How much of religious charity is actual charity? (disciple, belief, organization)
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And any reasonable person would understand that a significant portion of donations must go to operations costs in order to keep the church running. I really doubt when you give money to a non-Christian charity, that money is 100% used directly in helping people. Otherwise, how do they pay their operating costs?
Go look at the salaries of CEO of big non-Christian charities. They are often near one million dollars. The CEO of Goodwill is making a mighty fine living off those donations. Great business.
Assuming that's all correct, then the matter of oversized salaries requires attention - the sort of attention that Religion regards itself exempt from. And the overheads of a non -religious charity must inevitably cut out the waste of money involved in paying for religious activities. So the Church side loses the arguments on two fronts.
The difference is the purpose of the organization . A food pantry's purpose is to provide food to the need . Goodwills purpose is to provide varied kinds of assistance to the needy . A volunteer FD exists solely to respond to emergencies in areas not covered by city FD. All have operating expenses , but all exists SOLELY to provide charity or assistance to the needy .
A church's purpose is to provide to its members . It does not exist to aid others, it exists to serve its members and perhaps do a little community service when it has a little money left over from providing for the needs of its members .
You keep pretending the issue is salaries and such when the issue is that the church doesn't exist to provide some sort of aid to the needy . You have been told by multiple posters what the topic and issue is. Please pay attention and stop repeating the same things others have explained to you before .
The church serves several purposes. Helping the needy is one of them. Running a food pantry is HELPING THE NEEDY. Good grief, amazing how you can distort the most concrete of realities.
The church serves several purposes. Helping the needy is one of them. Running a food pantry is HELPING THE NEEDY. Good grief, amazing how you can distort the most concrete of realities.
Look, Jeff ... no one is suggesting that a food pantry isn't an example of a charitable endeavor, or that some churches operate them as a small part of what they do. It is, as usual, YOU who are "distorting the most concrete of realities" by basically denying (in a somewhat deniable way, of course!) that not all churches operate food pantries or any kind of charitable activity.
A church, at base, is a private club with members who support it, even though the "membership fee" is loosely structured / monitored or, at best, imposed as a tithe (10% pseudo-tax on one's income). It provides services to the club members in exchange for $$ and volunteer labor. Those services include providing meetings, teaching stuff, and free counseling to members. Sometimes it provides charity to the community and sometimes that charity is without strings attached (such as proselytization). But that is, for any evangelical church I've ever seen, a bolt-on optional extra and is not central to their mission and is even overtly taught against as "the social gospel". THAT is the concrete reality.
I know that in your mind "meeting people's spiritual needs" is charitable but it is not charitable, for this simple reason: no one can agree on what it means to "meet people's spiritual needs". It's entirely a subjective concept that is whatever a particular church decides that it is. On the other hand, out here in the real world, people are actually in need of food, clothing, shelter, and medical care that they can't afford because they are a member of the working poor underclass, or are unable to find work at all, or are unable to work due to disability or age or whatever.
That society has given churches a lot of slack to operate clubhouses and not required even a percentage of their income to go towards actual no-strings charitable work, doesn't change the fact that compared to a secular charity with a 3% administrative overhead, a church (and especially your kind of church) ends up generally looking like a private club that does some incidental charity and has a 97% administrative overhead.
The church serves several purposes. Helping the needy is one of them. Running a food pantry is HELPING THE NEEDY. Good grief, amazing how you can distort the most concrete of realities.
What are you on about ? Learn what is being said before commenting . I fully agree that a food pantry is true charity that is helping the needy . Show where I said otherwise . I have said that a church that spends most of its money on its operations as a church that mostly or wholly caters to its members is not true charity . The mere existence of a church does not serve the needy if it does nothing but hold church .
What are you on about ? Learn what is being said before commenting . I fully agree that a food pantry is true charity that is helping the needy . Show where I said otherwise . I have said that a church that spends most of its money on its operations as a church that mostly or wholly caters to its members is not true charity . The mere existence of a church does not serve the needy if it does nothing but hold church .
As I already stated, it often facilitates the gathering of people who are of the same mind that leads to actual charitable work and giving. However, the basic church expenses aren't really charity, I agree, though I'm going to continue to take the deduction, of course. You could do pretty much the same things we do without a central building.
