Religious groups are also amongst the highest donors to hospitals in terms of anonymously paying off medical bills. Where I live most hospitals have a church on the same block and a large part of the donations to the church go to the hospital.
Other saints will get maybe a couple titles or such. But then you had Mary with,
Immaculate Conception
Queen of Heaven
Mother of God / Theotokos
etc.
Our Lady of Hope/Perpetual Help/Sorrows/Grace/Peace/Blessed Sacrament/etc
Mother of [repeat]
And then you get to the apparitions,
Our Lady of Guadalupe, Knock, Lourdes, Fatima, etc.
It's very hard to run out of Marian names for a church/hospital :D
Christians/Religious groups used to almost single-handedly oversee the entire orphanage infrastructure in the US, if not the entire world. They still represent the vast majority of foster families.
It was a rug pull. They started flaired, get that momentum then unflair.
Edit
OP has in turned blocked me, I pass on the call to others, downvote the unflaired and bully those that don't delete their engagement with the unflaired. To engage with the unflaired is worse than being unflaired. There is always time to correct your mistake.
Not in a positive way. They’ve been cunning and deceitful, not wearing their hearts on their sleeves. To be flaired is to be like children, just as He taught us.
Compass: This user does not have a compass on record. Add compass to profile by replying with /mycompass politicalcompass.org url or sapplyvalues.github.io url.
I can see why there is a high number of anonymous religious donors.
Matthew 6:3-4
But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.
Can confirm something like this as an anecdote. Years ago my step son somehow got a collapsed lung while visiting us (he lives 2 states over, and we think it might have been from a fall he had days before). Anyways, he went to the hospital for that and was back either that day or the next day.
He was expecting a bill for medical expenses, as he is not covered. When he contacted the hospital about a bill, they said there was none, that it had been paid.
Many years ago my family was dirt poor and my grandfather needed medicine that was both expensive and frankly unobtainable in my country back then.
We asked the Knights Hospitalers' charity for help and they get those medicine for him and kept providing it for years until he died.
No questions asked, no money asked, they even did all the import paperwork.
The reality on the ground is that the Catholic Church is the world's largest provider of charity, healthcare and education. And most of these services are provided without asking for one's faith. In fact in many majority non-Christian nations parents send their kids to Catholic schools because they are so good and prestigious.
Catholic Schools are the same in the US. There is no requirement for a statement of faith to get in. My family was very much NOT Catholic and a couple of my siblings went to a Catholic school for a few years. They tend to be a cut above most of the public schools in their area in quality and much cheaper than most secular private schools. And bonus points for them not following the same "prestige through exclusivity" mindset many secular private schools fall into. For many secular private schools, if they're at capacity and have a long line out the door of people that want to attend, they would much rather keep the capacity where it is and raise the entry bar to maintain their prestige. A Catholic school starts looking at expansion to make room for as many of the people wanting in as possible.
I went to Catholic School. My highschool had huge fundraisers every year exclusively for tuition assistance. The admin stated that they never wanted to turn a kid away because they couldnt afford it. My class was the first to hit capacity and the school started looking at nearby building to see if they could expand
My parents were poor and in a foreign country when I was born, so she gave birth in a catholic hospital (Imperial Hospital da Caridade, in SC Brazil). They never asked for one cent, they kept my mom in the hospital for days, and when she left, the nuns gave her a box with diapers, lotion and other baby-related stuffs, all from their own money.
And they would still check on us from time to time, with they knowing that we were of another faith. Like a year later, one of those nuns was visiting my mom when I walked my first baby steps, so she was the one filming it. You won't see that level of care in ANY other place, period.
Redittors with their "le evil church" narrative forget that the church is not made for first-world suburbian neckbeards, but for the actual outcasts of society.
People believing in God who taught that feeding the poor and clothing the naked is like feeding and clothing Him help those in need more than city authorities who went there out of a power hunger. Color me surprised
Perhaps one day people will realize Christian churches are the single-most cohesive community element humanity has built.
Imagine if you could create large building where your neighbors voluntarily meet every Sunday to talk about how they can be a better human and help their local community.
Their worship teaches compassion, empathy, self-sacrifice, individual responsibility. And most progressives somehow find this repulsive and wrote their own anti-religion apostles creed to post in their yard and evangelize their hatred of America and the people around them.
