tithing and economics

If I were working on a doctoral dissertation for seminary, I think I'd be interested in studying the economics of tithing.

Tithing is one of those topics that makes everybody uncomfortable, myself included. Even if you can shut out your memories of the faith-exploiting swindlers of the 1980s and the new crop of prosperity-driven televangelists today, it's still an uncomfortable feeling to have preachers more concerned with the contents of your wallet than with remedying social ills like racism, greed, debt, pollution and the disappearance of ethics from public life.

Personally, I'm not too big on tithing as a requirement for the Christian life. As instituted in the Tanakh, tithing was a system of taxation meant to support the Levitical priesthood. Popular sermons aside, I'm not inclined to believe that tithing is a requirement for 21st-century Christians. The legal emphasis on giving 10 percent goes against the grain of a grace-driven gospel.

What I understand God expects of us in terms of finances is to give — generously, sacrificially, and to those we meet who are in need. Sometimes that means buying food for beggars and helping someone pay the rent so they can keep their home, and sometimes it means giving money to the church to support its ministries.

There's a strong biblical precedent for preachers having a regular job to pay their bills — the Apostle Paul worked as a tentmaker so that he would not be an imposition upon anymore — but ministry often is a vocational thing these days. Hence the push from plenty of preachers to give a tenth of all the money earned.

(I regret to say I had a pastor once who wrote a distributed an eight-page booklet on how to be sure you were tithing the right amount. In it he addressed issues like whether to gross on net or gross pay, your tax refund, and gifts; and how to calculate your tithe if you were self-employed and made quarterly earning estimates. Not surprisingly, he had a prosperity bent and was always complaining that he didn't earn enough, even though he had a bigger house and was paid more than his predecessor.)

Still, whenever the subject comes up, someone invariably cites Malachi 3:8-12 as a promise that God blesses people who tithe; and there are always compelling anecdotes about people who began tithing and found all their needs met, and about impoverished churches that started making tithing a priority, and found that the wealth of the entire church increased, from individual congregants to the entire body.

I hate this kind of thing, partly because it's greed-driven (Give to God, and he'll bless you); partly because it suggests that God is some sort of cosmic bean counter who sees everything in economic terms, like an all-powerful Marxist; and mostly because it suggests that God's favor is earned rather than given.

Even so, I can see some of the mechanics to this sort of consequence to tithing.

First, look at the immediate effect tithing has upon a person. Setting aside a tenth of your income requires budgeting and financial responsibility. You no longer have as much disposable income, and as a result have to rank expenditures based on necessity. And once that first financial step has been put in place, it can lead to greater responsibility in other areas, such as building short- and long-term savings.

A more important benefit, though, is that tithing widens a person's perspective and helps them to discover the big picture. If you're giving $4,000 a year to your church, you're going to want to know what the church is spending it on. And if your church actually has a focus on the Kingdom of God and spends money in the community around it, instead of pouring it all into the building fund, utilities and staff salaries, that can lead members to discover things like the soup kitchen downtown, the shelter for abused women, or the literacy program, and those discoveries in turn can lead the church members to greater compassion and involvement in their community and its needs. (How much that actually happens is another matter, but I'm no one's idiot. I'm sure it happens a lot less than it should, particularly among suburban churches.)

Beyond that, tithing has an economic impact on the community as a whole. If a church has fifty adult members, earning an average salary of $50,000, the church's total donations will hit $250,000 a year, assuming everyone is giving a tenth of their income to the church.

That is, I realize, an enormous assumption in this day and age, since giving in the "good old days" was closer to two or three percent than to 10, but it's a stunning thought. An annual income of $50,000 is fairly average for professional America, and 50 members is a fairly average size congregation, but if each member is practicing a 10 percent tithe, they'll be generating roughly a quarter-million dollars every year.

And this is where the fun begins. In a healthy church, that money's not going to go into junk like a coffee bar, an oversize gymnasium with regulation basketball courts, and everything else that megachurches are notorious for. It's going to be headed back into the community.

Some of the money is going to provide the church with a place to meet. If the church is paying a mortgage, the money goes to the bank — preferably one based in the community and not a nationally owned bank — and the bank in turn invests the money in other businesses around town, though loans, mortgages and so on. If the church rents its meeting space from a school, the American Legion, or someone else with a large enough room for the congregation, that organization turns the money around some more, either to stay in the black and manage its utility bills and employee salaries; to undertake a renovation, maintenance or expansion project; to invest its capital; or just to put more profit in the pockets of the owners. No matter where that money goes, though, it's going back into the local economy.

The church may pay its pastor; but even if it doesn't, almost all churches of any size have an office with a paid secretary, and have some sort of regular operating costs, such as the cost of church bulletins, if nothing else. The money flows through there, too; the pastor and secretary's salaries presumably support their families, who spend their money in the area. Buying church bulletins and other resources sends other money into the revenue stream at local businesses.

And the best churches aren't just open for business on Sunday mornings. They do things in their community: providing food for area soup kitchens, giving abused women shelter, helping the destitute get back on their feet, rescuing people from addiction, and providing support when people are in need. I've read of a few churches that even provide grants to start-up businesses, finance job training, and manage low-income housing.

All those programs involve creating jobs, whether for administration or counseling, and they all work on a trickle-up principle that improves the entire community by helping people on the lowest rungs of the economy. The money people donate to the church is returned to the community through programs that give the money to people who are going to spend it immediately, and keep it in circulation.

I don't know about you, but that sounds to me like one heck of a proposal for an economic stimulus package, if only more people would get in on it.