How Much Do You Help the Church?

I

WHAT I am going to say does not apply to sincere and loyal church supporters. Neither does it apply to those who are hard-hit and therefore unable to do for their church what they would like to do. (Probably they more than make up for their financial inability by prayers and service.) Neither does this screed apply to any specific parish — surely not any to which the writer has ministered. Heaven forfend! These are generalizations from ministerial experience — such generalizations as any group of Protestant parsons would agree upon in their equivalent of Papal Bull sessions, ad clerum, sotto voce, and sub rosa. But these generalizations do concern a much larger group in the average church than is usually realized. It is the group that makes or breaks a church’s solvency. The truly sacrificial are only a minority. The rest of the parish shades off from vivid, vital loyalty to infrared and ultraviolet nominality — a wide spread of spectrum to spectral.

For the defensive and therefore hypersensitive, any frank talk about finances and the church is taboo. But such a nettle-question ought to be grasped firmly by vestries, elders, and clergy more often than it is. They find the problem persistent despite the rigorous censorship of a congregational psychology which considers it more than slightly indelicate for public mention. If these jottings seem to any reader unduly brash, let him ask himself why. Is his reason actually spiritual?

What a queer notion it is that churches are expected to be like orchids, to thrive and be exotically luxuriant on air. Money is too sordid and soiling a thing to be mentioned from chancels! Begging sermons do more harm than good, one fears. Resentment is roused by intruding into services pleas for contributions. The analogy of Elijah fed by ravens is dimly in the background of parochial policy.

If faith is right, support will come; so we are told. The tales of orphanages supported by prayer are triumphantly quoted — but such orphanages seem to be far-removed and little investigated. ‘The Lord will provide.’ Selah! This theory would work out perfectly if all of a congregation were like its ideal members, who give from sheer self-abnegating comprehension and passion for the Cause. They are the disciple band, disciplined by love’s realism to unostentatious sponsorship. But the remainder of the church folk? How many of them let themselves off more easily? Barometrically one can estimate their religious climate by their attitude toward church underwriting. The less the fidelity, the more revealing the donation.

To what extent should the church temper its wind to the unshorn black or gray sheep? Is ‘the customer always right’? Must the treasurer shrug his shoulders and meekly say nothing? An ecclesiastic of our acquaintance sometimes shows his intimate friends his collection of Donald Ducks. Donald Duck has no inhibitions; he can explode with luxurious abandon whenever he sees red. So this man, when irked beyond public complaisance, goes home and winds up a scape-duck and lets it picture his ire until his blood pressure lessens and he chuckles. After all, he does not wish his D. D. to stand for a Disney character.

It is downright pathetic to be forced into such childish expedients as separate name-and-number and number-andpledge lists which have no cross reference, in order that the account books can be kept without names and that sealed statements, designated only by numbers, can be addressed by a second person from the second register. Before printing, that statement will have been rewritten perhaps six times until, with innocuous tact, it coos that this account seems not to have been completed by the sum of two dollars and forty cents, but of course errors may have crept into our books and we shall be grateful to be notified if this unfortunate possibility has occurred — and so forth. When the treasurer or cleric picks up his newspaper and sees the published Community Fund donations he wonders whether publicity has not entered into the giving of the amounts some of his people are willing to have blazoned in those lists. He almost wishes he might avail himself of this method, denied him by the tiptoe secrecy of the church’s alms. He would not dare to list the names of contributors on a chart in the church vestibule, even without any indication of the sum of their benefactions. One bold missioner once did that, with a space on the chart for every Sunday’s envelope to be checked. Yes, that year he had ‘marvelous results’ in promptitude of payment. But when the next canvass came around he found an embarrassing strike against subscribing at all.

Is this animus against knowing who gives what, shared by duly elected elders, deacons, or vestrymen, mainly defensive? Realists should have nothing to hide from legitimate administrators. The rapt and childlike, whose rose-petal delicacy of spirituality is bruised by mention of the kirk’s overhead, are joined by those who use this extreme sensitivity as camouflage. One remonstrant exploded with wrath because his preacher had been so indelicate as to assert from the pulpit that even Jesus of Nazareth had to be financed for His ministry.

