Transcript
Good morning. Today I want to focus on one of the most taboo topics in our society, not sex and not death, but money, which is perhaps more taboo as a subject of discussion than sex or death. And I also am not going to focus on giving to the church, which might be a more interesting topic to you, but money more generally. Questions of greed, attitudes toward the rich, issues. Two preliminary remarks. Someone yesterday afterwards said, well,
are there any resources, for example, if you were going to have a class in your church or just something to read? And I had mentioned yesterday Bill Deal's book, The Monday Connection, which I think is an excellent book dealing with work and faith. At a somewhat higher level of sophistication, certainly theological sophistication, there's a book by a man named Miroslav Volf, V-O-L-F, called Work in the Spirit. He's a Croatian who has come to
the U.S. just within the last couple of years, teaches at Fuller Seminary, and works a lot with theology of hope, was a student of Jurgen Moltmann's, and I think you'll find it an excellent book on the theology of work. On the topic of money, I've collected a whole shelf of books that deal in one way or another with faith and money, and I'm not sure that any of them are particularly better than any of the
others, and you could probably find some of them here in the bookstore or up at the other end of town at the Lamplighter bookstore, titles like Your Money Matters to God. One of the ones that I think is still a tad bit better than the others is Jacques Ellul's book, Money and Power, which was some time ago, but still well worth reading. The other preliminary comment I want to make is that this topic, as it has
emerged in our research, is a very complicated one, so as I walk you through some of the different topics and some of the things that people have told us individually or in surveys, you'll probably have the sense of being pulled in one direction and another, and at times there's a little glimmer that faith makes a difference to how people think and behave, and at other times I'm saying, no, it doesn't make much of a difference. You
have to hang on to the boat as we go down the rapids, and then as I conclude, I'll try to pull those things together a bit, and again we'll have some time for discussion. Let me begin, as I did last time, by introducing several specific people that we talked to. First of all, Lavella Medina. She grew up in South Philadelphia, that is, except during the summers, which she spent at the Jersey Shore in the winters at
the family home in Miami Beach. She remembers there was an exclusive dress shop near her house. She would go there any time she felt like it and buy anything she wanted. She says, my father always used to say, you and your credit cards, you're going to get me in jail, but then he'd just laugh. No, she says, money was never a problem for us, but her father did play the numbers and somewhere deep down Lavella knew
he could land in jail. Off the record, I think he's probably a mafia boss. She didn't say so, and so I won't say so, but I think that's probably what. At any rate, because she knew her father could land in jail sometime, money wasn't a source of security for her either, even though they had it. Security came more from her family and from her church. Going to Catholic school exposed her to all the teachings about Jesus
and the virgins and saints. She's always celebrated Christmas and Easter. She can still recite stories from the Bible about money, but she's not quite sure she understands these stories. God, to her, is a mystery. She says, like, maybe God decides to strike somebody with polio because they love their money too much. I don't know. I don't think for God. God thinks for God. After high school, Muriel Johnson, the second person, got a temporary job with the
board of education as a camp counselor. Since then, she's worked as a crossing guard, sold Avon, Tupperware, and insurance. She's driven a truck, and she's worked at the post office. Right now, she has three part-time jobs, and she's training to be a police officer. Pregnant with her fifth child, she has to earn as much money as she can to support her family. Being black in Chicago has never been easy, but Muriel works hard, lives frugally,
and is faring better than most of her neighbors. She hasn't gotten married because she doesn't want some, quote, irresponsible man telling her what to do with her money. In high school, she took her lunch money, 32 cents, to the store and bought cookies, sold them to her classmates at a profit, then used the money the next day to buy more. She's always been clever that way. Muriel is a Baptist. As a child, she went to church
every Sunday and to choir rehearsal every Wednesday. Lately, she hasn't gone as much. The biggest sinners are in church, she says. You can't go to church without it being a fashion show. In her view, God doesn't want people to be materialistic. She says God just wants people to learn how to strive together. And then, Doug and Linda Hill used to be Baptist. Living in Tennessee, it was hard to be anything else. A few years ago, though,