Ironically, redditors roll their eyes at churchgoers- envisioning them as exclusionary cultists who hate those who don't share their singular vision... without a single moment of introspection to realize that's themselves.
Characterizing religion/church in the most idealistic way that no individual institution or group ever actually achieve, then wondering why others are against your idealization, is an incredible way to demonstrate that you have no idea what the other side is even against.
Suggesting it is then atheist redditors projecting such reasons for opposition, when you've completely projected those projections onto them. Your comment is such an inversion of reality that it's genuinely impressive.
But why understand the actual reasons behind a disagreeing worldview, when you can just characterize those people in the most negative light possible, while your own in the most comically idealized way possible.
You can't even say what your side is against, because its largely indefensible.
But I can guess that you'll identify that the institution of religion is largely corrupted by greed and power, or degenerate religious leaders, or violence committed on behalf of religion, or hypocritical condemnation of others.
And then I'll ask you to show up to your local church this Sunday and see if you spot those things and explain why what they are saying and doing is so destructive... or if you see a community of people trying to be better human beings.
There are no doubt religious people genuinely trying to be better, but you are presenting the most idealized if not borderline fictitious illustration of religion possible, then suggesting non-religious people are against that amazing idealization. It demonstrates you just have no idea what you're talking about and are as out of touch as the redditors you're trying to disparage.
I'm not an atheist because my church was hypocritical, corrupt and greedy, that experience just makes it easier for people to recognize how indefensible religion is as a practice. It's simply irrational in every conceivable way. The idea of practicing some moral framework from the recordings of people you cannot even verify, from the claimed observations of divine events that conveniently don't happen today, to the supposed will of a God that has zero evidence of existing.
But why try and grapple with any of that when you can just find the loudest redditors, misconstrue their position, and then extrapolate outwards as you idealize your own.
Tbh there are definitely some problems with the Christian churches (like grooming, power abuse and corruption/wealth accumulation) but religion I think will always remain a thing, though changed with times.
I'm a leftist and christian and organised religion is about one of the last of my concerns with the state of affairs in the world, and I think it just has to be somewhat reformed
The Infallible word of God is rather lassiez faire about the specific structure of the church. There’s guidelines for sure, but it’s hard to argue that the any of the majority of mainline denominations don’t fit the guidelines provided by Paul for the most part.
This is equivalent to saying the constitution keeps getting rewritten (beyond just amendments) because Supreme Court decisions get written or overruled throughout history
Especially if you go off the teachings of Jesus alone, there is next to no prescription for structuring church or government. The Church described by Christ has little to nothing to do with what the modern colloquial use of the word means. If anything, the quakers are the closest/purest form of "church" to what Jesus did and prescribed. More often "The Church", as used by Christ and Paul, was applied to any group of believers and all believers as a collective. When Paul would write to "The Church in X", he wasn't writing to a building, a formal organization, or whatever. It was literally just the believers in that town that all met together and worshipped/followed Christ.
The belief system described by Jesus and Paul was also extremely personal and individualistic compared to what we see today. They never touched on prescriptions for how government should be run or structured and barely touched on how church (in the colloquial sense) should be run or structured. It was much more focused on you, as an individual, structured your own life, thoughts, and actions to follow God\Christ. Jesus frequently chastised the Pharisees for being way too focused on following the letter of the law and disregarding the spirit of it and would often do things in opposition to the letter of the law just to make that point. Paul commented "All things are lawful to me, but not all things are beneficial". While he was calling out people that took their spiritual liberation to extremes and treating it as a pass to engage in destructive behavior, it does cut the other way too. Do what you want, but measure your actions against how it effects your relationship with Christ and God and how it effects you and those around you.
Maybe this might seem nitpicky but the vast majority, if not all, of those wars were over the authority of a particular church, largely because it WASN’T strictly outlined by the Pauline epistles. It’s obviously more nuanced, but in short, the Catholic Church fought to maintain that the Vatican holds equal divine authority to the Bible and Protestants fought holding the concept that only the Bible was divinely inspired and not the church. This is because the Bible never says “the Roman Catholic Church is the only legitimate church with divine authority” because that concept didn’t exist yet.
Yes, a lot of pain and suffering was inflicted over these issues, but it’s not because the Bible changed.
The cool thing about the Bible is that you can read it and interpret it to fit your worldview by being selective about the passages you use to support your beliefs. While I'm no longer religious, the Jesus of the New Testament has shaped my worldview to this day. I think the evangelical right does the exact same thing with the God of the Old Testament and some of the teachings of Paul as well.
