Edit: I'm referring to this bit: "As an aside, I really dislike that so many of the US domestic charities are religiously driven". The bulk of your comment was interesting and fine. Unfortunately, flamebait dominates discussion regardless of intent, so your subtle point was lost.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I've seen really good organizations that just do good and don't have expectations. The Catholic and Jewish religions tend to have more open charities from what I've seen. They frequently try to solve problems without an expectation or requirement on membership.

In particular Catholic nuns teach in the fringes of society. Where people aren't able to get funding by the state. The cycle is, they go to the fringes, teach those fringes get big enough for state sponsored education and they move further out. I've worked with these amazing people and to put them in the same category as others is a disservice to their work.

On the flip side there are religions that only help if you are an active member. Which is why I think it's important to recognize that MANY religious organizations aren't bad. But that some are, so we can differentiate between them.

I'd also like to say, not even all charities within a given religion are bad/good. When you get down to an individual charity it's run by a person or people and we have to weigh each on on it's own merits.

If we want more secular charities, we have to find a way for people to organize outside of religion. I'd strongly suggest everyone here look at something such as First Robotics or another secular charity.

I use to donate to a large homeless feeding / sheltering place here in town. When I was told by someone who was asking for food money (that I told about the free food at the mission in which I donate to) - that the place forced you to listen to religious sermons before you can have a plate, I was flabbergasted.

I no longer donate to that place.

To those who are all bent out of shape about 'why not religion charity' - hey I don't mind them doing whatever they want to do - but be transparent about it to everyone.

I think if your religion group is good enough, you can give free food and offer another room for sermons if you want to check it out, another area with pamphlets about your gods, whatever, if it's good - have religious counseling available, that's all fine - but don't force people to listen to your cult leader espouse some kind of brainwashing, magical spells, incantations or whatever to starving people in order for them to get some bread.

Have another room for the kool aid, if it's good and welcoming, people will go there. No need to force it.

imho. No offense intended by outrageous characterizing - from what I have seen, some places are offering both without going overboard - and that's great.

In fairness, many of them are very good. The Mormons, for example, have always impressed me. I had a friend who grew up in Menlo Park, fell on hard times, and ended up in Utah. The Mormon community there was very supportive in substantial ways, and although they did evangelize, I hear it was pretty mild.

But yeah, it's...evil when a religion gets transactional with it's charity.

Getting transactional with charity is the whole point. That's why religious organizations often fight against public programs instead arguing that religiously affiliated charity should take its place (receiving public funding to do so in many cases).

Utah in particular loves to under-fund programs, and let the church pick up the slack. The benefit to them is that it is both transactional, and allows them to exclude as they desire.

The Mormons might be nice, but they shouldn't be getting public money to provide public assistance. They should be cut out entirely and taxes should fund these programs directly and fairly.

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finances_of_The_Church_of_Jesu...

Mormons as a rule are very generous with the church, and often with church affiliated charities. If the deduction for charitable giving was removed, the Mormon church would do fine, and likely so would many of their charitable activities, and it would seem more like separation of church and state to me.

If the charitable giving deduction were removed, I guess I agree that at that point there wouldn't be a way to argue (from a constitutional perspective) against Mormons in Utah voting for low levels of government support.

As it happens, I'm not convinced the "all charity should be provided by religious institutions in Utah" narrative for Utah voters is actually accurate; Salt Lake City at least is fairly generous with the homeless, at a government level.

But does Utah give that money to the church programs instead? It’s not clear from your comment.

But spirituality is quite real, and there are those who really believe in selfless giving without expectation of anything in return. Lots of people. They exist in the "cooperate/cooperate" equilibrium, and honestly, it's better there. It's not that you don't see the cheating, the greed, especially in the name of charity, its just that you're choosing to do something different, something that feels more wholesome. (I say this as someone who's served a bunch of meditation courses, and really enjoyed it.)

Why are religious organizations fighting public assistance programs? Why are their members arguing that a church should provide these same services instead? Your "criticise the crique" strategy isn't actually a retort, just an argument that religious affiliated organizations should be above criticism wholesale.