they switched to an independent Bible church. They used to fight a lot about money. Doug would come home tired from servicing computers all day. Linda'd be worn out from her job at a local daycare center. They'd fight about whether to go out to eat, and if not, who was going to fix dinner? Usually, Doug was the tightwad, Linda the spendthrift. At their new church, they've been hearing a lot about money. They've studied some Sunday school lessons
about family finances and heard some sermons on stewardship. They still disagree with each other about how much money to spend. But Doug and Linda both say they have a greater appreciation of each other's views. Now, when they go over their budget together, they try hard to figure out what God would want them to do. On the whole, most Americans, it appears, believe there is a connection between religious faith and money. Posed with a statement that denies
any connection, for example, only a fifth of the labor force, 22%, say they agree that God doesn't care how I use my money. Only a fifth say that. And this proportion drops to a seventh among weekly churchgoers. Other ways of posing the issue also suggest that Americans are fairly willing to draw a connection between faith and money. For example, about one person in two agrees that the Bible contains valuable teachings about the use of money. Among
weekly church attenders at religious services, this proportion rises to about three in four. For some Americans, the possibility of learning about money from the Bible is, of course, no more than an abstract idea. But a substantial number actually claim they have thought about such teachings in the recent past. In the labor force as a whole, this is true of nearly a third. While among weekly church attenders, more than half say they have thought a great deal
or a fair amount about what the Bible teaches about money during the past year. It is important not to exaggerate these connections. Posing a more stringent definition of making a connection quickly reduces the proportion who do this. For example, if devoting a great deal of thought to the connection between religious values and personal finances is the criterion, then only one person in eight in the labor force does so. And among weekly church attenders, the proportion is
only one in four. The four people I introduced illustrate some of these variations. Neither Lavella Medina nor Muriel Johnson think very much about the relationship between religion and money. They figure there is one, but don't worry much about it other than to take a cynical attitude once in a while when they do. Doug and Linda Hill, in contrast, are exposed to sermons on a regular basis and attend a fellowship group that draws explicit connections between the
Bible and money. They are also, of course, quite conservative in their religious views, including the belief that the Bible should be taken literally. There is, however, one issue on which all four of these people agree, greed. Muriel Johnson probably put it best when she said religion has kept me from being totally greedy. She explains, I could have made a lot more money or stuck with a job just for the pay and said forget about everybody and
everything else. Maybe I'd be a millionaire, but not know my kids. She says God has helped her keep things in perspective. Religious thinkers have always counted greed among the major human vices, categorizing it with such evils as lust, anger, envy, pride, gluttony, and sloth. Readers of the Hebrew and Christian scriptures can find countless examples of greed resulting in divine punishment. In most of these instances, money, gold, land, and other material possessions were at issue, not simply
an aggressive attitude or a compulsive lifestyle. While greed has a variety of connotations in our society, it is not uncommon to define it, therefore, in monetary terms or, as in a recent study of the topic as, I quote, the inordinate love of money and of material possessions and the dedication of oneself to their pursuit. In the United States, most people, 71% in fact, still agree that being greedy is a sin against God. And this figure
rises to 83% among church members and to 89% among those who say they have thought a lot about biblical teachings on money. This view is widely shared in contemporary religious books and in articles about money, and it has been reinforced greatly in recent years by scandals in the business community that have evoked editorials and public debate about the dangers of greed. It appears, however, that regarding greed as a sin is quite easy for most
Americans to reconcile with the desire for a lot of money. Thus, while 86% of weekly churchgoers say greed is a sin, only 16% of them say they were ever taught that wanting a lot of money is wrong. And in fact, 79% of them say they wish they had more money than they do. This is perhaps one reason why so many people in an affluent country like ours can also retain strong interests in religion.
