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On Christian Giving in America, An
Interview with Robert Wood Lynn
Interviewer: Tracy Schier,
http://www.resourcingchristianity.org
In the summer of 1994 I interviewed Robert Wood Lynn for the Fall, 1994
issue of Initiatives in Religion. Readers might be interested in looking
at that Conversation (see page 3 of the Fall, 1994 issue) before going
on to read this one because both pieces should be understood as a
reflection of a thoughtful journey. Lynn, former Senior Vice-president
for Religion at Lilly Endowment, is one of today's most profound
thinkers about religion and money; he is the first to admit, however,
that he has come a long way from where he was in 1994 and that the road
ahead is still full of bumps and snares. He is very aware that his is
often a lonely journey, especially because much of the research and
writing on this topic is done from the top down by church leaders
interested in solving financial problems, or by academics who are intent
on measuring and comparing who is giving and who is not, who is giving
more than whom, and so forth. While admiring and recognizing the
validity of these approaches to religion and money, Lynn makes it clear
that these only partially get to the heart of the relationship between
religion and money and that his interests and approach lie elsewhere.
The following conversation is edited.
Q. When I spoke with you last, you were hoping to encourage a national
conversation that could assist church leaders and seminary faculties to
gain a new level of understanding about the importance of talking about
religion and money in the open. Has this conversation been occurring?
A. I have engaged in numerous conversations across the continent, in
groups as small as ten people and in much larger groups. I have had the
privilege of listening to clergy and laity of all traditions. What
happen most of the time is that these conversations are shaped and
formed by a focus on fund raising itself. Now please understand, I
recognize the unavoidable need and the importance of fund raising and I
honor fundraisers. But I find that the prevailing concentration upon
fund raising eclipses all other issues that should be part of any
conversation about faith and money.
Q. What do people say to you when you want to talk about religion and
money?
A. I ask people everywhere why they want to talk about faith and money.
And they often answer by citing their immediate need to raise money.
They simply are not free to roam the territory and ask significant
questions. I think they take their cues from the literature that
dominates most attempts to tackle the issue of faith and money. Such
literature reflects the interests of the national, denominational
leaders, talking from the top down. Their concerns for fund raising are
truly legitimate, but they are not always free to ask how the givers in
the pews think about giving, how they analyze their own motivations, and
how money issues relate to personal faith issues. I don't think the
people in the pews are seriously interested in who is winning the
denominational giving derby. This is not an important question for the
rank and file. The compilation of data and the sociological studies are
useful for church leaders, but they do not excite the passions of the
ordinary people who worship in the churches. I want to understand more
than fund raising and the amounts given and received; I want to
understand why people give in historical and theological contexts.
Q. What have you been learning as you have looked back at giving to the
churches since the Colonial times?
A. I can best describe my findings and my thinking as a metaphorical
triptych. In a way I am kind of like a 19th century painter, putting my
vision down in a series of paintings. My first painting covers Colonial
America, the 17th and 18th centuries. The second one delineates the 19th
and early 20th centuries. And the third is from mid to late 20th
century. On that first canvas, the Colonial period can be seen as an
"era of charity." Then, in the 19th century, the word
"charity" became tainted in some eyes and there was a marked shift to
what I paint as an "era of benevolence." Finally I visualize our own
century as an "era of stewardship."
Q. Please describe the charity of the Colonial era and explain how--or
why--the concept of charity could become tainted.
A. We must remind ourselves what the Colonial era was like. It was a
time when great importance was placed on the concept of community. Of
fundamental importance to the Christians of the 17th and 18th
centuries was care for one another, care for the immediate members of
one's own community. We can go back to the writers of that time, to the
exhortations of leaders such as John Winthrop who tells his fellow
Colonists, in that famous piece where he talks of the city on the hill,
that "we must be knit together as one man." Winthrop warns his fellows
about seeking great things for themselves. And then there was William
Bradford, another whose words reveal the temper of the time. He was the
first governor of Plymouth and he saw how several people in his
community, through their exemplary giving of service, made a critical
difference in the life of that community. People such as Bradford and
Winthrop understood mutuality as the basis of charity. And then, you
ask, how could the concept of charity become corrupted? This came about
in the 19th century as mutuality became strained and as
communities grew. A certain kind of condescension began to creep in when
persons were seen to be recipients of charity; persons were seen as
receiving "hand-outs." There was need for a fresh way of understanding
giving and so the notion of "systematic benevolence" gradually emerged
in the 19th century. The new imperative was mission--mission
to others in this country, mission to the world.
