TruthBook Religious News Blog

One group’s formula for trying times: Live gratefully, spend less, buy justly, give more.

By Jane Lampman| Staff writer/
February 1, 2009 edition

In turbulent economic times, the watchwords are usually: Cut back. Live frugally. Hunker down and put money in safe places!

But here in Boston, small groups of churchgoers have been applying a different message to money management. During the past two years, they have studied what the Bible teaches about money and wealth, discussed their personal budgets, and taken concrete steps aimed at four commitments: “Living gratefully, spending less, buying justly, and giving more.”

With gratitude as a foundational principle, the study groups follow a 12-session curriculum called “Lazarus at the Gate,” referring to the challenging gospel story about a rich man who persistently ignored a beggar named Lazarus at his gate (Luke 16). They discuss passages from the Old or New Testaments that consider wealth as a blessing, a potential idol, a resource for meeting needs, and to be justly distributed.

Many participants say the experience has been eye-opening and life-changing, as they explore the meaning of economic discipleship.

Each individual decides on ways to live more simply, such as not buying sodas or snacks during the week or selling a car and taking public transportation instead. At the final session, they commit some of the resources saved from new spending habits to charitable organizations they’ve researched and prioritized.

The first group to follow the Lazarus program met once a month for 12 months in 2007.

“It was a fantastic experience. The group of 14 people wound up giving $40,000 to five organizations dealing with poverty around the world,” says Mako Nagasawa, of InterVarsity Campus Ministry. He and Gary Vanderpol, a Boston pastor, initiated the program, and worked with BFJN to offer it to churches in the area.

For Jo Hunter Adams and her husband, Eugene, the small-group experience brought remarkable results in their own lives along with an increased capacity to give.

“Creating our first budget and sharing it with the group really helped us. We didn’t buy anything we didn’t need, and we didn’t eat out,” says Ms. Adams, a public health worker. “We stayed away from ‘lifestyle inflation.’ ”

Instead of moving into a larger apartment as they had planned, Adams and her husband remained where they were.

As a result, the couple managed over the year to reduce the $50,000 they had in student loans to only $3,000. “It was miraculous!” she says.

A step in the process that really opened her eyes, she adds, was checking their financial position in the global economy on the website, globalrichlist.com. After entering their annual income, she learned that they were among the top 0.7 percent in the world. While she had always thought she could give time and energy to good causes but not much money, “now I see I can give a lot of money, actually,” she says.

What she most appreciates, however, is being able to live her Christian values more consistently. “I tended to think that being saved was the most important thing. Now I’m more interested in reflecting God’s love as much as possible,” she says. “And God wants us to be involved in dealing with poverty and justice.”

Along with Bible study, the Lazarus curriculum guides groups through research on global poverty and development. Participants educate each other about specific organizations active in development, microfinance, and fair trade.

Many involved speak of the way the Lazarus process builds community, enabling each group member to accomplish more than he or she would on their own. For instance, Letizia was giving away 1 or 2 percent of her yearly income though she had thought about giving more.

“Doing it in community lends a different joy and excitement,” she says. “This year is the first time I’ve been able to give 10 percent, and it comes from doing it with others.”

The question for many is whether they can sustain the lifestyle changes and commitments – or build on them. Some groups decide to continue meeting weekly or monthly. A few participants are leading new groups to spread the message. So far, 18 groups have completed the Lazarus program in Boston, and 15 more are getting under way this spring.

The curriculum is available on the Web (click here) to encourage churches in other parts of the country to sponsor groups.

It’s now being used in La Jolla, Calif., and Colorado Springs, Colo., and perhaps soon in New York, Mr. Nagasawa says. He’s also created an eight-week version for use by college students. The Lazarus program is part of a broader BFJN initiative to encourage people to consider what it might look like to have a “gratitude economy.”

Labels: frugality, generosity, gratitude, Jane Lampman, Lazarus at the Gate, the economy

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Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Giving Makes You Rich

by Arthur C. Brooks
November 2007 Issue

(Page one of two - as always, click on "external link" for full article)

New proof that it pays to be charitable.

In John Bunyan’s 1684 classic The Pilgrim’s Progress, the character Old Honest poses this riddle to the innkeeper Gaius: “A man there was, tho’ some did count him mad, / The more he cast away, the more he had.” Gaius solves the riddle thus: “He that bestows his Goods upon the Poor / Shall have as much again, and ten times more.”

Less poetically, the idea is this: Giving makes you rich. A lovely sentiment, to be sure, but quite backward-sounding to an economist. You obviously have to have money before you can give it away, right? Or in the pithy words of former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, “No one would remember the Good Samaritan if he’d only had good intentions—he had money too.”

Well, it turns out that Gaius was right, and new economic research backs him up. Emerging evidence—crunchy statistics from real data, not the mushy self-help stuff—supports the contention that giving stimulates prosperity, for both individuals and nations. Charity, it appears, can really make you rich.

