When President Trump recently mocked Pope Leo XIV as “weak” for criticizing U.S. war policy toward Iran and continuing to defend migrants and human dignity, it was tempting to dismiss the episode as yet another Trump provocation. That would miss the point. Trump’s aggression toward the pope is not random. It reveals a deeper vulnerability in authoritarian politics: Morally credible faith leadership still has the power to challenge nationalist mythmaking, expose cruelty and reach people in ways policy arguments alone often cannot.
Philanthropy should be paying much closer attention. For all the smart money going into litigation, elections, communications and democracy defense, liberal and progressive funders still too often treat faith engagement as marginal, awkward or reputationally risky. That is a serious strategic mistake. The authoritarian right has spent decades investing in religious infrastructure, moral narrative and identity formation because it understands something many mainstream liberal funders still do not: People do not live by policy alone. They live by stories about who belongs, what is sacred, who is under threat and what kind of future is worth fighting for.
That is why Trump’s attack on Pope Leo matters. The pope has criticized war, challenged the misuse of religion for political and military ends and defended migrants and human dignity. In response, Trump has tried to belittle and discredit him. This is what strongman politics does when confronted by an alternative source of moral authority: It moves quickly to disarm it.
For philanthropy, the takeaway should be clear: Backing faith leadership capable of depolarizing public life and speaking truth to power is a key part of backing democratic infrastructure.
Funding that infrastructure does not require agreement on every issue. Religious communities hold a wide range of views on gender, sexuality and equality, and those differences matter. But in a moment of democratic peril, the North Star must be broad alignment against authoritarianism, violence, scapegoating and the targeting of minorities. Backing religious leaders who resist those forces does not require compromise on, say, struggles for gender justice. It means recognizing that democracy is the space in which those struggles must remain possible and that protecting human dignity sometimes requires coalition across real difference.
For too long, many of us assumed democracy could be defended mainly through procedures, norms and institutional guardrails. Those things matter immensely. But they are not enough when opponents are offering a deeper story — about identity, civilizational crisis, enemies, sacrifice, and even about God.
Democracy’s defenders must recover the moral depth democracy already depends on: the equal worth of persons, the dignity of conscience, the conviction that no one is above the law, and the refusal to make cruelty a governing principle. Making an explicit argument from faith, when grounded in humility and human dignity, need not threaten secular democracy. It can help protect it.
Nevertheless, the communities and leaders most capable of offering a liberating public witness have too often been underfunded, underorganized and overshadowed, while authoritarian religious movements have been lavishly financed, networked, and amplified. In the United States, that imbalance has helped create a public landscape in which faith distorted into a tool for power is far more visible than faith rooted in dignity, solidarity and the common good. Many people alienated from institutional religion are not rejecting moral seriousness; they are grieving its corruption.
This is not only a Christian story, and it is not only a U.S. story. Across the world, democratic backsliding often advances by targeting those made most vulnerable — including women, LGBTQI+ people, migrants, racial and religious minorities, and others cast as threats to the nation, family or moral order. These are among the first battlegrounds in a wider struggle over democracy, pluralism, human dignity and belonging. As Faith in Democracy’s recent global faith convening with the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee affirmed, antigender politics has become one of the most effective tools for authoritarian mobilization, manipulating fear around children, family, sexuality, migration, race and national identity to consolidate power and erode democratic life. It is not spontaneous cultural backlash. It is organized power-building.
Beyond asking only “How do we reduce polarization?” or “How do we counter disinformation?” philanthropy should be asking: “Who is building the moral imagination, trusted relationships and public courage needed to resist authoritarianism before it hardens into common sense?”
History offers some of the clearest answers to that question. Desmond Tutu challenged the theological foundations of apartheid. Liberation theology resisted the colonial Catholicism that sanctified conquest and inequality in Latin America. The Civil Rights movement dismantled the slaveholder theology used to defend segregation and white supremacy. These movements did not depolarize by trying to please everyone. They did it by telling the truth, using shared moral language, exposing domination, and calling communities into courage and solidarity.
Pope Leo now offers a contemporary example. With a unifying style and by acting as a clear moral witness on migration, peace and human dignity, he has the potential to help depolarize the Catholic Church and rally it to confront authoritarian policies more openly.
Funders serious about democratic resilience should be investing in clergy and faith leaders who can interrupt extremist narratives before they calcify. The point is not to privilege religion over other strategies. It is to stop ceding one of the most powerful terrains of identity, belonging and moral meaning to the far right.
Inside Philanthropy has rightly pushed funders to think bigger about the fight for America’s future. That conversation should include a more serious reckoning with faith. Not because democracy needs clerical control. Quite the opposite. Democracy needs public moral leadership that can challenge domination while protecting pluralism. It needs leaders who can lower the temperature, widen the center of moral concern and still tell the truth about what is at stake. It needs communities that can speak across difference without sacrificing those most under threat. And it needs funders willing to recognize that this is not peripheral work. It is part of the main fight.
For funders who recognize this gap but are unsure how to proceed, PACE’s Funding Guide for Faith and Democracy offers a practical starting point for thinking about how faith communities can strengthen civic life, reduce division and support a more inclusive democracy.
Trump’s attacks on Pope Leo are a reminder of what concentrated power fears. It fears voices that cannot be easily bought, bullied or folded into the culture-war script. Philanthropy should notice — and invest accordingly.
Rev. Jennifer Butler is the founder of Faith in Democracy and a longtime faith leader, writer, and advocate working at the intersection of religion, democracy, and human rights.
