LAST week two prominent Americans — an
eminent social scientist and the president of the
United States — decided to answer the question:
How have America’s churches failed the poor?
Their answer was one deeply congenial to the
progressive mind: They’ve been too obsessed
with the culture war.
“Over the last 30 years,” Harvard’s Robert Putnam told The
Washington Post, “most organized religion has focused on
issues regarding sexual morality, such as abortion, gay
marriage, all of those. I’m not saying if that’s good or bad, but
that’s what they’ve been using all their resources for ... It’s
been entirely focused on issues of homosexuality and
contraception and not at all focused on issues of poverty.”
President Obama’s version, delivered when he shared a stage
with Putnam at Georgetown University, was nuanced but
similar in thrust: “Despite great caring and concern,” the
president remarked, when churches pick “the defining issue”
that’s “really going to capture the essence of who we are as
Christians,” fighting poverty is often seen as merely “nice to
have” compared to “an issue like abortion.”
It would be too kind to call these comments wrong; they were
ridiculous. Not only because (as Putnam acknowledged)
believers personally give abundantly to charity, but because
institutionally the churches of America use “all their
resources” in ways that completely belie the idea that they’re
obsessed with culture war.
As Mark Hemingway of The Weekly Standard pointed out,
“Even the most generous estimates of the resources devoted to
pro-life causes and organizations defending traditional
marriage are just a few hundred million dollars.” Whereas the
budgets of American religious charities and schools and
hospitals and other nonprofits are tabulated in the tens of
billions. (Indeed, as Bloomberg View’s Megan McArdle noted,
some of that money — from Catholic sources — paid Obama’s
first community-organizer salary.)

This reality is reflected in the atmosphere of most churches and the public statements of their leaders. Anyone who tells you that America’s pastors are obsessed with homosexuality or abortion only hears them through a media filter. You can attend Masses or megachurches for months without having those issues intrude; you can bore yourself to tears reading denominational statements and bishops’ documents (true long before Pope Francis) with a similar result. The belief that organized religion is organized around culture war is largely a conceit of the irreligious. Is there a version of the Obama-Putnam critique that makes any sense? Maybe they just meant to criticize religious leaders who make opposition to abortion more of a political priority than publicly-funded antipoverty efforts. But even this critique essentially erases black and Latino churches (who reliably support social programs), ignores decades worth of pro- welfare-state talk from Catholic bishops, and treats the liberal Protestant mainline as dead already.

It also conveniently absolves liberalism of any responsibility for pushing churchgoing Americans toward the small- government G.O.P. That’s an absolution that the Obama White House, with its pro-choice maximalism and attempts to strong- arm religious nonprofits, particularly needs. No, to actually save the critique, you have to transform it completely. There is a case that churches are failing poorer Americans. But the problem isn’t how they spend money or play politics. It’s a more basic failure to reach out, integrate, and keep them in the pews. This is the striking story of the last 30 years: Despite the stereotype of religion as something that people “cling to” (to quote a different moment of condescension from this president) in desperate circumstances, actual religious practice has collapsed more quickly among Americans with weaker economic prospects than it has among the college-educated upper class.

Mere religious affiliation has weakened for the poor and
working class as well. The much-discussed rise of the “nones”
— Americans with no religious affiliation — has been
happening in blue -collar America as well as among the hyper-
educated.
From a religious perspective, this a signal failure: A church
that pays out to help the poor, but doesn’t pray with them,
looks less like a church than what Pope Francis has described,
unfavorably, as merely another N.G.O.
But even from a secular perspective it’s a problem, because (as
Putnam’s work stresses) the social benefits of religion are
stronger further down the socioeconomic ladder, and these
benefits are delivered through community, practice, and
belonging. So churches that spend or lobby effectively for the
poor but are stratified come Sunday morning offer less to the
common good than if they won a more diverse array of souls.
This critique actually lays a heavier burden on believers than
the one Obama and Putnam offered. Their unjust accusation is
easily answered by citing what religious Americans do already.
The just one, though, requires doing something new.
Cull from: mobile.nytimes.com/2015/05/17/opinion/sunday/ross-douthat-do-churches-fail-the-poor.html

Admin front page pls

Church is not charity organization . Church is nit called to do the work of the government . Church is called to preach the gospel . What the poor need from the church is the gospel

Luke 4:18
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he hath anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. . .

Luke 7:22
Then Jesus answering said unto them, Go your way, and tell John what things ye have seen and heard; how that the blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, to the poor the gospel is preached.

However , the church has care system primarily for the poor in the church. But if the church does charity outside its commendable but not its primary responsibility .