If religions want to stay out of politics, I'm all for leaving them be. But as it stands they're a major power broker, particularly at a local level, and therefore cannot be ignored (particularly when they're arguing for religious discrimination of public services).

My other point was noting the cynicism behind your view, and why I think there are better options.

Not all religions do. Catholic Charities, for example, doesn't care what religion you practice and does not try to convert people who seek its help.

I guess another way of looking at it is why aren't there more atheist charities? What is it about religion that makes people help other people so much more?

Religous groups account for "31% of all donations", so that leaves a lot for other groups.

https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=content.view&...

https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=search.summar...

That 31% is donations to churches (from what I'm reading). Not donations to charities organized separately from the churches.

So if there is a catholic charity which focuses on Haiti, then that would be excluded from the 31%.

1. https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...

i.e. "The government should replace charity, and only the millionaires and billionaires should be the ones paying for it".

I'm atheist myself, but I've definitely seen this reasoning make it easy for fellow atheists to explain away their lack of charity.

Depending on your definition, pretty much all activist organizations could fall into this. Red cross, project eden, engineers without borders, etc. Honestly I'm stumped as to what constitutes "atheist charity" vs any non profit whose goal is not "spread the word of $deity".

Black swan effect? It may just be that the charity and/or atheism isn't reported.

> that makes people help other people so much more?

I think that's reading a lot more into both motivations and actions than is possible from here; or, in other words: I think you're anecdotally on to something - my religious neighbors definitely feel more kind / charitable than my other neighbors - but science would need to be done. For example, perhaps it's not the "religious" part but the "community" part that drives participation in charity efforts. I also wonder about the role that tax exemption plays into all of this.

I can think of 2 reasons why the religious want to help others:

   1. Within many religions, the concept of charity is tied to eternal salvation
   2. Helping people is a good way to recruit numbers

Why pick on atheists? What about secular charity or otherwise irreligious charity? Many such charities/aid groups exist. Doctors Without Borders, ACLU, Unicef, Goodwill, Oxfam, Rotary International, etc.

More importantly, what about social security?

I think the US government is too conservative when it comes to relying on outside entities for help getting people up on their feet. It really should be a government's prerogative to proactively help people enter society as a productive member, earning a wage, staying healthy, spending money and paying taxes, no?

But by studies performed by religious organizations themselves (who if anything are likely to skew the numbers more positively), across the board, "Local and national benevolence receives 1 percent of the typical church budget", and an additional 5% goes to "church run programs" (be it after school care, social or group activities).

If a secular charity - and lets go back to Charity Navigator here - Top Ten Inefficient Fundraisers (https://www.charitynavigator.org/index.cfm?bay=topten) we see some of the worst charities spending 15% of their donations on "program expenses" (i.e. doing what they are being given money to do).

I'm not familiar with the monitoring of 501(c)3 groups, but I suspect if charities were to regularly spend only one per cent of their givings on what they got to enjoy tax exemption to do, they'd likely have such a status revoked.

And, if you factor in this average percentage (even the six per cent combined, which is generous, as as much fun as social and youth activities are, they're not necessarily serving a critical need), and start to question 'how much money is being spent on 'spreading the word', patting themselves on the back, competitions in Texas to see who can built the world's biggest cross just down the road from where the world's previously biggest cross was built at costs of millions, there comes more and more skepticism of just how highly you can value "giving to your church" on the scale of charitable contributions.

A study by ECCU (http://web.archive.org/web/20141019033209/https://www.eccu.o...) stated that churches use 3 percent of their budget for children’s and youth programs, and 2 percent for adult programs. Local and national benevolence receives 1 percent of the typical church budget.

So I -do- place some skepticism on the idea of blanketing 'religious giving' as 'charitable contribution'.

It's also worth noting that in the US, there still exists a fairly strong bias against any openly atheistic people or organizations[1], so it would make sense to direct the public's attention towards what they're doing and therefore away from what they don't believe.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discrimination_against_atheist...

When people say atheist charities, what they are trying to say is secular charities lacking any religious affiliation. They aren't trying to say charities that are actively "affiliated" with being atheist.

