We live in an age, alas, of predictable reporting and predictable opinions coming from the keyboards of predictable writers.
However, Yale University law professor Stephen L. Carter has, for a couple of decades, been one of the pundits who — in his essays, columns and books — very, very rarely fit into the predictable molds seen in the chattering classes.
This weekend’s think piece is a perfect example of Carter doing that thing that he does, in a Bloomberg column that ran under this double-decker headline:
The Salvation Army's Actions Speak Louder Than Its Theology
Judge volunteers on their actions, not their religious beliefs.
The hook for the piece is, logically enough, the Thanksgiving weekend and the appearance — from coast to coast — of the familiar Salvation Army red kettles and the bell ringers asking shoppers to make donations to help the poor and needy.
This image of American life and community has, of course, become controversial in recent years for a simple reason — the Salvation Army is a church that clings (hello President Barack Obama) to traditional Christian teachings on the Bible, marriage and sex. Toss in the decision by Chick fil-A leaders to add some waffling to their chicken and you have a mess in the public square.
So what does Carter have to add to this discussion?
… (In) keeping with the season of giving thanks, I want to focus on a different problem: the effects on the volunteer sector of any boycott based on the teachings of a religion.
Religious groups, regardless of their theology, provide assistance to millions who are unable to help themselves. Without religiously motivated volunteers, we would have scarcely any volunteer sector at all.
When scholars use the word “volunteering” in this context, they have in mind not putting in time to elect a candidate or support an issue. Rather, they refer to socially valuable behaviors that usually involve contact with individuals who are suffering: ladling food at a soup kitchen, teaching a course in a prison, reading to homeless children.
In short, helping actual people.
Social-science researchers have provided the facts that link this issue with the practice of religious teachings in daily life.
The correlation between volunteerism of this kind and measured religiosity is well established in the literature. Volunteers are significantly more likely than non-volunteers to be religious; and the religious are significantly more likely than the non-religious to volunteer. As religion declines, so does volunteering. If we put the religious volunteers out of business, a lot of people will suddenly be unhelped. We need all the volunteers we can get.
And we cannot reasonably expect to replace them with paid labor. According to the Urban Institute, the 8.7 billion hours volunteered in the U.S. in 2016 were worth about $187.4 billion. This works out to a value of about $21.50 per volunteered hour — which some might argue is too low. Although it is not entirely clear how these figures are calculated, they appear to represent the opportunity cost of volunteering. The volunteers, in other words, could earn that amount of money by doing something else.
Why, then, do they donate their time?
The donate their time because of the teachings of their faith, of course.
Carter isn’t done, yet. What, for example, does this have to do with the remarkable record of African-American churches, when it comes to helping their neighbors?