‘People Are Already Dying’: The Spiritual Crisis Behind U.S. and U.K. Foreign Aid Cuts

After abrupt cuts to foreign aid in the United States and United Kingdom at the start of 2025, faith leaders feared such measures were just the beginning of a larger realignment of the longstanding collaboration between Western governments and religious groups to deliver humanitarian aid, partner in peacebuilding and support development across the globe.

The more immediate concern, aid workers in sub-Saharan Africa told the Fetzer Institute, was because cuts were so sudden, local governments and on-the-ground organizations had little-to-no time to prepare.

The impact, they shared, was instantaneous and brutal.

Clinical trials investigating the cross-border spread of infectious diseases in Kenya came to an overnight halt. A peace agreement that brought an end to a 40-year conflict in southern Senegal that had U.S. government funding baked in is no longer certain to hold. Communal kitchens in war-torn Sudan were no longer able to offer food in the midst of war-induced famine.

The full force of the funding cuts was directly devastating, said Barbara Njenga, who works in health research and development in Kenya.

Because of sub-Saharan Africa’s existing vulnerabilities, the effect was that much more severe. Of the 20 poorest countries on earth, 19 are in sub-Saharan Africa. Among them, seven rely on U.S. aid dollars to cover over a fifth of their assistance — South Sudan, Somalia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Liberia, Sudan, Uganda and Ethiopia.

Njenga cited numerous examples of that impact, from the lack of funding for critical HIV research, cuts to maternal and child health programs as well as school-based nutrition schemes and the reduction of surveillance programs to monitor potential outbreaks of diseases like Ebola. She also cited the economic vulnerabilities, with numerous workers losing their jobs and the knock-on effect that can have on families and communities.

“In one neighborhood near Kisumu [a city in western Kenya], there were numerous health programs supported by the U.S. government,” said Njenga. “On a recent visit, it was almost like a ghost town because so many NGO offices were shut down.

People are already dying, said Njenga, and even if funding is restored, much of the pain caused by cuts might be irreversible or irredeemable.

A woman living with HIV or a mother with a terminally ill child or a family with no income can pray to God or beseech religious organizations for aid – but without funding, they still die, she said.

“It is a wakeup call for African nations to think outside of the box to meet our needs.”

Not only are religious organizations stepping into the gap created by aid cuts to provide emergency services and support, they are also providing spiritual succor and searching for deeper, more divine, intimations in the midst of the devastation.

“Someone, somewhere, refused to walk away”

Ali Al Mokdad, who previously held roles within international non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and United Nations (UN) agencies, shared with his network, however, that “the world did not fall apart when the help left.”

“The world kept breathing because someone, somewhere, refused to walk away,” he wrote.

In sub-Saharan Africa, those “someones” are often religious communities, leaders, NGOs and institutions. Motivated by values of empathy, charity, compassion, mercy, courage or a deep desire to do good, these spiritually engaged humanitarians find a way to mitigate the worst effects and find spiritual solutions to their society’s most pressing problems.

Matthew Soerens, vice president of advocacy and policy at World Relief, an evangelical Christian organization dedicated to serving vulnerable populations at home and abroad, said the cuts have been an “earthquake” for the universe of organizations and ministries doing aid work around the world.

While World Relief does not have receive U.S. government funds for most of its work — with the exception of four conflict-affected countries: Sudan, South Sudan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Haiti — Soerens said the funding cuts have paralyzed life-saving humanitarian interventions his organization was involved in.

Soerens and World Relief are far from alone. The pause of foreign assistance funds and the termination of agreements and contracts to bring aid to millions around the world has caused shockwaves across the faith-based international humanitarian and development communities.

“While still believing that government has a compelling interest and unique ability to respond to global humanitarian issues,” Soerens said, “many leaders of faith-based organizations are calling on people of religious and spiritual conviction to step into the gap left by abrupt governmental funding changes.”

Religious communities step up and step in

In West Africa, where organizations like Catholic Relief Services (CRS) — the international humanitarian agency of the Catholic community in the United States — are active in disaster relief, health and agriculture projects and programs, the aftermath from abrupt funding cuts has been likewise devastating.

Following the rollback of aid funding, CRS reiterated the Catholic Church’s commitment to treating every human life as a “precious gift from God that must be protected and nurtured.”

In the wake of cuts, CRS has had to halt much of its U.S. government-supported work — cutting off critical aid to 20 million people worldwide — with food left in warehouses not able to be distributed to the hungry families, children unable to access vital health and nutrition services and peacebuilding programs in Senegal and Guinea stopped in their tracks.

“These programs do more than save lives,” the statement read. “They help lift communities and countries out of poverty. They support local faith-based and church partners that provide services and stability to their communities and to their countries.”

Speaking on background, two Catholic aid workers with decades of experience working in Africa said that while religious communities always have, and will continue to, step into the gap and provide services to those most in need, they will clearly have fewer resources to rely on going forward.

