Beds of Ivory

Ron Gleason hits it on the nose regarding the church's failure in society:

Interestingly, in the mid-1980s many denominations were in the throes of building mega-churches and didn’t have a lot of residual money to spend on true diaconal needs, since large sums of money were being tied up in erecting large, palatial-like edifices as monuments to the success of that particular church. The Church, therefore, abdicated its diaconal responsibilities to the state, which was all too happy to contribute significantly to the dependence of the poor upon the state for its well-being. The “womb to tomb” mentality produced wards of the state in great numbers, while the Church stood by and watched. Please don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying that the Church did nothing at all during this time. Much good was done, but clearly a paradigm shift was underway.