Doing the math on churches and food stamps

Amy Sullivan has a terrific piece countering the old conservative saw that churches should step up their charitable work so the government doesn't have to. Here's the money quote, as it were:

David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World, writes in another article at Religion & Politics that “We cannot food-bank our way out of hunger.” And he lays out the numbers that should provide a reality check to politicians who think that churches can just pick up the reins if government stops providing food assistance: “All the food that churches and charities provide to hungry people is only about 6 percent of what is provided by federal government nutrition programs … There are 335,000 religious congregations in the United States. If the House’s proposals to cut SNAP by $133.5 billion and $36 billion [over ten years] are enacted, each congregation will have to spend about $50,000 more annually to feed those who would see a reduction or loss of benefits.”

There's no way that's going to happen. It's simply too much of a hit for all the but the very largest congregations to absorb.

But as it happens, we can quantify the disaster SNAP cuts would create even beyond Beckmann's estimate. The median church size in the U.S. is 75 members: there are lots of little congregations, and a few very large ones. That in turn leads to this fun figure: asking a 75-member church to absorb $50,000 in increased ministry costs works out to about $666 per person each year, a 44 percent surcharge on the average worshiper's contribution.