Evangelical groups hold vigil against Trump and Musk's foreign aid cuts

Evangelical Christian groups are calling on Congress to reinstate foreign aid programs shuttered by President Donald Trump’s administration, arguing the government’s actions will hurt millions of people around the world.

Addressing a crowd of around three dozen largely evangelical Christians assembled at Capitol Hill Presbyterian Church on Tuesday morning (March 11) for a “Prayer Vigil for Foreign Aid,” the Rev. Eugene Cho, president and CEO of the group Bread for the World, denounced the “broad, un-targeted cuts” recently implemented at the U.S. Agency for International Development as an assault on vulnerable populations all over the globe.

“These indiscriminate cuts are not just a policy failure,” said Cho, standing in a sanctuary dotted with candles. “For us, especially, as followers of Christ, as uncomfortable as it may be, we must clearly … but prophetically, say: it is also a moral failure.”

Religion & Politics

Photos of the Week: Bloody Sunday anniversary; Ash Wednesday

U.S. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-NY, from left, U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., the Rev. Al Sharpton, the Rev. Jesse Jackson and NAACP President Derrick Johnson march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge during the 60th anniversary of the march to ensure that African Americans could exercise their constitutional right to vote, Sunday, March 9, 2025, in Selma, Ala. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)

In Opinion

And finally, Scripture doesn't make rules for pastors' wives. Beth Allison Barr explains why it matters.

Imagine a job interview where, to get the gig, your spouse must answer intrusive questions about their fertility, personal religious beliefs and their own career trajectory.

Such interrogations are common for many pastors’ wives across white evangelicalism, according to medieval historian Beth Allison Barr — herself a pastor’s wife and the James Vardaman Endowed Chair of History at Baylor University. In her new book, "Becoming the Pastor's Wife: How Marriage Replaced Ordination as a Woman's Path to Ministry," that’s only the start of the often-unspoken expectations awaiting many women who pair up with pastors. Their appearance, homemaking and parenting are often under scrutiny, and their unpaid labor is considered a given.

Barr isn’t arguing for an end to the role itself, but she wants everyone to know that the job’s expectations are based in culture more than Scripture. Though the only avenue in some denominations for women to pursue a calling to ministry, “pastor’s wife” is not the result of a biblical mandate, Barr argues, but of history.

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