All this is difficult (and humorous) enough, but the loose offering is more so. That loose offering comes from two groups — those who have already paid a lump sum in advance, but who would not think of letting the plate go by untouched each Sunday, and the far more numerous company of non-pledgers or unaffiliated. In the usual city church, the average amount per loose-offering worshiper, after the number of envelopes has been subtracted from the attendance total and even the extra-giving few have been included, works out seven to nine cents per person. The more ‘popular’ the service — that is, the more of a special feature it has to draw a crowd — the lower that average sinks. Yet it would be distinctly bad taste to remind such people that even a third-rate movie would cost them three times as much. One angry treasurer went so far as to count the number of coins on the plate. After meticulous allowance for those probably otherwise accounted for, he announced to his Board (confidentially, of course!) that in his large church more than one sixth of the congregation could not have put in a single penny. What a puzzle is the complex that brings a person to church for supposedly religious purposes and then lets him drop in a bad nickel or an out-of-town car token!

Many a Protestant envies the Roman Catholic system of the man at the little table by the door, collecting a flat-rate seat charge, with all extra offerings beyond that assured minimum. Yet whispers come that this does not solve the bread-and-butter bill of these parishes. The prevalence of Beano and Bingo evenings ratifies those whispers, the size of the major prizes manifesting the hoped-for net profits. I have heard it said that in certain parishes Beano annually brings in almost twice the total of the Sabbath income. So, quite plainly, there is no oasis of plenitude from voluntary subscriptions anywhere among the communions.

Money talks. Sometimes it even shouts. Once you know its tongue, it plainly says how much adherents really care. To those who lead the Church Militant it proclaims who are actually its Gideon’s army. No second sight is required to know who gives from the top of his purse and who from the bottom of his heart. Even the tiniest gift, if sacrificial, is sacramental; it conveys Grace. But tips are revealing: they have little Grace to impart from their grudging self-withholders. Money talks.

No, this does not mean judgment by mere amount. Widow’s mites still have shining aureoles. Any discriminating administrant will be able to evaluate the gift by the evident consecration of the giver. In daily, unostentatious ways what a man is will out. Anyone but a dolt can estimate roughly proportionate ability and offerings. He cannot fail to reverence the twenty-cent pledge of the young man who walks three miles, to and fro, to save carfare and give the money to the church. He cannot be unimpressed by the deserted wife with three youngsters who offers to launder the altar linens in lieu of a pledge. In contrast, the lady with the new mink cape who gives less than she must spend on her inescapable perfumes seems to merit a ‘Mene, Teke’ all her own. And the man who pays a much larger sum for his golf than for his and his family’s sacraments must not hope to escape the suspicion that his outlay represents his proportional caring.

At Every-Member Canvass time it gets to be almost a game, along with the checkup of the parish list and the discovery of family happenings no little bird has been prompt to report, to make a collection of new alibis. There is a vast difference between excuses and reasons. Excuses do not excuse; they merely state a preference. The volubility of evasive dodgers, and their naive expectation that the smoke screen deceives, amaze the parish ambassador. Such are clearly not ‘God’s poor,’ whom it is high privilege to assure that lack of money must never cause them to deprive themselves of the church at the time they need it most for their morale. Reasons have a way of ringing true, compelling both compassion and implicit acceptance.

II

There is much covert curiosity over ministerial fees. It isn’t only the Rectory children at the top of the stairs who want to know ‘How much didja get?’

Most Protestant churches have an unwritten agreement, sometimes frankly stated, that for their own legitimate supporting members there is no expectation of a fee for any needed ministration. There are no charges to the family of God for the normal use of its own church. Heat and light and janitorial incidentals, as well as the minister, are freely theirs. But when non-members or non-supporters shop around and choose a certain church for their exceptional occasion should there not be a charge to cover costs? And, no matter what he does with it, should not the minister have his honorarium? It would seem that he is as important to the ceremony as the organist, but he does not often fare as well.