My guess is that there are simply fewer atheists.

I don't see how this follows. There are punishments for committing crimes that don't come from a vengeful god, like punishment from a legal system.

Treat others as you want to be treated. And if I was poor I'd want someone to feed me.

The best churches to me are the ones who believe that church is for the "sinners" not the in-group. This means accepting everyone and not excluding anyone.

But we also have to recognize that churches are centered around people and people are very flawed. Organizations tend to be too.

I have to say, I fall much closer to atheist than theist now but that's mostly due to doctrine not practices within the church.

Also, as a side effect of how I was raised I was on the out-group of two religions. 90% of people in both churches treated me with respect and dignity. It was up to me to see that the 10% had no power in either church or over me.

He was wanting to put together a program where students would go volunteer to help NGOs do software projects in India.

Something he was surprised by was that NGOs in India are almost all oriented around lobbying the government to do things (particularly that they'd already promised to do) and not around provisioning social services themselves.

My understanding is that in some religions, we are living today in the "afterlife" of a previous life, and subject to karma based on what we've done.

If one has bad karma that has put one in an undesirable social position, it's not a stretch that Earth is a hell for those people, and we're supposed to be the demons that make life miserable for them.

Can you name those religions for me. I view everything as deterministic and see the world as either heaven/hell. Although the idea of karma doesn't make sense when understanding determinism. Since everyone is destined to do bad or good depending on the life they're born into.

edit: whoever downvoted me, I'm asking a simple question and stating what I observe. Please let me know why you find the need to downvote for that.

It's offensive.

it's then a smaller step to use some of those organizational resources for evangelizing in the form of charitable acts.

There is, in fact, a church in northern San Diego county that has a free meal open to anyone on Friday nights, no questions asked. It does involve listening to a sermon. It's one of the best free meals I attended while homeless and I wrote it up on one of my websites as a model program that should be copied because it was so well done.

No sermon, no lecture, just unconditional -- and very good -- food as part of a deeply held sense of community. They have leapt to help in disasters, kept going through riots a few years back, and keep sticking to those principles as numbers keep rising. Rising because the UK government created a need for food banks out of nowhere over ten years, and more and more now need free food... I keep hearing of quiet Sikh efforts across the country as our government deconstructs the benefits system and safety net.

I'm life-long atheist, but I feel much warmer toward our Sikh communities than the UK's formerly christian heritage - where charity so often seems to come with a catch, or a sales pitch, or worse is conspicuously absent. The Sikh sense of community feels far stronger, and more of a true belief as a result.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21805859

I think the Sikh community probably was the source of the absolute best homeless meal I ever got, but I wasn't offended at listening to them share their Christian faith at the program mentioned above and it was a good meal, far better than most homeless meals.

There is zero contradiction in saying "Don't hold homeless people hostage for a meal" and saying "Offering a free meal as part of sharing something you love -- be it Calculus or Christianity -- with whomever wishes to join you is not the same as holding homeless people hostage." They are entirely different points and they in no way conflict.

But that's a darn good example because free food with a lecture (or timeshare opportunity, or conference on industry tool) is a really common occurrence marketing wise and it raises a question that I can't answer in terms of legal and moral right - those lunch and learn conferences, do some people feel pressured to attend because it's subsidizing the cost of their lunch that day? How much time do they lose to engaging in such things and how many of them missed better job opportunities because of it.

I don't understand your sentence. "separation of religion" with what? Is there a law stating religion needs to be separated from everything else?

That kind of separation.

Should not the state stop this practice?

What if shelter A says I will close if you don't allow me to practice religion?

But the shelter's policy can and should limit what the city is allowed to do. Saying "I have a 'choice': to go to your religious shelter or be arrested for sleeping outside" is a problem.

> Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

this has generally been opined to imply a separation of church and state since any state endorsement of a religion (any directly stated ties) would support the establishment[1] of one religion[2] while also curtailing the establishment[1] of another religion.

1. The usage of the word establishment is pretty archaic language-wise, I think it's fair to conceptually substitute organization, enrollment and participation.