“Religious communities always step up,” one source said. “They always have and always will. But in West Africa they are poor and there is no secret source of funds to expand the shoestring budgets they have and already dedicate to aid.”

But what is the solution when there is not enough money for any organization – religious or otherwise – to step in or step up?

Despite the moral summons, the Divine appeals and spiritual support offered by local communities, there is often no happy ending for many who relied on foreign aid and who have been locked out and left in the cold by recent cuts.

It will take decades to build up the funds once provided by governments, sources from CRS said, but there are no resources that will fill the void left by recent cuts. “The religious communities will remain committed,” they said, “but they will have fewer resources to do so and have to decide what services they can provide and which they no longer can.”

Finding spiritual resources when material resources run out

The resources they will need to rely on, said another source, will be spiritual until funding is restored or new sources are found.

When people need more than they can provide, religious aid workers in West and East Africa told Fetzer they turn to deeply held religious convictions or spiritual practices for inspiration, sustenance and to reframe the situation. In such shocking circumstances, they shared, viewing their work as part of a higher calling and a more ultimate telos gave them a gritty perseverance to deal with the work as it is, holding onto a long view of hope in the midst of present horrors.

It also inspired them to call developed, and decidedly more secular, Western nations to task.

CRS sources shared, for example, how religious communities in Africa have been raising their moral voice to urge wealthier countries to step up and provide funds in the wake of abrupt and devastating cuts, with an acknowledgment of their belief in the sacredness of all beings and the dignity of all persons.

In a March 2025 statement, CRS enjoined, “the most powerful and wealthy countries in the world” to remember their “moral responsibility to assist the most vulnerable. “As Pope Paul VI said in his encyclical Populorum Progressio: ‘It is a very important duty of the advanced nations to help the developing nations,’” CRS said.

Likewise, Isaac Mong’are of Nairobi, who works in development studies and is a member of the Seventh Day Adventist Church, said religious leaders need to play a role in advocacy. “Leaders must use their moral and spiritual authority to create an enabling environment,” Mong’are said, “for members to discuss developmental issues and civil governance and the impact of foreign aid cuts.

“What I’ve seen is that they often avoid talk of such things in favor of supposedly ‘spiritual’ topics,” he said. “But the two are linked.”

To that end, Mong’are said Kenya’s Seventh Day Adventists emphasize “holistic ministry,” which emphasizes how people’s spiritual needs do not exist in a vacuum, but are inherently related to their social, economic and physical needs.

The aid cuts, from Mong’are’s perspective, are as much a spiritual crisis as they are a physical one. Churches like his need not only lead people into spiritual practices like prayer, Bible study or Sabbath observance for the sake of their souls, but the sake of the world, he said.

“Even as we cater to people’s spiritual needs, we must also seek to solve their physical and spiritual problems,” he said. His fellow Adventists and other Christians, Mong’are said, must begin to find God in service to the poor and marginalized among them.

In the wake of the cuts and their immediate impact in Kenya, Mong’are said numerous Seventh Day Adventist congregations have created new, or strengthened existing, community welfare circles to meet the needs of members who are hurting. Most of all, however, these groups have convened together to connect, listen, and care, said Mong’are.

“If the church is anything, it is a place to come together, to encourage one another, to identify problems, and seek solutions together,” he said.

For his part, Abdullahi Mustapha, a Muslim in Nigeria’s north-central Nasarawa state – where violence between nomadic herders (mostly Muslim) and farmers (predominantly Christian) has resulted in kidnapping, rape, the destruction of religious sites and death – has continued working in peacebuilding, despite the lack of financial capital available.

“The Quranic and prophetic texts call us to humanitarian action,” said Mustapha, “to do good no matter what challenges the world around us presents.”

In his day-to-day work in Christian-Muslim dialogue, Mustapha said he regularly draws on the concept of khayr — or “goodness.” Mentioned 148 times in the Quran, khayr is anything that is good, he said. “Whether real or ideal, actual or potential, it is all that is sound, healthy, and good,” said Mustapha. “And there is no higher good in Islam than peace.”

When funding runs thin or resources are not readily available to continue the work, Mustapha said people of faith can still endeavor to do good, to spread khayr among those in their communities. “Even if it is one person’s life that is improved, it is worth it,” said Mustapha. “Surah Al-Ma’idah [the fifth chapter of the Quran] says ‘whoever saves a life, it is as if he saved all of humankind,’” he added.

Echoing Mokdad, Mustapha said, the current funding crisis may even remind us of the solutions religious communities and spiritually-inspired individuals constantly seek — and find — in their day-to-day pursuit of the good.

“No matter the funding, no matter who is paying — or not — we must continue the work, even if our capacity and reach are reduced by the whims of the current political climate,” he said. “We people of faith are already living the salvation that our world needs.”

By Ken Chitwood