The American Spectator published a mentary by Acton Research Director Samuel Gregg. mentary was also picked up by RealClearReligion.

Christians in a Post-Welfare State World

By Samuel Gregg

As the debt-crisis continues to shake America’s and Europe’s

economies, Christians of all confessions find themselves in the

unaccustomed position of debating the morality and economics of

deficits and how to e them.

At present, these are important discussions. But frankly

they’re pared to the debate that has yet e. And

the question is this: How should Christians realize their

obligations to the poor in a post-welfare state

world?

However the debt-crisis unfolds, the Social

Democratic/progressive dream of a welfare state that would

substantially resolve questions of poverty has clearly run its

course. It will end in a fiscal Armageddon when the bills can’t be

paid, or (and miracles have been known to happen) when political

leaders begin dismantling the Leviathans of state-welfare to avert

financial disaster.

Either way, the welfare state’s impending demise is going

to force Christians to seriously rethink how they help the least

among us.

Why? Because for the past 80 years, many Christians have

simply assumed they should support large welfare states. In Europe,

Christian Democrats played a significant role in designing the

social security systems that have helped bankrupt countries like

Portugal and Greece. Some Christians have also proved remarkably

unwilling to acknowledge welfarism’s well-documented social and

economic dysfunctionalities.

As America’s welfare programs are slowly wound back, those

Christian charities who have been heavily reliant upon government

contracts will need to look more to the generosity of churchgoers

— many of whom are disturbed by the very secular character assumed

by many religious charities so as to enhance their chances of

landing government contracts.

Another group requiring attitude-adjustment will be those

liberal Christians for whom the essence of the Gospel has steadily

collapsed over the past 40 years into schemes for state-driven

wealth redistributions and promoting politically-correct

causes.

The welfare state’s gradual collapse presents them with

somewhat of an existential dilemma. The entire activity of lobbying

for yet another welfare program will increasingly e a

superfluous exercise — but this has been central to their way of

promoting the poor’s needs for years.

More-pragmatic liberal Christians will no doubt adjust.

Others, however, will simply deny fiscal reality and frantically

lobby for on-going redistributions of an ever-shrinking pool of

funds.

But even those Christians who have long moved past the

heady-days of the ’60s and ’70s — or who never actually drank the

kool-aid — will have their own challenges in a post-welfare state

era.

One will be financial. Will Christians be willing to reach

even further into their pockets to help fill the monetary gaps

caused by on-going reductions in government

welfare-spending?

For American Christians, this will be less of a struggle.

They’re already among the world’s most generous givers. For

European Christians, however, it will require a revolution in

giving-habits. Many of them have long assumed that paying the taxes

that fund welfare programs somehow fulfilled their obligations to

their neighbor.

But the more important, long-term challenge posed by

significant welfare state reductions will be less about money and

more about how Christians will take concrete personal

responsibility for those in need.

Here Catholics, Orthodox, and the many Protestant

confessions will find helpful guidance in Benedict XVI’s 2005

encyclical Deus Caritas Est.

Among other things, this text reminds Christians that

poverty is more than a material phenomenon. It also has moral and

spiritual dimensions: i.e., precisely those areas of human life

that welfare states have never been good at — or interested in —

addressing.

For Christians, humans are more than mere mouths. They

know moral and spiritual poverty can be as devastating as material

deprivation. This expansive understanding of poverty has enormous

potential to help Christians correct materialist assumptions about

human needs.

Another source of inspiration — especially for Americans

— may be Alexis de Tocqueville’s great book, Democracy in

America. Among other things, this nineteenth-century text

illustrates how American churches played the predominant role in

helping those in need in an America in which government was the

means of last resort when it came to poverty.

Lastly, there is the example of the ancient church. The

early Christians didn’t imagine that lobbying Roman senators to

implement welfare programs was the way to love their neighbor.

Instead, to the pagan world’s amazement, the early Christians —

bishops, priests and laity — helped anyone in need in very direct,

practical ways.

As anyone who has read the Church Fathers knows, the early

Christians went out of their way to personally care for

the poor, the incurably-sick, and the disabled — the very groups

who were non-persons to the pagan mind.

Moreover, the Christians undertook such activities at

their own expense, and often put their own lives at risk. When

plagues came and everyone else fled, Christians generally stayed

behind, refusing to abandon those in distress, regardless of their

religion.

In crisis, the cliché goes, we find opportunity. Instead

of engaging in politically exciting but ultimately futile

rearguard-actions to defend welfare-states crumbling under the

weight of decades of irresponsible spending, ing

post-welfare state age could be a chance for a Renaissance in

Christian thought about the whys and hows of

loving those to whom Christ Himself devoted special

attention.

Yes, that means abandoning much of the framework that

dominated 20th-century Christian reflection upon these questions.

But anyone interested in serving the poor rather than their own ego

or career-advancement shouldn’t hesitate to take such

risks.

The poor’s spiritual and material well-being demands

nothing less.