“We have to go back to the people in the pews,” Dyer told RNS in late June.
A researcher who worked for 20 years on AIDS prevention programs, worries that much of the progress in fighting the AIDS epidemic could be lost with the cuts to PEPFAR.
Torjesen, who was recently named president of BioLogos, a Christian nonprofit that makes connections between faith and science leaders, hopes other Christians will be willing to see PEPFAR as what she called kingdom work — taking the blessings that the United States has received and the medical advances here and sharing them with others.
“Can we at least agree that we are called by Christ to serve others?” she said. “That is a starting point.”
Asia Russell, executive director of Health GAP, an activist group that supports funding for PEPFAR, is skeptical that evangelical groups will be able to hold off cuts to the program.
Russell, whose group protested at a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing in June where cuts to PEPFAR were discussed, argues that few Republican leaders will oppose the Trump administration’s budget cuts to humanitarian aid. “It’s not about bringing the band back together,” said Russell. “It’s about the fact that Donald Trump is willing to let people die.”
Josh Graves, the preaching and teaching minister for Otter Creek, said he became aware of the cuts at USAID and other programs, like PEPFAR, through his friend Mark Moore, who runs a nonprofit that produces a vitamin-fortified version of peanut butter used in food programs that combat malnutrition.
Graves has been concerned about how Trump administration cuts through the Department of Government Efficiency program started by Elon Musk would affect “real Christian people doing really good Christian things.”
Attendees and musicians recognize the 26 million lives saved by the PEPFAR program during an event at Otter Creek Church, June 18, 2025, in Brentwood, Tenn. (Photo by Jorge Amaya)
Graves said that, at least in Nashville, there’s a hunger for public policy that “looks like Jesus,” shaped by justice and compassion rather than what he called the “empty calories” of polarization.
“I think there’s a group within Nashville and other cities that are hungry for clarity about how to take the red letters of Jesus and apply them into real-world situations,” he said, referring to Bible publishers’ practice of highlighting the words of Jesus in red ink.
At Otter Creek, Grant was joined onstage by Christian songwriter and producer Charlie Peacock, who recalled the heady days of getting PEPFAR passed a quarter-century ago. As Bono toured in 2002 to rally churches to support AIDS relief, the singer stopped in Nashville to ask musicians and other Nashville leaders to join the cause. The meeting with Bono was held at Peacock’s house.
Peacock hopes that once again evangelicals will speak up for AIDS relief. That support will be needed, he said, as the current administration doesn’t share the kind of “compassionate conservatism” that inspired Frist or Bush. Peacock said that supporting PEPFAR is more spiritual than it is political.
“And for many Christ-followers around the U.S. — around the globe — the care of orphans and widows, those in need of lifesaving meds, is never off the table,” he told RNS. “ It is as front and center as ever.”
This article originally appeared here.
