c. 2000 Religion News Service

ANAHEIM, Calif. _ Scholars researching evangelical spending habits have found most North American evangelicals do not tithe _ a core stewardship principle for the movement _ and conservative Christian ministries need to be wary of the ethical pitfalls in fund raising practices.

Overall, U.S. evangelical Christians on average miss the tithing _ giving 10 percent of their income to the church or other charitable causes _ mark by 2.8 percent, giving instead 7.2 percent of their income.

In Canada, the figure drops to 6.2 percent of their earnings, 3.8 percent shy of a tithe, reports John Stackhouse, a professor of theology at Regent College in Vancouver, British Columbia.

He and colleague Mike Hamilton, who teaches history at Seattle Pacific University, presented the findings at an early February workshop called “God, Mammon and Evangelicals: A Report from the Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals,” at the 57th annual convention and exposition of the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB).

Hamilton described the research as one segment of a more sweeping “Financing of American Religion Initiative” funded by the Lilly Endowment. The Institute for the Study of American Evangelicals is located at and partially financed by Wheaton College in Wheaton, Ill.

But the scholars also offered the caveat that because the tithing figures were based on contributors’ self-description they were likely inflated.

“Self-reporting is always high,” Hamilton warned in an interview. “The actual number would be lower.”

The study, of 6,000 North Americans in 1996, was originally reported in 1998 by scholars Dean Hoge of Catholic University and Mark Noll of Wheaton College.

The paper by Hamilton and Stackhouse of how evangelicals deal with money also covered one of the darkest recent chapters in evangelical finances: the 1995 New Era scandal.

Created by Philadelphia fund-raiser John Bennett, the Foundation for New Era Philanthropy promised charitable organizations a group of anonymous donors would match funds they placed in a New Era escrow account. But the plan turned out to be a Ponzi scheme, a classic scam using money donated by one set of contributors to pay back others.

Hamilton linked the scheme’s influence among evangelicals to the central role he believes personal relationships have traditionally played in evangelical entities.

He said the scandal spread when board members of evangelical organizations that had prospered from New Era deals encouraged other boards they sat on to sign up.

“The leadership of these institutions were in a terrible bind,” said Hamilton. “They had their financial professionals saying, `This looks really fishy,”’ and they had board members saying, `You can trust us.”’

When the whistle blew on New Era, evangelical organizations that had contributed funds and reaped benefits suddenly found they had prospered on the backs of others who had lost their shirts.

Hamilton reported the evangelical organizations involved formed a United Response to New Era in the aftermath to seek an equitable settlement, one that reflected their own biblical standards. The victims also agreed not to take each other to court over the settlement.

Reflecting on their findings, Stackhouse admonished evangelical leaders “to take the evangelical doctrines of sin and sanctification with organizational seriousness.”

Stackhouse accused evangelical organizations of becoming “in fact liberal Christian organizations,” referring to what he perceived as too casual a posture toward sin and its potential to taint financial dealings.

Charging there is too often an inconsistency between belief and boardroom practice, Stackhouse said leaders had come to see themselves as “pretty good people doing pretty good work, in a pretty good organization” instead of a group of sinful human beings needing to safeguard themselves from the consequences of error.

Other participants at NRB also stressed the importance and challenge of holding to ethically higher ground in the process of fund raising.

“Many NRB members rely on donations in order to keep their ministry and their work operating, and it’s really important for members to do that in an ethical manner,” said Karl Stoll, director of communications for the organization.

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Gene Bender, general manager of Christian radio station KIXL-AM in Austin, Texas, noted that broadcasting “is a very expensive industry.” He said there is pressure to slowly abandon ideals under the strains of the marketplace, noting a “slippery slope” Christian broadcasters have to battle when “moved by the dynamics (of the market) from the pureness of your original intention to the reality of trying to survive.”

“There’s a real need for a continual gut-check about why you’re doing what you’re doing,” he said.

Stackhouse warned broadcasters to “beware the rhetorical magic of slogans” at a financial crossroads, noting the temptation to fall back on “a little grab bag of a few homely sayings” instead of seriously reflecting on the spiritual perils of raising money.

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Stackhouse referred to Karl Marx’s revulsion toward hollow talk on finances, noting Marx was “very leery … of using high-sounding words to mask economic realities.”

“You don’t have to be a Marxist to get that, you just have to be (a) biblical Christian,” he said.

DEA END PARKS