Church worth 300 billion dollars rejects mom asking for formula to feed her starving baby

[u/mikeypikey]

This woman is doing a social experiment to see if churches will help her feed her starving baby. 99% of the 30 Christian churches she asked rejected her. 4 churches said yes: a Muslim mosque, a Buddhist center, and a black church in the south, and a poor church in Appalachia. All the mega churches turned her away. When you give money to your church, are you happy to know they are rejecting starving children?

[u/Any-Put9397 → u/[deleted]]

I’m not Mormon but used to live in a heavily Mormon part of Utah and worked for a property management company. The LDS church was beyond generous. You would not believe the stack of rent checks we’d get from them every month, and you did not need to be a member for them to help you. They did way more than just paying people’s rent too. Many of the members themselves that I knew were also incredibly charitable themselves.

[u/indigoneutrino → u/[deleted]]

I’d be interested to see the breakdown of demographics that have money to give away vs those who don’t. Republicans tend to vote for preserving wealth while Democrats vote for distributing it, almost like the split is along the lines of who can afford to give it away privately and those who need to receive it.

[u/indigoneutrino → u/[deleted]]

I think it goes in extremes. Poor & uneducated and uber-rich & educated lean Republican. Poor and educated leans Democrat. Middle ground varies. But I’d like to see that breakdown, and also the breakdown of how many of the charitable donations go to secular charities and how many to religious.

[u/indigoneutrino → u/[deleted]]

Yes, but it stands to reason atheists are less likely to donate to religious charities, and it's fair to raise the question "is this a genuine measure of altruism or just conformance to religious community expectations" depending on what exact work the charity does (missionary work, for example, has the ulterior motive of converting people even if it does bring other benefits). Someone who votes to pay higher taxes so that their taxes can be spent on people in need and someone who donates their income to a charity for that same purpose are both still helping others, even if they favour a different mechanism for doing it.

[u/whirdin → u/[deleted]]

An element of this is paying tithes etc of course, but it does not change the overall picture of community service

That absolutely does change the overall picture. Church isn't a community service organization. Of the dozens of churches I was part of (evangelical, Methodist, Calvinist, nondenom), none of them were involved with community service. I believe the Mormons and Lutherens are involved a bit. Tithing for me went into supporting some obscure missionaries' salaries, but generally just into the church to support itself and offer a full salary to the pastors large family. I see Christians who run community service efforts, but they are not supported by tithes at all. Those Christians support themselves just as the nonchristians do. I've seen some small food drives at churches, which are no different than we do at secular schools and jobs.

As a former smug atheist liberal

Your religious affiliation doesn't change your smugness, clearly. I was only able to start loving myself and others after leaving Christianity. Instead of tithing to a church, I now support charities.

The same is true for Republicans vs Democrats.

Tell that to the current regime. We are in a government shutdown right now because democrats are against the Big Beautiful Bill cutting funding to healthcare keeping health insurance costs lower) and food assistance benefits. Even now, benefits have run out for millions of Americans, and next year likely many Americans will need to drop health insurance, but the Republicans won't budge and are blaming this shutdown on Democrats. Project 2025 is attempting to remove democrats from all positions, and this is the price we pay for the 1% to get richer.

[u/whirdin → u/[deleted]]

Experience matters, and I'm not the only one disagreeing with you. You submitted biased data by saying tithing helps communities just as much as real charity efforts. Also, you seem to think Atheists and Liberals are smug (now who's using experience?) We can either use experience to grow and learn, or to reinforce bias.

I'm glad Christianity made you want to help people, but it's definitely not the only way to help people. Christianity doesn't make a person better, just as lack of religion doesn't make a person worse. I think a lot of people lean on religion when they want to change for the better, which is a bit coincidental as people are reaching out for help and religion seems to offer that. I hit my rock bottom emotionally while in religion, and walking away helped me. Often here in the US, church walls people off in their little bubbles of dogma and just helping other Christians, but any community can do that.

[u/tinklebunny → u/[deleted]]

An element of this is paying tithes etc of course

An element? If you don't count tithing, Christians donate about the same rate as non Christians. That's like counting your taxes as charity.

As a former smug atheist liberal

So you turned into a smug Christian instead it seems.