2. Generally, traditionally we haven't minded supporting religious organizations unless that support is unequal, this is why a lot of religious organizations are tax free and have some other fun benefits.

People were, essentially, arrested for not attending religious ceremonies - there is a lot more interesting nuance here, but suffice to say that the 1st Amendment is absolutely relevant if people are potentially being jailed by the state due to a failure to attend religious ceremonies.

This case (partially) answered "Can the government jail you for being homeless?" The answer being "No, not generally, but perhaps under a certain set of circumstances that are outside the scope of this case."

Much of the discussion here is "Can a charity compel you into indoctrination in return for bed/food/etc?" The answer to which is "No, not if they are receiving state funding." (They probably shouldn't regardless of funding, but that's a moral question, not a legal one)

Omitting that addendum I agree this is more clear cut legally - I still think there may be moral questions about feeding people conditional on their attendance to a lecture religious or otherwise, but honestly... there are some moral questions about refusing to feed someone in need in any circumstances that our society has mostly moved on from acknowledging so I think most of my objections (excluding the potential arresting scenarios) are academic and beyond the common ethics.

Neat thread though, lots of fun stuff in it.

That was one of the keys - "the City said it wouldn't cite people when shelters weren't open", but the plaintiffs said that one of the religious shelters had an "always open" policy, even if they didn't actually have beds, and they did require religious participation, so the city's point was effectively moot.

At the time Massachusetts ratified the First Amendment, everyone was required to belong to a church and State tax money was used to support those churches: http://www.statelegalhistory.com/home/1-new-england-legal-hi.... Several New England states had government-supported churches well into the 1800s.

Jefferson wrote this in 1802:

> Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between man and his god, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their "legislature" should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between church and State.

Madison wrote repeatedly about the separation of church and state, as anchored in the 1st Amendment. It was one of the issues that he was particularly passionate about.

As for the states passing legislation regarding religion, the 1st Amendment was originally only a limit on what the Federal government could do. The 1st-Amendment separation between church and state was extended to the states through the 14th Amendment (which led to several of the liberties in the Bill of Rights being extended to the state level).

So in conclusion, the idea of the separation of church and state goes back to the founding generation of the United States. That's not to say it hasn't evolved over time and become stronger. It was a novelty at the time, so you wouldn't expect it to have sprung from Zeus' forehead fully formed.

This is, by definition, a law respecting an establishment of religion. It was permissible only because the Bill of Rights was not applied to the States until the passage of the 14th Amendment.

If you look at the first amendment, the Establishment Clause stands out:

> Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

For the other rights, Congress used verbs: "prohibiting" the free exercise of religion, and "abridging" the freedom of speech, etc. But "an establishment of religion" is a noun. What is an establishment of religion? In 1789, "an establishment of religion" was a known thing: the established churches of the states. So the First Amendment can be interpreted to mean that Congress can't mess with the established churches of the various states.

Turning to incorporation: remember, its not automatic, and incorporation of each amendment must be justified on its own terms. Not all of the Bill of Rights makes sense as applied to the States--for example the Ninth and Tenth Amendments, because those set forth a separation between State and Federal power, not individual rights. There is a natural reading for incorporation of the Free Exercise Clause. But whether it makes sense to incorporate the Establishment Clause turns on what you interpret the Establishment Clause to mean. If the latter, then its really setting forth a separation of State/Federal power, not an individual right, and it makes no sense to apply that to the states.

It means neither.

"Respecting" means "with reference to", and this definition is the same as it was when the Constitution was written. Ergo, "respecting an establishment of religion" means "with reference to an establishment of religion". "Establishment of religion" means "an organization of religion", including both lay churches all the way up to the Anglican Church and the Vatican. So the first half clearly states that Congress shall make no law "with reference to an religious organization."

This is where the separation of church and state comes from. That, and Thomas Jefferson saying explicitly that this was the purpose of that clause and the commonly understood meaning of the Constitutional Congress when they voted on the language...

For the second half: "thereof" means the thing just mentioned, and "exercise" meant "practice" (as in practice a religion, from the original Latin meaning). So "prohibiting the free exercise thereof" means "prohibiting the free practice of religion."

