Church Giving During the Depression vs. Giving Now
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This is a sobering statistic:
In fact, fewer than 5 percent of churchgoers actually tithe 10 percent of their income; the average, according to numbers from Empty Tomb, a Christian research group that puts out annual reports on church giving, is now 3.4 percent, or 21 percent less than what dust-bowler counterparts gave during the worst of the Great Depression. Figures show that churchgoer contributions have been cascading downward since the 1960s. Religious conservatives do give more. Problem is, they only give nominally more and other groups give next to nothing.My emphasis. Read the whole thing.
posted by JT at Monday, November 24, 2008
2 Comments:
JT -- Great article, but I think you missed the absoluely-villainous part:
[QUOTE]
Megachurches are widely credited with getting a Third Awakening of sorts off the ground, with lots of excited members and fistfuls of money, but their wealth also makes them the worst charity offenders—and garish, besides. The average annual income for a megachurch is $5 million. Of that almost $100 billion given in 2006, three-quarters was banked by the original church or went to other churches or religious organizations.
Churches understandably want safe Christian atmospheres, but too many want cafés, skate parks, Xbox-jammed arcades, kids’ sports leagues, not one but four JumboTrons, booming THX sound capable of rattling the walls of the nearby AMC Theaters, staggeringly sophisticated Obi-Wan Kenobi hologram projections of the pastors at satellite campuses—the whole shebang. My own adieu from the Dallas megachurch I grew up in was accelerated when it decided to convert, for a nearly six-figure price tag, a small outdoor courtyard into a baptismal sanctuary. During services, baptisms happening in the grotto were taped and fed back into the auditorium on JumboTrons, a (not joking) “LIVE” stamped at the top of each.
[/QUOTE]
I have been meaning to write, for a long time, a summary of medieval greed and cathedral-building as a critique of the current American church landscape -- the above two paragraphs more than suffice. What we do as Christians with our money today is categorially wasteful and sinful, and may God have more mercy on us than we have on those who are not living in our cul-de-sacs.
And that, btw, is not a call to a 'social gospel'. That's asking the serious and heavy question, "Is Jesus Lord of All?"
This is disturbing, but not all that surprising...call me a pessimist.
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