Weddings are in a slightly different category from funerals or baptisms or special meetings (‘with a few words by one who needs no introduction’). Weddings are legal functions as well as religious. The law provides for a minimum fee, perhaps so that justices of the peace may not feel they are undersold. Custom dictates that the groom shall give the officiating cleric a fee, which the dutiful cleric as customarily turns over to his wife.

Here again — and indelicately — money talks. The calibre of wedding participants or of exploiters is obvious in their attitude toward costs and a fee. The simple wedding filled with beautiful emotion will probably end with a sacrificial gift. The elaborate wedding may also show deep sincerity by tangible symbol to the representative of the church that blesses the mating. But the ‘splurgy ‘ wedding is more than likely to reveal its lack of profound mysticism not only by cavalier treatment of the incidentally necessary clergyman but also by sundry flippancies and nonreligious emphases. Occasionally, indeed, an ostentatious wedding may not even produce a note of thanks to the man of God who has had the preliminary interviews (endeavoring to make marriage seem awesomely holy), the difficult rehearsal, and the supervision of his church’s readiness.

The same holds true of funerals involving those not of the parish. The more religious the people, the more evidence of appreciation there will be. But just what idea of the church has a bereaved family who send for a minister ‘someone has recommended,’ have him come out for prefatory details, then accept the service and committal — and ‘the rest is silence’? Unbelievable? Oh no. One such funeral proved to be a case of a virulently contagious disease where the family insisted on an opened coffin, and the parson, discovering a local church connection, was told, ‘You see, we didn’t want to expose our minister.’

Make no mistake: the decent cleric is not on the still hunt for fees. He usually shrugs his shoulders and smiles wryly and forgets the personal side of slights. He takes as tokens of moving appreciation such grace-banknotes as incidentally come for ministries rendered, and uses them for something extra-gracious and graciously extra. But his soul retches when pleasant, or less than pleasant, pagans misuse the institution of which he is a steward, as if someone had insulted his beloved and he were helpless to punish. He can’t bear to have the honor of the church profaned — but he has to bear it! Even a physician of the soul recognizes anæmia of sensibility by its symptoms. Per contra, he recognizes tingling moral health. As a cinder in the eye is more painful than one on the back of the hand, so he is irked when ‘society’ sees no wrong in the exploitation of the church’s offices.

III

Every denomination is gravely concerned over the developments of the last decade or two and their effect on gifts to the churches. Each one has to make drastic adjustments to meet the new state of affairs. There is no evasion of the fact that the churches must cut their garment of salvation according to the economic cloth allowed by world conditions. The depression, higher and higher taxes, threats of war, and the general chaos of competitive world-systems are all disrupting. The churches are in the same boat with other cultural institutions on a very choppy sea. But education, the arts, and social service can as a last resort be aided or even taken over by government, whereas the churches can never be.

One of the dangers of our era is the undermining of the imponderables by the apparently imperative bread-andbutter insistencies. The refining, mystic, idealistic, spiritually creative agencies are feeling the sand sifting out from beneath what they thought was reasonably solid rock. While no one can deny that it is unreasonable to expect calm Olympian philosophy and high poetic nuances of inspiration from the man who is fighting for solvency, nevertheless ‘man doth not live by bread alone,’ or even by ‘bread and circuses.’ Girls on strike in a textile mill painted on their banner,

‘ We want bread, but we want roses, too! ‘ Humanity, even in a time of economic revolution, must have its quota both of material and of spiritual nourishment.

Every college and school, every art museum, every symphony orchestra, every settlement house or charity, every church, feels the twinge of shrinkage in support. When one is forced to cut his budget he naturally blue-pencils first the items which appear both optional and beyond the grimly practical. By the casual or nominal member the church is too easily classed as a luxury. Only the thoroughly devoted, carrying minority will recognize that the church is basically essential as the sustainer of morale, and will pack its giving with increased support. In sacrifice value the benevolences of this group mount to heroism.

