house churches

, , , , , , , ,

To tithe or not to tithe: Should 21st Century Christians give church 10% of their income?

, , , , , , , ,
To tithe or not to tithe: Should 21st Century Christians give church 10% of their income?

THE QUESTION:

Should 21st Century Christians still give 10% of their income to the church?

THE RELIGION GUY'S ANSWER:

A bad pun says that the week of a church's annual budget pledge drive the pastor preaches the Sermon on the Amount. Many churches are fretting about amounts these days, hoping attendance and offering-plate receipts will recover from the COVID crisis.

How much should modern-day Christians donate to support their churches? The oft-cited standard is the "tithe," a biblical term for 10% of income. But Keith Giles, a "progressive Christian" blogger at Patheos.com, argued that there are "very good reasons to stop tithing your 10% every week."

Definitions: Should that be 10% of wealth and accumulated assets or only income? Should all 10% go to the church only with any other giving counted beyond the 10%, or does the tithe cover all religious and charitable donations? Also, of course, the very different biblical situation involved gifts of agricultural produce, not money.

Speaking of the ancient context, Giles's main theme is that tithing was part of a bypassed Old Testament system that provided upkeep for the Jerusalem Temple and the priests working there who had no other livelihood. The Romans destroyed the Temple in A.D. 70 so there's no Temple or priesthood that need support.

However, that argument ignores that today's clergy similarly live off believers' financial support in order to carry out religious work. In fact, clergy typically get lower pay than other professionals with comparable years of training.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , , , , , ,

Can Christianity save China? There might be more to that question than westerners imagine

, , , , , , , , , , , ,
Can Christianity save China? There might be more to that question than westerners imagine

Tear your eyes away from the White House campaign for a moment and consider the coming 50 years in an officially atheistic land with the world’s biggest population.

The surprising question at the top of this post is the headline of a July 14 piece for The Week by Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry, a France-based fellow of America’s conservative Ethics and Public Policy Center.

Simultaneously we get the same point from prominent human rights activist Yu Jie, a 2003 convert to Christianity now living in exile near Washington, D.C. Writing in First Things, he contends that “neither the dead hand of Communism, nor the cynical imitation of Confucianism,” nor democracy, nor capitalism, will determine what happens to his homeland. “Christianity is China’s future.”

If that’s possibly so, such a cultural earthquake demands substantive journalism.  Why would Yu or Gobry think such a thing?

First, Yu says, Christianity is “the largest force in China outside the Communist Party.” Probably true, because Communism stamped out normal institutions of civil society.

Second, Purdue University sociologist Fenggang Yang estimates China’s Christians number 60 million plus.  (Believers often offer higher numbers.) Several million more convert each year, among them a notable number of urban intellectuals. He figures if this growth rate persists by 2030, the mainland’s 200 million would be the largest Christian population in any nation, surpassing the U.S.


Please respect our Commenting Policy
, , , , , , , , ,

Big picture: Will global Islam overtake Christianity by 2050?

, , , , , , , , ,
Big picture: Will global Islam overtake Christianity by 2050?

The Pew Research Center scored ample ink at GetReligion and elsewhere with its important April report on global trends that all religion writers will want to keep on file: “The Future of World Religions: Growth Projections, 2010–2050" (.pdf file here). The 245-page publication provides religious population estimates as of 2050 for each of the 198 nations and territories that have  populations of 100,000 and above, by calculating such factors as birth rates, age distribution, migration, life expectancy and  rates of switching between religions in 70 nations for which we have data.

The headline item was the Pew team’s estimate that “by 2050 there will be near parity between Muslims (2.8 billion, or 30 percent of the population) and Christians (2.9 billion, or 31 percent), possibly for the first time in history.” (Pew explains that Muslims might have outnumbered Christians sometime between 1000 and 1600 as Muslim forces repeatedly invaded Christian strongholds and the Black Death decimated Europe. But we’ll never know because estimates for the Middle Ages are “fraught with uncertainty.”)

The most significant response to Pew’s report (.pdf file here) comes from another essential resource for journalists, the Center for the Study of Global Christianity at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary.  That analysis tapped the annual CSGC survey for the International Bulletin of Missionary Research, which was expanded this time to include projections to 2050 (.pdf file here).  This center, which the Religion Guy recently visited, provides statistics for various reference books and has just began work on a 3d edition of its World Christian Encyclopedia.

As of 2050, CSGC projects a slightly lower global count than Pew for Muslims at 2.7 billion, and a considerably higher 3.4 billion for Christians.

Why the disparity?


Please respect our Commenting Policy