Suppose an Evangelical church believes that helping the poor is the believer’s obligation and we should not ascribe this responsibility to the government. To demonstrate this conviction, the church holds bi-annual events reaching out to the poor families in the community. Each family that comes to the event receives $100 worth of gifts. Though such an occasion requires a substantial amount of preparation, believers in the congregation are eager to participate, striving to show God’s love in a concrete manner, and those events have become the highlights of the church.
Most Christians would consider activities like these praiseworthy. In both the Hebrew Scripture and the New Testament, caring for the poor matters greatly to God. However, as someone growing up in a totalitarian society, I’m more conscious of the freedom and rights we enjoy here in the U.S., and with it, the existence of other and better ways to serve the poor.
In most places, rights and liberty do not exist, and the available means for Christians to help the poor is very limited. Christians in those countries primarily focus on sacrificing their own material comfort, sharing what they have with the poor, a method used by the Evangelical church aforementioned.
We Have Unique Privileges — and Hence Responsibilities
God, on the other hand, has given American Christians a unique system that allows us to perform functions that are unimaginable to Christians in many other places. Chief mong them is the right to participate in political decisions through the legislative and electoral process. We can elect the government officials — local, statewide and nationwide — who represent our values and champion our interests. There are numerous bills at any given moment at local, state and federal levels. We are given rights and opportunities to vote on some of them directly. We can also influence or compel our elected officials to vote in our favor.
The outcome of the bills affect the citizen’s life in many areas. Take the bills concerning the economy for instance. Some of them have the potential to improve or harm the economy, lower or raise the unemployment rate and increase or decrease the worker’s pay checks. In like manner, the president’s policies have direct and even immediate effects on the citizen’s life, especially the poor.
Elections Have Consequences
During President Trump’s first term, the unemployment rates for African Americans, Hispanic Americans, Americans without a high school degree, and disabled Americans reached record lows. Nearly 2.5 million Americans were lifted out of poverty, including nearly 1.4 million children. Wages rose faster for the bottom 10 percent of breadwinners than for the top 10 percent. And wage growth for employees surpassed managers.
Trump’s historic tax reform enabled the lowest earners to enjoy the fastest wage increase than every other income group. Overall, household incomes increased by $3,100 a year on average. His energy policies also helped American families save about $2,500 a year. In addition, nearly 40 million families saved an average of $2,200 per family through the doubling of the Child Tax Credit. This forms a sharp contrast with the Biden/Harris administration whose rule was characterized by inflation and high costs of energy.
Consequently, during 2017-2020, many poor families experienced an increase of income of about $100 or more per week. This number, compared with the bi-annual events held at that church — $100 twice a year — is substantially greater.
Maybe the Church Is Obliged to Get Political
Perhaps the drastic difference between $100 twice a year and $100 fifty-two times a year should create a cognitive dissonance in us. If our motive is truly focused on helping the poor, would it be logical for us to mobilize efforts to get certain bills passed so the life of the poor could be better ? Likewise, if the churches truly care about the poor, would it be judicious for them to help elect a president whose policies can improve the condition of the poor, as President Trump has done?
Unfortunately, the reality proves otherwise. Most Evangelical churches would rather provide poor families with $100 twice a year than help elect a president whose economic policies could increase poor families’ income about $100 per week.
Why Don’t We All Vote?
During the last presidential election, few pastors encouraged the congregation to vote, let alone offering biblical principles to evaluate the candidates. No wonder only half of self-professed Christians vote in a given presidential election. On the regional level, very few churches are aware of the bills taking place on the state or the local level. Nor do they seem to care about the implications of the bills to the poor in the community.
It bewildered me greatly. In the name of helping the poor, why do Evangelical churches choose the lesser but reject the better alternative, as the numbers so convincingly demonstrate? Perhaps the answer lies in the dominant theology in today’s Evangelical churches.