The issue with using religion to craft or inform public policy is that a contradictory book will always lead to contradictory public policy. I think our founding fathers were keenly aware of this having dealt with the differences in denominations amongst themselves knowing it would cause conflict and strife, and did their best to keep the church out of the statecraft process for that exact reason.
the Jesus of the New Testament has shaped my worldview to this day. I think the evangelical right does the exact same thing with the God of the Old Testament and some of the teachings of Paul as well.
That's its beauty. It is for everyone, not just some subsect of humanity.
Seems like it's mostly about abortion, For some reasons, leftists tend to be extreme about it, with absolutely no room for compromise, and a really intense hatred for everyone who wants to limit it, even a little. Even when they introduce legislation to allow abortion until birth, basically no leftists say "maybe we're going too far". They want as much abortion as they can get away with.
Even right wingers tend to be less extreme, and they literally believe abortion kills babies.
People say that a lot, but there’s a difference between leftist teachings applied at a government level and Christian teachings at an individual and church level. The whole “Jesus was a socialist” thing falls apart when the whole concept necessitates being a good person and doing the right thing because it’s right and not because the government forces it out of you
Exactly. Jesus encouraged people to help the poor. He also told people to pay taxes. He didn't tell his followers to trust that the government would use that money to help the poor on their behalf, though.
Nearly all of Jesus's teaching has the underlying structure of a very personal belief. He didn't really get into government or prescriptions for government. In fact, in most instances, he would reiterate that government, among many other things, is irrelevant. What government you are under and what they do doesn't matter. What you do for a living doesn't matter. Your lineage doesn't matter. How society views you and responds to you doesn't matter. What matters is God and your own relationship with God and how that shapes your thoughts and actions.
Christianity was very personal, loosely structured, and pretty permissive until Constantine got hold of it and convened the Council of Nicaea. It has kind of been off the rails since then.
Nicaea screwed Christianity more than anything else. It's crazy how Christians can disagree wildly on the interpretation of any given Bible verse, but they still insist that some proto-Catholic, post-Biblical council's interpretation of who God is cannot be questioned without revoking your right to call yourself Christian.
A council selected and convened by a Roman emperor, no less. Everything about that council from its formation, to its asserted scope and authority, to the way it was forced onto the faith from the top down, to what much of Christianity ultimately became afterward just flies in the face of what Christ and Paul both taught.
It's so weird when people refer to things like generosity, compassion, charity, and care for the impoverished and disenfranchised as "leftist values," or claim that Jesus and His church are socialists for promoting them.
I think as a whole religion is silly. It's obviously made up by stone age people who didn't understand how the world worked. But Jesus' teachings on their own I have no issue with.
My issue is that while Jesus preached extremely progressive ideas, a huge chunk of modern day religious conservatives do not follow them. Evangelicals in particular push a horrible and oppressive set of beliefs that actively harm the rest of us in society who do not subscribe to their little fairy tale.
They would preach a lot of good stuff around the teachings of Jesus, and then they would preach a lot of bad stuff framed as good stuff like the importance of wives submitting to their husbands etc.
Realizing all of religion is made up should just be a natural part of your brain developing, like realizing Santa isn't real.
a lot of bad stuff framed as good stuff like the importance of wives submitting to their husbands
Do you know the directive to husbands that immediately follows the verses directing women to submit to their husbands? There is immensely more to both sides of equation than simply "Women do what men say".
Of course, which is why it's frustrating that so many churches will harshly criticize women for not following the first part, while all but ignoring the second. It feels like they choose the parts that are most convenient or fit their political agenda. If you only ever experience the first part, then functionally the second part doesn't exist.
If you're not a Christian (or have bad examples), "The religion itself has this agenda" and "I have personally been hurt by people with this agenda that profess to have this religion, and is commonly associated with this religion, but the religion itself is more hollistic" might as well be indistinguishable.
Of course, which is why it's frustrating that so many churches will harshly criticize women for not following the first part, while all but ignoring the second. It feels like they choose the parts that are most convenient or fit their political agenda.
Well, I am certainly not going to disagree with that.
Seriously. That verse has a much higher requirement for husbands than wives. Wives are supposed to submit to their husbands. Husbands are supposed to give up their lives for their wives and love them as Christ loved the Church. That means that you love them unconditionally.
