Mark Green, a Republican state senator from Tennessee who is President Donald Trump’s pick to be army secretary, once told a church group that he opposed universal health care because it makes people less likely to embrace Christianity. As the Washington Examiner reports, Green said in 2015 that it should be the Christian church’s role to help provide sick people with health care so they can more easily convert them to their religion. “The person who’s in need…they look to the government for the answer, not God, and I think in that way government has done an injustice that’s even bigger than just the creation of an entitlement welfare state,” Green said.
Asked to explain his comments on the matter in a recent interview with internet portal KnowMyRepublican.com, Green stated that “people have only ever truly progressed when they were faced with hardships,” as well as that the search for God “becomes the last thing on anyone’s mind when porn and gambling are just a swipe of a touchscreen away.” “I think it has become increasingly difficult to serve God nowadays – I’m not just talking about monks and nuns – I’m talking about normal, everyday people,” he said. “There are so many temptations we’re faced with on a daily basis that it’s really, really difficult to say no. We’ve gotten to a point where abundance has started giving birth to sin rather than purity.”
President Trump’s army secretary pick then argued that people who are currently residing in America and are in need of anything for a normal life pretty much have one of two options: “they can either turn to the government, which many of them do and then they end up cheating the rest of us by using food stamps to buy brand new SUVs or something, or they can turn to God, at which point it’s the church who’s responsible for helping them and guiding them to a better life, all the while using God as a catalyst in order to force them to get closer to our Lord. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that, basically, giving poor people free food and welfare is essentially robbing the church of its right to force them into a closer relationship with God.”
“And let me tell you something – throughout the years, we have been many things, but a godless nation is not one of them, nor will we ever be. Our faith and our religion have always been the one staple that has kept our society afloat through hell and high water, which is why we owe it to the church not to take away its bread and butter. The church cannot exist without its flock; by feeding the hungry and helping the poor, we are essentially doing the church’s work for them, and I don’t know how the rest of you feel about this, but I personally don’t like to play God in any shape or form. We need to let the church do its thing however it sees fit to do it, even if it means turning a blind eye – yet again – if an altar boy should come out and accuse a priest of sexual harassment. There are just some things you do not mess with, period,” Green concluded.