"David" wrote in message
...
What happens to that famous American giving statistic when you
remove
donations to churches? If you give because you think you'll go to
Hell if you don't that's not giving. It's paying protection to
gangsters.

Not as much as you think. I, personally, don't consider
a tithe as part of any charitable giving, since the tithe
tends to stay within the local parish and help keep the
parish running. If you've ever been to a parish council
or a church leadership meeting for your local church
come budget time, you'd be surprised at how little money
the vast majority of them actually have. Having been a
member of a parish council for some years in the 90's,
I know that the budget is often very tight for all save
the richest of churches, and all it takes is a major construction
expense to wipe out a budget.

That's not the charitable giving that Mark and others
are talking about; there's the sponsoring of children
overseas, the United Way, the Red Cross, and other ways
people give without having to send the dollar to Uncle Sam
first. At a university, you can find people who collect old
textbooks (which tend to be better than the newer ones,
IMHO) to send to schools overseas.

Are the motives always pure?? No. High school kids
may volunteer to help out because volunteering for
charitable causes looks good on a college application.
Other people want to advance a cause, political, religious
or otherwise. Still others are shamed into it. That doesn't
change the net effect, however. To pretend it doesn't
count because the motives aren't pure is like pretending
that Sweden and Norway and other countries that spend
a higher official percentage of government dollars on
overseas aid are doing it out of the goodness of their
hearts.

--Mike L.