Whenever you see a left-leaning Christian talking to a conservative about poverty, it turns into a question of who should be taking care of the poor. I found myself in a debate about this the other day, and the gentleman I was talking to fell back on the argument that it was the Church’s job to take care of the poor, not the government. But is that really true?
My first thought whenever I hear this argument is, “Who gave the Church this job?” Obviously the implied answer is God. After all, Jesus does talk a lot about His followers’ responsibility for taking care of the downtrodden, poor and oppressed. If you read His parable about the sheep and the goats, it’s easy to walk away with the impression that eternal life rests entirely upon whether or not a person cares for the poor. It’s pretty obvious that Jesus intends for the Church to be in the business of serving “the least of these.”
But does that mean that He’s delegated that responsibility away from non-faith communities and governments? That seems a little silly. To tell His followers to be mindful of a particular group doesn’t necessarily preclude the rest of humanity’s responsibility to each other. If I tell my kids to pick up their trash, I’m not sending a message to every other parent on my block that their kids can litter because my kids will pick it up.
Christ’s major point is that He cares about what happens to the those on society’s bottom rung. It would be irresponsible for Christians to not encourage everyone to do all that they can to protect them.
What happened to the Christian nation?
In America, there’s a lot of talk about being a “Christian nation.” Typically the people who are the most concerned with viewing the nation as Christian are the same people who don’t believe it’s the government’s job to take care of the poor. And while I don’t believe that a nation can even be Christian, I’m often left scratching my head at what the words “Christian nation” mean to these people.
When I tell them that the word “Christian” isn’t an adjective that you can simply tack on to random nouns, they tell me that “Christian nation” means that the country was founded on Christian principles and its laws were based on Christian values. But if that’s the case, then taking care of the poor would be one the country’s primary objectives.
Think about it. When God was running a theocracy out in the desert, welfare was baked into His laws:
Tithes were collected and this was a provision for the Levites, as well as immigrants, widows and orphans.
Farmers were not to pick their fields clean so the poor could come through and glean.
Every seven years, creditors had to release their neighbor’s debt.
Every 50 years all of the wealth that the rich had amassed was redistributed to its original owners.
Reading the Pentateuch gives you a real understanding of how particular God was about taking care of the poor.
It seems irrational to me to say that a country is based on Christian values and then argue that spending tax dollars on the helping the poor is “wealth redistribution” or robbery through taxation. I mean, taking what the rich have accumulated and giving back to the original owners every 50 years seems like an actual example of wealth redistribution—and it was sanctioned by God.
I fear that too often Christian values are simply as laws that require “Christian” morals in others, but are expected to keep themselves away from my belongings.
Christians do have a responsibility to the poor.
There is no question the church has a responsibility to the poor. If Christians gave even 10% of what they earned to the church — and it was not being squandered on nonsense — we could make an enormous impact. But can the church afford to take care of all the poor’s needs?
According to the most recent U.S. Census Bureau data, the median household income in 2024 was about $83,730, essentially unchanged from 2023. The U.S. population in 2025 is roughly 340 million. About 62% of adults identify as Christian, according to the latest Pew Research Center findings. That translates to roughly 211 million Christians in the United States.
Using an average household size of about 2.6 people, that leaves approximately 81 million Christian households.
If every one of those households gave 10% of its $83,730 income, the total would come to roughly $680 billion a year. That is a staggering number. But the federal government alone spends trillions of dollars annually on social welfare and safety-net programs, and total government outlays in fiscal 2025 were about $7 trillion, with large portions devoted to health care, Social Security and income support.
And even then, that level of giving assumes several things that are not true:
- The number of committed Christ followers is significantly smaller than the number of people who simply identify as Christian.
- Only a small percentage of Christians give 10% of their income. Multiple studies show the average churchgoer gives far less, often just a few percentage points, and only about 5% of U.S. Christians tithe at the traditional level.
- These figures do not account for the costs of keeping churches running — staff salaries, buildings, utilities, insurance and ministry expenses — not to mention the excessive spending that characterizes some American churches.
Christians are called to care for the poor, but they are not called to live in a fantasy world. The church cannot meet all of society’s needs on its own. Part of caring for the poor, then, requires the church to serve as the conscience of the state. If we truly want to live in a “Christian nation,” we would spend more time advocating for effective charitable spending and questioning how much of our national income is devoted to trusting in horses and chariots (or, in our case, drones and bombs.)
Put your money where your mouth is.
When push comes to shove, this discussion frustrates me because I know how little the average Christian gives. As I said earlier, on average, people give about 4 percent of their income to the Church. But let’s be honest—that average is only that high because a lot of benevolent Christians are giving so much more.
When I’m having a discussion with a Christian who’s telling me that it’s the Church’s job to take care of the poor and not the government, I’m always wondering how much they give.
There’s no way for me to know the truth, but if a Christian truly believes it’s the Church’s job to care for the poor, I would hope that they’re giving sacrificially.
I mean, if you’re a Christian who wants to argue with me that poverty is the sole responsibility of the Church, you’d better be giving your fair share. Otherwise, this is really an argument about protecting your hoard and not really about God’s concern.
