Three weeks into January, most regular church-goers probably have picked up their offering envelopes or have had them mailed to them. Unless they use electronic deposits for their regular giving.By now also, financial committees of congregations have tallied pledges, have forecast their expenses and anticipated income and have finalized budgets. In the coming weeks, some congregations are holding their annual meetings to give final OK to budgets, or, at least, receive the report of where the church or parish stands financially. It is a time of prayers and scowls and sometimes nudging the faithful to give more.A recent Baptist Press article looked at a book, Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism by behavioral economist and professor Arthur C. Brooks, who writes regularly for the Wall Street Journal. Brooks debunks what he says is a popular notion that conservatives, who talk more about salvation and sin, give less of their money to help the poor. He says its a stereotype that liberals are more generous. Baptist Press writer Kelly Boggs puts it this way, Conservatives have long been characterized as the Ebenezer Scrooges of society. When the phrase compassionate conservatism was first coined, it was derided as oxymoronic. It was the liberal who was the champion of the poor and who really felt their pain.Boggs quotes Brooks, a Syracuse University professor: For too long liberals have been claiming they are the most virtuous members of American society. Although they usually give less to charity, they have, nevertheless, lambasted conservatives for their callousness in the face of social injustice. He says indices such as church involvement, traditional families, the Protestant work ethic and a dislike of government-funded social services characterize conservative Christians. And subsequently those values make conservatives more generous than liberals, Brooks contends. The professor believes conservatives who practice religion, live in traditional nuclear families and reject the notion that the government should engage in income redistribution are the most generous Americans.Though conservative-headed households make slightly less money than liberals, Brooks argues, when you look at the data, it turns out the conservatives give about 30 percent more.The Baptist Press article said ABCs 20/20 and its correspondent John Stossel carried out a compelling experiment that, its argued, supports Brooks assertions. The liberal city of San Francisco and the conservative city of Sioux Falls, S.D., were chosen for their contrasting demographics. Data showed that the percentage of weekly church-going was 14 percent in San Francisco and about 50 percent in Sioux Falls. To test generosity on the street, Salvation Army buckets were set up outside a Macys store in San Francisco and outside a Wal-Mart in Sioux Falls. When the results were tallied, the South Dakotans had out-given their leftcoast counterparts two to one, Boggs writes in The Baptist Press. Stossel told his audience that out of the top 25 states where people give an above average amount of their income to charities or churches, 24 were red states for having had a majority of Republican votes in the 2004 presidential election.If we look at party affiliation instead of ideology, Brooks asserts, the story remains largely the same. If anything, it makes the political left look less charitable, not more so.He said he has found that religious folks give nearly four times more dollars annually than secularists, on average, and they volunteer more than twice as frequently. In a November column in the Journal, Brooks concluded, While 85 million American households give away money each year to nonprofit organizations, another 30 million do not." The charity gap, he believes, is driven by values rather than economics.

Posted in: Uncategorized |

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.