Do the arbiters of our economics nonchalantly ignore the declining support for all charities and churches? The government’s retort would be that there is exemption from income taxes, estate and inheritance taxes, for any charitable gifts up to 15 per cent of gross income — which makes the state really a participant in such donations, since it goes without the 8 to 76 per cent of these sums it would otherwise have collected. Indeed, it might be said that the state should receive grateful acknowledgment for its share of the gift and the donor should frankly admit that he has given only the net balance. The state could also protest that exemptors do not take anywhere near their possible leeway. For the present level of benevolent giving is averaged at 2.033 per cent of income. At least one substantial Stewardship Movement includes among its slogans and objectives ‘the lifting of the present level to the unprecedented figure of 3 per cent ‘! The state’s encouragement of benevolences therefore seems a bit hypothetical.

Total deductions have taken a toboggan slide. From 1924 to 1933 the diminuendo was from $533,000,000 to $252,000,000. For 1934 and 1935, the last years for which figures are available, there was an increase up to $305,000,000, but the climb out of the Slough of Despond is not yet over. Certainly the increase of intensity in church and charity pleas gives no basis for blithe optimism.

Perhaps the supporters of churches, institutions, and agencies might console themselves with the reasoning that this drop in their fortunes is only a part of the general depression if they did not see the Gargantuan expenditures of the government and the self-assessment of the populace for the ‘luxury trades.’ In the very worst years, 1932-1936, when colleges lost 18 per cent, community chests 24 per cent, charities 29 per cent, and churches 30 per cent, jewelry spendings leaped by 25 per cent, theatres 41 per cent, automobiles 203 per cent, and radios 302 per cent. A single major prize fight grosses more than a goodly college budget. A big football game involves more money than the entire missionary and social-service program of any leading denomination. More money goes for cosmetics and chewing gum than for all church offerings.

None of these expenditures are vicious in themselves. And the constituency for baseball or the movies or beauty aids is larger than for philanthropy. The two do not entirely overlap; therefore any effort to erase the disproportion will not reach most of those responsible for it. There is great disparity between a vestry meeting and a directors’ meeting, not so much in the personnel as in their proposed budget.

IV

Inside this total of shrinkage of benevolences the churches’ subdepartmental share has also been subdivided. Its loss in self-support has been alarming, but its loss in selfless extension work has been worse yet. The support of an institution from which givers get direct benefit is underwritten with some sense that this is not giving but paying for value desired and received. But such generosities as those for sustaining missions and allied activities are real giving; therefore, they suffer more from curtailment.

Coupled with the fact that only a minority of church members give conscientiously is the change in belief about missions. Missionary boards may persuade themselves that the falling off in their receipts is due to high taxes and lowered incomes, but pastors who are in touch with donors recognize a definite increase of resistance to making donations designed for extension of the Gospel beyond our borders. The number of otherwise loyal parishioners who doggedly announce that they ‘ don’t believe in missions’ is mounting. The calibre of these opponents gives pause. Discounting people who are plainly rationalizing their selfishness into a plausible alibi, we still have to face a backbone group of otherwise public-spirited, intelligent men and women who disagree with the very idea of Christian extraterritoriality. They are precisely the ones who make up the membership of the Foreign Policy Association, Community Fund teams, China Relief, Refugee Committees, and vestries!

The average annual per capita giving in twenty-two non-Roman communions now shows $11.28 for congregational expenses, against $2.19 for all non-local work. When these averages are broken back into detail, it cannot escape notice that the very communions that are predominantly Fundamentalist (or ‘orthodox’ or ‘conservative’ — choose your own term) are well above the Liberal (or ‘progressive’ or ‘modern-minded’) in their contributions. Let us consider the roster: —

The average of gifts beyond selfsupport coasts from 29.69 per cent of the total income with the United Presbyterian Church to 11.14, 12.30, and 10.02 per cent with the last-named trio. Small wonder we are being urged to ‘re-think missions.’

