How Trump’s Executive Orders Threaten Faith-Based Institutions’ Public Witness
(ANALYSIS) In the earliest days of the new administration, two Executive Orders — 14151 and 14173 — were issued with the aim of dismantling what they describe as “radical” diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs and end what they frame as illegal preferences across the federal government. But the reach of these orders goes well beyond federal agencies.
They send a signal — and potentially create enforcement pathways — that reach deep into civil society, including faith-based and spiritually-rooted institutions that serve, teach, heal and convene from a place of theological conviction.
This moment is not simply about shifting regulatory frameworks. These Trump administration orders raise far more fundamental questions.
For starters, will religious institutions still be allowed to live out their sacred commitments in public life, particularly when those commitments lead them to acknowledge historic wounds, serve communities pushed to the margins or speak openly about equity and belonging as a matter of spiritual identity?
What one administration categorizes as “DEI” or “preferencing,” many communities of faith recognize as neighbor-love, as prophetic witness or as an expression of the imago Dei.
Executive Order 14151: A sacred-rooted reckoning
President Trump’s Executive Order, titled “Ending Radical and Wasteful DEI Programs and Preferencing,” was signed on his first day in office back on Jan. 20. The order declares: “The Biden Administration forced illegal and immoral discrimination programs, going by the name ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ (DEI), into virtually all aspects of the Federal Government, in areas ranging from airline safety to the military ...”
This executive order extends far beyond a routine reversal of federal administrative priorities. While it begins by targeting DEI, DEIA, and environmental justice offices within executive agencies, its implications reach deep into the heart of civil society — including nonprofits, faith-based institutions, foundations, universities, and businesses that have received federal grants or contracts.
EO 14151 does not merely eliminate internal DEI programs; it establishes a retroactive and proactive enforcement mechanism. One provision requires federal agencies to identify contractors and grantees that have provided any DEI-related materials or programming since January 20, 2021. This creates a chilling effect — not just for DEI consultants or university departments — but also for religious organizations whose spiritual practices may now be interpreted through a secular and ideologically charged lens.
Religious and spiritually grounded civil society organizations are not exempt from this scrutiny. Many receive federal funds to provide critical public goods — housing support, after-school enrichment, addiction recovery, workforce development — motivated by convictions about the dignity of every human being and the call to serve the vulnerable. Faith-based providers often act from a spiritual mandate to care for “the least of these” (Matt. 25:40–45), seeing in each person the image of God.
Consider the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), which has consistently articulated a theological commitment to confronting racism, listening to those historically marginalized, and forging authentic relationships across differences.
In one statement, the USCCB declared: “Only by forging authentic relationships can we truly see each other as Christ sees us. Love should then move us to take what we learn from our encounters and examine where society continues to fail our brothers and sisters, or where it perpetuates inequity, and seek to address those problems.”
Such a statement — rooted in sacramental theology and Catholic social teaching — could be interpreted by outside reviewers as indistinguishable from DEI rhetoric. Yet this is not simply about semantics or partisan disagreement over DEI frameworks. This is about whether religious institutions retain the freedom to live out spiritual convictions that may, to the untrained eye, bear striking resemblance to secular DEI commitments, without being penalized under a vague and sweeping administrative directive.
The executive order also introduces significant ambiguity. Nowhere does it define DEI or environmental justice. This vagueness opens the door to selective enforcement. For instance, a Black Church nonprofit that integrates religiously grounded racial reconciliation practices may now be asked to justify its programming not in terms of sacred formation, but under a narrow rubric of federal compliance. Similarly, Indigenous-led ministries or faith-based immigrant support services that contextualize care with culturally rooted spiritual practices could be scrutinized under the presumption of “advancing DEI.”
This is not merely a regulatory challenge. For some faith-based organizations — particularly those embedded in historically marginalized communities— it is a spiritual reckoning. The core question is whether the public square will continue to make room for those who act from a sacred conviction about justice, hospitality, belonging and memory. What may appear to some as “diversity training” may in fact be a liturgical expression of repentance, restoration, or bearing witness to the wounds of exclusion.
Again, this is not about whether one agrees with the structure or scope of DEI programs as they have developed in secular institutions. The question is more foundational: Will the state recognize the integrity of religious institutions whose spiritual beliefs call them to love across difference, to acknowledge historical harm, and to pursue a vision of a beloved community — even when that overlaps with contested public language?
For some, Executive Order 14151 not only represents ending DEI and environmental justice programs. For some, this order has the potential to reshape how religious institutions are allowed to carry out their most sincerely held religious beliefs. Not because they have become more political, but because their deepest spiritual convictions about the imago Dei and neighbor-love are now perceived as ideological liabilities. For religious nonprofits and sacred-centered institutions, the question is not just how to comply, but how to remain faithful to their own live-giving animating spiritual beliefs.
One recent example highlights the potential path forward. In response to pressure from federal officials, Georgetown University Law Center was warned that its continued DEI teaching could result in disqualification from federal internships.
