Think Globally, Sit On Your Butt Locally

I am preaching through the book of Amos, and so issues of economics, finances, generosity, and so on keep coming up. This last Sunday, someone after the service asked about something they had heard, which was that Catholic charities outgive evangelical charities, and do so by a long shot. This had application to Amos, but it also has application to a number of other things I have been thinking and writing about.

That didn’t sound right to me, and so I did some checking. But before reporting the results of that checking, it is important to note that we are here making horizontal comparisons — if God were to mark iniquities, who could stand? There are many grievous ways in which evangelicals fall short, but our witness against such things must be prophetic, not partisan. And prophetic witness, among other things, needs to get the facts right.

Bottom line first. American religious believers are dramatically more generous than their secularist counterparts. More on this shortly. Among believers, Protestants are more generous than Catholics, by a factor of more than 2 to 1. And evangelical Protestants are far more generous than Protestants generally. Twenty three percent of evangelicals tithe, making them the demographic group most likely to tithe in comparison than any other. But recall what I said in the previous paragraph — this means that 77% of evangelicals don’t tithe, which is obviously a striking and significant problem. But even though they don’t tithe, they do give — far more than anybody else.

For pastors who are concerned about whether or not their congregation is among that 23%, but do not want to be inappropriately intrusive concerning the financial details of their households (e.g. say by the grotesque means of having people give their income tax returns to the chief deacon), there is a simple way to calculate this. Count the number of households in your church, take the bottom line total of last year’s budget, and calculate what the average income in your congregation was, on the supposition that everyone was tithing. The average income in the United States is around $35,000, and you can get the average income of your region or county pretty easily on line. If your budget figures give you an average income of $20,000 less than the regional average, you likely have a problem. If it gives you an average income of $20,000 more than the local averages, then you need to praise your people more. I did this calculation for our congregation about a year ago, and was very pleased to find that it is a tithing congregation. This is an approximation of course, and taking someone’s pulse is not a full medical exam, but it is still a valuable approximation.

Are we doing everything God has called us to? Not even close. But are we condemned because liberals have clear insight on these matters? Not even close. Liberals compound their skinflint practices with the gross hypocrisy of pretending that personal generosity is their distinguishing characteristic over against conservatives. The only problem is that it ain’t true.

As we consider the objective data on all this (and there is quite a slag heap of available data), the pattern is clear. Americans are far more generous in their personal patterns of giving than citizens of other nations. In individual giving, Americans donate over 250 billion a year. Once back on these shores, red states are far more generous than blue states, and individual conservatives are far more giving than liberals. The most generous state in the Union is Mississippi, and the least generous is Connecticut. Protestants are more generous than Catholics, and evangelicals are more generous than mainline Protestants.

In The Mikado, the Lord High Executioner has “a little list.” That list contains a reference to a perennial character in virtually all cultural discussions.

“Then the idiot who praises, with enthusiastic tone,
All centuries but this, and every country but his own;

I have seen numerous examples of this, examples which testify to a profound and foundational loss of cultural confidence. When folks are in this insecure condition, especially if they know that confidence is supposed to be a good thing, they get an approximation of it by talking about the greener grass elsewhere. I have seen this trick from insecure Americans, insecure conservatives, and insecure Presbyterians. There are those who emphasize “catholicity,” but it is not really catholicity at all — rather it is that temporary calm that comes to someone who is in the process of transitioning from one sect to another. He begins by saying that he thinks we should see the good in other groups — sure, say I — and then he moves on to pointed criticisms of his own group — certainly, I reply — but he is doing all this because of an inability to rest content where he is. He doesn’t rest there because he doesn’t understand it, and he doesn’t understand it because he is driven by something other than the facts.

I am not arguing for a banishment of or moritorium on self-criticism. I am an American, a conservative, a Reformed minister, and an evangelical. This is where I am (and will remain). Does anybody want to seriously maintain that in the course of my writing career I have been uncritical of my traditions? If so, huh. I am arguing that we look twice at criticisms from people with an obvious agenda-driven trajectory, and an equally obvious inability to admit a plain fact.

On the ecclesiastical front, one of my critisms of the TRs is that they have been so brittle and inflexible in their defense of their tradition that they have committed (in my mind) the grievous sin of defending it very badly. I don’t complain about people who wake up in the morning knowing what they believe, and who decline, throughout the course of the day, to drift away from it. Defend the faith, baby. But brittle and insecure defenses of the faith will not persuade those who are intent (because of their corresponding insecurities) on wandering away from home. And people like this are vulnerable to liberal propaganda in stiking ways.

The liberal self-image is that of someone who cares. He cares for the downtrodden, on his calculus, because he talks. Because he promotes roundtable discussions. This self-absorbed condition projects the caring image up on the screen as part of the multi-media presentation. It is one of the central talking points. Conservatives are tight-fisted and uncaring and liberals are generous and willing to share. Do I really need to demonstrate that this is the standardized stereotype? But when we turn to the actual record of giving, the stereotype vanishes.

A few years ago, a couple of our local radio stations had a fun bet — they set up a contest where their respective listeners would donate toys to underprivileged kids. One of the stations was a country music station and the other a top 40 station. Do I really need to tell you which way the contest went, and the extent of how embarrassing it was?

Now I believe that conservatives of every stripe (theological, political, and so on) have a lot of work to do. Some of our grotesqueries have to be seen to be believed. We need to humble ourselves under the mighty hand of God, and He will lift us up. What I have been arguing for here is that our repentance will consist, in part, of learning to laugh at lectures from liberals — liberals of every stripe (theological, political, and so on).

Those who want to pursue some of the data related to this a bit further can check out Who Really Cares? and Makers and Takers. The title of this post came from a heading in this latter book, and refers to the self-congratulatory stance of the average liberal, as compared with what he actually does.