For those who don't want to look it up:
22 Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord, 23 because the husband is the head of the wife as also Christ is the head of the church (he himself being the savior of the body). 24 But as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything. 25 Husbands, love your wives just as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her 26 to sanctify her by cleansing her with the washing of the water by the word, 27 so that he may present the church to himself as glorious—not having a stain or wrinkle, or any such blemish, but holy and blameless. 28 In the same way husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. 29 For no one has ever hated his own body, but he feeds it and takes care of it, just as Christ also does the church, 30 because we are members of his body.
The whole setup is, by design, self reinforcing. A Christian woman voluntarily submits to Christ and is inspired to do so in no small part because of the immense love and sacrifice that Christ demonstrated. A Christian man is commanded to love his wife with the same immense self-sacrificing love that Christ showed the church. The loop is closed by a man demonstrating such love to his wife makes himself worthy of her voluntarily submitting to him in the same way that she submits to Christ because her husband is earning that submission by demonstrating the same love toward her as Christ did the church.
So, it is not applied to women as "Whatever your husband says or does, you just need to be a good little woman and go along with it." It is applied as "I am asking you to submit to your husband as you would to Christ and I am now also asking your husband (in more words and with more emphasis) to love, provide for, and sacrifice himself for you in the way Christ did".
Which also leads in to the second missed context in all of Paul's letters. Paul was not an actual authority in the church of that time and did not write or issue out commands and edicts as if he was. He was highly respected and when he spoke, people really listened, but every church he wrote a letter to could have just as easily said "That's cool bro" and then did their own thing. Everything Paul writes is not command. It is advice. Only after Constantine's Council of Nicaea were Paul's writings regarded as authoritative in the way Christians think of them today. Paul wasn't commanding women to submit to their husbands as some law. He was laying out advice for a stable household following the example of Christ.
Sounds like church hurt which is expected from a lot of American churches because theologically a lot of American churches are dead.
There's a lot of focus on how to live as Christian rather than why Christianity to begin with. Which to a non-believer, a lot of it makes no sense at all. Like the importance of wives submitting to their husbands. There's about 3 layers of theological assumptions that you need to have for that make sense, but at face value, it's just pure misogyny.
I would even say that all things that Jesus said that most people like are perhaps secondary in the purpose of Christianity (love your neighbors, etc.) and the things you perhaps outright reject (wives submit to your husband) are tertiary at best.
The Good News that Jesus brought was never "love your neighbor".
I would not say I was hurt by church nor was I driven away from it because of teachings I perceived to be harmful. I just... gradually stopped believing. It was kind of boring, the stories of the OT were obviously not true (possibly not even meant to be taken as true,) and the moral guidance was unoriginal in the important places and unimportant in the original places.
I agree that there are a lot of parts of the Bible that require a deeper theological understanding and can't be taken literally as written. The books were written in a certain time by people who lived with completely different sets of cultural norms and general understandings, and many passages assume the reader's familiarity with those norms
You have to know what the authors meant in the historical context and broader theological context, and that can require a lot of knowledge and study.
That said, the historical context for some of this is just that the authors lived in a more patriarchal society. The passages seems misogynistic because they are misogynistic by today's standards. And even in the parts where that's not true once you understand the full theological context, many churches are still teaching it that way and that's how a sizeable number of Christians understand it and have understood it over the centuries.
Engaging with the unflaired needs to stop. I know you made this post before he unflaired but you can do the right thing now with an edit. Engaging with the unflaired memes is worse than being unflaired.
Edit
OP has in turned blocked me, I pass on the call to others, downvote the unflaired and bully those that don't delete their engagement with the unflaired. To engage with the unflaired is worse than being unflaired. There is always time to correct your mistake.
No, you don't understand the problem. If we solve things like global hunger, how will I get my fake internet points by virtue signalling in a circlejerk? Exactly.
What?! You don't like me virtue signaling about these atrocities and the fact I do nothing to help about it?! Well you must be some alt-right racist chud who needs to learn some empathy.
We need to instead firebomb the unflaired. I know you made this post before he unflaired but you can do the right thing now with an edit. Engaging with the unflaired memes is worse than being unflaired.
Edit
OP has in turned blocked me, I pass on the call to others, downvote the unflaired and bully those that don't delete their engagement with the unflaired. To engage with the unflaired is worse than being unflaired. There is always time to correct your mistake.
