Washington Post: Christians More Likely To Think Poverty Caused By Lack Of Effort. That’s Because They’re Right And Compassionate.

On Thursday, Julie Zauzmer of The Washington Post published a piece provocatively titled, “Christians are more than twice as likely to blame a person’s poverty on lack of effort.” This, of course, was meant to show the deep, abiding hypocrisy of those supposedly-forgiving, charitable Christians – why, they’re just selfish and greedy, even more so than the heathens they condemn!

There’s an obvious reason why Christians are more likely to attribute poverty to lack of effort than their secular counterparts: Christians nearly universally believe in free will and personal responsibility, as well as particular standards of behavior that result in financial success. The Brookings Institute has said that if people don’t get pregnant before marriage, graduate high school, and hold a job, they won’t live in permanent poverty in the United States (“of people of American adults who followed these three simple rules, only about 2% are in poverty and nearly 75% have joined the middle class”); Christians and other Bible-believers promote those standards every day to their children, and don’t blame the vagaries of “The System” for individual failures to abide by those standards.