With the expanding notion of mission came the need for "more" money.
There was constant pressure for "more" and it drove all the
participants--denominational leaders, pastors, and churchgoers alike--to
a concentration on fund raising. No matter how much was raised, more was
required. There was never enough. This pressure drove Protestants to
become experts in fund raising. Indeed, the beginnings of what is now
called "development" can be traced back to certain innovations in
Protestant church life in the late 19th century. Today fund
raising has become a huge industry and an omnipresent cultural power.
Unfortunately, we have not been quick to discern how it shapes our faith
and our lives.
Q. A lot of Protestant writing about giving warns us about the dangers
of greed, avarice, and covetousness. Can you talk about this?
A. I don't think we get anywhere beating people with ideas of greed.
It's not representative of the richness of the Christian tradition. If
you remember the deadly vices that were so much a part of the medieval
tradition, there is another vice beside greed that bears examining. That
vice is sloth which can be described in today's terms as apathy. In the
Colonial period apathy manifested itself as indifference to the
stranger. Remember that I said the Puritans focused on their own town,
the immediate members of their community. They didn't embrace strangers;
in fact, they were often quick to encourage strangers to move on. They
lacked the moral imagination to see the needs of others--for instance,
the Native Americans.
Let me digress for a moment. Robert Putnam recently wrote a
well-received book entitled Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of
American Community. His reflections in the book came out of his own
experiences as a student of the differing political cultures in the
northern and southern parts of Italy. He noticed that in the north there
was a civic culture that encouraged and enabled people to care for each
other, a culture that inspired volunteerism. In the south, on the other
hand, he saw how the familial ethic is so strong that all energy is
poured into maintaining the family and thus there is much less
infrastructure to make a civic life, like that of the north, possible.
Putnam's reflections on Italian life led him to ponder a critical
question: how far does a community extend? Does it stop at the family?
Does it stop at the neighborhood? Does it stop at the town wall? He
realized that civic virtue suffers if there is a tight noose around
"community" and that people cease caring, if they ever did, for "the
other."
Q. Didn't concern for "the other" come about in that time you refer to
as the time of "systematic benevolence" when there was great concern for
foreign missions?
A. The motif of "mission" is truly at the heart of the 19th
century canvas that I am painting. There was a mission imperative, both
national and foreign, and it was a time of extraordinary growth and
development within the churches. By the 19th century American
Protestants believed they were on the brink of a great new age. They
were intent upon transforming the world. Theirs was the language of
world conquest.
The notion of "sacrificial giving" came about during this time when
there was feverish concern for the possibility of a great and new
future. God's reign seemed to be within reach. Some even thought it was
simply a matter of money. "How much would it cost to convert the whole
world?" From the asking of such questions it was not a very large leap
to arrive at the concept of tithing.
Q. Tithing seems to mean a lot of different things to different people.
How is that?
A. In the "old world" tithing was usually a state tax imposed upon
people to pay for the established church's needs. At first, Americans,
by and large, resisted this notion. In the middle of the 19th
century, however, it began to make more sense. Tithing offered an
alternative to fundraising. Encourage everyone to give ten percent of
their income. If everyone became a tither, the result would dramatically
increase the total amount given and so the coercive pressure of fund
raising would no longer be necessary. The freedom from coercion and the
equality of everyone giving the same percentage reflected two important
American values. In the last hundred years different versions of tithing
have become popular: for instance, we see examples of a "modern tithe"
where persons give 5% to their church and 5% to community non-profit
organizations of their choice.
