NASHVILLE, Tenn. (RNS) –On a heat June night, Christian music legend Amy Grant completed up a set at church in Brentwood, a music celebrity-laden suburb of the nation music capital, set down her guitar and picked up her cellphone.
“I’ve by no means finished this earlier than,” Grant stated from the stage at Otter Creek Church, as she dialed the Washington workplace of Tennessee Sen. Invoice Hagerty.
After getting via to voicemail and introducing herself, Grant launched into an enchantment for continued help to fund the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Aid — a George W. Bush-era federal program generally known as PEPFAR that the Trump administration has threatened to defund.
“We would like you to know that right here in Nashville, we need to see full funding of PEPFAR in order that we are able to keep on monitor to finish the HIV AIDS epidemic by 2030,” Grant stated in a second caught on video. Viewers members, who had come to the church to assist elevate consciousness about PEPFAR, hooted their help.
After hanging up, Grant urged viewers members to comply with her instance. “What if everybody known as?” she stated. “That’s democracy — to make use of our voice.”
Regardless of its historical past of bipartisan help and lengthy success — PEPFAR has been credited with saving 26 million lives around the globe — this system’s future is unsure. The White Home Workplace of Administration and Price range, led by Russ Vought, is in search of to chop $400 million in funds already accredited for the present fiscal 12 months, via a course of generally known as rescission.
The administration has proposed an additional $1.9 billion in cuts in this system for the upcoming fiscal 12 months, on high of cuts to the U.S. Company for Worldwide Improvement, which has funded clinics that delivered AIDS medicines.
A brand new report within the Lancet estimated that cuts to USAID packages, together with PEPFAR, might result in greater than 14 million deaths by 2030, together with extra than 4 million kids underneath 5.
Jenny Dyer, founding father of The 2030 Collaborative, speaks concerning the important affect of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Aid, generally known as PEPFAR, at Otter Creek Church, June 18, 2025, in Brentwood, Tenn. (Picture by Jorge Amaya)
“We’ve got acquired to do one thing,” stated Jenny Dyer, founding father of The 2030 Collaborative, a consulting agency in Nashville that advocates for world well being and improvement points, in a latest interview. “We will’t let these cuts occur.”
A former religion director for the One Marketing campaign, co-founded by U2 lead singer Bono, Dyer can also be the previous government director of Hope By way of Therapeutic Fingers, a humanitarian group based by Invoice Frist, a doctor and former U.S. senator who was a key early supporter of PEPFAR as Senate majority chief.
She’s lengthy seen the vital function that evangelical teams have performed in supporting PEPFAR and hopes that when once more religion leaders will rally to help this system.
Dyer stated that for a lot of its historical past, PEPFAR had the help of main evangelical leaders akin to Rick and Kay Warren of Saddleback Church in Orange County, California, and Invoice and Lynne Hybels of Willow Creek Group Church close to Chicago. Earlier than this system was accredited in 2003, they and different megachurch pastors of their technology helped the Bush administration overcome the stigma round AIDS amongst conservative Christians.
Musician Amy Grant performs at an awareness-raising live performance for PEPFAR at Otter Creek Church, June 18, 2025, in Brentwood, Tenn. (Picture by Jorge Amaya)
Kay Warren had seen the devastation of the AIDS epidemic firsthand whereas visiting clinics in Africa, one thing Warren recounted in a 2007 interview for Sojourners journal. She recalled assembly a girl within the clinic who was dying of the illness, who requested for prayer. “Who will look after my kids when I’m gone?” Warren recalled her asking.
Frist spoke by video on the Otter Creek occasion, and he recounted his personal encounters with the devastation of the AIDS epidemic whereas on medical mission journeys to work at clinics in sub-Saharan Africa. “Three million individuals a 12 months dying of HIV/AIDS on the time,” stated Frist.
Frist informed the viewers a few 2002 dinner on the White Home the place President George W. Bush mentioned his plans for this system to fight the AIDS epidemic. Nobody knew on the time if it will work, he stated.