We’ve Lost Our Focus
Benevolent activities in Evangelical churches are rarely perceived by the outsiders as out of pure love and compassion for the poor, even though they could be. This is because, for most Evangelical churches, reaching the lost has become the sole purpose for their existence. Compassion is often used as one of the props to attract nonbelievers to the church. The success of a charitable outreach is measured by the number of people who accept Christ as their Savior.
In contrast, efforts in swaying a political outcome or electing the right president may bring improvement to the life of the poor, but it does not yield the consequential result, getting people saved. There is no direct correlation between political involvement and saving souls. They thus consider being political as fruitless and a waste. This unspoken sentiment might be one of the main root causes of the church’s adverse attitude regarding politics. Charitable outreach still remains the preferred method for most Evangelical churches.
There are, however, deep flaws in this approach.
The Kingdom Is Already Here
First, this method overlooks the fact that the lost too are made in the image of God. Regardless of race, sex, education, intellectual aptness, and social status, they, like us, not only possess the sense of dignity but also the defense mechanism to protect it, sensitive to the strings attached to the benevolence we offer to them. Once they see the real motive beneath the outward compassion, they likely would preemptively turn down the offer of salvation, considering us manipulative and lacking genuineness. Eventually, our good intention may actually become counterproductive. However, our eagerness to reach the lost has often blinded us from recognizing this obvious flaw.
Over the course of time, evangelical churches have left the impression on the outside world that Christianity has basically abandoned earthly concerns, wholly focusing on heavenly pursuit. This appears very radical, unapproachable, and unattractive in the eyes of ordinary people whose focus is on daily necessities.
God Demands That We Work for Justice
Second, this method may be unbiblical because God cares about how we live on this Earth, especially how we treat the poor. There are numerous passages in both the Hebrew Scripture and the New Testament that command us to help the poor. Christ’s death and resurrection have not rendered this command obsolete (Gal. 2:10). Helping the poor seems the natural instinct of the people of God (Deut. 15:11; 1 John 3:17). When we help the poor, we honor God (Prov. 14:31, 19:17; Matt. 25:40) who will reward our kindness (Ps. 41:1; Matt. 6:3-4; Luke 14:13-14). However, nowhere has the notion of helping the poor been presented in the Scripture as a prop for evangelism.
To carry out the Great Commission is indeed the responsibility that we cannot shirk. Nonetheless, it is not the only thing we do while on earth. God does not intend us to abandon earthly concerns, because He still cares about human beings, saved or unsaved. That is the very reason He commands us to help the poor.
We Are Citizen Sovereigns
This leads to the crucial questions that every American Christian must answer. What is the unique feature of being American Christians? How should we apply our peculiar characteristic to better serve the poor? These questions are valid because we live in an exceptional country where God has bestowed on us special privileges along with unprecedented responsibilities.
As stated before, Christians in most places have no rights nor opportunities to influence a political outcome. In America, however, every Christian citizen has the constitutional right to elect a local or state official to represent our interests, to influence and sway a bill, and to elect a president who can better serve our citizens. It seems that our participation in politics or lack thereof could bring different results that affect the life of the poor positively or negatively. Evidently, in America being political is one of the most effective ways for Christians to help the poor. By no means should we stop holding outreach events. But we should participate in the latter without neglecting the former.
In the past few decades, our lack of involvement in politics has kept the doors wide open for the progressive left to implement a socialist agenda in the name of helping the poor. Instead of improving the condition of the poor, they’ve kept the poor perpetually in poverty, making them dependents of the government. We have a better solution for the poor. The statistics of President Trump’s first term proved it.
Much is given, much is required. God will not hold Chinese Christians accountable for not being political, since they have no rights nor opportunity to do so. We are, however, answerable if we refuse His sovereign provision.
Chenyuan Snider was raised in Communist China and majored in Chinese language and literature in college. After immigrating to the U.S. and studying at Assemblies of God Theological Seminary and Duke Divinity School, she became a professor at Christian colleges and seminary. She and her husband live in northern California and have two grown children.