Indeed, the admonition against greed appears to be rooted more in broad cultural understandings than in specific religious teachings or experiences. Taking other things into account, people who have heard a sermon about personal finances or one on stewardship within the past year, for example, are no more likely to say greed is a sin than anyone else, nor are they any more likely to say they have been taught that wanting a lot of money is wrong. Even regular
church attendance and participation in fellowship groups fail to have any discernible impact on responses to these statements. The reason why religious admonitions against greed have no more effect than they do is that other, predominantly secular, understandings of money have penetrated the thinking even of those who are religiously active. One is what might be called the ecologization of money. According to this view, money itself is neither good nor bad. All that matters is a person's attitude toward
it. Like emotivism in ethics, this orientation can make it very difficult to know whether a person, even oneself, is greedy or not. Some contemporary religious writers, for example, try to discourage greed by telling their readers it will make them unhappy. Am I unhappy? Ask the reader. No? Well, then I must not be greedy either. The Bible itself encourages this orientation, of course, in stating that it's the love of money that is the root of all evil
and not money itself or even the pursuit of money. At a time when love implied behavior, this distinction was less problematic. But now that love has become a kind of good feeling, it becomes more difficult to pin down greed to anything concrete. A related understanding that, as it were, protects money from moral accusations is captured in the statement, money is one thing, morals and values are completely separate. About two-thirds of the labor force as a
whole and about the same proportion of those who attend religious services every week agree with that statement. Thus, despite the fact that many people try to connect their faith and their finances, there is also a tendency to think of money as being in a category all by itself. What belies the belief that money really is separate from morals and values is that most people turn right around and connect it to their values. About two-thirds connect
having money with freedom, while three-fourths admit that having money makes them feel good. Freedom and feeling good are, of course, two of the most widely held values in American culture. The fact that money is linked to both of these values means that having it and wanting more of it makes a lot of sense to most people, whether they also believe it is wrong to be greedy or not. The same religious teachings that and wanting money
too much often make their point by showing how the rich may have a hard time entering the kingdom of heaven, but living in one of the richest countries in the world, most Americans seem to have difficulty believing that such teachings should be taken very seriously. Only 30 percent, for example, agree that riches get in the way of our truly knowing God. Among church members this proportion rises only to 37 percent and among those who attend religious
services every week only to 42 percent. Apparently the majority of regular churchgoers have trouble believing that Jesus really meant it when he talked about the difficulties the rich face in realizing the kingdom of God. Lavello Medina knows the passage in the Bible about it being for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven than a cast than a camel to pass through the eye of a needle. She figures that means there is a human tendency
to be corrupted by power. Note that power is the issue for her, not money itself. She doesn't figure this figure that this passage applies to her father either. Despite his wealth, she says, people still respected him and he respected them. As for the Bible, she says its teachings about money are just plain contradictory. One person, she says, gets bitched at because he didn't invest his money and somebody else because he didn't give it away. This is
why God is mysterious. Now Muriel Johnson, in contrast, is one of the 30 percent who does feel money conflicts with religious values. Never having had very much of it herself, perhaps she is more willing to see the tension. She says, most people are turned around by money. They forget about the Bible and their values. They just say, I worked hard for it so you can't touch it and they forget to be human anymore. Doug and Linda
Hill fall into the 30 percent too. They both think riches can conflict with spirituality and yet their arguments typify what many of the people we interviewed said, essentially softening the biblical teaching and finding other ways to give the rich more credit. Linda says, the trouble is mainly that the rich have so many responsibilities that they may not have time to devote to their spiritual lives. Doug sees the problem more as being lured by a false sense
of security. Both admire the rich. They do so because they also believe the rich have simply been, in their words, blessed abundantly and that it is, again in their words, the Lord's choice to do so. Neither believes the rich may have done anything immoral to attain their wealth. Thus, as long as the rich behave responsibly, they are actually carrying out a special mission for God. Another way in which religious teachings bear on the topic of money