The diagnosis of the waning enthusiasm of the ‘advanced’ folk would take analysis of the subconscious. If, as Chesterton affirms, Christianity sings the Paradoxology even more than the Doxology, here is an illustration. It would seem consistent that the broadminded who feel the world’s pulse should also recognize that the Christian ethic is the only solution of our dangerous muddle, that the Golden Rule must be established between classes, nations, and races, and public opinion everywhere must be leavened by faith, hope, and charity. The ‘heathen’s’ distrust of soap-box evangelism is distrust of a type of missionary now long past. But that bitterness still persists in ignorance. Madras marked the moment after which no informed churchman could think of missions as an effort to pattern native churches according to Western denominationalism. Indigenous churches are now building their own self-expression according to their own idiom, asking of home churches only the aid of spiritual ambassadors and funds. The Christian missionary nowadays is social engineer, statesman, appreciative friend, skilled servant of need, and educator far more than he is an exhorter. Yet some otherwise wide-visioned liberals still set up a straw man and anathematize him. It is of small use to argue that foreign missions are not the whole story of church extension. In one sample major communion, hospitals, colleges, schools, orphanages, churches, native leaders, doctors, teachers, nurses, and Bible distributors account altogether for only thirty-nine cents of each dollar of the extension budget. The objector ignores the twenty-two cents for domestic aid, the twelve cents for our national outposts and possessions, the one cent for youth work, the six cents for religious education, social relations, and promotion, and the necessary but inadequate ten cents for administrative expenses (I omit decimals and sundry minor activities). He still withholds his dollar for ‘foreign missions.’ He ignores his right to designate his gifts to projects in which he does believe. Josh Billings once said in effect, ‘The wust trubble about tew menny folks is thet they know for sartain so menny things thet jest ain’t so.’

V

What does money say to the churches, then? Pour loud truths, at least: —

1. Ours is a dehabitized age; not merely a time of transition, but an era which is cutting back to the roots of all our institutions. Much that we and our fathers once rated among civilization’s finalities is removed from the glass case of infallibility and subjected to acid test. The Church has to revalidate itself, with no favors asked or granted.

2. It will be good for the Church to be obliged to prove its case under this drastic questioning. It will rediscover the difference between churchianity and Christianity. It will insist less on an orthodoxy which is dogma about Jesus rather than the religion of Jesus, It will learn that Christianity is a way of living, with pragmatic authority, and that team play is the first Christian unity to be achieved. It will recognize that the small support for its ministries is a criticism. Where such criticism is justified, there must be simplification and vitalization; where it is not, there must be education to prove the cause worth while. The petition in the Litany which prays, ‘In all time of our tribulation, in all time of our prosperity, Good Lord, deliver us,’ needs to put more emphasis on the second condition than on the first. Times of prosperity tempt to fatty degeneration of the soul. Times of adversity make the Church Militant smaller but mightier. Erasing the camp followers — or, better yet, the campfollowing concept — from nominal members’ hearts will galvanize the churches to new effectiveness.

3. A deprofessionalizing of religion will come. Dean Inge says that in most people’s minds God stands as the head of the clerical profession. Religion itself has seemed too often merely the technique of ecclesiastics. One does not need to belong to the Oxford Group to know that moral rearmament is the business of every convinced layman. Enthusiasm and gratitude for a faith that is known by its works will surely be kindled in and by informal witness. The recanonization of religion must come from the rediscoverers of its realities.

4. The Church’s duty and policy must be education, and more education. Counsels of perfection are not enough in ordinary fives. Repeating ‘Four! Four! Four!’ is not as effective as providing two and two for us to add up ourselves. This chaotic world is now learning, or will soon learn, that selfishness produces intolerance, despotism, bitterness, exploitation, economic injustice, chicanery, antisocial criminality, war, and general catastrophe. Is it visionary to believe that we cannot ultimately be content with the kind of world such things have spawned? If there are even a minority holding fast to Christian essentials, the hour of their faith will come. And substantial underwriting will spontaneously follow new understanding.