January 29, 2009 | Read Time: 1 minute
NEW BOOKS
Passing the Plate: Why American Christians Don’t Give Away More Money
by Michael O. Emerson, Christian Smith, and Patricia Shell
“When it comes to sharing their money, most contemporary American Christians are remarkably ungenerous,” write Michael O. Emerson, a sociology professor at Rice University; Christian Smith, a sociology professor at the University of Notre Dame; and Patricia Snell, a religion and sociology researcher, also at Notre Dame.
In 2005, Christians who attended church regularly earned more than $2-trillion but donated less than 1 percent of that figure to charitable causes. Christian churches generally advocate tithing about 10 percent of one’s annual income each year.
The authors write that the goal of their book is not to condemn stingy Christians, but to understand and explain this lack of generosity from a sociological perspective. The authors used data from church records, Internal Revenue Service charitable-contribution reports, and government reports based on U.S. Department of Labor Consumer Expenditure Surveys to gather information about Christian giving. They also conducted their own study on tithing, and interviewed 77 Christian pastors and church members.
In the chapter “Toward Explaining Ungenerous Giving,” the authors present nine hypotheses about why Christians give so little, and evaluate each. For example, they write, most American Christians may not perceive legitimate needs for their money, or they may be suspicious of waste and abuse by nonprofit administrators.
The book includes an appendix with different denominations’ teachings on charitable giving.
Publisher: Oxford University Press, 198 Madison Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016; http://www.oup-usa.org; 288 pages; $24.95; ISBN 0195337115.