Reading "establishment" synonymous with "organization" would be anawkward and un-idomatic even today. Would you call the ACLU a "civil rights establishment?" Would you call NARAL a "women's rights establishment?"

There are good reasons to believe that's not the sense in which the word is used. The Constitution repeatedly uses the word "establish" in the sense of "to make official." It uses the word "establishment" in one other place, referring to the requirements "for the Establishment of this Constitution.” I.e. the requirements to make the draft constitution the official law of the country.

And historically, "establishment" was used precisely in that sense--a religion that had been made official. The Church of England was an "establishment of religion." The Colonies had had "established" churches, and many, but not all, had "disestablished" their churches. “An establishment of religion” is not a weird way to say “religious organization” but a legal thing that existed at the time that made sense to talk about. And what the First Amendment does is prohibit the federal government from making laws with reference to those "establishment[s] of religion."

Within that framework, Congress was probably prohibited from establishing a national church. But why? Is the answer: because established churches were bad in the same way that cruel and unusual punishment is bad? That would be an odd reading given how many of the original 13 colonies had some form of government supported religion. The other interpretation is that the amendment endeavored to protect these establishments from federal interference. That’s what makes the most sense given the structure of the colonies at that time.

Within that framework, incorporation doesn’t make sense. You take a provision that was intended to protect states' rights to maintain their established religions free from federal interference, and turn it into a provision that eliminates the very right the amendment sought to protect. https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl...

Quite frankly, I don't care what the words mean today, since we have a body of court cases that has expanded the application of the First Amendment beyond the strict scope of the words as they were written.

There are good reasons to believe that's not the sense in which the word is used. The Constitution repeatedly uses the word "establish" in the sense of "to make official."

You keep trying to make linguistic arguments while ignoring the linguistic means of the words at the time they were originally written, especially when one of the men responsible for actually writing the Bill of Rights explicitly stated what the words of the First Amendment were intended to mean at the time they were written.

The First Amendment was explicitly intended to create separation of church and state at the Federal level. Like the rest of the bill of Rights, it wasn't intended to apply to the states at the time, so your arguments about state churches are entirely irrelevant.

Lastly I wanted to mention the parallel term you draw here because it's also a drifted phrase

> to make official

Is actually a highly accurate synonym for establishment, but only in archaic word usage, official (the adjective) is actually just a corruption of official a noun, it's sort of like "the influencer lifestyle" or "that's an influencer hat". Technically all "off-*" words originally related to religion, but that's gone by the wayside quite a bit by now.

And the opposite view: https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/06/constit...

1) It's full of invective and straw-man arguments. It accuses Christine O'Donnell of not having read the Establishment Clause, for example. And it makes a completely irrelevant reference to "old antebellum slave oligarchies," even though it was the free New England states that were the ones that had state-supported churches.

2) It makes tenuous arguments. The "words 'separation of church and state' are not in the text," the article concedes. But "the idea of separation is" present. Of course! In support of that view, it points to the fact that the Constitution prohibits religious tests for office. "If government can't require its officials to support a church," it reasons, "is there a serious argument that church and state are not separate?" Of course, the prohibition on religious tests is entirely consistent with the existence of a plurality of public religions.

It also pulls a "??? Profit!" over the most significant issue: what does "no law respecting an establishment of religion" mean? The article states that it "mean[s] that not only no church but no 'religion' could be made the official faith of the United States." That reads the phrase as "no law establish[ing] [a] religion." But if that's what the Framers meant, they would have written that. That's how they wrote the rest of the first amendment "no law ... prohibiting ... or abridging ...."

3) As with the present Supreme Court precedent on the subject, the article rests almost entirely on the letter of Thomas Jefferson. But Jefferson (a) was not a Framer; and (b) was a radical wingnut. What he thought about things carries some weight, but not all that much. (I would add that almost everyone who invokes Jefferson's view to interpret the First Amendment would recoil in horror at invoking his views to interpret the Second.)

