Religious choice


The new face of tithing and what congregants expect from their churches

I forwarded this one to about six ministers I know. And two priests. Emphasis added.

Can you put a price on faith? That is the question churchgoers are asking as the tradition of tithing -- giving 10% of your income to the church -- is increasingly challenged. Opponents of tithing say it is a misreading of the Bible, a practice created by man, not God. They say they should be free to donate whatever amount they choose, and they are arguing with pastors, writing letters and quitting congregations in protest. In response, some pastors have changed their teaching and rejected what has been a favored form of fund raising for decades.

The backlash comes as some churches step up their efforts to encourage tithing. Some are setting up "giving kiosks" that allow congregants to donate using their debit cards when they attend services. Others are offering financial seminars that teach people in debt how they can continue tithing even while paying off their loans. Media-savvy pastors, such as Ed Young in Grapevine, Texas, sell sermons online about tithing. And in a shift, more Catholic parishes are asking churchgoers to tithe, says Paul Forbes, administrator of McKenna Stewardship Ministry, a nonprofit that says it has encouraged more than 500 parishes to tithe in the last decade. Popes haven't requested tithes in recent decades.

Church leaders say tithing isn't just a theological issue, but a financial one. Americans gave an estimated $97 billion to congregations in 2006, almost a third of the country's $295 billion in charitable donations, according to Giving USA Foundation, a nonprofit educational organization in Glenview, Ill. But giving to religion is growing more slowly than other types of giving, says Patrick Rooney, director of research at the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University. That's partly because people are attending church less frequently, says Mr. Rooney, and are giving to a wider array of causes, including secular ones.

So why am I mentioning this article? Because I am a passionate believer in the free market. That means that people must be free to choose ANYTHING, including their faith.

That also means that people have a right to expect fair value for their money or that they can walk away to find alternatives.

No matter what "they" say, churches are human institutions subject to all the failings of humanity. They may be divinely inspired, I'm not going to debate that here. I will say that membership in a specific church brings no particular virtue, any virtue depends on the words and deeds of the individual members and not on the social structure of a group.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Mon - November 26, 2007 at 07:15 AM  Tag


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