GENEROSITY & Religious participation, in most settings, increases generosity.

Commentary by Dr. Whitesel: participation in a religious community has always shown to result in increased generosity. These results have been validated by the scholarly community across multiple scholarly studies. Therefore, a few years ago when one survey came out with the opposite results (e.g. that religious participation lowers generosity) there was widespread suspicion in the research methods. Dozens of scholarly studies could not be overturned by one study, even though national media outlets promoted the story. Below is an article about how this one survey has now been retracted because it had a major research error that skewed the results.

Does a Religious Upbringing Promote Generosity or Not? An erroneous paper on religion and generosity is finally retracted.

by Tyler J. VanderWeele, Psychology Today Magazine, 9/25/19.

2015, a paper by Jean Decety and co-authors reported that children who were brought up religiously were less generous. The paper received a great deal of attention, and was covered by over 80 media outlets including The Economist, the Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times, and Scientific American. As it turned out, however, the paper by Decety was wrong. Another scholar, Azim Shariff, a leading expert on religion and pro-social behavior, was surprised by the results, as his own research and meta-analysis (combining evidence across studies from many authors) indicated that religious participation, in most settings, increased generosity.

Decety’s credit, he released the data. And upon re-analysis, Shariff discovered that the results were due to a coding error. The data had been collected across numerous countries, e.g. United States, Canada, Turkey, etc. and the country information had been coded as “1, 2, 3…” Although Decety’s paper had reported that they had controlled for country, they had accidentally not controlled for each country, but just treated it as a single continuous variable so that, for example “Canada” (coded as 2) was twice the “United States” (coded as 1). Regardless of what one might think about the relative merits and rankings of countries, this is obviously not the right way to analyze data. When it was correctly analyzed, using separate indicators for each country, Decety’s “findings” disappeared. Shariff’s re-analysis and correction was published in the same journal, Current Biology, in 2016. The media, however, did not follow along. While it covered extensively the initial incorrect results, only four media outlets picked up the correction.

GENEROSITY & More Devout Means More Giving

by Aaron Earls, LifeWay, 1/30/17.

A survey from Pew Research found a correlation between religiosity and giving of time and money to others.

Religious individuals are more likely to have volunteered and donated to the poor in the last week compared to the irreligious. Highly religious Christians are also more likely than other self-identified Christians.

A third (33 percent) of Americans say they volunteered in the past week. However, 35 percent of religious individuals volunteered versus 27 percent of the unaffiliated.

Much of the difference comes from church involvement. Twelve percent of Christians say they volunteered mainly through their church and 21 percent say it was primarily through another organization. For the religiously unaffiliated, 24 percent volunteered outside of a church and only 2 percent say they served mainly through a church.

While church participation provides a built-in advantage in opportunities for volunteering for the religious, a similar gap exists in donating to the poor.

More than half (52 percent) of Christians say they donated money, time, or goods to help the poor in the past week. Fewer than a third (31 percent) of the unaffiliated say the same.

The most giving were among the adherents of non-Christian faiths (56 percent), evangelical Christians (55 percent), Jews (54 percent), mainline Protestants (49 percent), and Catholics (49 percent).

LEGACY & Leaving a Bigger, Better “Barn” & Combating Greed

“Someone out of the crowd said, “Teacher, order my brother to give me a fair share of the family inheritance.”

He (Jesus) replied, “Mister, what makes you think it’s any of my business to be a judge or mediator for you?” Speaking to the people, he went on, “Take care! Protect yourself against the least bit of greed. Life is not defined by what you have, even when you have a lot.” Then he told them this story: “The farm of a certain rich man produced a terrific crop. He talked to himself: ‘What can I do? My barn isn’t big enough for this harvest.’ Then he said, ‘Here’s what I’ll do: I’ll tear down my barns and build bigger ones. Then I’ll gather in all my grain and goods, and I’ll say to myself, Self, you’ve done well! You’ve got it made and can now retire. Take it easy and have the time of your life!’

“Just then God showed up and said, ‘Fool! Tonight you die. And your barnful of goods—who gets it?’ “That’s what happens when you fill your barn with Self and not with God.” He continued this subject with his disciples. “Don’t fuss about what’s on the table at mealtimes or if the clothes in your closet are in fashion. There is far more to your inner life than the food you put in your stomach, more to your outer appearance than the clothes you hang on your body. Look at the ravens, free and unfettered, not tied down to a job description, carefree in the care of God. And you count far more.