What the ruling says is that you cannot prosecute a person for sleeping on the street if they have nowhere to go, and that a room that comes attached with a lecture about your life choices doesn't count as a place to go.

Catholic Charities had consistently good programs. In my experience, they did not ever require you to listen to a sermon to get the help you needed.

Yes, I chose to go hungry rather than attend shitty services with lousy food that put my welfare at risk with their shitty policies. Some so-called "help" is worse than nothing.

And not all homeless have literally nothing. Some have income, just not enough to support a middle class life. Some have regular jobs and live in fear of being fired if their employer learns of their situation.

The thing that bothers me now about the homeless is how many of them appear to have their basic shit together.

Hmm? I think there's a typo in there. Did you mean that it bothers you about homelessness (not the homeless people) that people with "shit" together still have trouble getting housing?

A significant portion of homeless people are actually 'invisible' homeless people- people living out of their cars, or sleeping on couches. They arguably do have things, up to and including a sense of identity and self for which any attempt of indoctrination must erode. I don't think someone who is sleeping on a friend's couch would be down for sleeping on a bed instead for the low low price of conversion therapy.

(FTR: I don't think religion is brainwashing/conversion therapy or whatever. I also just think this take is also very bad.)

If the reason you help someone is because you want to sell them something or use them, you're doing help wrong.

I suppose you could argue that religion is harmful.. but even as an atheist, that’s a stretch for me to agree with.

How is that a stretch for you? Have you ever heard of conversion therapy. Do you know how that came to be and similar to slavery. I know a lot of LGBT+ friends that had religious parents throw them on the streets because of God wouldn't make them not be normal.

But unlike others, I don't agree that religious charities should not do any proselytizing. A genuine religious person believes their doctrine, not just in being a good person like anyone can be. Christians believe there are eternal issues at stake.

The point is that basic services should not be conditional and proselytizing should invitational, not mandatory.

(Notably, it’s not like less religious places have devised secular replacements for religious charity. As a percentage of income, people in San Francisco donate just half of what people in Alabama and Mississippi do.

until it's used to keep people apart in "mandatory religious programs"

That said, I really despise hypocrites and the biggest ones I can see today are Prosperity Gospel preachers and that Evangelical voting block that support the "good christian" in office today. I have no problem with faith and churches, but when they start getting political or taking advantage of the needy then they've got to go. Lastly, it's getting a bit weird with religious institutions fighting against women's health organizations - and that discussion is a pile of snakes so let me just say I understand where both sides come from and don't really care to discuss the topic.

It is highly likely that the religious institutions you're thinking of aren't these partisan televangelists or con-men but those guys have left a sour taste in my mouth for religious institutions in general - I default to spurning and distrusting them until I've seen an organization act in a beneficial and ethical manner. I trust them more slowly then I trust secular charities.

But that's not what was happening, right?

> I have no problem with faith and churches, but when they start getting political

I disagree with the notion that religion must be a private matter. Religion is not only a matter of personal belief. Its a framework for organizing communities and raising children. Forcing people to keep religion private amounts to an infringement on "the free exercise thereof."

Notably, religion in the U.S. has always been political. Many of the original colonies were founded by religious people who were too radical for Europe. They didn't create a Constitution where the right to "free exercise" implied banning the very religious communities they had come to America to establish. Rather, religion has always been a part of peoples' politics. It played an outsized role in everything from abolition to women's suffrage to the civil rights movement.

> Boise said it does not issue citations if the city’s three homeless shelters are full. The plaintiffs said that the two Christian-based shelters have policies to never turn away anyone for lack of space, and so police have continuously enforced the ordinances. > > The 9th Circuit noted that those facilities could still refuse to shelter homeless people who exceed limits of the number of days they can stay or who object to mandatory religious programs.

As to your other point

> I disagree with the notion that religion must be a private matter. Religion is not only a matter of personal belief. Its a framework for organizing communities and raising children. Forcing people to keep religion private amounts to an infringement on "the free exercise thereof."

That's fair, it definitely needs to be a balance, it's my opinion that things like Prosperity Gospel not being outright illegal and pundits like Pat Robertson are good examples that it has gone too far, but I definitely see and understand concerns about going too secular. I'm privately faithful and secular in nature, but that's just me and I understand that other folks have their own understandings of faith and religion.

