When I speak at college campuses, I constantly hear the argument that if American evangelicals would just stop “obsessing” over “gays and abortion” and concentrate on serving the poor, then they’d be much more accepted. I’ve always thought the critique was disingenuous — just a manipulative way to convince Christians to shut up and accept the sexual revolution — so I thought I’d put it to a bit of a test. Where do evangelicals send their charitable dollars?
The numbers may surprise you.
And as you read, please note that this analysis doesn’t even include leading Mormon and Catholic charities, which would skew the ratios even more dramatically.
Instead of being focused on government funded abortions, why don't NOW, NARAL and Planned Parenthood focus on setting up a private revenue stream from liberal donors?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHeh, when are atheists and liberals going to stop obsessing over "Christian Nazis"? Or indeed, over any of the other hobgoblins of the Left?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseAsk these young skulls full of mush when they're going to stop obsessing about Christians and START obsessing about violence-prone, misogynistic, homophobic Islamic fundamentalists on their own campuses.
I'll bet you'll be able to hear a pin drop in the room once somebody asks that. ;)
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSince the left see the Evangelical church as an obstacle they have a hard time understanding us. Since we are the enemy there can't be anything good about us so they don't pay any attention to it. Besides if we did stop "obsessing on gays and abortion" and focused on helping the poor the would stop us there too. Then it would be why must we "impose" our views on the poor by sharing Christ, teaching them the Scriptures, helping them to be empowered by the Holy Spirit so that they can stand on their own too feet. It is so much more "generous" to keep the poor on the public dole for as long as possible so they will keep voting Democratic.
Thanks for the good work but as I know that you know you are stating what should be obvious.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abusewhose more obsessive the christian whose not ashamed of church teaching on abortion/gays or the collegians who are willing to put all of christianity aside for the same reason?
christianity is a revealed religion...you can't just pick and choose what parts of the revelation you are going to believe. christianity is not gnosticism.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseDid any of you actually read the article? Comparing the budgets of Focus on the Family and World Vision demonstrates very little about how evangelicals allocate their charitable contributions. For instance, in 2008 25% of World Vision's funding came from the government.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI remember reading (after Katrina) that the top three groups providing financial and other aid to the victims included the Southern Baptists and the Salvation Army. Yet that fact got very little play in the media.
But let Chick-Fil-A give some some food to a group which happens (among other things) to oppose gay marriage and it's big news. External Link
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseLeigh,
I call bull on your World Vision funding "fact". Offer proof.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHere is World Vision's 2010 annual report - it went down to 23% government funding.
External Link
click on the annual review brochure for a quick summary.
The 2008 info that I mentioned is here:
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Most likely.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIf anything, the obsession is from the left directed at Christians, not the other way around. Liberals own the "lamestream media" so that's why it looks like it does.
On abortion and gay "issues", there is little middle ground, so you are either for it, or very much against it. Since Christians oppose the liberal way of seeing things, they are the enemy.
Like the studies have shown time and time again, conservatives and Christians give more. Not that you would ever hear about it from the press. And most of the money goes towards the poor, not political issues that liberals throw money at.
Liberals use the tools (money and media) they have because they know they are minority on the issues and will never win at the ballot box.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseChristians are easily fooled by words. They believe "prohibited" means "unavailable" when it actually means "distributed by criminals".
The Baptists are the bootlegger's best friends.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI'd say Christians are obsessed with marriage and life. I guess debates on social issues depend on how the terms are characterized.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseTim in Ohio said it perfectly.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse1. For many of us conservative Christians, especially those of us that are younger, we see gay issues and abortion quite differently, no matter how intertwined they are often made to be. I can see homosexual acts as sinful, but I still see it as a highly complicated issue where I have very little enthusiasm to fight the “gay rights agenda.” An obnoxious jerk like Perez Hilton can inspire me to push against that agenda, but given the gay people I actually know, I really am not too worried about them. Mostly, I want to live and let live, insisting that the rights of individuals and churches to speak against homosexuality be upheld but not being too concerned that gays be allowed to serve in the military (I myself served in the Navy) or that their relationships are given many of the same benefits of hetero marriage. In contrast, abortion seems pretty clearly to be the taking of a human life, and a completely innocent one at that. It might be complicated to ban virtually all abortions, and like most pro-lifers, I don’t want to “judge” anyone, but abortion doesn’t seem to me nearly as morally complicated as gay rights.