Georgetown’s dean responded not by retreating, but by calling upon both First Amendment protections and the school’s Jesuit Catholic mission — affirming that sustained dialogue across difference is a moral and religious imperative: “As a Catholic and Jesuit institution, Georgetown University was founded on the principle that serious and sustained discourse among people of different faiths, cultures, and beliefs promotes intellectual, ethical, and spiritual understanding.”
Executive Order 14173: Reframing ‘merit’
Executive Order 14173, “Ending Illegal Discrimination and Restoring Merit-Based Opportunity,” reconfigures the federal government’s posture toward any program or practice that explicitly considers race, sex, or other protected characteristics in organizational operations, contracting or service delivery. Though framed as a reaffirmation of nondiscrimination and equal opportunity, the order shifts the emphasis from preventing exclusion to dismantling what it defines as “preferential treatment” — even when such measures have historically functioned as remedial or equity-promoting responses to systemic inequality.
The order begins by revoking affirmative action requirements for federal contractors and directing agencies to eliminate internal DEI and DEIA programs deemed inconsistent with the administration’s interpretation of federal law. But it quickly broadens its scope beyond the federal workforce, authorizing civil compliance investigations into a wide range of institutions.
Specifically, the order targets “publicly traded corporations, large nonprofit corporations or associations, foundations with assets of $500 million or more, state and local bar and medical associations, and institutions of higher education with endowments over $1 billion.”
This explicit inclusion of nonprofit organizations, foundations, and universities — some of the primary vessels through which faith-based and spiritually rooted institutions contribute to public life — signals a major expansion in potential federal scrutiny.
For religious and spiritually grounded organizations, this order raises urgent and layered considerations. Many of these institutions (especially those engaged in direct service, public-private partnership, or philanthropic grant-making) have developed programmatic and organizational commitments that center those historically pushed to the margins.
These are not political strategies but sacred expressions of mission. Whether through mentoring underrepresented leaders, anchoring community development in historically excluded neighborhoods, or shaping grantmaking strategies around racial reconciliation, many faith-based institutions see such commitments as inseparable from their theological identity.
Under Executive Order 14173, however, these practices may now be interpreted as legally suspect, particularly if they involve organizational support, resource allocation or service prioritization perceived to conflict with a narrow vision of “merit-based opportunity.”
The order does not categorically ban service to marginalized communities, but it does place the burden on institutions to defend their programming under a narrowed reading of anti-discrimination law. Moreover, the requirement that entities certify compliance with the order’s principles as a condition of receiving or retaining federal funds adds another layer of legal and administrative complexity, especially for religious providers of behavioral health care, workforce training, housing services, or community clinics operating under federal partnerships.
The order also casts a chilling effect over the broader faith-based nonprofit sector. Institutions may now hesitate to use public communication that reflects their sacred commitments—language of repair, reconciliation, historic harm or restorative justice—for fear it could trigger reputational, legal or financial risk. When DEI is defined so broadly and vaguely, even spiritually grounded statements of moral conviction may be viewed as noncompliant with an increasingly ideological framework that redefines equality as formal neutrality and discourages any acknowledgment of historic exclusion.
Executive Order 14173 introduces a regulatory framework that could constrain the ability of faith-based and spiritually grounded organizations to embody their convictions in the public square, particularly when those convictions call them to act on behalf of communities historically impacted by injustice. While the full scope of enforcement remains to be seen, the order sets the stage for narrowing the moral imagination and institutional distinctiveness permissible in federally supported spaces. And that narrowing risks suppressing not only certain kinds of programs, but the sacred commitments that animate them.
Executive Orders 14151 and 14173 are not just regulatory pivots. Instead, they signal a redefinition of who may meaningfully participate in public life. For religious and spiritually rooted institutions, the question is not merely how to comply, but how to remain faithful to sacred convictions that resist easy translation into prevailing ideological terms.
Religious freedom, at its core, protects the right of institutions to serve, teach, and lead from within their distinct theological frameworks. It does not grant privilege, but it guards pluralism. In a truly democratic society, the public square must remain open to communities acting from divergent and even contradictory sacred commitments.
This includes a Black Church ministry grounded in spiritual reconciliation, a Jesuit law school invoking Catholic teaching to foster discourse across difference, or an Indigenous nonprofit centering communal repair. These expressions of the sacred are not ancillary to public life, they are essential to its vitality.
These executive orders, with their broad and undefined mandates, threaten to narrow the moral imagination and suppress the sacred language that animates so much of civil society. If their enforcement chills not only partisan rhetoric but also sacred witness, we risk eroding the very pluralism religious freedom exists to protect.
This is not a moment for faith-based institutions to retreat or sanitize their convictions. It is a moment to reclaim their voice and affirm their rightful place in shaping a public life capacious enough to hold true difference — including sacred difference. Religious freedom—grounded in conscience, practice, and institutional distinctiveness — must remain a cornerstone of our shared civic life.
Chelsea Langston Bombino is a believer in sacred communities, a wife and a mother. She serves as a program officer with the Fetzer Institute and a fellow with the Center for Public Justice.