As an atheist, I find the chart above kind of embarrassing. But when I started this blog, I promised myself to always tell the truth. That obligated me to print this chart, especially in light of the many slams I have given religious people over the last few years.As the chart shows, a higher percentage of religious people give to causes in general and to secular causes in particular. A higher percentage of them also volunteer their time to both types of causes. Come on all you non-religious folks! We should be doing better than this, especially since we believe there is no god that is going to do it for us.
I also found it interesting, but not surprising, that the folks who make less than $20,000 a year give about twice as much of their income percentage-wise as those who make $100,000 a year. It looks like the folks who don't make much money understand how hard life is for the underprivileged just a little better than those who make a comfortable living.
NOTE -- The chart was found at the site of The Friendly Atheist.
The discrepancies are narrower in the last two. "Any cause" includes their own "church home"; these are notoriously bad at actually getting money where it's needed. The chart shows, in fact, that a full 35% of all giving goes to religion, with education an extremely distant second. According to Christianity Today, payroll averages 42% of church budgets, building projects another 20% and then there are the ski trips. These things may be worthy, but are not "charity" by any reasonable definition, since the beneficiaries of your money are yourselves, your kids, and your friends.
ReplyDeletehttp://tiny.cc/ZM0oQ
"It looks like the folks who don't make much money understand how hard life is for the underprivileged just a little better than those who make a comfortable living."
ReplyDeleteI saw this in a very real way almost 19 years ago while attending an evangelical Catholic youth camp in Poland. Poland was just beginning to emerge from communism, and the kids there had very little in the way of material possessions. But there was a kid at the camp from the neighboring country of Belarus who had even less than they did, so the Polish kids took up a collection to help him out.
Too often, those of us who have much more than we would ever need cling to our wealth as if it somehow had eternal significance. Kaufman & Hart were right: You Can't Take It With You.
It also reminds me of the story of The Widow's Mite.