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Greed and Giving: The Great Divide between the Church and the World
In 1998, Senator Al Gore came off badly when his 1997 federal tax return showed that he and his wife had given only $353 to charity out of an income of $197,729.1 More recently, New York Governor David Paterson reported giving only $150 (in old clothes) to charity from his and his wife’s income of nearly $270,000. The title of the New York Post’s article, “Gov Is Plain Cheap,” speaks volumes of the public’s expectation of charitable giving.2
Who then is picking up the slack? With prominent, non-religious charities such as One (“the campaign to make poverty history”), it would seem that the secular world is doing well in avoiding greed and promoting charity. Such is not the case. Arthur C. Brooks, a professor at Syracuse University, used data from a large 2000 survey connecting religion to charitable giving. The results were striking.
Religious people3 were 25% more likely to give money to religious causes or non-religious charities than secular people.4 They were also 23% more likely to render volunteer service. The divide persisted regardless of political ideology. Religious liberals were 19% more likely to give to charity than secular liberals, and the difference between religious and secular conservatives was 28%.5 Another way to look at it is that religious people make up 33% of the total population, but they make 52% of the donations.6
Brooks notes two reasons for secularists’ giving less. First, they are more likely to prefer government, tax-supported solutions to social problems. Second, religion may play a key ingredient in building “social capital,” “the stock of trust and social cohesiveness that promotes giving, volunteering, and participation in civil society.”7 In other words, charity is taught and caught in churches.8
And it is not merely the religious in general who give the most. Today, 68.4% of religious-based non-governmental organizations are from the Judeo-Christian tradition.9 The importance of this tradition is also evident when looking at charitable giving in post-Christian Europe: there is so little private charity that few researchers bother to investigate it.10 This should help all Christians realize what happens to charitable giving when its theological base crumbles.
Christian charity has a long and storied history. From the days of the Patriarchs to the present, helping the needy has been a vital part of serving God. In ancient Israel, God commanded that the corners of fields be left unharvested so that the poor would have food (Lev. 19:9). Jesus taught the convicting parable of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:30-37). Such care is a mark of true believers, who feed and clothe the least of their brothers and sisters and so clothe Christ Himself (Matt. 25:34-40). | 1 |
“Gores’ Charitable Giving Raises Some Eyebrows,” CNN Website, April 15, 1998, http://www.cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/1998/04/15/gore.taxes/ (accessed October 15, 2008). | | 2 |
Kenneth Lovett, “Gov Is Plain Cheap,” NY Post Website, April 15, 2008, http://www.nypost.com/seven/04152008/news/regionalnews/gov_is_plain_cheap_106578.htm (accessed October 15, 2008). | | 3 |
Defined as those who attend church at least once a week. | | 4 |
Defined as those who attend church only a few times a year or none at all. | | 5 |
The difference in annual amounts given was also large: the religious gave $2,210 on average, while only $642 was donated by the secular. | | 6 |
Arthur C. Brooks, “Religious Faith and Charitable Giving,” Policy Review 121 (October and November 2003). Available from Hoover Institution Website, http://www.hoover.org/publications/policyreview/3447051.html (accessed October 15, 2008). | | 7 |
Ibid. | | 8 |
To conclude his study, he states, “Simply put, people may be more likely to learn charity inside a church, synagogue, or mosque than outside. If charity is indeed a learned behavior, it may be that houses of worship are only one means (albeit an especially efficacious one) to teach it. Secularists interested in increasing charitable giving and volunteering among their ranks might spend some effort thinking of alternative ways to foster these habits.” Ibid. | | 9 |
57.4% Christian and 11% Jewish. See Kairos Journal publication, Legatees of a Great Inheritance. | | 10 |
Brooks notes, “There is so little private charity in Europe that it is difficult to find information on the subject—so irrelevant is it that few researchers have even bothered to investigate . . . Specifically, no Western European population comes remotely close [to] the United States in per capita private charity. The closest nation, Spain, has average giving that is less than half that of the United States. Per person, Americans give three and a half times as much as the French, seven times as much as the Germans, and fourteen times as much as the Italians.” See Arthur C. Brooks, Who Really Cares: America’s Charity Divide (New York: Basic Books, 2006), 120. |
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