I mentioned last week in our chapel service at World Vision’s U.S. headquarters about a recent Christianity Today article I read that I can’t seem to get off my mind.
In the article, a recent survey (pdf) by the Pew Research Center showed that American evangelicals were more in favor of cutting federal spending to “aid the world’s poor” than any other area. Second and third to cutting foreign aid were “government assistance for the unemployed” and “environmental protection.”
As World Vision urges Congress right now to reconsider its possible budget cut that will greatly affect foreign disaster assistance by more than two-thirds, I wonder how Christians in Jesus’ day would poll in a survey of this same sort.
From Polling Evangelicals: Cut Aid to World’s Poor, Unemployed on Christianity Today:
The top choices among evangelicals for the chopping block are economic assistance to needy people around the world (56 percent), government assistance for the unemployed (40 percent), and environmental protection (38 percent).
In each of these categories, evangelicals were more supportive of decreasing spending than are other Americans. In fact, evangelicals were more supportive of funding cuts in every area except military defense, terrorism defense, aid to veterans, and energy.
Cutting foreign aid and support for the unemployed while favoring increases in defense and police are not priorities of all evangelicals.
Robert Zachritz, government relations director for World Vision in the U.S., said in a statement that U.S. programs help save lives worldwide.He said 8 million children die each year — lives that could be saved with low-cost aid programs to provide malaria bed nets or child immunizations.
“World Vision recognizes the need to make tough decisions addressing the present fiscal crisis, including budget cuts, but these should not fall disproportionately on the poorest of the poor,” Zachritz said. “Congress is considering an overall budget reduction of 8.8 percent from the FY2011 presidential request, with cuts disproportionately made to the most cost-effective humanitarian programs saving children’s lives.”
Join World Vision’s fight to preserve funding for humanitarian programs that save lives. Contact your members of Congress today.
For more from World Vision on U.S. Budget Cuts that threaten the poor:
Pray that God will move people’s hearts to give on their own. When God is moving in people’s hearts, more can be done anyway than with the government greedily sucking in dollars from the taxpayers and spitting out pennies into charities.
I’m forever amazed when conservative Christians insist that it is not the role of government to care for the poor. Just as I am when they argue in favor of the death penalty, war and the suspension of human rights for “our enemies” and “ilegal aliens” and other “criminals”.
Their stance that it’s not the government’s place to act on the religous scruples of individual citizens sounds like a solid argument for the separation of church and state. Until they insist that the government impose thier religious beliefs about human sexuality, science and social behavior on everyone else. When it comes to intimate matters of the bedroom, marriage, reproductive rights and the education of children, suddenly we become “Christian Nation” founded on (an Evangelical interpretation of) “Christian Principles.”
We have limited funds. Now more than ever, the way we choose to use our resources speaks to who we are as a people. Do we value war or peace? Love our enemies or kill them? Do we welcome the foriegner, or fence them out? In the end we will be judged on our answer to only one question. Did we feed His sheep, or didn’t we?
I am happy to support World Vision, my church, and numerous other charities with a portion of the money I earn. That’s voluntary charity, and it comes from the heart. I do not want my government taxing me or borrowing against the taxes of my children to support non-essential charitable programs. That’s compulsion, and there’s nothing charitable about it. When our $14 trillion dollar debt is under control and being paid down, we can have this discussion again.
I agree with John Fulper. As you know, our nation is not a Christ centered nation and we cannot and should not expect the government to do the work of the church. Also, that money we are spending on foreign aid is NOT money we have. It’s credit. I don’t think anyone should be advocating members of the church max out their credit cards, when they can’t even currently make the minimum payments, to give donations to the church. We need to be good stewards of the resources God gives us. One way we do that is to give generously within our means, not destroy our future to help one person now.
I read this article carefully a few times, World Vision never said that government should do the church’s job. And some of you go as far as saying that you would stop sponsoring with World Vision over this article? That sounds like you have a lot of pride. It seems like the main point of the article is to outline PRIORITIES–that we would rather leave children dying of starvation before we cut military defense. I seriously doubt Jesus would vote this way. Good post World vision! I’m proud to be a sponsor with your agency.