Last updated 3/18/2025
Part of the Christian Kyriarchy Project
1. The concept that panhandlers will just spend it on booze or drugs or that they are actually scam artists has gotten quite some traction in Christian spaces.
Uncritical examples
None yet
Stop Telling Me about the “Lazy” and “Entitled” Poor by Jayson D. Bradley | Honest To God (January 2018)
2. Christians against government welfare programs will argue that it's the church's job to take care of poor people, not the government's.
Uncritical examples
None yet
Commentary
Church or Government: Whose Job Is It to Take Care of the Poor? by Jason D. Bradley | Honest To God (February 2017)
3. The fact that some pregnant people abort because they are too poor to care for the child is often brushed off. Some Christians argue that if you can afford an abortion, you can surely afford childcare. This ignores that paying for an abortion would be a one-time expense, while childcare would be both constant and much pricier.
Uncritical examples
Single Mothers Deserve Better by Rev. Robert A. Sirico | Acton Institute (July 2010)
Archived on Wayback Machine, Archive.today, and Ghost Archive
Commentary
How I Lost Faith in the “Pro-Life” Movement | Love, Joy, Feminism (October 2012)
Opposing Abortion and Stigmatizing Single Motherhood | Love, Joy, Feminism (January 2018)
4. In addition to being sexist, the belief that women should all be housewives and stay-at-home-mothers ignores that many families cannot live on just one income.
Uncritical examples
Addendum 1: Thoughts For Young Men & Women On Vocation by Brent Detwiler (2006, makes victim-blaming assumptions as to why a couple would need or want two incomes)
Archived on Wayback Machine
Commentary
None yet
5. Some church cultures expect a certain level of respectability that requires having enough money to pay for religious services and events.
Uncritical examples
None yet
Commentary
10 Times Classism Hurt Jesus by Lisa Marie Garver | Class Action (October 2015)
Interlude: Class and true womanhood | Are Women Human? (November 2011)
6. Something popular among televangelists is a notion called the prosperity gospel. This is the belief that if you're a good Christian, God will give you material rewards.
To be fair, even Christians who are classist in other ways have called out this idea as bullshit.
Uncritical examples
None yet
Commentary
The Prosperity Gospel and Classism by Andy Pope | Class Action (May 2018, contains derogatory comments about sex workers)
[video]Televangelists: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) (August 2015)
Name it and claim it | Rational Wiki
More information on Christian classism
Does Organized Christianity Justify Class Bias | Class Action (September 2015)
Preserved on Wayback Machine, Archive.today, and Ghost Archive
Classism Exists in the Church—and It's Hurting All of Us by Matt Ingalls | Missio Alliance (November 2018)
The Church and Social Class: Breaking Down Divisions | Student Christian Movement (October 2016)
4 Reasons We Should Focus on Poverty Instead of Abortion by Jayson D. Bradely | Honest To God (October 2020)
From classism to community: Consider the poor, forgotten this Thanksgiving by Rev. Dr. Jini Kilgore Cockroft | Available on The Christian Citizen and Medium (November 2019)
Through the Front Door by Caitlin Zinsser | Class Action (July 2014)
Preserved on Wayback Machine, Archive.today, and Ghost Archive
Ignorant Christians need to STFU about 'the poor you will always have with you' until they can be bothered to understand what Jesus actually said | slacktivist (December 2014)
Owning Laura Silsby's Shame: How the Haitian Child Trafficking Scheme Embodies the Western Disregard for the Integrity of Poor Families by Shani M. King | University of Florida Levin College of Law (January 2012)
On Washing Machines and Republican | Tell me why the world is weird (October 2024)
How the Christian orphan care movement may be enabling child abandonment | Rage Against The Minivan (September 2013)
TTUAC: Romanticizing Poverty | Love, Joy, Feminism (September 2017)
Further reading
Researchers gave thousands of dollars to homeless people. The results defied stereotypes. by Francesca Giuliani-Hoffman | CNN (October 2020)
Reasons U.S. Women Have Abortions: Quantitative and Qualitative Perspectives by Lawrence B. Finer, Lori F. Frohwirth, Lindsay A. Dauphinee, Susheela Singh, and Ann M. Moore | Guttmacher Institute (2005, quotes from multiple women it notes are below the poverty line)
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