A White House official has ignited a fierce church-and-state controversy after describing more than $4 billion in federal homelessness funding as “God’s money” and urging faith communities to compete aggressively for it before organizations with different values receive the funds.
Dave Donaldson, a special assistant to President Donald Trump in the White House Faith Office, delivered the extraordinary message during a webinar explaining how religious organizations could apply for grants through the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Continuum of Care program.
Follow @allchronologyThe program is the federal government’s largest funding initiative dedicated to addressing homelessness. States, tribal governments, nonprofit organizations and housing providers can apply for assistance through the end of August.
More than one-quarter of the $4 billion has reportedly been reserved for new participants—an amount the administration described as historic.
But Donaldson’s attempt to persuade hesitant faith leaders to pursue the money immediately raised alarms.
“I heard the other day, a faith leader said to me, ‘We shouldn’t touch that government money,’” Donaldson said. “But how many know ultimately it’s not the government’s money? It’s God’s money, and it’s your tax dollars.”
He then warned that if religious organizations failed to compete, the funds might go elsewhere.
“If we do not compete with this HUD Continuum of Care, these funds by default are going to go to perhaps organizations that have values that you do not share,” Donaldson said. “And so I cannot urge you enough to do whatever it takes to compete.”
Faith-based organizations have long participated in federally funded social-service programs, and their eligibility for grants is not inherently unusual. Churches and religious nonprofits often provide food, shelter, addiction treatment and emergency support in communities where government capacity is limited.
Follow @allchronologyThe controversy centers instead on the language used by a White House official and the suggestion that public money should be claimed as part of a competition between opposing moral or religious values.
Ryan Burge, a professor at Washington University in St. Louis who studies religion’s influence on American life and politics, described the “God’s money” statement as “very odd.”
Burge said Trump’s second administration has embraced explicitly evangelical language more aggressively than previous White Houses, which generally discussed faith in broader and more inclusive terms.
“Trump 2.0 is a decidedly more evangelical administration than even Trump 1.0,” Burge said, pointing to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth as another official who frequently frames public questions through an evangelical worldview.
“It’s like, ‘God owns everything. God’s providence is over all of us,’” he explained. “That kind of language is very evangelical.”
Donaldson’s appeal did not occur in isolation.
Paula White-Cain, a prominent televangelist and White House faith adviser, recently urged evangelical Christians to register and mobilize voters so that “we would never have an election problem again.”
Burge characterized her message as traditional evangelical political rhetoric fused with the Trump movement’s permanent sense of conflict.
Follow @allchronology“This is a constant in the Trump administration,” he said. “They’re always fighting against the Deep State.”
The same combative framing appeared in Donaldson’s warning that if ideologically aligned faith groups did not obtain the homelessness grants, organizations holding different values would.
“That combativeness is so much more evident in this administration than prior ones,” Burge said.
White-Cain also described the election of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a Muslim and democratic socialist, as “a very scary time.”
“You’re not just talking socialism,” she said. “You are talking straight-up Marxism.”
She then connected his election to the closure of churches during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Burge called her remarks “couched anti-Muslim rhetoric,” arguing that they promoted the idea that Muslims were gaining power and represented a threat to the country.
He warned that such language resembled the Islamophobia that spread across the United States after the September 11 attacks.
That rhetoric appears especially disproportionate when considered alongside America’s actual religious demographics.
Follow @allchronologyAccording to Pew Research Center findings cited in the report, approximately 62 percent of Americans identify as Christian, while 29 percent are religiously unaffiliated and 7 percent belong to other religious traditions. Muslims represent approximately 1 percent of the population.
Yet concerns about Christian nationalism exist alongside significant public support for Christianity’s cultural influence.
Nearly 80 percent of Americans reportedly oppose churches becoming directly involved in partisan politics. At the same time, many remain comfortable with politicians using Christian language or promoting broad Christian moral values.
Pew researcher Chip Rotolo explained that Americans may reject formal church control of government while still viewing Christianity as an important part of national identity.
“People would like to see Christian moral values promoted,” Rotolo said, even when they do not support eliminating the separation between church and state.
The portion of Americans who believe Christianity should become the country’s official religion reportedly increased from 13 percent in 2024 to 17 percent in 2026.
White evangelical Protestants remain among Trump’s strongest constituencies. Evangelicals constitute approximately 23 percent of Americans and continue to support the president at very high levels, even as his approval has declined across other religious and nonreligious groups.
That political loyalty creates what Rotolo described as a reciprocal relationship: Trump officials use language that evangelical communities value, and those communities reward the administration with continued support.
The $4 billion funding appeal demonstrates how that relationship may extend beyond rhetoric and into the distribution of public resources.
There is no evidence in the supplied report that HUD has legally restricted the grants to evangelicals or that applications from secular organizations or members of other faiths will automatically be rejected. Grant recipients remain subject to federal requirements.
Follow @allchronologyBut the White House’s message has left critics confronting an alarming question.
Taxpayer money belongs collectively to Americans of every faith and no faith. It is supposed to combat homelessness based on public need—not to become a prize in an ideological contest over whose values dominate.
Donaldson called it “God’s money.”
The danger, critics argue, is that the administration may be treating one particular group as God’s chosen collectors.
