Words and Pictures
Secular liberals love to portray themselves as the ones who care. They care about the poor, the sick, the arts, the trendy charity, etc. They portray conservatives, especially Christian conservatives as uncaring and greedy. Does the data back that up? Do the words and the pictures go together? NO !
Who Cares Most? ... Who Gives Most?
Of course Christians out give secular liberals when we look at church / religious giving. But what about when we look at overall giving and non-religious giving? According to the data, committed Christians out give secular liberals on every front... in every way!
Conservative Secular ...
Christian Not Religious
% giving to charity 91% 66%
% volunteering each year 67% 44%
# of times volunteering 12 6
% giving to secular charities 71% 61%
% volunteering w/ secular orgs. 60% 39%
$ of annual secular gifts $532 $467
Source: SCCBS N=29,233 (Column label are paraphrased by me)
An Old Saying
There is an old saying...
What you do speaks so loudly that I can't hear what you are saying.
When Big Government/Secular Liberals "preach" to us about caring for the needy, imagine a bubble above their heads saying...
Do as I say, not as I do!
Don't Be Proud... The Bar IS LOW
Liberal hypocrisy doesn't let us off the hook!
If we advocate: free markets... actually following the Constitution... drastically reducing the size of government, especially federal government.... we have to continue to give time and money to charities. The fact that we give more time and money to both religious and secular charities does not mean that we are where we need to be. It just means that they are the ones that are greedy hypocrites.
If Christians funded their ministries with a Biblical level of tithing, we would put many functions of government out of business.
Don't wait for smaller government... give more... take back from government what they shouldn't be doing in the first place!
1 comments:
Daniel Dennett talks about the roots of religiosity/generosity in his book, Breaking The Spell. He posits that there is a genetic predisposition in some people to either of those behaviors and likely both at once.
He also argues that there is an evolutionary advantage to both; in that they offer group cohesion and aid the passing on of social mores and wisdom.
So it is not likely true that "secular liberals" as you put it are less giving because they are secular or liberal, but because of genetic predisposition to be less inclined to favor group cohesion and faith.
I am an Atheist, yet a Capitalist. So there must not be a direct causal relationship between secularism and liberalism.
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