Christian Smith, Michael O. Emerson and Patricia Snell, Passing the Plate: Why American Christians Don’t Give Away More Money. Oxford University Press, 2008.
Referenced in: Giving and Financial Stewardship
LifeandLeadership.com Summary
The best on the subject, Passing the Plate is a probing and incredibly well-researched text on the subject of giving patterns among American Christians. The statistics are gathered from a plethora of studies and presented from a number of angles. The findings are startling. Here are a few:
- 22.1% of Christians give nothing in any given year.
- Most church-attending U.S. Christians donate only 2-3% of income to the church they attend and to other charities each year.
- Only 9.4% of Christians give 10% or more of income.
- Mormons are the most generous, followed by Protestants, then lastly by Catholics.
- Since the data was self-reported, the actual figures are probably worse.
Why is this? It is not because denominations lack official teachings on stewardship. Appendix A, “Christian Church Teachings on Financial Giving,” gives a detailed replication of the teachings of several denominations on financial giving, wealth and stewardship. It is not because Christians do not have the money. To demonstrate this, Chapter One, “Giving to Change the World,” lays out the fascinating possibilities of what could happen if every member of American churches contributed 10% of their net income to charity. The result would be an additional $46 billion each year available to finance a host of ministries and charitable causes. These and many other figures demonstrate a “failed generosity” among U.S. Christians. To explain this failure, the authors offer nine hypotheses. Among them are “subjective resource restraints” (many simply do not believe they can give 10%), administrative distrust (suspicion regarding waste and mismanagement), and low leadership expectations (churches have low expectations about giving).
The authors go beyond analysis, and present a number of excellent suggestions for improving the climate of generosity. Chief among the suggestions is to transition congregational cultures from a mentality of “pay the bills” (meet budget necessities) to that of “live the vision” (see generosity as “a fundamental part of Christian worship experience and life of faith,” 132). The authors present cases and interviews with over 70 ministers and members representing each culture.
This is a very substantive and sensitively written text authored by sociologists who are connected to and care deeply about faith communities and their potential. They are not overly critical, but they do tell hard truth, and are actually quite visionary about what can occur if the culture of generosity begins to take over.
Church leaders will benefit from this book for many years to come.
From the Publisher
Passing the Plate shows that few American Christians donate generously to religious and charitable causes — a parsimony that seriously undermines the work of churches and ministries. Far from the 10 percent of one’s income that tithing requires, American Christians’ financial giving typically amounts, by some measures, to less than one percent of annual earnings. And a startling one out of five self-identified Christians gives nothing at all.
This eye-opening book explores the reasons behind such ungenerous giving, the potential world-changing benefits of greater financial giving, and what can be done to improve matters. If American Christians gave more generously, say the authors, any number of worthy projects — from the prevention and treatment of HIV/AIDS to the promotion of inter-religious understanding to the upgrading of world missions — could be funded at astounding levels. Analyzing a wide range of social surveys and government and denominational statistical datasets and drawing on in-depth interviews with Christian pastors and church members in seven different states, the book identifies a crucial set of factors that appear to depress religious financial support — among them the powerful allure of a mass-consumerist culture and its impact on Americans’ priorities, parishioners’ suspicions of waste and abuse by nonprofit administrators, clergy’s hesitations to boldly ask for money, and the lack of structure and routine in the way most American Christians give away money. In their conclusion, the authors suggest practical steps that clergy and lay leaders might take to counteract these tendencies and better educate their congregations about the transformative effects of generous giving.
By illuminating the social and psychological forces that shape charitable giving, Passing the Plate is sure to spark a much-needed debate on a critical issue that is of much interest to church-goers, religious leaders, philanthropists, and social scientists.
Editorial Reviews
“Superb. Urgent. Well researched but highly readable. This book is a powerful summons to use our abundance to bless others. A must-read.” —Ronald J. Sider, President, Evangelicals for Social Action
“Americans are, supposedly, a generous people, and religiously active Americans are supposed to be among the most generous of the generous. These stereotypes are not entirely false, but sociologists Christian Smith and Michael Emerson want to register a dissent. Their patient and diligent research explores the troubling question why American Christians do not give MORE. Passing the Plate explores this unusually important subject with unusual depth, unusual clarity, and unusual insight.” – Mark A. Noll, author of America’s God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln
“Financial giving to churches and charitable organizations has been neglected by scholarly researchers and remains poorly understood. With characteristic clarity and empirical precision, Christian Smith and Michael O. Emerson have tackled one of the thorniest aspects of American Christians’ behavior. I hope church leaders will read this fine book and find ways to incorporate its insights into their thinking about church finances. Scholars of religion and nonprofit organizations will benefit from it as well.” – Robert Wuthnow, author of After the Baby Boomers: How Twenty- and Thirty-Somethings Are Shaping the Future of American Religion
“They are clear in their presentation of their research and in the analysis of their conclusions. Seminary professors and leaders in church organizations might be well advised to read the excellent introduction first, and then pursue those chapters that present the authors’ research and analysis.” – Choice
“I am convinced that Passing the Plate is urgently important for the American church. Every pastor should read it and beg God for the courage to insist that his or her congregation deal directly and systemically with this topic in an ongoing way. Every seminary professor and church leader should read it and take its lessons to heart. And every informed Christian layperson should pray over this book, asking God for a biblical understanding of stewardship and the strength to act accordingly.” – Books & Culture
About the Author
Christian Smith is William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Sociology and Director of the Center for the Study of Religion and Society at the University of Notre Dame. He is the coauthor, with Michael O. Emerson, of Divided by Faith: Evangelical Religion and The Problem of Race in America (Oxford, 2000), which was named the 2001 Distinguished Book of the Year by the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, and Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of American Teenagers, which won a Christianity Today Book Award in 2006.
Michael O. Emerson is the Allyn R. and Gladys M. Cline Professor of Sociology and Founding Director of the Center on Race, Religion, and Urban Life at Rice University. In addition to Divided by Faith, his books include United by Faith: The Multiracial Congregation as an Answer to the Problem of Race, coauthored with Curtiss Paul DeYoung, George Yancey, and Karen Chai Kim.
Patricia Snell is Programs and Research Specialist for the Center for the Study of Religion and Society at the University of Notre Dame.
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