Conservative Christians relentlessly brag about how much more they give to charity than other religious and secular groups. For purposes of this article, I am not primarily concerned with the findings that show that most of that charity does not find its way to the intended targets. Let’s say for the sake of argument that all of the money goes to the intended recipients.

Conservative Christians are especially generous around Thanksgiving and Christmas. No surprise there. What better way to call attention to your faith than to give money during two of the most popular holidays in the U.S.? Sadly, though, after the holidays are over, conservative Christian giving goes way down and the causes they support fall from the proverbial radar.

Charity is important and it makes the world a better place. I have given to charity throughout most of my life and will continue to do so. But like religious progressives, I understand that charity is simply not enough.

It is all well and good to open soup kitchens, build clinics and hospitals, open shelters for the homeless, and so forth. But as nice as all of this is, it simply puts a band aid on a gushing wound.

Conservative Christian Dinesh D’Souza rarely engages in formal debates to defend Christianity without bragging about how much more money conservative Christians give to charity than everyone else. Moreover, when told about the genuine success that secular social democracies in Europe are having in combating poverty, homelessness, bad health, and so on, he implies that that is no big deal because the government is responsible for that success.

Duh! That’s exactly the point and the point of this article. That is the only way to make widespread progress for suffering people. Charity has never done so and never will.

Conservative Christians seem to have a point when they claim that the Bible does not say that the government should intervene on behalf of its citizens in need. If they are correct, it just shows how sadly outdated the Bible truly is.

While Conservative Christians pat themselves on the back for feeding some of the hungry, they want to cut food stamps and other government programs that could feed far more people than they ever could.

For example, shortly before Christmas in 2019, President Donald Trump, the hero of White evangelicals, made plans to cut the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. As many as 3.1 million people could lose benefits as a result. No matter how much they give and pray, conservative Christians would be unable and unwilling to help so many needy people on a regular basis. That is the government’s job!

The law is proposed to go in effect in April 2020. It would deny benefits to seniors, veterans, the disabled and hundreds of thousands of children, i.e., the most vulnerable members of society. It would even hurt many of Trump’s poor White supporters.

Conservative Christians love to point to the clinics and hospitals that they have built all over the world. They have volunteered their time as well as put their money where their mouth is. However, they have routinely opposed good health care for the poor majority.

For example, in 2018, Judge Reed O’Connor ruled that the entire Affordable Care Act be dismissed. Later, on December 18, 2019, a federal appeals court found that the act’s requirement that people have health insurance is unconstitutional.

If the law is dismissed, millions of people could lose health insurance, including many of Trump’s poor White supporters. Fifty million people with pre-existing conditions could be without health insurance. What, pray tell, could charitable conservative Christians do to help all of these people?

Incidentally, this raises the question of why hospitals are needed in the first place. Why can’t Christians and other theists just ask God to intervene on behalf of the sick and suffering? Perhaps the omnipotent and omniscient God could even bring people back from brain death and grow people new limbs.

There are many other areas of need in which government aid is paramount, such as disaster relief. However, conservative Christians have steadfastly opposed government aid for those suffering from the ill effects of “acts of God.”

Not surprisingly, on August 27, 2019, President Trump declared that he would take $155 million from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to detain asylum seekers and create locations for their court hearings.

There are several secular and religious charities that provide disaster relief. However, such efforts are simply too short. For example, they cannot pay for the Coast Guard during floods, and so on.

Again, though, we must ask why Christians and other theists cannot simply pray away hurricanes, earthquakes, and so on. To make matters worse, many self-righteous conservative Christians blame the victims. For example, that have blamed alleged sinners for the fires in California, a major earthquake in Haiti, Hurricane Katrina, and so on.

Last but not least, Trump has proposed massive cuts to affordable housing, to bipartisan disapproval. Despite conservative Christians building houses for the poor, providing homeless shelters, and so forth, this simply will not help most poor people in need of housing.

Conservative Christians are too obsessed with their own sense of moral superiority to be truly concerned with the elimination of widespread human misery. They can always pat themselves on the back for the charity they give to hospitals that will not be able to serve those poor people to whom conservative Christians have gleefully denied health insurance.