Philanthropy Expert: Conservatives Are More Generous
By Frank Brieaddy
Religion News Service
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SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- Syracuse University professor Arthur C. Brooks is about to become the darling of the religious right in America -- and it's making him nervous.
The child of academics, raised in a liberal household and educated in the liberal arts, Brooks has written a book that concludes religious conservatives donate far more money than secular liberals to all sorts of charitable activities, irrespective of income.
In the book, he cites extensive data analysis to demonstrate that values advocated by conservatives -- from church attendance and two-parent families to the Protestant work ethic and a distaste for government-funded social services -- make conservatives more generous than liberals.
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...secular liberals who believe fervently in government entitlement programs give far less to charity. They want everyone's tax dollars to support charitable causes and are reluctant to write checks to those causes, even when governments don't provide them with enough money.
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Still, he says it forcefully, pointing out that liberals give less than conservatives in every way imaginable, including volunteer hours and donated blood.
I was watching the program Iconoclasts on the Sundance Channel, and Robert Redford and Paul Newman were on this particular episode. I didn't realize that all the proceeds from "Newman's Own" products go to charity (I used those products before I watched the show - I will use them whenever possible now that I know that). I also didn't realize that he has several camps for children. Also, Ben & Jerry's is pretty generous too.... at least they were before they were acquired.
Let's not forget about Bill & Melinda Gates, or Warren Buffet. Then of course there is the infamous George Soros. How about Ted Turner?
Regards - hope all is well down there in Atlanta,
BiR (I am in beautiful downtown Little Rock, AR)
They give more because they have more. We can't give what we don't have. Now if they'd stop off-shoring our jobs, cutting our pay and raising our benefits we'd have more to give also.
I aggree that they should pay us reasonably, but I think the arguement of the post was that regardless of money earned, the religious conservatives give more.
Brooks' credentials are in order.
I think he's stating as a pure fact what most thinking Christians already knew.
"Brooks is a behavioral economist by training who researches the relationship between what people do -- aside from their paid work -- why they do it, and its economic impact.
He's a number cruncher who relied primarily on 10 databases assembled over the past decade, mostly from scientific surveys. The data are adjusted for variables such as age, gender, race and income to draw fine-point conclusions."
I would assume (and hope) that Christians give more to charity (including their church) than do secular humanists.
No suprise there.
A more informative study would be to compare conservative Christians to moderate or liberal Christians.
Perhaps a way to get an approximate answer to the question would be to compare the per capita giving of SBC Churches to CBF and American Baptist churches.
I'll see what I can find.
"The book's basic findings are that 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, by any measure."
Daisy , you may be the most generous liberal in the world, but it's a fact that your political soulmates, Christian or not, don't share that trait with you.
Brooks' empirical data backs it up, regardless of how you view his political persuasion.
This book can prove whatever it likes.
I think it's more useful to compare Christians with different political philosophies.
Then we can put to rest the lie that liberals or moderates can't be Christians.
Liberals & moderates can't be Christians? Sure they can! They just never grow in spiritual knowledge, wisdom, and strength. They remain stuck, as described in 1 Corinthians 3:1-3. :tongue3:
I saw something similar not long ago but not exact.
The greatest link is between actual involvement/attendance and charity.
Conservatives as a whole were more generous than liberals.
Secular liberals were the least charitable of any group.
One such study compared charity by state.
Several poor but conservative states like Mississippi ranked high in giving while more affluent blue states ranked very low.
If I remember correctly, more than 20 of the 25 most charitable states were "red".
This really shouldn't be all that surprising.
The whole premise of wealth redistributing social programs is that liberals should be empowered to be charitable with other people's money... but quite often not their own.
Someone mentioned Gates and Buffett.
I'm curious.
When did either declare themselves a liberal or a Democrat?