is by counseling people not to worry about it. Jesus encouraged his followers to consider the lilies of the field. Through no effort of their own, they were beautiful, simply because God made them that way. The Apostle Paul wrote that he was indifferent to being abased or being able to abound as long as he was following God. Modern writers have sometimes been critical of such teachings, arguing that they prevent people from throwing off oppression. The therapeutic motif
evident in contemporary religion, however, points to a similar argument. Perhaps religion does less to alter behavior or values than simply to make people feel better about themselves, including fretting less about their bills. Despite the fact that American standards of living are generally quite high, there is plenty of worry and anxiety about money, and these concerns do influence how people feel about themselves. Most Americans wish they had more money than they do. Most feel anxious about their
purchases and monetary decisions. Most worry about their bills and many feel guilty about their expenditures. Other evidence points to the same conclusions. For example, 53% say the statement, I worry about meeting my financial obligations, describes them fairly well. 63% say they think a lot about their money and finances, and more than half say they have a lot of financial obligations. Does religion make a difference? Does it encourage people to cut back on their financial
obligations? Does it help them to worry less about the obligations they do have? Does it alleviate guilt? Does it provide techniques, such as prayer, for attaining peace of mind about finances? Despite the fact that many religious leaders have championed a life of simplicity, there is little evidence that religious commitment actually encourages the majority of people to cut back on their financial obligations. It may have this effect on certain kinds of consumer wants, but on the whole,
it appears that religiously committed people are just about as likely to incur major financial obligations as the less religiously committed. Certainly, this is how they themselves see it. For example, those who attend religious services every week and who say religion is very important to them are just about as likely to say they have a lot of financial obligations as those who seldom attend religious services or who say religion is not very important. Religious commitment does, however,
have a modest effect in reducing the chances of people worrying about their finances. The most consistent effect is from actually spending a lot of time thinking about one's relationship with God. Even when differences in other kinds of religious commitment, such as denomination or church attendance are taken into account, those who spend more time thinking about their relationship to God are less likely to be worried about their bills, less likely to feel anxious about money decisions, and
less likely to feel guilty about their purchases. Although weaker, some other forms of religious commitment also have that effect. For example, those who have heard sermons on personal finances or on stewardship recently are less likely to feel anxious or guilty about their money. I don't know if that's good news or bad news for those of you giving those sermons. The fact that thinking about one's relationship to God has the most consistent effect in reducing the chances
of worrying about money also raises possibility that prayer is a significant way of dealing with such worries. Prayer is indeed something that a lot of people resort to in dealing with their money. The labor force as a whole, 31% say they have prayed about money matters within the past year. Among church members, 42% have done so, and among those who attend religious services every week, 55% have. Protestants, it may be worth noting, are
significantly more likely to pray about money than Catholics. Apparently, these prayers are answered, too. At least a large number of people say they have thanked God for receiving a financial blessing. In fact, the number who have done so within the past year is actually higher than the proportion who have prayed about money and finances. In the entire labor force, 49% have thanked God for a financial blessing within the past year. Among church members, 64%
have, and among weekly attenders, 76% have. Let me pause momentarily then to sum up this part. Most church-going Americans believe their faith should in some way be relevant to their use and understandings of money. They also believe it is sinful to be greedy, but their desire for a lot of money is seldom tempered by their faith. Instead, faith serves mainly to make them feel better. They worry less about financial obligations, and they receive comfort
when they pray. We can flesh out what is going on a bit better if we turn next to contemporary understandings of stewardship. And I'm going to skip over some interesting material we found on the fact that people don't talk about their money. Although religious organizations convey norms about greed or hints about how to have monetary peace of mind, their most systematic teachings on the subject of money generally fall under the heading of stewardship. In the Judeo
-Christian tradition, believers are taught to regard themselves as stewards or caretakers of what ultimately belongs to God. In the 20th century, stewardship has increasingly come to be associated with fundraising and pledge drives in local congregations, but stewardship also has broader connotations. Thus, I want to ask whether people understand it at all, and if so, what their understandings are. Despite the fact that stewardship sermons are preached in nearly all churches as a matter of sermon within the