The United States is a remarkably charitable nation. The Giving U.S.A. Foundation estimates that Americans donated nearly $300 billion to charity in 2006—more than the gross domestic product (the annualized value of goods and services produced within a nation) of all but 33 countries in the world. More than three-quarters of this came from private individuals. Additional research suggests that between 65 and 85 percent of Americans give to charities each year.

How does all this generosity relate to our high average levels of prosperity? Let’s begin with individuals and families. The Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey, completed in 2000, is a survey of about 30,000 people in more than 40 communities across the U.S. and is the best single source of data available on the civic participation of Americans. The S.C.C.B.S., which takes into account differences in education, age, race, religion, and other personal characteristics, shows that people who give charitably make significantly more money than those who don’t. While that seems like common sense, it turns out that the link in the data between giving and earning is not just one-way. People do give more when they become richer—research has shown that a 10 percent increase in income stimulates giving by about 7 percent—but people also grow wealthier when they give more.

How do we know this? When two variables like giving and income are interrelated, economists use something called an instrumental variable to see which is pushing and which is pulling. In a nutshell, that means selecting something that’s closely related to donations but not directly to income, like volunteering. Volunteers tend to be money givers and vice versa because of the same charitable impulse. But income doesn’t always directly affect volunteering. (While people have differing amounts of money, they all have the same amount of time.)

We start by predicting how much money people would donate based on how much they volunteer, regardless of income. This projection essentially strips out the role of income in giving. Next, see if that predicted donation level correlates with income. If it does and the correlation is positive, it means that giving pushes up income and not just vice versa.

Labels: Americans, Arthur C. Brooks, charity, generosity, Giving U.S.A. Foundation, income, Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey, wealth

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Sunday, September 02, 2007

Doing Good, and Feeling Better

Why Giving Back Could Make You Happier … and Healthier

By John Stossel and Sylvia Johnson
Aug. 20, 2007

How good would it feel if someone just gave you $1,000?

Last fall, Oprah Winfrey thrilled audience members with these words: "You will each go home with $1,000."

Then she said there was a catch: "You have to spend the money on someone other than your family."

They still applauded, but the smiles looked a little forced.

Yet maybe she did her audience a favor, because even though the audience had to give the money away, it could get back even more than they gave.

Stephen Post explains why in his new book, "Why Good Things Happen to Good People."
He reveals that new science shows giving -- money or time -- not only feels just as good as getting, but can actually improve your health.

"Giving is as good for the giver as it is for the receiver. Science says it's so. We'll be happier, healthier, and even -- odds are -- live a little longer if we're generous," Post said.

"Public health isn't just about bugs and staying away from lead. It's about doing unto others, and at the right dose, science says it's very good for you," he said.

Arthur Brooks, author of the new book, "Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism," also knows a lot about the current research on charity.
Brooks said, "There's evidence that it helps people with their asthma, in cardiovascular disease, weight loss, insomnia. When people have a lot of happiness, they do a lot better in their health as well."

Helping Others, Healing Themselves

That was true for former heart patients at Duke University Medical Center.
They were asked to visit current heart patients -- no particular agenda, just to listen and lend support. By doing that, the volunteers had better health after their heart attacks.

A similar study at the University of Miami by Dr. Gail Ironson followed HIV patients who volunteered, like Katherine Marshall Scott, who talks to teenagers about avoiding infection, and Stephen Baker, who counsels fellow HIV survivors.
These and other HIV patients who helped others had lower stress levels and higher immune resistance.

Scott's disease-fighting cells went up, from 200 to 800.

Baker says he could feel how volunteering improved his health.

"To get involved with someone else's problems makes your problems look a lot less," he said.

Service Learning

Many high schools require their students to volunteer.

It's called service learning. And oddly, even though the charity is forced, it still brings happy results. Teachers say students who volunteer raise their grades, and get higher SAT scores.

Abington High School student Jeff Rohrback said, "After service learning started, I got so involved into it, I started paying attention more, picked up my grades."
So "20/20" decided to see whether we could find a similar effect.

We put an ad on Craigslist recruiting people who were not currently volunteers. We introduced them to Post, and asked them to try it for one week.

But first, Post had them fill out a questionnaire that asked how they felt about life, like how often during the week they felt calm and peaceful.

Children for Children, whose mission is to get children involved in giving, agreed to help us, as did the Salvation Army, which has many different programs, from soup kitchens to after-school activities for kids.

Then off they went -- bringing donated books to children at an elementary school, then reading to the kids and making scarves with the kids. One spent time in a truck handing out food to the poor. All four worked at a Harlem soup kitchen.

One week later we had them answer that questionnaire again.

This time their answers about how often they felt "calm and peaceful" changed from some of the time to most of the time.

The Helpers' High

"The helper's high has been measured physically," Post said. "We know there's an actual physiological state. It's quite euphoric."

The helper's high shows up in MRI brain scans.

People who give money show brain activity that's associated with feel-good chemicals like dopamine -- the same brain activity that happens when you receive money.
National Institutes of Health neuroscientist Jordan Grafman showed us the brain scans.

"Those brain structures that are activated when you get a reward are the same ones that are activated when you give. In fact, they're activated more," he told us.
We asked our volunteers after their week of service who had gotten more out of the experience: the people they helped, or they themselves?

