
The Trump administration also plans to decimate USAID’s staff numbers, even though it faces a legal challenge.
Impact on the poor
There are claims of direct harm to emergency aid already. About 500,000 metric tons of food value $340 million is in limbo, in transit or storage, as humanitarian organisations wait for approval to distribute it, in line with Marcia Wong, a former senior USAID official, Reuters reported.
The ACT Alliance, a body that represents faith-based development charities, said in a statement: “These sweeping and harmful policy decisions have significantly limited lots of our members’ ability to keep up programmes and serve vulnerable families who need critical services.”
The group didn’t address the allegations of waste and political bias made against USAID.
Controversial political payments
However, ideological extremism in US Government aid just isn’t latest, nor warnings that this hurts the poor it’s alleged to help. Former USAID official Max Primorac warned in 2023: “The Biden administration has subordinated US foreign policy to its radical domestic social agenda and [is] grossly misusing foreign aid as a taxpayer-funded vehicle to advertise abortion, gender ideology, and climate fanaticism that’s catapulting Africa towards deeper and deeper poverty,” he told The Daily Signal. “The administration is making thinly veiled threats to [sub-Saharan] Africa about continued critical programme support.
“In effect, they’re tying future lifesaving aid to forcing Africans to dispense with their traditional family values. Such blackmail shouldn’t have any place in our foreign assistance programmes.”
Details of this sort of Western pressure on poor countries are given within the book “Target Africa: Ideological Neocolonialism within the Twenty-First Century” by Obianuju Ekeocha, a UK-based Nigerian pro-life activist.
When Trump restricted government funding of abortion abroad in 2017, Marie Stopes International said it led to a £60m shortfall. The ‘LGBT Vision for Action,’ that supported gay rights world wide began during Barack Obama’s administration, and Biden expanded the donations to gender ideology in 2023 through the ‘LGBTQI+ Inclusive Development Policy’.
The Center for Family and Human Rights said in 2023 that it had found individual government grants for LGBT causes value greater than $3.7bn over three years, and $478m more for ‘transgender’ activities, when searching public records.
The House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Brian Mast has also just announced it found a lot of highly controversial payments from the US government, including what he says was $15m for condoms to the Taliban and $446,700 to advertise the expansion of atheism in Nepal through the State Department.
Perhaps most significantly, most of the poorest countries are against the West’s attempts to impose liberal sexual values onto their societies. It has even been described as a ‘latest colonisation’ by African Christian leaders.
On the bottom reports
Trump’s defunding has prompted furious debate and a few very different first-hand accounts of USAID.
“Just a few years ago some friends of mine returned from S. Africa and told me how they were appalled to see USAID staffers promoting transgenderism in, I kid you not, the squatter camps of Johannesburg,” wrote Christian Post journalist Brandon M Showalter on X. “Those poor people needed clean water but were getting cross-sex hormones as an alternative.”
This witness, Clint Thomas, said he was horrified to see how US tax dollars were being spent when he visited the slums of South Africa: “The beautiful African people we met with and ministered to that week didn’t need or care about ‘transgender services,'” he wrote. “They were trying to search out their next meal and make it through the following cold African winter night. Talk to anyone who’s struggling for survival on an empty stomach and you will quickly learn the way unimportant ‘transgender services’ offered for ‘free’ from the US government are to them.
“It’s high time that Christians and all people of goodwill get up to and resist this radicalism and gross misuse of aid dollars each at home and abroad.”
Yet many say they’ve witnessed US aid supporting the poorest.
“Destroying USAID is not going to make the federal government more efficient,” said Matthew Loftus, whose X bio says he practises medicine in Kenya. “Doing so will take away food and medicine from poor people. Attempting to destroy it wholesale somewhat than reforming and focusing it is solely a cruel want to let other people die.”
He continued: “I work at a Christian mission hospital. USAID funds the organization that ensures our hospital gets drugs. People in our hospital hear the Gospel daily. That’s not a leftist agenda.”
Furious debate
These conflicting accounts and perspectives were reflected in lots of discussions on social media. Left-wing commentator Dr Krish Kandiah said on X: “The dismantling of USAID is an act of vandalism. We must speak up for the world’s poor.”
However, such views were challenged by those concerned of the character of USAID’s activities.
“I’m surprised that Christian leaders are able to support an organisation that seems to spend its money pushing leftist ideology across the globe with $hundreds of thousands of US tax payers money,” said Karl Faase, chief executive of Christian media outlet Olive Tree Media on X.
Others challenged the Church to step up.
“If USAID really does get closed down, will Christians who supported the shutdown then give generously to assist those affected – the poorest of the poor in our world?” wrote retired president of World Vision USA Rich Stearns on X.
“There’s a whole lot of misinformation on the market,” he continued. “The overwhelming majority of the funds are benefiting the poor. I do know most of the organizations doing the work they usually are saving lives and helping people out of poverty. Closing USAID is throwing the child out with the bathtub water.”
Making up the shortfall
The challenge from Stearns to Christians to offer more to the poor raises the query of alternatives to government funding comparable to development charities, although their willingness to uphold traditional Christian ethics just isn’t at all times clear.
Loftus really helpful African Mission Healthcare for Christians concerned in regards to the effects of the Trump decision. He also encouraged Christians to go to poorer countries and construct relationships with people working there when considering where to donate. But short term missions must be fastidiously executed in order to not do harm to poor communities.
Nonetheless the Church might have to contemplate alternatives to government aid.
“I’m on the board of http://shepherdsgate.org and we take zero government funding,” said Vijay Swamidass in response to Stearns on X.
“Most of the donations are from individual Christians. I do know others as well. Government funding just isn’t essential.”
Heather Tomlinson is a contract Christian author. Find more of her work at https://heathertomlinson.substack.com or via X (twitter) @heathertomli