past year. Among church members, only 40 percent have, and even among those who attend church every week, a bare majority have heard such a sermon. Perhaps it is not surprising, therefore, that many Americans have little understanding of what stewardship means. Of the people we interviewed, many responded simply that the word stewardship was not part of their vocabulary. Others struggled to give it a definition, but came up with little more than notions of being responsible or of
using one's talents wisely. Lavella Medina was one of the few who referred the question back to Jesus' parable of the talents. She was able to recount the story with fair precision, yet the conclusion she drew was that the master was pretty arbitrary. You never know how to take these things, she says. In the survey, close to 40 percent of the labor force said they didn't know what stewardship meant, or that it wasn't meaningful to them. Of
the remainder, only 22 percent said the idea was very meaningful to them. Even among those who attended religious services every week, fewer than half, 42 percent said it was very meaningful to them. Moreover, it seems doubtful that hearing sermons on the topic does much to enhance this figure, given that the same proportion said it was very meaningful among those who had heard a sermon and among those who had not. Religious leaders themselves are, of course, quite
divided about what exactly stewardship means. Sermons on the topic are quite often preached during a congregation's pledge drive. These sermons may encourage members to give a certain proportion of their earnings to the church, but it is not hard to find sermons, tracks, and books that define stewardship more broadly, for instance, as responsible living or the wise use of one's talents. Another meaning, sometimes conveyed in children's Bible stories, is that stewardship means recognizing that God created the
world, the implication being that one should therefore be thankful, or perhaps reassured things are working okay. Stewardship has also come to be associated with environmentalism. Given these diverse meanings, it is little wonder that the public defines stewardship in a variety of ways. Judging from the survey, the most common definition is the idea of using one's talents wisely. Next most common is the view that stewardship means remembering God as creator. This is followed by the environmentalist view,
and the least common understanding pertains to giving money to the church. We also found that people who have actually heard a stewardship sermon in the past year do differ, to some extent at least, in their understandings. Yet these differences tend to be outweighed by the similarities. Using one's talents responsibly is still the most common understanding among those who have heard stewardship sermons, and this is followed by the idea that God made everything. Then however, the environmentalist
view is less common among these people, while the idea of giving to the church is somewhat more common. More detailed analysis of these results shows that hearing stewardship sermons does substantially increase the likelihood of thinking in terms of giving to the church, even when nomination and level of attendance are taken into account. The idea that one can be a faithful steward by using one's talents wisely may of course be so bland that it means very little,
but religious leaders have also tried to give this teaching concreteness by applying it to the ways in which people handle their money. There is a long tradition of religious thought about the importance of budgeting money and of making careful decisions about expenditures. So how do those things work out? Well, most Americans claim they have a budget of some kind. In the labor force, three out of every four persons said they did have a budget, but whether
these budgets serve much of a purpose is another matter. Most people it appears do not have budgets that actually tell them very precisely how to spend their money. In the labor force, 48 percent they had a budget that quote provides general guidelines, and 19 percent they had a budget but that they don't follow it very closely, and only nine percent said they follow a strict itemized budget. We could take a survey here and see how many
of us follow an itemized budget. Harold Bentley, the banker that I talked about yesterday, is fairly typical in this respect. He says he and his wife have never really sat down and made out an actual budget, but things have been tight enough over the years that they've just gotten into the habit of not buying frivolous things. So that to him is what a budget means. Given these overall patterns, it does not appear that religious teachings about
the importance of budgeting have had a very significant impact on the American public. Nevertheless, there is evidence that these teachings have made some difference. Among persons who say they have thought a great deal about what the Bible teaches on money, for example, the proportion who follow a strict itemized budget rises to 15 percent, or among those who have not thought about these teachings, it sinks to 7 percent. But if religious commitment has little impact on budgets
themselves, it may influence family finances in an indirect way. Doug and Linda Hill illustrate how thinking about biblical teachings concerning money can influence the family budgeting process. I take them as fairly typical of this sort of person, even though they may be more theologically conservative than many of the others. Doug explains that the budget itself doesn't actually amount to much because most of their expenditures are in fact fixed. The purpose of the budget, he says, is
