This past week a study was released that estimated the economic impact of religion on the U.S. economy. The study concluded that the annual revenues of faith-based organizations totaled more than $378 Billion each year, making religion a bigger business than Facebook, Google, and Apple combined! If you read the actual study, you'll also see that the number could even be as high as $4 TRILLION, or nearly one quarter of America's GDP as the good folks over at Get Religion noted. Those are massive numbers!
While listening to NPR yesterday, one of the segments referred to this study. Since the study included organizations as varied as church congregations, social service agencies, and charities, the radio hosts asked the audience if they give to faith-based organizations. The responses were quite eye-opening.
Many (in fact most) of the callers I heard stated they did NOT give to churches or faith-based charities. The reasons given were several: Churches spend too much on themselves; faith-based charities don't offer anything non-faith based charities don't; I want to pay to help people, not to have someone preach; not enough money actually gets to people in need; there's not enough oversight or transparency. I was struck by the repeated cynicism.
However, my shock was likely due to the fact that I live within Christian circles. I have grown up around and worked with many Christian institutions that have done amazing good in communities. But perhaps these responses to the radio question reveal that much of our society does not automatically share that assumption. What do we do with this? What do we take away?
First, it would be rash to simply dismiss the criticisms. We could easily point to the fact that these faith-based charities have helped millions of lives. Or we could point to the largest faith-based sector--healthcare. An estimated 1 in 6 hospital beds in our country belong to a Catholic health system. One response to point out that religion both boosts the economy and helps millions of lives. However, maybe we should approach these criticisms with a bit more humility. Is there any truth to their concerns?
I think many of the concerns I heard on the radio were valid. When it comes to faith-based charities, I think many Christians will blindly give because an organization claims to be "Christian" without doing enough research into how effective the charity actually is. There may indeed be secular organizations that are run more effectively and have better research to support their methods, but sadly many Christians will give money to the one with the "Christian" name.
The same applies to media and entertainment. A "Christian" movie with sub-par plot and production values will be released and Christians will dump their wallets for it because it has a "Christian message." Or we will choose to donate money to Christian radio stations in order to hear more overly-produced, shallow theology, lacking-creativity songs, rather than donate to a public radio station that often prizes journalistic integrity and meaningful, original discussion.
The correlation between religion and money should give us pause, particularly when we see these tendencies among Christians. It is far too easy for Christians to be duped into a shallow commercialism as a substitute for our faith. Greed among both Christians themselves and those marketing to Christians is too strong a temptation. Yes religion is big business, but maybe it shouldn't be quite as big.
Second, we need to listen to the hesitations about giving to faith-based institutions when it comes to local congregations. After faith-based health care, one of the next largest economic segments was individual church congregations. Americans give nearly $75 billion per year to individual churches and religious congregations. In listening to the comments on the radio, this was the type of giving about which people seemed to have the greatest reservations.
But, truth-be-told, I too have big reservations in this area. It's no secret that the majority of the budget for most congregations is spent on the building and grounds. Whether it's a small, dying church overpaying to maintain an aging building, or a megachurch dropping millions for a new state-of-the-art facility complete with stage lights, smoke machines, and a coffee bar, the mentality is the same. I find this a particularly uncomfortable position when I read passages in Scripture, such as Acts 7 where Stephen is killed for challenging the idea that God can be contained to a physical building.
For years churches have assumed that people would give money to them. Or, when giving has waned, we have relied on a good sermon on "tithing" to guilt people into giving. However, those days may be fading fast. If congregations want people to give money, particularly younger people like myself, they will need to re-evaluate how they are spending that money. If congregations continue to spend the vast majority of their budgets on buildings, salaries, and internal programs rather than on ministry to their community, it will be harder and harder to justify the morality of such giving to its members or to the world.
Third, the criticisms of faith-based giving should illuminate a false assumption the church has helped promote. In listening to the various comments on the radio, there was a latent assumption in many of them that faith-based work was somehow inferior to government or secular social services. Embedded within this assumption is the belief that faith-based groups and congregations are primarily focused on "the spiritual." "Yes, churches may give back to their community, but that's not their primary calling," or so the thinking goes.
But churches have also unwittingly pushed this belief. By taming the Gospel down to a mere mental agreement with a set of propositions ("I'm a sinner"--"Jesus died for me"--"If I believe in Him I can go to heaven"), and by reducing our eschatology to an escape to a non-physical dimension called "heaven" we have set up the narrative that the church (and anything relating to faith) is only secondarily concerned with the physical world and with societal concerns. We reason: If it doesn't relate to something "spiritual" or pertain to saving a person's soul, then it doesn't matter.
This is a gross misunderstanding of the Gospel Jesus preached. The Gospel Jesus preached is not about getting into a spiritual realm called heaven; it is about declaring a new allegiance to a Lord and a Kingdom that challenge the empires and powers of the world. A proper understanding of the Gospel should teach us that faith is as much about physical manifestations of grace, mercy, and forgiveness in the world as it is about the personal, inner manifestations of those dynamics of those things. If the church itself could recapture this Kingdom vision of the Gospel, then perhaps the world around us would be less likely to believe the false division between faith, spirituality, and work in the real world.
Finally, this study and the resulting comments should prompt the us to remember religion's broad impact upon society. Our faith not only impacts people's lives in a personal, inward manner, but it has also profoundly shaped our culture for the better. If it were not for religion, there would be far fewer hospitals in our country. If it weren't for the role of faith, countless additional Americans would go hungry and be homeless each year. If it weren't for people and organizations of faith, many orphans and refugees would not be alive today.
The cynicism I heard on the radio tended to too quickly dismiss the massive force of this positive impact. But I can't help but wonder if it's because we as Christians have also neglected this aspect of our faith. As mentioned in my previous point, we have relegated faith to the realm of the personal and metaphysical. Studies like this one should remind us that there is so much more to our faith than that. It should inspire us to continue the work of social justice and compassion for our neighbors. It should drive us to become even more creative within our culture. We can't force outsiders to our faith to accept the positive role of religion in society, but we can live out our faith in such a way that it makes it impossible to ignore this positive impact.
In summary, this study should cause people of faith to both be thankful and to practice introspection. We may be thankful that our faiths have contributed so much good to society. However, we should also take a hard look at our practices and use of money to see when the criticisms of outsiders may in fact be warranted. To do any less would be to forsake our calling in the world.
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