The recent government memo directing all federal agencies to stop all government grants and loans has raised many questions. The administration aimed to review everything and find government waste and fraud. Many left-wing NGOs received billions in federal aid, but among the left-wing appropriations were also billions in funding for the social efforts of more mainstream evangelical organizations.

Warren Smith identified several favorites:

But the outcry was not just from progressives. A number of Christian groups, some of them relatively conservative, also objected. World Relief, the benevolence arm of the National Association of Evangelicals, said the freeze would hamper their refugee resettlement efforts.

PEPFAR, an AIDS prevention effort in Africa and elsewhere that costs $5 billion a year, has been a favorite of evangelicals. It too faced a funding freeze. Sanitation and clean water efforts, many of them led by Christian groups in Africa, India and elsewhere, faced immediate shutdown.

In fact, a spreadsheet sent to federal agencies naming the programs under review ran to more than 50 pages.

Shockingly, even Christianity Today, the granddaddy of evangelical periodicals, received nearly $2 million in funding from USAID.

One of the Baptist Distinctives is the separation of Church and State, but does that mean the separation of parachurch institutions from the state? Have we become a frog in the water on this issue? We have to consider all kinds of connections. …

Read the whole article here: Christian Ministries and Government Funding – Proclaim & Defend — or just listen to the podcast.

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