NASHVILLE — There’s a meme about charitable giving that makes the rounds in Southern social media circles from time to time. It’s a map of United States counties color-coded by charitable giving, and it purports to demonstrate that people living in red states give a greater percentage of their income to charity than people living in blue states. The caption beneath the map reads, “Those heartless conservatives — am I right?”
The map was created in 2013 from a report in The Chronicle of Philanthropy. “Donors in Southern states,” the report notes, “give roughly 5.2 percent of their discretionary income to charity — both to religious and to secular groups — compared with donors in the Northeast, who give 4.0 percent.”
These are figures that Southerners, accustomed to being thought selfish and cruel by the rest of the country, will happily create a meme to promote.
There are many problems with a map like this, but the biggest is that it’s based on the filings of taxpayers who itemize deductions. The vast majority of American taxpayers — some 70 percent — don’t itemize anyway, so there’s really no way to know how many people actually make charitable donations and how much they give when they do. Even so, it has become a cultural commonplace: People in red states are more generous than everyone else.
Just last week, Wallet Hub’s ranking of the most charitable states arrived at exactly the opposite conclusion. Analyzing 2017 data according to 18 different metrics, only one of which was tax returns, their experts concluded that it’s the people living in blue states who are actually more generous.
In truth, we can’t possibly know which region of this troubled country is populated by the most generous people. And it wouldn’t matter in the least if we could. What does matter is that we think these statistics tell us something about who we are, and my brothers and sisters in the Bible Belt still believe we’re the most generous people in the country.
And we are generous. That famed Southern hospitality is not a myth. Every single person I know would stand out in the rain and hold her umbrella over your head if you had no umbrella of your own.
But in terms of charitable donations, red-state generosity actually looks more like regular old tithing than like what we traditionally think of as charity. “The generosity ranking changes when religion is taken out of the picture,” according to the 2013 Chronicle of Philanthropy report. “People in the Northeast give the most, providing 1.4 percent of their discretionary income to secular charities, compared with those in the South, who give 0.9 percent.” In other words, when Southerners itemize their tax donations, what they’re mainly giving money to are their own churches.
For the I.R.S., there’s no distinction between charitable donations to a church and charitable donations to an arts nonprofit and charitable donations to an organization that helps communities ravaged by fire or famine or hurricane or disease. From a moral standpoint, however, some charities clearly do make a bigger difference than others. And if part of your identity stems from the idea of yourself as a generous person, it’s worth considering that difference.
When my husband and I give money to support our church, we’re underwriting an organization we benefit from ourselves. We’re saying, “I value this institution’s importance to my spiritual life.” For us, supporting our church is exactly like supporting NPR because we listen to “All Things Considered” on the way home from work or contributing to a fund-raising drive at our own children’s school. And while supporting those organizations is hugely important, donating to them is not the same thing as contributing to charity, at least not as that word is widely understood.
“I was hungry and you gave me food,” Jesus taught his disciples. “I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.” When the disciples objected that they had done no such thing, Jesus was very clear about his relationship to people who are suffering. “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.”
That’s why many Christian churches work hard to alleviate suffering, and member donations certainly underwrite those efforts. But outreach to the needy represents only a small portion of most church budgets. And there are other aid organizations whose sole purpose is to alleviate misery in all its guises — suffering caused by poverty, illness, abuse, natural disaster, cultural upheaval, climate change. (In the context of a suffering planet, an organization like the Natural Resources Defense Council can surely be seen as a kind of global Doctors Without Borders.) Aside from all the usual satisfactions of giving, and they are many, the way you know you’re donating to a true charity is that it doesn’t benefit you personally.
I’m not saying that people should pass an empty collection plate down the pew. I’m saying that if those of us who are living in red states want to earn the right to call ourselves the most generous people in America, we’ll need to rethink the whole nature of tithing.
While we’re setting aside money to support our churches, we’ll need to set aside even more for Doctors Without Borders, so it can bring medical care to war-torn areas of the world. We’ll need to set aside even more for the International Rescue Committee, so it can care for displaced people around the globe. We’ll need to set aside even more for AmeriCares and Direct Relief, so they can help victims of natural disasters. We’ll need to set aside even more for the local food bank, so it can feed our hungry neighbors.
The list of needs goes on and on and on. Every day, it seems, the world becomes unbearably harder for huge swaths of humanity. Millions of our fellow human beings are starving. Millions of our fellow human beings are dying of preventable diseases. Millions of our fellow human beings are refugees, fleeing war and crime and the ravages of a changing climate. We can’t feed or clothe them in the sanctuary of our own churches, but we can contribute to aid organizations that know how to help. (Check Charity Navigator for a list of the most effective nonprofits in each area of global concern.)
New changes to the United States tax code mean that only about 10 percent of taxpayers will itemize their deductions this year, and that change is widely expected to cause charitable donations to drop by $16 billion to $17 billion. That’s a dramatic — and traumatic — reduction in aid exactly when more and more people find themselves in tremendous need. But it won’t happen if we’re thinking about charity the right way: not as a tithe or as tax benefit but as a lifeline for others.
Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.