Volunteer Daniel Smith didn't hesitate with his answer. "No brainer. Me, definitely."

Lelani Clark also felt renewed from her single week of volunteering.

"I just felt energized," she said. "We were so caught up in this energy of helping that it was like a buzz -- like a spiritual buzz."

Winfrey's audience members reported that, too. After a week of giving money away, many said they were changed.

Maybe we should call it selfish to help others, because it seems to help the givers more.

"If you want to define selfishness so widely as to include the warm glow that people feel in the aftermath of selflessly giving to others, guess what, we need more of it, not less of it," Post said.

So try it.

Get out and give your money or your time. You'll help someone else. … And you'll feel good, too.

This story originally aired on December 1, 2006.

Labels: 20/20, Arthur Brooks, charity, generosity, health, John Stossel, Oprah Winfrey, Stephen Post, students, Sylvia Johnson

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Friday, August 31, 2007

UBC study finds religion leads to more generosity

Subjects primed with words like 'spirit,' 'divine' and 'God' gave more money to strangers than control group, researchers say

David Wylie, CanWest News Service
Published: Thursday, August 30, 2007

Thinking about religion really does make people treat their neighbours as themselves, according to a new study.

Researchers from the University of B.C. found that priming people with words, such as "spirit, divine, God, sacred and prophet," prompted them to be more generous, said post-graduate student Azim Shariff.

"I was quite surprised that something that subtle would have this big of an impact," said Shariff, 26. "This is a twist on an age-old question -- does a belief in God influence moral behaviour?"

In the study, to be published in September in the journal Psychological Science, 125 participants were asked to unscramble sentences. Then they were given $10 and had to decide how much to keep and what amount to give away to a stranger.

Sixty-eight per cent of those who unscrambled sentences with religious words gave about half the money away. Meanwhile, most members of the control group, who worked on non-religious sentences, kept nearly all the money.

"I thought there would be some effect," Shariff said. "I didn't think it would be double."

Shariff and UBC associate professor Ara Norenzayan conducted their research between September 2005 and July 2006.

The method they used is a popular one in social psychology, Shariff said.

Shariff said he was inspired to study religion because its effect is "the central debate of our age." With a rash of anti-God books being released, the psychology student said he wanted to know what effect that message would have on people.

"If you have these books telling you that God doesn't exist, will that make you cheat more?" he asked.

In a second study, researchers investigated the strength of a "religious prime" compared to a "secular prime." They obtained almost identical results using concepts of civic responsibility and social justice with words, including "civic, jury, court, police and contract."

"These are compelling findings that have substantial impact on the study of social behaviour because they draw a causal relationship between religion and acting morally -- a topic of some debate," Shariff said. "They by no means indicate that religion is necessary for moral behaviour, but it can make a substantial contribution."

Labels: David Wylie, faith, generosity, God, morality, religion, University of B.C

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Thursday, July 26, 2007

Religious concepts promote cooperation

Exposure to religious and civic concepts both make people more generous.

25 July 2007
Matt Kaplan

A belief in God may have promoted the evolution of cooperative behaviour, say Canadian psychologists. They found that priming people with religious concepts makes them more generous — regardless of whether they declare themselves to be believers.

Notions of civic responsibility also promote cooperation, suggesting that religion might encourage altruism by invoking an omniscient judge of behaviour

To investigate how belief in supernatural agents might influence cooperation, Shariff and his colleague Ara Norenzayan used a word game to stealthily introduce religious concepts to their subjects.

Participants had to unscramble five-word sentences, dropping an extraneous word from each to create a grammatical four-word sentence. For example, "felt she eradicate spirit the" would become "she felt the spirit," and "dessert divine was fork the" could become "the dessert was divine." A control group unscrambled sentences made up of non-spiritual words.

Share and share alike

After this exercise, the participants played an economic decision-making game. Each player was given $10 to share with an anonymous recipient.

Participants primed with religious concepts gave their partner an average of $4.22, compared with only $1.84 in the control group. But those who declared themselves religious before the study were no more generous than non-believers.

"The effect of the religious prime was both large and surprising, especially considering that during exit interviews the participants were unaware of having been religiously primed," says Shariff.

A second study introduced a third group, primed with words associated with civic responsibility such as "jury", contract", and "police." This group behaved almost identically to that primed with religious concepts.

Common functions

"This research is really ground-breaking," says social psychologist Adam Cohen at Arizona State University, Tempe. "The subtle prime of religion is one of the greatest strengths of this research because it does not tip people off to what the study is about."

But why such priming makes people more charitable is unclear. "The fact that primes to civic institutions also produced more charitable behaviour gives some clues," he says. "Perhaps religion and these civic institutions have certain functions or effects in common."

Whether religion and civic responsibilities are equally effective spurs to cooperation remains to be seen. "We can't compare the relative strengths of religion and civics, or draw tight analogies to real-world situations," says Shariff. "What we can do is identify that both concepts have substantial effects on prosocial behaviour."

Labels: cooperation, generosity, God, Matt Kaplan, religion