Realize, please, that the great majority of churches don't fit the silly, over-the-top descriptions of churches with multiple paid staff and gym facilities usually slapped up as examples on these types of threads. Our church's annual budget is probably less than the annual salary of most posters here.
And any reasonable person would understand that a significant portion of donations must go to operations costs in order to keep the church running. I really doubt when you give money to a non-Christian charity, that money is 100% used directly in helping people. Otherwise, how do they pay their operating costs?
Go look at the salaries of CEO of big non-Christian charities. They are often near one million dollars. The CEO of Goodwill is making a mighty fine living off those donations. Great business.
CEOs of non-charitable organizations typically make a good deal more. If Goodwill wanted to pay their CEO say 50k per year, what sort of candidates would they attract? Grossly unqualified ones is my guess.
The church serves several purposes. Helping the needy is one of them. Running a food pantry is HELPING THE NEEDY. Good grief, amazing how you can distort the most concrete of realities.
Of course running a food pantry helps. But the vast majority of the funds a church has are for its internal edification---salaries, mortgages for often extravagant edifices, playtime for members with gyms, indoctrination of youngsters. Reviving itself is the primary function of churches today. They no longer serve community fellowship needs as in one church in a town.
The early followers of Jesus heard a different word from Him. And the original word was slightly corrupted the further away from Him in time the gospel writers came.
In Matthew 6 Jesus presented a simple way His followers were to look at their physical needs:
"Give us this day our daily bread."
But in Luke 11 the prayer became more of a prosperity gospel:
"Give us each day our daily bread.…"
Jesus was living in the now in Matthew with a prayer reminiscent of the day by day manna from heaven in the wilderness, but a decade or two after Luke has Jesus' prayer for bread was both now and in the future.
It grows more, and becomes more spiritualized in John 6, leaving out the simple message of physical food for now found in Matthew:
"Do not work for food that perishes, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you."
Your church is far more into the "spiritual" food which sprang from a different intention. I suspect that most of the money spent is not to provide for physical needs but to spring for sermons on disc, public broadcasts, etc. in order to provide the "more important" spiritual food.
Spiritual food is not unimportant, just not as important as that food bank which gets much less attention on a percentage basis.
Why is a church/synagogue/temple/mosque a worthy charity? What makes it special?
Because we are a non-profit that exist to serve others. We provide spiritual instruction, teaching, and help the needy. We are every bit as deserving of a charity status as any organization you name.
Because I use the dictionary and normal definition of charity that means aid to the poor, helpless , needy etc. You wish to redefine charity to mean any money given to a church , whether the money helps the needy or not, or whether the church ever even attempts to aid the poor and hungry .
Merriam Webster defines it as:
benevolent goodwill toward or love of humanity
2
a : generosity and helpfulness especially toward the needy or suffering; also : aid given to those in need
b : an institution engaged in relief of the poor
c : public provision for the relief of the needy
3
a : a gift for public benevolent purposes
b : an institution (as a hospital) founded by such a gift
4
: lenient judgment of others
Seeing as how we are founded by benevolent gifts, we do meet the needs of the poor and needy, both physically and spiritually, we meet the criteria.
If you disagree, great. You're entitled to your opinion.
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Well OK, mostly . But you do not exist as an entity whose sole or even primary purpose is to provide charitable services to the needy . Any church's primary function is to serve its members .
Actually, a church's primary function is to glorify God. In the process we worship, and we make disciples. Along that route, we help the poor and needy, with physical and spiritual needs.
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My opinion is based on the dictionary definition of charity . It might well be just my opinion that you are not a liberal church , but since that would be based on a normal understanding of the term liberal vs your doctrine my opinion would be based on reality .
And I am very tolerant . No one has said people shouldn't give money to churches . What has been said is that giving to churches does not equate giving to charity . Why do you regard not agreeing with you as intolerance ?
You really are not demonstrating your tolerance that you brag about. Sorry--just haven't seen it.
You may disagree with how we meet the needs of the people, and you are welcome to do that. But it doesn't change the fact that we do serve the community.
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You could do pretty much the same things we do without a central building.