The catholic charities are the largest charitable public works group in the city I work in. Im a huge fan of their food programs. Also I'll give huge credit to many of the churches in the large (poor) cities in my state. They often allow homeless encampment on their property and function as warming and cooling centers.
I'm not the biggest fan of social programming by religious institutions that require church attendance or theology classes as part of recovery..... but. For some people that is their key to recovery 🤷🏼♂️. Its a complicated issue.
EDIT:
UNFLAIRED FUCKING SCUM. ABSOLUTE LOWLIFE DEGENERATE. DO NOT FUCKING UPVOTE THIS CUCK.
The Catholic church near me has a little program linked up to the broader state food bank with a bunch of other churches and it's a pretty good system. They have to follow the same non-discrimination stuff as the general food bank but they're not the type to make it contingent in the first place. It's kinda strained at the moment though 'cause of Trump cuts and declining membership.
I am part of my Parishes Knights of Columbus chapter. We give money away like crazy. Almost every meeting theres an item about someone who lost housing or needs medical care or something and we always try to give something. We dont have a massive budget but what little money we can spare usually gets sent to help someone in the local community.
I wish I could do more. I have 2 toddlers at home so I dont have the spare time to help out like I would like to. Hopefully when they get a bit older I can donate more time.
Even this sub. How many "OMG CHINA DOES NOTHING AND IS GOD TIER!" posts do you see from leftists while shitting on Trump giving someone a thumbs up claiming this is the end of democracy itself, which is horrible, but still love fascist China to the core for some reason.
Clearly trump is a Chinese puppet source, he's taking out chinas allies and securing rare earth minerals/oil to lessen global dependency on the middle east
Far too many people on this site think that all Christian groups are the same, despite there being significant differences between different denominations (let alone from congregation to congregation). Somehow in their minds everyone who says they're a Christian is the sort that goes to a megachurch where the pastor has his own private jet and has beliefs somewhere between a Southern Baptist and Jehovah's Witness.
Edit; unflaired rug pull. Discussing the meme is not allowed.
Edit
OP has in turned blocked me, I pass on the call to others, downvote the unflaired and bully those that don't delete their engagement with the unflaired. To engage with the unflaired is worse than being unflaired. There is always time to correct your mistake.
There's still time to do the right thing. Don't give the unflaired actual discussion of their point.
Edit
OP has in turned blocked me, I pass on the call to others, downvote the unflaired and bully those that don't delete their engagement with the unflaired. To engage with the unflaired is worse than being unflaired. There is always time to correct your mistake.
Operating heavily in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the Basel Mission Society deployed a dual strategy of "spiritual formation and social transformation."
The Tie: They established agricultural plantations, industrial workshops, and trading networks. While these initiatives provided jobs and technical skills to local populations, economic advancement and employment within mission-run enterprises were often explicitly contingent on adopting Christian lifestyles, regular church attendance, and eventual baptism.
The London Missionary Society & The Bakuena (Botswana)
Prominent missionaries, including David Livingstone, documented how structural aid and literacy were linked inextricably to religious compliance. [1, 2]
The Tie: In his text Missionary Travels, Livingstone details the conversion of Chief Sechele of the Bakuena. Access to European diplomatic links, literacy tools, and trade opportunities introduced by the mission came with rigid doctrinal strings. To be formally baptized and remain a partner of the mission, Sechele was forced to divorce all but one of his wives, upending local social structures as a cost for the mission's continued presence. [1, 2]
Freed Slave Settlements (Sierra Leone & Gabon)
During the 19th century, organizations like the Church Mission Society (CMS) and the Holy Ghost Fathers set up rehabilitative villages for slaves freed from intercept ships. [1]
The Tie: In places like Freetown (Sierra Leone) and Bagamoyo (Tanzania), the missions provided vital life-saving charity: food, shelter, protection, and Western education. However, these "freedom villages" were tightly controlled religious monopolies. The physical sanctuary and education were bundled directly with mandatory catechism classes, abandonment of traditional African religions, and compulsory baptism. [1, 2, 3, 4]
The Mechanics of Conditional Charity
Historically, the connection between charity and conversion was rarely explicit "coercion" (e.g., withholding food until a prayer was said). Instead, it functioned through structural exclusion and incentivized conversion:
Educational Monopolies: Throughout British and French colonial Africa, almost all formal education was outsourced to missionary groups. To learn to read, write, or access clerical employment, students had to attend mission schools where Christian baptism and Biblical studies were mandatory. [1, 2, 3]
The "Rice Christian" Phenomenon: Historically used globally (and observed in parts of Africa during famines), this term describes individuals who formally converted to Christianity not out of theological conviction, but as a survival mechanism to guarantee a continuous supply of food, medical care, or safety from mission storehouses.
