How Charitable are US Churches?

[downtown]

Originally Posted by metatron

Neither does aiding the poor make the typical organised church a charity.

I don't understand why not. The whole "wanting to sustain itself" bit it a part of virtually any non-profit orgization or charity.

[Farm Boy]

Originally Posted by metatron

It's not a good example.

Heheh, what you are talking about, it's a fantastic example!

Are you a member of a church that has a parish council to spend its money? If so, your experience must be vastly different than mine.

The vast majority of payments for self sustaining or whatever you are picking at are these in all my experience - The pastor collects a salary and some health benefits for his family. That is our major expense. It's not a very competitive wage considering the amount of hours she spends working. What is the nature of that work, preaching of course, but she's really rather obligated to spend much of it at community activities just being present and providing two more hands. She spends much of it on hospice care. True, much of that is for members of the congregation, but if anyone were ask there isn't really much of a chance at all she would say no.

The second major expense is the maintenance of our church building. It's really not that big, but it's old so it needs care. We get whatever labor for free we can from our handier members. It still costs money past that to heat and mow, etc. That church is open for free to community organizations that want to use it. Membership is not required to use the church building.

Occasionally, we do collect enough extra funding from our members to sponsor a missionary trip. It's not very frequent and it's never purely a mission trip. There is always a service project they are working on which is the reason for the trip. Mission through service. Live by example. You know, all that stuff.

I just have no idea what you are seeing, or what you think you are seeing that is so vastly different from the "reality on the ground" that I have experienced other than a cleverly misleading accounting of funds in the OP. Let's say I'm willing to an extent to roll with you that political speech isn't charity work. Okay, that's fine. I can go with that. How much of these charity funds go for that though, really? If it is congregation members going to a county board meeting did they use church funds to drive there? Not bloody likely. Even if it's the pastor who is paid by the church, yes, even they do get some personal time though the lines are pretty blurry. The fact that they may spend their evenings with political involvement or burn their vacation going to Washington DC or whatever the example was, I think they should have the freedom to spend their time off as they see fit.

About the only place I can see your argument potentially making sense with the reality of my experience is that if a church is hiring a professional lobbyist, sure, maybe that payment should be fair game for the same tax liabilities as a typical organization. I say maybe. If we did this though, I would throw out tax-exempt status for labor unions under the same circumstances just to be consistent. Unions are already far less constrained in their spending on political causes than religious organizations.

Eh, whatever, I think what is probably really going on is we have people that value the humanitarian work religious organization do and those who don't value it because of the source.

[timtofly]

I think what is being re-defined here is the nature of charities itself. For some reason it seems that charities have to lobby the government or they are not doing enough to help the poor. For it is the governments sole responsibility to look out for the poor. In a democracy every one has a duty to speek out against injustice.

I may be wrong, but that is the vibe I am getting.

From a purely historical context it was the church that used to be the social welfare administers. Now that role has been passed on to the secular government and the churches whether they wanted to or not are now seen more as takers and not givers.

[El_Machinae]

Originally Posted by metatron

Here pub owners often provide a venue for elections (dancing rooms and such). That doesn't make them charities.

True, but in its regular day-to-day business, a pub requires me to pay money to rest my bottom in the establishment. Churches provide community-building services for free to the congregation.

[warpus]

Originally Posted by BvBPL

I can tell you what happened in my experience in Catholic parochial schools. During my primary education (one year, eighth grade) attendance at religious events (ie Mass) was mandatory. I don't recall whether participation was mandatory; I don't think it was but it was certainly expected. It was generally expected that you were Catholic if you were going to that school. Catholic values were integrated into many parts of the curriculum and were stressed, but did not overshadow actual education. I think religious education classes were mandatory. After an unpleasant incident, my punishment was to sit in front of the statue of the Madonna and mediate and pray about my actions.

I went to a catholic highschool and it was basically a secular school except for

1. The chapel we had
2. We had to take religion in grades 9 (old testament) and 10 (world religions)
3. There were easter/christmas/etc. masses that weren't really mandatory but weren't optional either. a lot of people skipped them, but the thing was that the school buses went straight to mass.. and then took you to school afterwards.. so a lot of people who usually took school buses ended up going. i walked to school, so i skipped every single mass and showed up to school when everyone was returning from mass. Attendance was never taken, nor was it ever stressed by anyone that it was mandatory.

Other than that the school was pretty much secular.

Originally Posted by The_Tyrant

Not only does my church (LDS) send millions of dollars to those in need, we have at any one time about 50,000 missionaries aroundthe world.

Why mention the missionaries? They don't do any charitable work as far as I know.. or do they?

[The_Tyrant]

Originally Posted by warpus

Why mention the missionaries? They don't do any charitable work as far as I know.. or do they?

We only spend about 20% of our time prosthelytizing. You're supposed to become close in the community. When I was serving in Russia I did anything from babysit kids, serving food, and building shelters.

[Formaldehyde]

Originally Posted by metatron

It's not a good example. I explained it what way i feel the two are alike, for arguments sake. But for the most part they are obviously rather different.

I agree. There is a world of difference between a church and a secular charity. And many of these secular charities are largely promoted by churches. Some of them, like the Masons and their brother organization the Shriners, require that you believe in a supreme being in order to even be able to become a member.

