Very interesting statistics, though. Wonder how they cross over to Canada?

Oakland is relatively poor and very black.  It could skew the results to compare Oakland with Souix Falls unless one wanted to bring race into the equation, which it doesn’t seem like Brooks did from your description.  Black religiosity has different historically from white religiosity in many ways: political affiliation and the percent balance of christians and muslims being two significant ways that could effect this study.

San Fran and Souix Falls in many ways offers a valid contrast and even there I think that one could see the effects of religion on the generosity equation apart from cultural effects.  If one looks at the percent of counter cultural people (GOP in SanFran and Dems in Souix Falls) I would think that there would be a very strong correlation between religion and party affiliation.  Contrasting these two groups would provide interesting insights into the specific roles of religion and party affiliation when it comes to generosity.  Of course, sometimes subcultures have an even stronger cultural effect overall that could skew the results, but it would perhaps offer a contrasting data subset without completely redoing the study.

MB

He uses a comparison of a Sioux Falls, South Dakota and San Francisco, California – just as radically opposite political and religious communities – at one point.  I forget the percentages but it’s a tiny number of San Fran folks go to church services in a given week and call themselves conservative.  Tiny.  And then the opposite is true of Sioux Falls.  San Fran is also wealthy compared with the rest of the nation, with almost no working poor (I guess he’s not counting Oakland just down the street huh?).  Sioux Falls is relatively poor – working poor. (Toby, I liked your wife’s insight.  Good stuff.  But the poor she seems to be speaking about sound poorer than working poor.  To me.  Maybe I misread.)

Anyway, those cities give you an idea of what he seems to think is VERY conservative religious, working poor and what he considers VERY liberal, irreligious and middleclass/wealthy.

And, I didn’t want to believe this stuff.  I assumed the guy was a conservative religious guy from a working class family.  And he may be biased in that way or another.  But he SAYS his hypothesis going into his work was the opposite of what he discovered.  He THOUGHT the wealthy were more generous and the poor were less, etc.  He seems shocked by his own research.

I think “religious” people can often be empathatic but unfortunately with the surburbanization of many churches … many have isolated themselves(sometimes intentionally and sometimes not) from actually seeing the needs out there. After all, we won’t have enough money for that tiVo (insert status item of choice) if we give. 

With many who think the government should “fix” the problem is so they don’t have to do anything but someone else should fix it so they don’t have to… after all, I have things I need…like a new tiVo (insert status item of choice).

It all stems from the heart.

One of my wife’s psych classes focused on issues of wealth.  One of her texts verified that the most generous givers were the poor and listed the sociological reasons for it.

Remarkably, the poor and the wealthy seem to have a similar view of money, it is to use.  For the rich it is more about investment (even in charity: “Where can this benefit the most…”), for the poor about meeting needs.  So poor people who get money, spend it quickly meeting needs and perceived future needs for their families, and also for those in need around them, so there is an empathetic aspect, but there is also a hopelessness to it.  The poor, especially the generational poor, see no way out of poverty so there is no need to save.  You get what you can when you have the means and get by the rest of the time however you can.