Remember, I talked about the vices before and that greed is not always
the predominant one associated with money. In the 19th
century, pride could be a real temptation. People could take pride in
what they gave and enjoy others' dependency on them. This attitude, of
course, is an important challenge for all Christians who are serious
about giving. Today we see pride arising out of affluence. People can
control others through their giving. This pride, and the apathy I talked
about before, is just as much a problem as greed.
Q. So now we are getting up to your depiction of the 20th
century. How does it look in your triptych?
A. In our own time the concept of stewardship has become popular. It has
biblical roots and is understood to mean the way in which a Christian
takes good care of his/her life and possessions. We talk about
stewardship of "time, talent, and treasure" although I would say that
the churches have never quite followed through on helping people to be
good stewards of their time and talent. The churches have dwelt a lot,
however, on stewardship of "treasure." Cultural and religious pressure
and competition have moved us, one generation after another, to focus on
the bottom line.
Much is different today from the past centuries. We live in a largely
pluralistic society and there is great awareness of diversity and of
what our diversity can teach us. If we are inclined to listen to the
variety of voices speaking in our pluralistic society, we soon find that
there are considerable sources of wisdom in some traditions regarding
giving. So it's good to know that John Mulder and Dianne Reistroffer are
editing a collection of writings on giving out of the Jewish and
Christian traditions. These selections will gather wisdom from across
the centuries. In contrast, most of the available Protestant literature
reflects a parochial preoccupation with 20th century interpretations of
giving. We have benefited from the ecumenical moment of the last century
but we haven't truly taken advantage of what we might learn about giving
by exploring other traditions and their rich histories.
Let me turn the tables and ask you a question. How often do you find
people actually talking about why they give? (The answer to that was
"rarely.") Only a few communities encourage open and candid
conversations about giving. I have heard of a Mennonite congregation in
northern Indiana in which the members meet in small groups to talk about
their responsibilities as givers. The people even bring their tax forms
to these meetings. They take it very seriously.
When you go out and really listen to the people in congregations you
often hear them ask potentially important questions about giving. They
want to know how they can be genuinely creative givers. Yet in many
American Protestant and Catholic communities the question pressed upon
lay people has been "How much should be given?" instead of "How well do
we give?" Giving is still seen as a private activity and frank
conversations about giving are all too infrequent.
Q. What needs to be done?
A. We can encourage givers to find ways to candidly talk with one
another. We can encourage people to have the freedom to be critical of
themselves as givers and of each other. We need to do this if for no
other reason than to encourage people to be responsible in the act of
giving. We also need to encourage people to discover their own
traditions of giving. In my current immersion in biographies and
autobiographies, I am slowly becoming aware of the unstated personal
attitudes and cultural norms that permeate issues involving faith and
money. It is interesting; for example, that American Protestants often
suspect that church-based conversation about giving is somehow another
fund raising ploy. I hope there will be settings where givers can
develop common theological understandings of giving.
Q. I would say that you are developing a theology of giving. Is that
correct?
A. Yes, I hope my historical work will contribute to deeper theological
understandings of giving. In the coming years I will focus my research
efforts on discovering the images of good Christian givers over four
centuries of New England life. I want to understand what a "culture of
giving" looks like--my metaphor of painting these periods reflects my
desire to show how the periods looked and how the people acted out of
their faith commitments. I will study different religious traditions and
different locales throughout New England.
And I will continue to encourage others to become interested in how the
ordinary people develop their own conscience around the issue of giving.
I will focus upon understanding the giving by people of modest means,
not the new wealthy, and not the old wealthy. I am interested in how
people's attitudes toward money and toward giving money away relate to
their faith life.
You could say that by painting this picture I am trying to take what has
been so privatized--money and faith--and make visible what has been
hidden and mysterious. I want to hang these pictures on the wall for all
to see and understand. With such understanding will come deepening of
faith and more genuine attitudes about charity, and generosity, and
community, and our responsibility to "the other."
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