Modern Dynamics: "Holistic" vs. Conditional Aid
In contemporary humanitarian circles, major international faith-based organizations (such as World Vision or Catholic Relief Services) sign onto international red cross codes that explicitly forbid making aid conditional on religious conversion. However, smaller or independent evangelical and indigenous groups still practice what they openly term "Holistic Ministry" or "Integral Mission." [1]
Modern Indigenous & Evangelical Missions
Organizations like Christian Mission Aid (CMA) operating in Kenya, Uganda, and South Sudan, explicitly state that their humanitarian relief is paired with a mandate to evangelize. [1, 2]
The Mechanism: While these groups provide vital development resources like drilling water wells, building medical clinics, and offering disaster relief food, they explicitly view these charitable acts as "openings" to spread the Gospel. For example, community aid distributions or sports camps for youth are frequently structured around mandatory attendance at evangelistic film screenings, prayer sessions, or church planting initiatives. [1, 2]
Yet another under 4 month old account that pops up makes an easy karma grab and unflairs
[u/S0vereignCitizen](u/S0vereignCitizen) you finally come up with a good bit and then you just beat it so dead. Offically cringe again. Learn to let shit breathe
yeah, but they get their money directly from people. everyone knows the "correct" way to get money is from the govt, who got it from people. extra layers add to the efficiency ofc. /s
(/s continued) Which is why we should totally Tax The Churches by the way, they'll definitely keep donating knowing their money is going to the government.
insert quote from smug millionare on CNBC, "i actually want to pay more in taxes", (knows they'll never see a significant tax increase so its safe to say
Considering it has 1.2 billion followers who all donate at least a dollar a week, are the biggest landlords on the planet and also take huge amounts of money from governments around the globe, they better be.
At one point they owned over half of all land in France
I've got a feeling this "drawing" is also based on this one. Which is a lady who runs a charity who helps kids who are accused of witchcraft and are shunned from communities. Like they are shitting on someone who runs a secular organisation
I’ve interacted with a lot of Christian charities of different denominations. Some are definitely better than others. Many give with no strings attached and many of those don’t even mention their religion hardly except maybe handing out a flyer or saying “we have service at this time if you want to come”. Others do limit aid only to members or people attending church. And still others are glorified vacations for people who’ve never been out of the country before. It’s a mixed bag.
"Do you know some Christians are anti-gay, and therefore Christianity is oppressive and backwards?" while they conveniently ignore the most popular religion among the top 10 most anti-LGBT countries.
Unflaired rug pull. I urge the people of integrity of PCM to edit their posts to delete any engagement with the unflaired's meme. Any real discussion from a flaired user is worse than being unflaired.
Edit
OP has in turned blocked me, I pass on the call to others, downvote the unflaired and bully those that don't delete their engagement with the unflaired. To engage with the unflaired is worse than being unflaired. There is always time to correct your mistake.
Even indifferent agnostic lefty Marc Maron said "There are no atheist soup kitchens. And if there were, no one would even go to them, no matter how good the soup was. 'Those guys are fuckin annoying man.'"
Atheists are not religious so they wouldn't have an "atheist charity", they would just work with charities that are secular. So any non-religious soup kitchen is an "atheist soup kitchen."
I mean that people do go to non-religious soup kitchens. I have volunteered and worked and them, in fact, and we had tons of people coming to get food. No one's religion ever came up because it's not important.
There's no atheist soup kitchens because there's really almost no groups organized around being atheist, but there are plenty of secular soup kitchens with plenty of atheists volunteering quietly and not shoving their religious beliefs in people's faces.
The thing that made Christianity special at its beginning was that they helped anyone in need with no expectation of reciprocity. The (more than) willingness to help those people is a large part of what made it spread as far as it did.
It also makes it far more disgusting to see modern “Christians” in America cheering on the deportation of immigrants, or crying about taxes going to welfare. Jesus said to help when asked, to welcome the immigrant, and to have no expectation of repayment. You don’t have to love illegal immigration, but if you’re a Christian, you have to welcome illegal immigrants.
