Motivations for and Obstacles to Religious Financial Giving

Sociology of Religion 2011, 72:2 189-214 doi:10.1093/socrel/srq074 Advance Access Publication 21 October 2010 Motivations for and Obstacles to Religious Financial Giving* Brandon Vaidyanathan Patricia Snell University of Notre Dame This paper extends previous findings on religion and generosity by developing and assessing a conceptual typology of potential motivations for and obstacles to religious giving. Specifically, we examine “socialized giving,” “need giving,” “normative giving,‫ ״‬and “guilt giving” as potential motivators, and “wealth insecurity,” “giving illiteracy,” and “comfortable guilt” as potential obstacles. To investigate these mechanisms, we then combine behavioral and observational data, linking ethnographic and interview data with church-reported financial giving behavior. Data analyzed are from the Northern Indiana Congregation Study. Based on church-reported giving levels, interview respondents are grouped into high- and low-giving categories, and responses are analyzed for stated motivations for and obstacles to religious giving. Findings reveal how complicated it is to ascertain mechanisms driving or inhibiting people's religious giving, and highlight the need to be wary of relying exclusively on self-reported giving data. The conceptual typology presented here can be developed further in future studies that investigate the prevalence and origins of these types. Understanding such processes underlying religious giving becomes particularly relevant in light of the recent economic recession. Key words: religious giving; generosity; congregations; mainline Protestants; evangelical Protestants; qualitative methods. American Christians, by virtue of their relative wealth, are in a financial position to give quite generously. Christian traditions teach their members to give liberally, and nearly all American Christians profess a desire to do so (Smith et al. 2008). Despite this professed desire, American Christians still *Direct correspondence to Brandon Vaidyanathan, E-mail: [email protected]. The authors wish to thank the many graduate students and undergraduate students who participated in the Northern Indiana Congregation Study project. Specifically, we wish to acknowledge the contributions of Katie Spencer, Kaitlyn Conway, Peter Mundey, Hilary Davidson, Brad Vermurlen, Robbee Wedow, Scott Mitchell, and Carlos Tavares for their data collection efforts, discussions, and feedback on previous versions of this paper. We also thank Christian Smith and Amy Jonason for their feedback on previous versions of this paper. Our sincere thanks also to the editor and the four anonymous reviewers for helping us improve this manuscript. © The Author(s) 2010. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Association for the Sociology of Religion. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: [email protected]. 189 190 SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION give less than two percent of their income to charity (Smith et al. 2008), as was the case even prior to the recent economic recession. While much of the literature on Christian giving focuses on the religious and moral dimensions of the issue (e.g., Olford 2000), several studies also assess the correlates of religious financial giving (e.g., Chaves and Miller 1999; Hoge et al. 1996; Iannaccone 1997; Regnerus et al. 1998; Zaleski and Zech 1992; and the entire special issue [1994(36)] of the Review of Religious Research). The present study contributes in-depth qualitative investigation to the predominantly statistical focus of previous sociological studies on religious giving. As a step towards understanding the social causal mechanisms which drive or inhibit financial generosity among Christians, this paper examines how people explicate their motivations for and obstacles to financial giving to religious congregations. This is especially timely given the more strained financial situations that many Americans are experiencing as a result of the recent economic downturn. This paper extends previous findings by developing conceptual typologies of motivations for and obstacles to giving, based on our own previous research (Smith et al. 2008) and other research summarized further below. We then investigate these types through a case study of religious giving within two Protestant churches. Our approach combines parishioner interviews, pastor interviews, and ethnographic field notes, and matches church-reported religious giving behavior of individuals to member-reported attitudes and perceptions of religious giving. Based on church-reported figures, we categorize interview respondents into high- and low-percentage givers. We then analyze the similarities and differences in the ways they articulate their motives for and obstacles to their own giving, which allows us to explore the prevalence or absence of our conceptualized types. This enables us to overcome limitations in previous studies that relied on self-reported data