This is actually the title of a web-page on a site called “The Science of Generosity”: http://generosityresearch.nd.edu/. Christian Smith, at Notre Dame, is a sociologist who is investigating generosity. He’s interested in these aspects:
1. The sources, origins, and causes of generosity
2. The variety of manifestations and expressions of generosity
3. The consequences of generosity for both the givers and receivers involved.
I’m curious about the research that will come out of this. The funding is coming from the John Templeton Foundation, and the first wave of funding has yet to be distributed. How much will we find out about the impacts that religions make on our generosity? For example, are we more likely to give money to charity organizations that combat poverty if we at least say that we are members of a religion? Are we more likely to be generous if we tend to practice our religion devoutly? Guesses? Can anyone point me toward some empirical evidence already out there on this?
I believe George Barna from Barna research has a few stats out on this. He tends to focus on christianity rather than other religions. I believe his findings tend to be that Christians give the same or even less then those who do not prescribe to that particular belief system. The Stats I would like to see would be the difference between religions in the area of generosity and also the difference between church going christians and those who are living out the lifestyle of Jesus which I would classify this as the difference between the Christian religion and the Christian Faith.
ReplyDeleteI checked out the Barna website and found a study they did about tithing and donating in 2007: http://www.barna.org/barna-update/article/18-congregations/41-new-study-shows-trends-in-tithing-and-donating. They found that:
ReplyDelete"Christians tend to be the most generous group of donors. An examination of the three dominant subgroups within the Christian community showed that evangelicals, the 7% of the population who are most committed to the Christian faith, donated a mean of $4260 to all non-profit entities in 2007. Non-evangelical born again Christians, who represent another 37% of the public, donated a mean of $1581. The other 42% of the Christian population, who are aligned with a Christian church but are not born again, donated a mean of $865. Overall, the three segments of the Christian community averaged donations of $1426. The Christian giving was divided between Protestants (mean of $1705) and Catholics ($984). In contrast, Americans associated with non-Christian faiths gave away a mean of $905 during 2007. Atheists and agnostics provided an average of $467 to all non-profit organizations."
I don't have too much of a problem with accepting these figures at face value. We could always question the way the study was done. There's a little information about the research at the end of the article, but not enough for me to tell if it was done well or not. I think the most important distinction here is tithing vs. donating to non-profit organizations. So, if we were concerned about whether or not people will be more generous because of their religious beliefs or because of the mere existance of a religion that people participate in (regardless of how passionate their beliefs are), it may be somewhat helpful to see how much people give to their churches or synagogues or mosques *compared* to how much they give directly to other non-profits. Atheists gave less than 1/8 to non-profits compared to "evangelicals" (they give a specific definition of who qualifies under that term). Ok. How much did evangelicals give directly to their church and how much did they give to non-profits besides their own church? To be honest, I'm not convinced tithing is a good indicator of generosity. In my experience, many Christians treat it more like dues that they pay to be a part of the club. And, what percentage of those dues go to, say, feed the hungry? How much to salaries and the electric bill? I'm just asking...
I will admit that religious groups seem to have much more of a culture of generosity and giving compared to agnostic and atheistic groups. But, come to think of it, I don't really know that much about agnostic and atheistic groups. They exist, I think. They don't get too much publicity in Indiana.
ReplyDeletePeter Singer is someone who's trying to change this, I think. I saw him in Indianapolis in the spring. He was at the IU/Purdue campus downtown and spoke about his new book, *The Life You Can Save*. I haven't read it yet, but here's the website, which gives a brief outline of the book: http://www.thelifeyoucansave.com/. He starts with an argument that he first articulated in his famous essay, "Famine, Affluence, and Morality," which he first published in 1972. Basically, he argues that the vast majority of us would save the life of a child if we were in an emergency situation, like witnessing a little boy drowning right in front of our eyes. But we pass up the opportunity to literally save children's lives every day by witholding the money that would alleviate extreme poverty in underdeveloped countries. And in some cases, it would only cost pennies a day to do this.
Singer proposes that we encourage people to pledge to give money to help alleviate extreme poverty. He suggests a minimum standard that we should expect people to give, which is a sliding scale based on your income. Why is this different than, say, the Christian practice of tithing? Well, first, Singer is an atheists and he's not making a religious argument/plea. He's making a moral argument and appealing to our common sense of decency. What kind of a world do we want to live in? Does it make any sense that some people live in affluence and others die of starvation? Second, Singer emphasizes that this is a minimum standard to *alleviate extreme poverty* around the world. Not a minimum amount of money to give to non-profit organizations. I'm confident that the vast majority of tithing in the Christian church does not go to alleviate extreme poverty around the world. That's not to say that it's bad to tithe. We can pay money to support whatever organization we want, within reason. But that's not what Singer is talking about.
Here's a link to the minimum standard: http://www.thelifeyoucansave.com/pledge/pledge.php?curr_country=171&lang=EN. What do you think? Is it too much? Not enough? Should we be publicly pledging to give, as Singer wants us to be doing? This seems to be going against the instruction of Jesus to give secretly. Singer has some ideas on why we should make our giving more public, and I think they make sense: http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2008/jun/22/charitablegiving.