Here is Tony Campolo (Kerry voting Christian) accompanying Bill Clinton out of Ron Brown's funeral. Tony advocates socialism at the cost of baby-slaughter and Christian persecution.
While I don't have hard facts in front of me at the moment, I hope that you get what your looking for and set your pastor straight.
Just tell him you gave part of your tax cut as tithing to the church instead of letting the government fund the ACLU, National Endowment for the Arts (cross in urine), and planned parenthood.
If your pastor believes that more taxes equals giving to the poor, ask him how much of his income above the required amount he gives to the government. Liberals are so screwed up. They actually believe that taxes equal charitable giving. This is why the states that are taxed the highest (all blue) have the LOWEST per capita giving despite having 50 million FEWER adults.
The Methodist Church has been taken over by liberals who don't even bother to read the bible. Find a good Southern Baptist church and go there.
We've spent 4-6 trillion dollars in the "war on poverty" in the past 40 years. At what point do you accept that a transfer of wealth doesn't work.
It's the old "give a man a fish........."
Some people will be poor even if given a million dollars. There will just be a short period in their life that they weren't poor.
You might want to remind the pastor that taking care of the poor is the moral responsibility of (properly led)Christians as individuals, not the Government.
In any well functioning economy the gap between rich and poor will always be getting larger as there will always be people with zero.
You're going to have a very tough time disputing what the preacher says...However; when you find out his/her views on queer preachers and marriage, Israel, salvation, etc.,, you probably would have walked out anyway...
Ask him how much LBJs Great Society has spent on stamping out poverty and why it's been such a failure.
The tax cut will alleviate more poverty the way it's being worked now than if double the amount had been tendered to the poor in the form of handouts.
I don`t have any idea the theology of the church you attend but if this is an issue of more pressing concern than salvation through Jesus it may be time to find another place of worship.
As far as your search for facts, this web page; http://www.econ.umn.edu/~bplatt/Rational/TaxCuts.htm gives some factual information directly related to the Bush tax cuts as well as a tax chart showing who got what cut and how they were effected economically. A quote from the page being
"Bear in mind that this is actual historical data coming straight from the 1040 forms that you and I submit - we aren't just talking about what happened "in theory," but what actually happened. Notice that every taxpayer earning less than $200,000 dollars received a tax cut, effectively giving them between a 1.4% to 2.6% raise in income. Remarkably, the only people seeing savings of 2% or more are those earning less than $20,000. The idea that the tax cut only helped the rich is complete falsehood."
Hopefully this'll help in your search.
in order for government to end poverty, they must hire four people to oversee the spending, one to collect, one to verify collection, one to verify distribution and one to distribute. for those government employees, poverty ends. unfortunately, the government does not earn money, but must take it from taxpayers. these taxpayers if not supporting government, would be supporting charities that actually would help the poor.
you will not change your pastor's mind... you are better off in another church.
teeman
Matthew 26:11 "26:11 For ye have the poor always with you; but me ye have not always."
Here is Tony Campolo (Kerry voting Christian) accompanying Bill Clinton out of Ron Brown's funeral. Tony advocates socialism at the cost of baby-slaughter and Christian persecution.
I used to be a UM pastor, and even was an associate to one of the most liberal senior pastors in a liberal conference! My tenure with him was the beginning of my life as a conservative, as I saw his beliefs as bankrupt and dishonest and basically a grab for power.
First of all, pastors are poor economists. You'll see that whenever you see the resolutions passed by your Annual Conference (as well as the governing bodies of most "old line" denominations). Don't expect to actually argue economics with him/her. You begin by telling him/her that you're going to use "Scripture, Reason, Tradition and Experience" in your discussions. Even they you're fighting 4 years of seminary liberal indoctrination.
Second, you might remind the pastor of John Wesley's advice ("Standard Sermons", as I recall) of "Earn all you can, save all you can, that you might give all that you can." I think this is the definitive statement of conservative charity. It doesn't mention "tax all you can that you can send all the welfare checks you can."
Third, John Wesley didn't advocate taxation for the support of the poor. Wesley's ministries, along with those of early Methodists, never turned to the Church of England or the Crown to address the very distressing social and economic problems of the era. Instead they used religious beliefs, along with limited acts of charity, to change the behavior of those in poverty, and thus bring them out of poverty.
In my 43 years on earth, the United Methodist's liberal voices (the ones you hear at Annual and General conferences) have never had a president that they thought was liberal enough. Their idea of social change (unlike Wesley) is to stay in their upscale NYCity headquarters, hang with the United Nations crowd, and demand that governments do something with other people's taxes.
It's impossible to quantify how Bush's tax cuts have impacted the poor. What we know is that this country had the worst stock market crash in history, followed by a war caused by the worst attack on the USA in our history, and we barely had a recession. My opinion is that Bush's tax cuts, along with low interest rates, greatly softened the blow. To the extent that wealthy people were able to resume their charitable acts sooner, the poor most certainly were the beneficiaries.
If your Methodist minister is like mine there are no facts in existence that will ever sway them from there liberal position. I have tried on Kerry, Iraq, Israel, Boy Scouting, etc. After the election I then got to listen to the sermons on grieving and rightwing christian zealots. Back to your question; ask their definition of poverty and expand it to include morals. Good results with it so far. I haven't been excommunicated.