By Mark Alan Leslie*
July 2010 – What began as “a brilliant move” by then-President George W. Bush to fund abstinence training in the fight against HIV/AIDS abroad has been turned on its head by the Obama administration. As a result, faith-based missions groups and church outreaches have lost tens of millions of dollars in support.
In addition, President Barack Obama’s decision to cut federal money to faith-based groups unless they give equal training from other religions. Mission groups that received federal aid are left scrambling to make up the difference that, in many cases, equals hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Lavonne Stevens of Nashville, chief operating officer of African Leadership from 2003 to 2009, said that in 2009, word came out of Washington, D.C., that, “if an organization was faith-based and proselytizing was a core part of what it was doing, it lost its funding.”
African Leadership, a Christian education and development organization, trains church leaders in Africa and funds relief and development projects. At least five missionary groups it worked with lost federal funding, Stevens said.
Among them are groups that teach abstinence, such as Living Hope, a church-based outreach, which received funds from the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, established by Congress and President Bush in 2003.
“Our cut was $347,000 per annum,” said Living Hope chairperson John V. Thomas, senior pastor at King of Kings Baptist Church in South Africa.
President alone sets policy
Thomas added, “The money we received was explicitly run by the president of the United States. Policy regarding this fund was and is the president’s policy. … In late March after President Obama came to power, we received an e-mail from Washington stating that our money for abstinence funding and Be Faithful funding had been cut and no explanation was given at all in the letter.”
The PEPFAR bill authorized $15 billion over five years and in 2008 was reauthorized for another five years, committing $48 billion. The 2003 legislation declared that 20% of the funding must be spent on HIV/AIDS prevention, of which at least 33% was to be spent on abstinence until marriage programs.
That translates into at least $1 billion to fight HIV through abstinence.
According to the PEPFAR Web site, 2008 wording was changed to read: “In countries with generalized HIV epidemics, at least half of all money directed toward preventing sexual HIV transmission should be for ‘activities promoting abstinence, delay of sexual debut, monogamy, fidelity, and partner reduction.’”
It further declared that if this was not complied with, “then the global AIDS coordinator (whose mission is to implement the president’s plan) must report to Congress within 30 days on the reasons behind the shortfall.”
The Obama administration has changed the legislation this year to focus on gender-based violence, based on the belief that women who are victims of abuse are less apt to seek HIV/AIDS testing.
Brilliant move negated
The original bill, said Thomas, “was a brilliant move of President Bush, but with one glaring weakness: the president alone determines policy. That was fantastic for us and President Bush, but it has had negative results with the new administration. President Obama’s views on abstinence are very clear.”
Stevens said the current administration is so averse to helping faith-based organizations that it will take bizarre actions to avoid working with them. She told of her experience in southern Darfur where a village has no homes, no food, no protection – but it does possess a huge flat-screen television.
The reason? The U.S. government literally air-dropped bags of money there because it was too afraid to send people into the area.
“They wouldn’t use a delivery system like African Leadership,” Stevens said, “because it is faith-based, and we were taking Bibles along with medicine and water purification, etc. While I was there we flew in at least 10 plane loads of food.”
Avoid the strings
Ray Walker, chief financial officer of Source of Light Ministries International, based in Madison, Georgia, said the current situation should teach faith-based groups to trust the Lord, not government.
“If the government is involved in funding,” Stevens said, “there are always strings attached and you have to bend to their will if you are relying on their money.” 
*Mark A. Leslie (www.markalanleslie.com) is an author and president of The Leslies – Media Consultants in Monmouth, Maine.