“Has anyone by fussing before the mirror ever gotten taller by so much as an inch? If fussing can’t even do that, why fuss at all? Walk into the fields and look at the wildflowers. They don’t fuss with their appearance—but have you ever seen color and design quite like it? The ten best-dressed men and women in the country look shabby alongside them. If God gives such attention to the wildflowers, most of them never even seen, don’t you think he’ll attend to you, take pride in you, do his best for you?

“What I’m trying to do here is get you to relax, not be so preoccupied with getting so you can respond to God’s giving. People who don’t know God and the way he works fuss over these things, but you know both God and how he works. Steep yourself in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. You’ll find all your everyday human concerns will be met. Don’t be afraid of missing out. You’re my dearest friends! The Father wants to give you the very kingdom itself.

“Be generous. Give to the poor. Get yourselves a bank that can’t go bankrupt, a bank in heaven far from bankrobbers, safe from embezzlers, a bank you can bank on. It’s obvious, isn’t it? The place where your treasure is, is the place you will most want to be, and end up being.” ‭
‭

Luke‬ ‭12:13-34‬ ‭MSG‬‬

Read more at … http://bible.com/97/luk.12.13-34.msg

GENEROSITY & Do not be so preoccupied with getting so you can respond to God’s giving

“He (Jesus) continued this subject with his disciples.

‘Don’t fuss about what’s on the table at mealtimes or if the clothes in your closet are in fashion. There is far more to your inner life than the food you put in your stomach, more to your outer appearance than the clothes you hang on your body. Look at the ravens, free and unfettered, not tied down to a job description, carefree in the care of God. And you count far more.

‘What I’m trying to do here is get you to relax, not be so preoccupied with getting so you can respond to God’s giving. People who don’t know God and the way he works fuss over these things, but you know both God and how he works. Steep yourself in God-reality, God-initiative, God-provisions. You’ll find all your everyday human concerns will be met. Don’t be afraid of missing out. You’re my dearest friends! The Father wants to give you the very kingdom itself.

‘Be generous. Give to the poor. Get yourselves a bank that can’t go bankrupt, a bank in heaven far from bankrobbers, safe from embezzlers, a bank you can bank on. It’s obvious, isn’t it? The place where your treasure is, is the place you will most want to be, and end up being’.”

‭‭Luke‬ ‭12:22-24, 29-34‬ ‭MSG‬‬

#WesleyTour
#BibleQuote

CULTURAL BIASES & Don’t fuss about what’s on the table at mealtimes or if the clothes in your closet are hip.

“He (Jesus) continued this subject with his disciples.

‭‭Luke‬ ‭12:22-24, 29-32‬ ‭MSG‬‬

BIBLE & Stories of generosity amid diversity. A Leadership Exercise.

by Bob Whitesel, D.Min., Pd.D., 9/20/7/15.

I give my students an extra-credit exercise (that they seem to enjoy) which is also good for leadership development.

In the book “Forces for Good: The Six Practices of High-impact Nonprofits” (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2012) the authors Leslie Crutchfield and Heather Grant found the following:

Most organizations operate in a competitive mode rather than a partnership mode with similar organizations.

Even when they have the same mission most organizations operate in a competitive mode with other organizations, simply because they are reaching out to a different culture.

Here is a quote:

“…high-impact nonprofits work with and through other organizations – and they have much more impact than if they acted alone. As we explored this attribute in depth, we were struck by the enormous amounts of time and energy these groups spend sharing funding, expertise, leadership, power, and credit with likeminded allies. They build networks of other nonprofits in their field—with either formal or informal affiliations—and they work in coalitions to achieve collective goals. At times they make significant short-term organizational sacrifices to move the larger cause forward— they put their long-term vision and desire for impact above their own self-interest. And they do all this while managing and growing their own organizations. What they don’t do is focus exclusively on building their own empires or hoarding resources.” (p. 128).

Crutchfield and Grant warn against hoarding “funding, expertise, leadership, power, and credit” (2012:128) when they could instead be sharing these assets with like-minded allies.

Now, here is the Bible exercise. Have each leader look in the scriptures and pick a different story that illustrates no-stings-attached generosity to others who could be perceived as our physical or spiritual competitors.

The resultant Biblical stories can be helpful reminders of how God asks us to be generous while His Word diversifies, justifies and sanctifies different cultural groups.

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