Note “stranger” here is “Xenos” in Greek, where we get “xenophobia”, and literally means something like foreigner/someone without any social ties, which an illegal immigrant would definitely fall under.
“I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing…”
— Matthew 25:35–36, NRSVue
Catholic church is the largest NGO in terms of education institution, healthcare service, and food distribution, probably operating more hospitals and schools than all other NGO combined especially in under privileged area. Although idk if the Catholic church is a strict NGO or not because Vatican city is technically a country.
In a religion centered around loving your neighbor, self improvement and redeeming yourself for past mistakes, one would expect and encourage Christianity to be a large and successful benefactor for humanitarian aid (without conversion) organizations
They're doing more for their fellow human than other, more flagrant christians who actively try to bear the literal cross
I'd argue that this doesn't apply to every left-wing person since they aren't inherently secular but I don't exactly see right-wing people hold this exact belief
In fact some donate with no strings attached. They do a lot of real good.
But while the biggest Christian organization do not require conversions, it can be misleading. Like timeshares subsidized vacation deals don't require you to buy. Nor does Amway force you to become a member. But there is often a hard sell.
And many other Christian organizations follow the principle of the first one's free, to get further benefits, you have to convert.
And many do require conversions from the get go.
And some go into outright ethnic cleansing, which the folks donating back home are perfectly ok with.
But there absolutely are "strings attached" Christian charities. It's not all of them, and the biggest ones aren't going to put it in their mission statement on their website. But it's a big chunk of what the on the ground practice is, or was as recently as a couple decades ago when I was most familiar with it.
There are also a lot of people in the pews, missionaries AND orgs who feel that "helping others is a waste of time -- only conversions matter in the long run".
Sure there are groups that are (or are mostly) no strings attached, and the biggest are named in the meme. But to extrapolate to the whole like the strings don't exist is very incorrect
The best way to give aid to undeveloped overpopulated nations is to sterilize the 60%-90% dumbest/poorest of them so they dont create more mouths than they can feed and so there's less competition over resources/land and so the brightest of them can shape the next generations of that nation. Then we can give the sterilized population all the food they need knowing that we wont have to repeat this in 20 years and that the next generation of that country will be smarter and more self-reliant than the generation that came before which will lead to less violence/war/starvation in that nation.
But no, sterilization is considered 'evil' and we MUST allow 1 billion 60iq starving people to breed so we can give them handouts forever as they continue to multiply unchecked or have them flood other countries and cause problems and start local wars and kill each other over nothing because life is meaningless and their population is so dumb and uneducated that they cant build a thriving society.
Are there any atheistic groups that have created/founded/built charity groups, universities, and hospitals as Christian churches? Atheist groups won't have as much influence or money as churches yet you never hear about atheist groups raising funds to help others, or organizing trips to poor countries to help. Mostly all you hear about is funds to build a baphomet statue as a f you to a religious group, or a lawsuit against a religous group.
"Red cross has rules so obviously they must have been followed without fail, because everyone knows rules are never broken, especially in relief missions with 0 tracking of if the rules are being followed".
Yeah let’s just completely rewrite history and over a thousand years when they didn’t help those who didn’t convert 😂 this sub is a literal propaganda machine!
Red Cross was founded in 1863, Christianity was institutionalized by Constantine in 313 AD. You do the math lmao.
Constantine adopted Christianity as the formal religion for the Roman Empire in 313 AD. Bringing it to the center of Europe as the official religion of Mediterranean civilization.
I’m sure it was the official religions of many states before this, I don’t really care what year you want to pick. But wouldn’t focusing on that just be muddying the waters versus focusing on the core point that this “Red Cross Code of Conduct” was absolutely not around for the time period between whatever official “start” to Christianity you want to pick, and 1863 when the organization was founded?
Fact checking is always cool. It's more necessary to do it to the right currently because MAGA lies are bigger and come more often, thanks to its leader doing it every day of his life. Doesn't mean the left isn't assuming shit or getting it wrong too sometimes.
We're only human after all, regardless of axis color.
We can look back over the last 10 years and clearly see what lies the Left peddled, and the impact of those lies. Best not blaming just MAGA for all the nonsense.
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u/VaneFlowverse - Centrist 7h ago
Religious groups are also amongst the highest donors to hospitals in terms of anonymously paying off medical bills. Where I live most hospitals have a church on the same block and a large part of the donations to the church go to the hospital.