Evangelicals Are Different They Give More Money - Road to the Middle Class

ONE OF THE reasons that Americans give so much to charity compared to others is that a lot of Americans go to church and the ones that do give to their churches. The same thing applies in Britain. American evangelicals give away about 10 percent of their income, but British evangelicals are even more generous. They give away 12 percent of their income, according to Ruth Gledhill and Joanna Sugden. They give “nine times as much to charity as the average householder” in Britain. And of course, they have much less debt and three times the average level of household savings.

The survey, conducted for Kingdom Bank by Christian Reseach found that evangelical Christians in Britain

give 7.5 per cent of their income to the church, 3 per cent to Christian charities and 1.5 per cent to secular charities, averaging £3,000 [$5,000] a year per household. The Rev Vaughan Roberts, Rector of St Ebbe’s Church, Oxford, where hundreds of students attend Sunday services and give a total of £600,000 [$1 million] a year, said: “It is not surprising that those who have understood God’s gift of grace to them should be generous in return.”

But what happens to all that money? Not all of it goes for megachurch buildings and services. According to Richard Bewes, at his church ”we were giving 30 per cent of our income to outside mission work.”

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.