Now there may be proof, he stated.
Kids play on the Nyumbani Kids’s House in Nairobi, Kenya, Aug. 15, 2023. The orphanage, which is closely reliant on international donations, cares for over 100 kids with HIV whose dad and mom died of the illness and offers them with housing, care and PEPFAR-supplied anti-retroviral medication. A U.S. international support program that officers say has saved 26 million lives in Africa and elsewhere is being threatened by some Republicans who worry that program funding may go to organizations that promote abortion. (AP Picture/Brian Inganga)
“We’re simply 5 years away from the top of the HIV/AIDS pandemic,” Frist stated. “Now isn’t the time to again away. We’d like Congress to see this via to maintain the religion. And to complete the race.”
However leaders like Frist, who left workplace in 2007, and the Warrens, who stepped down from management at Saddleback in 2022, are now not in place. Many youthful church leaders don’t have any firsthand recollection of the peak of AIDS disaster, when help for PEPFAR grew.
“We’ve got to return to the individuals within the pews,” Dyer informed RNS in late June.
a researcher who labored for 20 years on AIDS prevention packages, worries that a lot of the progress in combating the AIDS epidemic could possibly be misplaced with the cuts to PEPFAR.
Torjesen, who was just lately named president of BioLogos, a Christian nonprofit that makes connections between religion and science leaders, hopes different Christians can be keen to see PEPFAR as what she known as kingdom work — taking the blessings that the USA has obtained and the medical advances right here and sharing them with others.
“Can we not less than agree that we’re known as by Christ to serve others?” she stated. “That could be a start line.”
Asia Russell, government director of Well being GAP, an activist group that helps funding for PEPFAR, is skeptical that evangelical teams will have the ability to maintain off cuts to this system.
Russell, whose group protested at a Senate Appropriations Committee listening to in June the place cuts to PEPFAR have been mentioned, argues that few Republican leaders will oppose the Trump administration’s finances cuts to humanitarian support. “It’s not about bringing the band again collectively,” stated Russell. “It’s about the truth that Donald Trump is keen to let individuals die.”
Josh Graves, the preaching and educating minister for Otter Creek, stated he turned conscious of the cuts at USAID and different packages, like PEPFAR, via his good friend Mark Moore, who runs a nonprofit that produces a vitamin-fortified model of peanut butter utilized in meals packages that fight malnutrition.
Graves has been involved about how Trump administration cuts via the Division of Authorities Effectivity program began by Elon Musk would have an effect on “actual Christian individuals doing actually good Christian issues.”
Attendees and musicians acknowledge the 26 million lives saved by the PEPFAR program throughout an occasion at Otter Creek Church, June 18, 2025, in Brentwood, Tenn. (Picture by Jorge Amaya)
Graves stated that, not less than in Nashville, there’s a starvation for public coverage that “appears to be like like Jesus,” formed by justice and compassion reasonably than what he known as the “empty energy” of polarization.
“I believe there’s a bunch inside Nashville and different cities which can be hungry for readability about the right way to take the purple letters of Jesus and apply them into real-world conditions,” he stated, referring to Bible publishers’ observe of highlighting the phrases of Jesus in purple ink.
At Otter Creek, Grant was joined onstage by Christian songwriter and producer Charlie Peacock, who recalled the heady days of getting PEPFAR handed a quarter-century in the past. As Bono toured in 2002 to rally church buildings to help AIDS aid, the singer stopped in Nashville to ask musicians and different Nashville leaders to affix the trigger. The assembly with Bono was held at Peacock’s home.
Peacock hopes that when once more evangelicals will communicate up for AIDS aid. That help can be wanted, he stated, as the present administration doesn’t share the form of “compassionate conservatism” that impressed Frist or Bush. Peacock stated that supporting PEPFAR is extra religious than it’s political.
“And for a lot of Christ-followers across the U.S. — across the globe — the care of orphans and widows, these in want of lifesaving meds, is rarely off the desk,” he informed RNS. “ It’s as entrance and middle as ever.”
