According to many Republican politicians and pundits, caring for the poor is the job of the churches, not the government. Now Franklin Graham, son of the famed evangelist, is claiming that churches no longer care for the poor, because government stole that role from them. I lave a load of that to fertilize the front lawn!

I can’t help wondering why Franklin Graham isn’t preaching an Easter Sunday revival instead of showing up on Christiane Amanpour’s show to make political statements, or to be more accurate, pronouncements. Some pronouncements, however, should not be allowed to stand unchallenged, and the following is one of them.

AMANPOUR: We in this country and around the world are living in very dire times right now. Dire financial times, economic crisis, the gap between rich and poor is growing, not only here, but all over the world.

What can the church do to fill that gap and to step into that gap?

GRAHAM: Christiane, a hundred years ago, the safety net, the social safety net in the country was provided by the church.

If you didn’t have a job, you’d go to your local church and ask the pastor if he know somebody that could hire him. If you were hungry, you went to the local church and told them, "I can’t feed my family." And the church would help you. And that’s not being done.

But the government took that. And took it away from the church. And they had more money to give and more programs to give, and pretty soon, the churches just backed off.

And as a result, now you have generation after generation of pastors in churches that have not done that. And you would have to teach them again how to do it.