Open Thread

The right wing churches do more and give more to charity but always with a hope of a return of some kind. That bothers me. In Judaism there are different levels of charity, the highest being anonymous giving. We had to stop these people over and over again from proselytizing while doing disaster relief. They would go after the most emoitionally vulnerable- it was despicable.

And then there were the true Christians who did amazing work simply because they were following Christ’s tenets and their own hearts. Kudos to them.

Very poor people contribute to charities way out of proportion to their income.

BSM, I think that churchgoers in general tend to give more to charity, and churchgoing trends Republican. But here on the OT, we tend to have libertarian Republicans who are not believers.

I have a friend in Maryland who is a Southern Baptist, very strongly connected to her church, who has brought this up many times. Her church does many good works for poor people in Baltimore. And the projects are really well-thought-out and require a lot of effort, not just check-writing, on the part of the churchgoers. Although I do not agree with the political beliefs of my friend, I admire what she and her fellow-churchgoers accomplish.

I saw a report on TV, forgot which program, Reublicans, particulary right wing Christians give more to charity than liberals.

And although he never said so (and there’s certainly nothing wrong with that–it’s very uncharitable to brag about charitable endeavors), I just knew Benson is in that “old-fashioned Republican” category.

So there, Benson!