Margaret Renkl is a contributing opinion writer who covers flora, fauna, politics and culture in the American South. She is the author of the forthcoming book “Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss.” @MargaretRenkl
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Home » Analysis & Comment » Opinion | Where Charity and Love Prevail
Opinion | Where Charity and Love Prevail
NASHVILLE — There’s a meme about charitable giving that makes the rounds in Southern social media circles from time to time. It’s a map of United States counties color-coded by charitable giving, and it purports to demonstrate that people living in red states give a greater percentage of their income to charity than people living in blue states. The caption beneath the map reads, “Those heartless conservatives — am I right?”
The map was created in 2013 from a report in The Chronicle of Philanthropy. “Donors in Southern states,” the report notes, “give roughly 5.2 percent of their discretionary income to charity — both to religious and to secular groups — compared with donors in the Northeast, who give 4.0 percent.”
These are figures that Southerners, accustomed to being thought selfish and cruel by the rest of the country, will happily create a meme to promote.
There are many problems with a map like this, but the biggest is that it’s based on the filings of taxpayers who itemize deductions. The vast majority of American taxpayers — some 70 percent — don’t itemize anyway, so there’s really no way to know how many people actually make charitable donations and how much they give when they do. Even so, it has become a cultural commonplace: People in red states are more generous than everyone else.
Just last week, Wallet Hub’s ranking of the most charitable states arrived at exactly the opposite conclusion. Analyzing 2017 data according to 18 different metrics, only one of which was tax returns, their experts concluded that it’s the people living in blue states who are actually more generous.
In truth, we can’t possibly know which region of this troubled country is populated by the most generous people. And it wouldn’t matter in the least if we could. What does matter is that we think these statistics tell us something about who we are, and my brothers and sisters in the Bible Belt still believe we’re the most generous people in the country.
And we are generous. That famed Southern hospitality is not a myth. Every single person I know would stand out in the rain and hold her umbrella over your head if you had no umbrella of your own.
But in terms of charitable donations, red-state generosity actually looks more like regular old tithing than like what we traditionally think of as charity. “The generosity ranking changes when religion is taken out of the picture,” according to the 2013 Chronicle of Philanthropy report. “People in the Northeast give the most, providing 1.4 percent of their discretionary income to secular charities, compared with those in the South, who give 0.9 percent.” In other words, when Southerners itemize their tax donations, what they’re mainly giving money to are their own churches.
For the I.R.S., there’s no distinction between charitable donations to a church and charitable donations to an arts nonprofit and charitable donations to an organization that helps communities ravaged by fire or famine or hurricane or disease. From a moral standpoint, however, some charities clearly do make a bigger difference than others. And if part of your identity stems from the idea of yourself as a generous person, it’s worth considering that difference.
When my husband and I give money to support our church, we’re underwriting an organization we benefit from ourselves. We’re saying, “I value this institution’s importance to my spiritual life.” For us, supporting our church is exactly like supporting NPR because we listen to “All Things Considered” on the way home from work or contributing to a fund-raising drive at our own children’s school. And while supporting those organizations is hugely important, donating to them is not the same thing as contributing to charity, at least not as that word is widely understood.
“I was hungry and you gave me food,” Jesus taught his disciples. “I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.” When the disciples objected that they had done no such thing, Jesus was very clear about his relationship to people who are suffering. “Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.”
That’s why many Christian churches work hard to alleviate suffering, and member donations certainly underwrite those efforts. But outreach to the needy represents only a small portion of most church budgets. And there are other aid organizations whose sole purpose is to alleviate misery in all its guises — suffering caused by poverty, illness, abuse, natural disaster, cultural upheaval, climate change. (In the context of a suffering planet, an organization like the Natural Resources Defense Council can surely be seen as a kind of global Doctors Without Borders.) Aside from all the usual satisfactions of giving, and they are many, the way you know you’re donating to a true charity is that it doesn’t benefit you personally.
I’m not saying that people should pass an empty collection plate down the pew. I’m saying that if those of us who are living in red states want to earn the right to call ourselves the most generous people in America, we’ll need to rethink the whole nature of tithing.
While we’re setting aside money to support our churches, we’ll need to set aside even more for Doctors Without Borders, so it can bring medical care to war-torn areas of the world. We’ll need to set aside even more for the International Rescue Committee, so it can care for displaced people around the globe. We’ll need to set aside even more for AmeriCares and Direct Relief, so they can help victims of natural disasters. We’ll need to set aside even more for the local food bank, so it can feed our hungry neighbors.
The list of needs goes on and on and on. Every day, it seems, the world becomes unbearably harder for huge swaths of humanity. Millions of our fellow human beings are starving. Millions of our fellow human beings are dying of preventable diseases. Millions of our fellow human beings are refugees, fleeing war and crime and the ravages of a changing climate. We can’t feed or clothe them in the sanctuary of our own churches, but we can contribute to aid organizations that know how to help. (Check Charity Navigator for a list of the most effective nonprofits in each area of global concern.)
New changes to the United States tax code mean that only about 10 percent of taxpayers will itemize their deductions this year, and that change is widely expected to cause charitable donations to drop by $16 billion to $17 billion. That’s a dramatic — and traumatic — reduction in aid exactly when more and more people find themselves in tremendous need. But it won’t happen if we’re thinking about charity the right way: not as a tithe or as tax benefit but as a lifeline for others.
Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram.
Margaret Renkl is a contributing opinion writer who covers flora, fauna, politics and culture in the American South. She is the author of the forthcoming book “Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss.” @MargaretRenkl
Source: Read Full Article