A prominent right-wing Christian says it’s liberals who want to establish a religion-based government, not conservatives.

Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, told conservative radio host Janet Mefferd during her program Tuesday that there was no biblical basis for the government having a role in helping the poor.

The conservative activist and the religious broadcaster were discussing a recent article, “Government shutdown may drive more young Christians from GOP,” by the Religion News Service columnist Jonathan Merritt.

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Perkins and Mefferd dismissed many of the concerns voiced in the column because they’d come from liberals, and Perkins disputed many of these young Christians’ claims.

“What is that saying?” Perkins said. “Is that saying then that the government has a responsibility to care for the poor? That’s not what the Scripture says.”

He said The Bible makes clear that individual Christians were expected to care for the needy, but not the government.

“As Christians, we’re responsible for the policies of this government because it’s us,” Perkins said.

Another Family Research Council official said last month that there was “nothing more Christian” than cutting millions of food stamp recipients off of public assistance.

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Perkins said Jesus never asked the Roman government occupying Israel during his lifetime to help care for the poor using tax money, which he’d instructed his followers to willingly give up.

“He never said to Rome, to the Romans, ‘Hey, you guys need to make sure that you’re taking out of one person’s pocket to put into another,’” Perkins said.

Perkins, whose organization promotes the idea that God is “the author of life, liberty and the family” and the “Judeo-Christian worldview as the basis for a just, free and stable society,” said it was actually liberals who wished to impose their religion on government.

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“This is how disingenuous the Left is,” Perkins said. “They accuse evangelicals of wanting to create a theocracy, which is the farthest thing from the truth, when in fact, they are treating the government as if it had divine instruction from God to be a form of theocracy.”