There are numerous examples about how church-based charities have openly discriminated against non-Christians and others. Others force them to attend services in order to receive aid. While not all of them do so, the ones which do should lose their tax-exempt status. The Salvation Army in particular is extremely homophobic. The Boy Scouts should lose their tax-exempt status for the same reason as well as discriminating against agnostics and atheists.

Originally Posted by The_Tyrant

We only spend about 20% of our time prosthelytizing. You're supposed to become close in the community. When I was serving in Russia I did anything from babysit kids, serving food, and building shelters.

Why are you supposed to become close to the community? To build the trust of the people so they will convert to your religion?

[Winner]

Originally Posted by The_Tyrant

we have at any one time about 50,000 missionaries aroundthe world.

And this is a good thing because.... because... no, I give up, please tell me.

[BvBPL]

Originally Posted by warpus

I went to a catholic highschool and it was basically a secular school except for

How would you rate the quality of your education versus public schools and secular private schools?

[cegman]

Originally Posted by BvBPL

How would you rate the quality of your education versus public schools and secular private schools?

My experience most religious private schools would probably be in the top half of public high schools. I don't have experience with secular private high schools.

Originally Posted by Formaldehyde

Why are you supposed to become close to the community? To build the trust of the people so they will convert to your religion?

"Missionaries are suppose to lead by example. They should be helping the community. They should use this good work and examples as a way to bring people to understand the grace of God"

This doesn't mean they are trying to force people. (That mindset changed hundreds of years ago at least for Christians) They want people to join their religion because they believe it is for their good. Just like they help them with things they need for their own good. Most religions don't have nefarious intentions. They believe what they are doing is for the betterment. A lot of them are doing things for the betterment of people.

[peter grimes]

I just wanted to let you all know that this is precisely the sort of discussion I was hoping would arise:
The benefits of churchical charity vs. secular charity vs. the public 'charity' (safety net services)

I'm going AFK for a couple weeks, so I apologize for the apparent abandonment.

[Save_Ferris]

Why are you supposed to become close to the community? To build the trust of the people so they will convert to your religion?

Not everything Church-related is some evil plan to convert everyone.

[timtofly]

I have yet to meet one entity, who can continuously give out more than it takes in and still succeed. Eventually it will fail.

Call them converts, or call them new members, if the entity does not grow, it will be a drag instead of something that helps the community.

Charity is not a one way street. Those who receive charity, not always, but most of the time, can turn things around and in turn pass on charity to someone else. Getting support from local friends and a family network can be worlds better, than just getting a check from a distant benefactor.

If there is a decline in the "churches" ability to do charity, it is more than likely a decline in membership and that means that the entity if it is not struggling or keeping up will also end up in need of charity itself.

I think that it is ok to find people of like mind who can come together, and I do not think that people are being held at gun point to become members. I think that going door to door is getting outdated, but if that is the only thing one can afford and can be sustainable, then there is nothing wrong with it. There are probably more social ways of going about it these days though.

[downtown]

Originally Posted by Winner

And this is a good thing because.... because... no, I give up, please tell me.

Because they do a lot of secular charity work, from teaching english to manning soup kitchens?

[Winner]

In exchange for souls. No thanks.

[cegman]

Winner I don't know what you think MOST churches and religions are but they certainly don't force people to convert anymore. Most of the missionaries honestly want to help people. Just like Habitat for Humanity people (or other secular charity). The fact that these people believe a certain religion and hope to share the message of that religion with these people while doing good work doesn't take anything away from them. Most won't turn someone away because of a religious difference. They just believe what they believe and want to share the good news of that belief with people.

Whether they are wrong is up for another debate but they do think they are doing another good work by sharing their beliefs.

[El_Machinae]

Originally Posted by Winner

In exchange for souls. No thanks.

There's always opportunity cost. Always

[AlpsStranger]

<snip>

[HannibalBarka]

I am not exactly surprised and that is why I never donate to faith based charities. I don't have any thing against any religion but I think there is a kind of conflict of interest involved here: religious organisations tend to use money to "propagate" their faith and/or tend to link "charity" with the religion of the needy. I am not saying that this is true all the time, but there is a risk.
I generally check how much % of the money i donate is really going to help the needy, so I check admin costs, etc of the different organization i donate to first.

[warpus]

Originally Posted by BvBPL

How would you rate the quality of your education versus public schools and secular private schools?

I can't really say, because I didn't attend a secular highschool.. or a private school. The quality has got to be bounds better at the private school though - isn't that almost always the case? As for the secular public school - I think that our catholic highschools receive better funding here (per capita), but I'm not too sure about that. The quality of education, from what I've heard, is pretty much equal.. aside from the fact that I know a crapload of things about Moses and someone educated at the secular highschool wouldn't

Originally Posted by HannibalBarka

I am not exactly surprised and that is why I never donate to faith based charities. I don't have any thing against any religion but I think there is a kind of conflict of interest involved here: religious organisations tend to use money to "propagate" their faith and/or tend to link "charity" with the religion of the needy. I am not saying that this is true all the time, but there is a risk.
I generally check how much % of the money i donate is really going to help the needy, so I check admin costs, etc of the different organization i donate to first.

I generally don't donate money to organizations that don't have "helping the needy" as their #1 priority. That includes churches and big-name organizations who pay their CEOs $500,000+ a year.

Charity drives organized by reddit? The ones I've donated to I *know* that all of the money is going towards the cause I care about. That makes me feel a lot better about donating.