Jack Jenkins, of the Faith and Progressive Policy Initiative at the Center for American Progress, made a thoughtful observation recently: “Vice Presidential candidate Rep. Paul Ryan might have appealed to religion during his speech at the Republican National Convention . . . but it’s unclear whether a Romney-Ryan presidency would help or hurt faith-based charities and churches.”

Jenkins’ criticism? Ryan, he claims, believes that faith-based organizations ought to care for the poor, not the federal government. “But there is a flaw in this plan: churches and faith-based charities, which offer roughly $50 billion worth of services a year to the poor and needy, often depend on government funds to operate.” Moreover, he says, if Ryan achieved his goal of drastically cutting the SNAP program (aka Food Stamps), welfare, and other social programs, then faith-based groups and houses of worship would have to come up with billions of dollars in extra services just to compensate for that absent government help.

Jenkins is right in this: when considering the role of faith-based services, it isn’t accurate to think of them simply as alternatives to government. The charitable sector, including religious charities, depends significantly on government funding. And the poor do count on help not just from churches and charities but also from government. It has ever been so.

But Jenkins is also leaving out a big part of the whole picture. Government does provide much needed funding to the charitable sector, but as it gets bigger and bigger, it (a) aggrandizes more and more of the available resources; (b) leaves less and less opportunity for private organizations to take the initiative in services; and (c) regulates and standardizes (= secularizes) more and more private organizations and service delivery.