really just to meet the bills we have. To do this, he and Linda try to be frugal. For example, they find what they call the screaming point in setting their air conditioner in the summer and then back it off one degree from that. They don't have enough money to make investments, but Doug does have what he calls a saving thing at work that takes some of his money out each month. So where biblical teachings come in
is mainly in helping them keep their sanity while they struggle to meet their bills. Rather than fighting about their bills, they've tried to use the bill paying process as a time of drawing closer together as a couple. Doug, for example, says Linda is much more artistic than he is, and he's come to appreciate her spontaneity and creativity more as a result of working together on family finances. Their faith has done less to tell them specifically how
to budget their money than it has to undergird their marriage so they can work together better in making financial decisions. Well, let me then try to summarize and pull some of these things together. Money has come to be the domain primarily of financial advisors, bankers, investment brokers, and economists, but religious teachings have always regarded money as a matter of the heart. Avoiding greed, not worrying about money, and yet being good stewards and the use of one's
money have always been central tenets of religious tradition. These teachings have become problematic in contemporary society. On the one hand, many people give lip service to the notion that greed is a sin or that stewardship is a meaningful concept. On the other hand, many people seem not to understand these ideas very well, turning them to bland statements about personal responsibility rather than religious teachings that actually make a difference in how they lead their lives. Those who
are actually actively involved in religious communities generally understand these ideas better than the rest of the population, but even among this group, many seem to be little exposed to and little influenced by teachings that draw strong applications for the handling of money. Noting the prevalence of greed in American society, some observers suggest that religious convictions are either ineffective or downright hypocritical. Barbara Ehrenreich, for example, writes that, and I quote, our traditional values have always been bigotry,
greed, and belligerence buttressed by wanton appeals to a god of love. Her opinion is perhaps overly cynical, yet, I hope, a sober-minded assessment would also ask whether religious faith has done more to encourage the pursuit of wealth than to deter it. Certainly, it is valuable to keep the idea alive that greed is wrong, but if this idea does little to influence behavior, then religious leaders who articulate it may be doing little more than giving tacit
assent to the way things are. Religious commitment in contemporary society appears to have little effect on the levels of financial responsibility that people shoulder. The simple life advocated by St. Francis or more recently by Thomas Merton, Richard Foster, Mother Teresa, and others is beyond consideration, even for the most religiously oriented. Indeed, religious commitments themselves encourage people to take on financial responsibilities, such as providing good educations for their children or investing money for old age. Nor do
the religiously committed regard money or those who have a lot of it very differently from other people. Attendance at religious services produces little effect. Protestants and Catholics basically hold the same views on these matters. Even the differences between religious conservatives and religious liberals are relatively small on these issues. There does, however, appear to be some lingering effect of the ascetic religious orientation that Max Weber considered to have contributed to a more rational spirit in the handling
of money. Although the doctrine of stewardship holds little meaning for many people, those who consider it particularly meaningful in their lives tend to be more practical and careful in their financial dealings than most other people. They are somewhat more budget-conscious, somewhat more practical in the gifts they buy, somewhat more cautious about lending money, and somewhat more pragmatic in their purchases. The therapeutic orientation is also evident in American attitudes toward money. If religious commitment does not
deter people from wanting money, it at least helps them worry less about whether they have it or not. Part of the reason is that money is relativized. Even if it is important, it may not be as important as meditating or thinking about God, and religious attachments help anchor a lifestyle that deters people from making the adjustments that would actually be required to pursue wealth. Many people also pray about financial concerns, testifying that prayer gives them peace
of mind. Most of this therapeutic activity occurs in private, in what has been called the devotional aspect of personal religious commitment, because formal participation in religious congregations still encourages a taboo against actually discussing money matters. Only participation in small, intimate fellowship groups seems to break through that taboo. If a single word had to be used to describe the relationship between religion and money, however, it would be compartmentalization. Despite the fact that financial responsibility and a therapeutic
orientation are both part of contemporary religion, most people seem not to differ very much from their counterparts, whether they are religiously oriented or not. There is a kind of mental or emotional gloss to contemporary religious teachings about money that prevents them from having much impact on the ways in which people actually lead their lives. Prayer, for example, seldom leads people to buy one brand of automobile rather than another. It just makes them feel better about their
