Religion and charity
December 19, 2006| By Nathaniel Ward
Faith plays a very direct role in determining who’s prone to make charitable gifts, author Arthur Brooks explained yesterday in The Heritage Foundation’s Lehrman Auditorium. Through his research, the author of Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth about Compassionate Conservatism found that religious individuals give more to charity than do non-religious individuals.
“There’s no comparison” between the charitable giving habits of those who attend religious services and those who don’t, Brooks said.
Compared to secular people, religious people:
- Are more likely to give money. More than 90 percent of religious people give money every year, compared to 66 percent of those who are secular.
- Are more likely to volunteer their time. Two-thirds of religious people volunteer each year, compared to 44 percent of secular people.
- Give about four times as much money.
- Are more likely to give and volunteer even for purely secular activities (groups not connected to religious causes).
- Are twice as likely to give blood and engage in other acts of generosity and compassion.
In his research, which controlled for other factors like geography, race, politics and education, he found that religion trumps all other explanations for charitable giving. What’s more, which religion an individual subscribes to makes little difference: “It has to do with practice, not religion itself.”
“I have never found a way, in all of my research, in which secular people give more than religious people,” Brooks argued. “It doesn’t matter how you measure religion.”
Click here to watch the event online and find out all the details (Windows Media format)
Nathaniel Ward is the Editor of MyHeritage.org—a website for members and supporters of The Heritage Foundation.