Directly? No.

"If there is a homeless shelter open, we can cite and jail you for sleeping outdoors".

"But one of the shelters has a policy of always being 'open', even if there are no beds. They also require mandatory religious activity and participation."

"If there is a homeless shelter open, we can cite and jail you for sleeping outdoors".

Is a fairly strong indirect link.

Other places in the US, you mean. They have done this elsewhere, they call it socialism.

If person A takes from person B by coercion to give to person C because person D voted for it. Neither person A nor person B nor person D can claim to be engaging in charity.

Charity is voluntary giving.

That said, a better example is that 'socialist' countries seem to give less to charity for those abroad. The biggest donating countries per capita are Myanmar, the USA and Australia, the most likely to help strangers appear to be Iraq, Libya and Kuwait. Even in Europe, it's topped by the UK which, while it is in possession of a social safety net, I would not call Socialist.

Mississippi and Alabama need religious services because religious people suffocated the government. I'd much rather be poor in San Francisco and enjoying public services than be poor in Mississippi hoping for religious services.

It’s not really voluntary, which brings in the question of if it’s really charity.

> I'd much rather be poor in San Francisco and enjoying public services than be poor in Mississippi hoping for religious services

Which public services do you think SF has that aren’t available in Mississippi? I think you’ll find that the real difference is tolerance of homelessness in general and programs that allow continued drug use while receiving benefits.

Medicaid expansion.

They happen to be more motivated to provide services. If you wish there were more alternatives, more secular people should start their own charities.

"Elevation Church does post some financial records on its website, reporting that the church took in $33.5 million in offerings last year and gave away about $3.8 million in outreach, spent $9 million on personnel and reported $13.9 million in cash assets."

(this after their pastor purchased a 'not that great' 16,000 sq ft home on 19 acres, and said that would be 'against Christ's teachings' to disclose what he was paid).

A study by ECCU (http://web.archive.org/web/20141019033209/https://www.eccu.o...) stated that churches use 3 percent of their budget for children’s and youth programs, and 2 percent for adult programs. Local and national benevolence receives 1 percent of the typical church budget.

I'm an atheist myself, but this speaks volumes about the people who aren't religious and their propensity to be charitable.

As much as secularists like to fall into the ego trap of hating on religious institutions, once you separate out the dogma, there's probably a lot to learn from them in terms of fostering desirable behavior like charitable giving.

If you factor that in to 'charitable giving as a whole', then secularists are doing more than fine with their propensity to be charitable.

> As much as secularists like to fall into the ego trap of hating on religious institutions, once you separate out the dogma, there's probably a lot to learn from them in terms of fostering desirable behavior like charitable giving.

I sense a certain hypocrisy there. It's an ego trap to hate on religion, but religious folk have the upper hand and "much to teach" about charity? (Which, as previously stated, is a highly suspect argument foundation).

I agree we should not tear down the charities first, but I don't think that we should pretend the charities are successfully solving the problem. They are making the problem less bad than it otherwise would be, and that's valuable, but they're not actually solving it. People have been saying "Private charity will solve the problem" since Judas wanted to sell that one bottle of ointment, and the poor are still with us.

The parent poster did not say that religious or secular charities could "solve the problem"; nothing can solve the problem. What the parent poster did say is that religious charities are expending far more effort in helping the homeless.

I'm not disputing whether religious charities are working more effectively now. I'm disputing whether that is the right strategy. If, in 2000, you were to argue that an open-source web browser is the right thing for the world, "Most people use IE, which is closed-source" (though true) would not be not a counterargument.

It is not obvious to me that nothing can solve the problem. (To be clear, I take Jesus' words about "you will always have the poor with you" as a statement addressed to the people there at the time, not to humanity forever, but even if not, a passing comment from God still seems like an inappropriate basis for public policy in a non-theocratic society.) Even if nothing can solve the problem, it's also not obvious to me that we're anywhere close to doing as good a job as we can at reducing the problem.