purchase after the fact. Stewardship encourages people to think of themselves as responsible persons in the handling of their money, but it also says little about what responsibility actually means. Okay, well that gives you a sense at least of what we've found. We have a few minutes of thoughts from you, comments, questions. In the back. Well, finding from people out there, church members and others, that they didn't understand stewardship very well, encouraged us to look back in
the churches a little bit. More recently, we have been asking clergy themselves how they understand it in the first place, what they did preach about last time they preached a stewardship sermon. We've also collected, I suppose, close to 200 stewardship sermons, transcribed a lot of them or have them transcribed already. What strikes me about all of that material is that clergy are trying to do a lot of different things in stewardship sermons, and one thing they're
trying to do is not offend anybody. In fact, a lot of clergy have told us, and I suspect it might be true if I ask you, that the stewardship sermon is one of the hardest sermons they have to preach during the year. They don't enjoy preaching it. So what we find is on the one hand, let's say if it is a pledge drive where there is a need to talk specifically about money and giving money, it's
often couched in very subtle ways. I have a graduate student who's fairly good at linguistic analysis with a computer, actually, and he's analyzed some of these sermons and he finds that you sort of sneak the appeal in the middle somewhere and then back out of it real quickly before you get to the end. So I suppose one answer to your question is, well, that's how I'd do it. That's how the best people we see doing it.
But I think there's also an important factor here which says whatever kind of stewardship, whether it's using one's talents wisely or giving money to the church, being very specific and giving very specific examples really help. Because when you talk to some of these people from the pews or man in the street kind of interviews, occasionally at least they remember a specific example that was given. They may not appreciate kind of general principles, but they remember a
specific example. Sometimes they're inspired by that example. Sometimes they're inspired to disagree with that person. But at least it generates thinking because they've seen how somebody else specifically applied the concept of stewardship. I have not looked at that very much myself. There is a project that has been going on or at least was going on for some time at Boston College, a man up there named Paul Shervish. And he's written some things. What he did was
interview millionaires. And I think tried to find a number of them who had been majorly involved in philanthropic giving. And he finds that quite often there is really a spiritual dimension. It may have nothing to do with Christianity or any kind of orthodox spirituality, but there's a kind of spiritual understanding of the special responsibilities that someone with great wealth may have. And that sense of a special responsibility to do something for good can certainly make a
difference. So we can talk. I can refer you to some of his work. Average percentage of giving we found and other larger surveys that have just focused on giving show on average about 2% of family income, for example. In the case of churchgoers, the more active the person is or the family is, that goes up. So it does make a difference. What we've tried to do is pay more attention to the culture of giving. Why
do people give? Maybe some give $50 more than others. But they have a intense feeling about whether the church is handling their money responsibly, whether the church is being too materialistic, whether the church is engaged in helping the poor. Some of these make a lot of sense and others are kind of projections onto the church of their own insecurities and ambivalent feelings and they sometimes want the church to be much more pure and to run all
sorts of programs without any funds at all and no fundraising drives. Part of it is a matter of educating the public, again, to understand that it really does take money to run churches and church programs. Let's see. Let's get some over here. Yeah. I have only looked at it a very little bit. We did ask all these people a few questions about winning the lottery, for example. Faith doesn't make much difference, it appears across the board,
as to whether people play the lottery, hope to win, want to win, so forth. There's kind of an imaginary world that most people enjoy that's associated with the prospect of winning the lottery and very few people say they would anything very benevolent if they won the lottery and very few of them worry that there might be a lot of strings or a lot of burdens associated with having that much money. I guess we have time just
for one more because you have your break coming up. Yeah, way in the back. I don't really know the answer to that. I'm just trying to think if anybody's looked at that. I don't think so. For some reason, there have not been surveys across the board lately of pastors. There might be some material actually in the Presbyterian panel because that has pastors and it also has elders broken out from the rest of the congregants, so that
might be a source. Okay, we should cut it off if you have other questions while we can talk during the break.