Each time a church committee or staffer redirects needy persons in their communities to a local, state, or federal government program, that church redirects the need's attention away from God.
What follows is that if and when the needy receive "help" from government, their gratitude and thanksgiving for that "help" further strengthens and reinforces government's hold on and domination over their lives.
Our Constitution embodied a UNIQUE IDEA. Nothing like it had ever been done before. The power of the idea was in the recognition that people's rights are granted directly by the Creator - not by the state - and that the people, then, and only then, grant rights to government. The concept is so simple, yet so very fundamental and far-reaching.
America's founders embraced a previously unheard-of political philosophy which held that people are "...endowed BY THEIR CREATOR with certain unalienable rights...." This was the statement of guiding principle for the new nation, and, as such, had to be translated into a concrete charter for government. The Constitution of The United States of America became that charter.
What so-called "progressives" are attempting to accomplish, over a matter of several decades, is to turn that idea upside down, putting themselves in charge of a "government-over-people" government structure, and erasing the idea of the "Creator" altogether.