NASHVILLE, Tenn. (RNS) – On a warm June evening, Christian music legend Amy Grant finished up a set at church in Brentwood, a music celebrity-laden suburb of the country music capital, set down her guitar and picked up her phone.
“I’ve never done this before,” Grant said from the stage at Otter Creek Church, as she dialed the Washington office of Tennessee Sen. Bill Hagerty.
After getting through to voicemail and introducing herself, Grant launched into an appeal for continued support to fund the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief — a George W. Bush-era federal program known as PEPFAR that the Trump administration has threatened to defund.
After hanging up, Grant urged audience members to follow her example. “What if everyone called?” she said. “That is democracy — to use our voice.”
Despite its history of bipartisan support and long success — PEPFAR has been credited with saving 26 million lives around the world — the program’s future is uncertain. The White House Office of Management and Budget, led by Russ Vought, is seeking to cut $400 million in funds already approved for the current fiscal year, through a process known as rescission.
The administration has proposed a further $1.9 billion in cuts in the program for the upcoming fiscal year, on top of cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development, which has funded clinics that delivered AIDS medications.
A new report in the Lancet estimated that cuts to USAID programs, including PEPFAR, could lead to more than 14 million deaths by 2030, including more than 4 million children under 5.
Jenny Dyer, founder of The 2030 Collaborative, speaks about the significant impact of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, known as PEPFAR, at Otter Creek Church, June 18, 2025, in Brentwood, Tenn. (Photo by Jorge Amaya)
“We have got to do something,” said Jenny Dyer, founder of The 2030 Collaborative, a consulting firm in Nashville that advocates for global health and development issues, in a recent interview. “We can’t let these cuts happen.”
A former faith director for the One Campaign, co-founded by U2 lead singer Bono, Dyer is also the former executive director of Hope Through Healing Hands, a humanitarian group founded by Bill Frist, a physician and former U.S. senator who was a key early supporter of PEPFAR as Senate majority leader.
She’s long seen the important role that evangelical groups have played in supporting PEPFAR and hopes that once again faith leaders will rally to support the program.
Dyer said that for much of its history, PEPFAR had the support of major evangelical leaders such as Rick and Kay Warren of Saddleback Church in Orange County, California, and Bill and Lynne Hybels of Willow Creek Community Church near Chicago. Before the program was approved in 2003, they and other megachurch pastors of their generation helped the Bush administration overcome the stigma around AIDS among conservative Christians.
Musician Amy Grant performs at an awareness-raising concert for PEPFAR at Otter Creek Church, June 18, 2025, in Brentwood, Tenn. (Photo by Jorge Amaya)
Kay Warren had seen the devastation of the AIDS epidemic firsthand while visiting clinics in Africa, something Warren recounted in a 2007 interview for Sojourners magazine. She recalled meeting a woman in the clinic who was dying of the disease, who asked for prayer. “Who will care for my children when I am gone?” Warren recalled her asking.
Frist told the audience about a 2002 dinner at the White House where President George W. Bush discussed his plans for the program to combat the AIDS epidemic. No one knew at the time if it would work, he said.
Now there is proof, he said.
Children play at the Nyumbani Children’s Home in Nairobi, Kenya, Aug. 15, 2023. The orphanage, which is heavily reliant on foreign donations, cares for over 100 children with HIV whose parents died of the disease and provides them with housing, care and PEPFAR-supplied anti-retroviral drugs. A U.S. foreign aid program that officials say has saved 26 million lives in Africa and elsewhere is being threatened by some Republicans who fear that program funding might go to organizations that promote abortion. (AP Photo/Brian Inganga)
“We are just five years away from the end of the HIV/AIDS pandemic,” Frist said. “Now is not the time to back away. We need Congress to see this through to keep the faith. And to finish the race.”
But leaders like Frist, who left office in 2007, and the Warrens, who stepped down from leadership at Saddleback in 2022, are no longer in place. Many younger church leaders have no firsthand recollection of the height of AIDS crisis, when support for PEPFAR grew.
