Through their town councils, citizens began to claim the authority to administer the ecclesiastical welfare work of hospitals and poor relief. The process was accelerated by the Reformers, whose theology undercut the medieval idealization of poverty as a virtue wherever or however it occurred. According to the Reformers, righteousness in the eyes of God was by faith. Human good works and salvation was perceived as the foundation of life rather than its goal. Thus, the Reformation community found it difficult to rationalize the plight of the poor as a peculiar form of blessedness, and they saw no salvific value either in being poor or in the mere giving of insufficient alms. When the Reformers turned to poor relief and social welfare, their new theological perspectives led them to raise questions of social justice and social structures. Poor relief became institutionalized in the “common chest” sections of Protestant church legislation. The common chest—funded by church endowments, offerings, and taxes—was the community's financial resource for providing support to the poor, orphans, aged, unemployed, and underemployed through subsidies, low-interest loans, and gifts. The attempt to resolve social problems in the cities was a driving force of the early Reformation.

Though modern protestant and catholic churches do charitable works it is denigrated by many church leaders as not as important as faith in God according to their instructions. In the centuries following the Reformation, noteworthy examples of compassion and charity for the poor, were produced. Nevertheless the churches lost their “fathers' vision” which was a social ethic that was preventive as well as therapeutic. Like their Roman Catholic counterparts, the Protestants made noteworthy efforts to serve the poor but ignored the root causes of poverty. There is little evidence that Christian churches are acting in a more enlightened manner today. What would Jesus do?; is an uncomfortable question.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, social concern for the masses of people who had been pauperized and made “in but not a part of the system by industrialism” inspired the Methodists in England to undertake adult education, schooling, reform of prisons, abolition of slavery, and aid to alcoholics. Famous missions arose such as The Young Men's Christian Association (YMCA; 1844), Young Women's Christian Association (YWCA; 1855), and the Salvation Army (1865) those named were only some of the numerous charitable institutions and organizations created to alleviate modern, especially urban ills.

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