Religious Right against government welfare because it doesn’t force the poor to rely on Churches
French: The fact of the matter is that in many circumstances, particularly in this country, poverty is the result of an awful lot of bad choices. A lot of our poverty is the result of behaviors that often require heart-level repentance to change.
Medicare, Medicaid , and food stamps are not going to get you to turn away from behaviors that are destroying your life, but the Gospel will.
Rick Green: Doesn’t it make them more dependent on government, which makes them less likely to come to the church that used to be the epicenter of the community where people would come and meet?
French: That’s exactly right. It used to be that if you were hungry, if you needed help, you would go to the church and as the church was feeding you, as the church was providing you with the physical sustenance that you needed, it was providing you also with the much more important spiritual sustenance.
And right now what we’re doing is we’re saying you’re going to be able to have the television, all the food you need, the roof over your head, everything that you need without any intervention from the church at all.