2. Sadly, I find that judgment against conservative Christians comes just as strongly from politically liberal Christians as it does from irreligious liberals. Some of my Christians friends who are politically active on the left have no problem speaking about how conservative Christians don’t care about the poor, the environment, immigrants, minorities, etc. It’s not that they mean to be rude or unfair, but it’s just a sort of willful blindness they have. They choose not to investigate what their conservative brethren also do to help those in need and find it easier to rely on out-of-date stereotypes and anecdotes about certain judgmental, hypocritical social conservatives. In my experience, they tend to live in urban bubbles surrounded by likeminded people. They don’t really know tea partiers; they just rely on Jim Wallis to tell them what to think about tea partiers. But even if they knew what good individual Christian conservatives do, it is unlikely to change their opinion much, given how liberals (in my experience) seem to view the policies one advocates as being at least as important as how one actually lives.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseIt's not about gays and abortion.
Christians could vote for Ru Paul for President and for the head of Planned Parenthood for Vice President and the Christian-bashers wouldn't miss a stroke in their efforts to beat Christians into submission.
Don't be mislead. And don't feed the subterfuge by trying to justify Christians to these mutts. It's not going to work.
I repeat. This isn't about gays and abortion. This is about something much more fundamental (no pun intended).
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"Here is World Vision's 2010 annual report - it went down to 23% government funding."
And 51% private monetary donations and another 24% in-kind material donations. So instead of spending a billion dollars they're only spending (or giving equivalent) about $750 million. That's still over 5 times the $120 million given to Focus on the Family. Even Samaritan's Purse, the smallest of the three organizations listed in the article, had an operating budget of $320 million in 2009. And SP doesn't receive any federal funds that I can see.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse@Jeff and @Leigh, I'm glad to see people digging into the numbers. A few things to note:
First, as I note in the article, the Focus number is a bit misleading, since they spend the vast majority of their own budget on non-culture war related items, such as child-rearing, marital harmony, etc. Some Focus folks that I've talked to estimate than the culture war part of their budget isn't even close to 10%. So the non-culture war part of Focus's budget alone exceeds the combined total of many of the largest legal and advocacy groups.
Second, by selecting World Vision, Samaritan's Purse, and Compassion International only, I'm actually dramatically understating the total disparity. These numbers don't include vast numbers of other Christian nonprofits operating in this space (including, for example Salvation Army), yet the disparity is still massive. You could take every dime donated to any Christian culture war organization anywhere (local, state, and national levels) and not come close to these private donation numbers. Nor does my article reference Catholic and Mormon expenditures and is instead tied closely to evangelical organizations. Heck, the Mormon church alone has spent more than $1 billion on relief for the poor and distressed, not counting the private donations of LDS members themselves.
Third, as I said, these numbers also don't include such things as volunteer time. I did link to an estimate showing something on the order of 300,000 foreign missionaries, and World Vision alone reports more than 40,000 volunteers. Any given evangelical church sends out foreign mission teams every single year, building churches, building schools, digging wells, and doing all kinds of things that have nothing to do with "gays and abortion."
Finally, I didn't write the article to diminish the defense of marriage and especially the defense of unborn life. Those are vital issues, and indeed I spend much of my professional life fully engaged in those battles. We need some of us on that particular wall -- and we can always use more. We've got momentum in the battle to save the unborn, and now is not the time to grow weary in that fight.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseTo msulfy.
Simple answer. Leftists only want to spend taxpayers money on their goals, never their own. Even most of their actual charities, funded with their own voluntary contributions, spend most of their money lobbying for gov handouts, rather than directly helping those in need.
We need to understand what real "charity and compassion" is to seperate it from the phoney leftist variety. Real compassion requires the following:
1. The person providing the money does it with their own money, voluntarily.
2. The person donating the money has complete say on where it goes. If they disagree with the goals of the charity they can stop donations and choose another more to their liking, or even personally organize their own charity.
3. The person receiving the charity knows they are getting charity, that somebody else sacrificed to give to them, not something they have a "right" to. And if the charity decides they are no longer deserving, they can easily cut them off.
4. The person deciding where the money goes sacrifices far more with their contribution than they receive in benefits. Their only real benefit is the joy of giving and helping others.
Phony leftist gov "charity" violates all those principles:
1. The money comes from taxpayers, who are forced to pay the taxes, no voluntary donation involved.
2. The taxpayer has little choice in where their money goes, being just one small vote among many.
3. Persons receiving gov handouts often come to think of it as something they have a "right" to.
4. The politician deciding where the money goes receives campaign contributions from lobbying groups, votes from gov money recepients, and praise for their "compassion" while in fact sacrificing none of their own money, other than their own very minor share of taxes. Thus they receive all the benefits of their "compassion" while bearing none of the costs.
A note to those that ask "what would Jesus do". If Jesus was a leftist he would have organized a demonstration to demand a welfare program from Rome. Instead Jesus asked his followers to help the poor with their own money, personally, or distributed voluntary contributions he received from his folowers.
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