alone. The research questions motivating the current study are: W hat are the reported motivations for and obstacles to religious giving? And, how are these motivations and obstacles similar to or different across different levels of givers and givers in different church contexts? Specifically, we ask: How do high- versus low-giving parishioners differ in their understandings of, motivations for, and obstacles to religious giving? To what extent can the responses of different levels of religious givers, as measured by church-reported giving behavior, be differentiated based on their own perceptions of their giving levels? Are there notable differences across religious traditions in the reported motivations and obstacles? Pursuing these questions in an in-depth qualitative study allows us to investigate mechanisms that might be pertinent to religious financial giving more generally. MOTIVES FOR A N D OBSTACLES TO G IV IN G : BACKGROUND Participation in voluntary associations—religious groups in particular—is consistently associated with high levels of charitable giving (Chaves and Miller MOTIVATIONS FOR AND OBSTACLES TO RELIGIOUS GIVING 191 1999; Hoge et al. 1996; Lee et al. 1999; Reddy 1980; Wiepking and Maas 2009). Religious giving in the form of charitable donations to churches and religious charities makes up a significant percentage of annual charitable giving by Americans (Giving USA 2009). This is not surprising, considering that several religions—Christianity being no exception—teach “love of neighbor, deeds of mercy, and charity for the needy‫( ״‬Wuthnow 1991:122). Religious traditions even institutionalize charitable giving, through teachings such as the Christian tithe. Among American Christians, however, religious financial giving varies considerably across at least two levels. First, studies show important differences in giving levels across Christian denominations. Conservative or Evangelical Protestants (EPs) are typically found to have the highest giving levels, whereas Mainline Protestants (MPs) and Catholics (CAs) have lower giving levels (Brooks 2006; Finke et al. 2006; Hoge and Yang 1994; Olson and Perl 2001; Regnerus et al. 1998). Yet, within denominations, there is a significant individual'level variation. A primary finding of a recent study on financial giving was that 20 percent of American Christians give no money to religious or charitable causes (Smith et al. 2008). Among those who do give money to religious or charitable causes, the distribution of giving is not spread evenly. The top 5 percent of givers contribute nearly 60 percent of the total dollars contributed, which resonates with the findings from older studies (Hoge and Yang 1994). Similarly, the percentage of giving over time by American Christians decreased while per capita income was increasing (Bekkers and Wiepking 2007). One explanation for these low giving levels could be that American Christians do not possess the financial resources needed in order to be able to give. However, studies on this matter do not find clear support for this explanation: American Christians with the most income tend to give a lower percentage of their income to charity than those with relatively less income (Bekkers and Wiepking 2007; James and Jones 2010; James and Sharpe 2007).1 O ther explanations for differences in giving relate to potential influ-‫׳‬ enees on giving (Bekkers and Wiepking 2007). One potential influence on giving is that parents teach their children to give, and then children are compelled to give when they are older. Previous studies in this regard find a strong correlation between financial generosity of parents and that of their children (Smith et al. 2008; Wilhelm et al. 2008). Another potential 1The relationship between income levels and proportion of income donated to char‫׳‬ ities is a debated issue. Some studies found that the proportion of income given decreases steadily as levels of income increase, suggesting “a linear downward trend” (Bekkers and Wiepking 2007:11; Schervish and Havens 1995; Schervish et al. 2001). More recent research, however, identifies problems in previous analyses and offers more support for a U-shaped relationship between income levels and percentage donated to charity (James and Sharpe 2007). This U ‫· ׳‬shape is driven primarily by low ‫ ׳‬income households, which, while less likely to fall in the set of charitable givers, are more likely than households in other income levels to donate 10 percent or more of after-tax income to charities. 192 SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION motivator for giving pertains to an awareness of needs that financial giving can support, lessen, or eradicate (Bekkers and Wiepking 2007; Smith et al. 2008:101). W hether or not people express an awareness of societal needs, they may describe themselves as giving primarily because that is what God, the Bible, or the church commands, requires, or teaches they should do (Smith et al. 2008:101). Research also finds that values such as humanitarianism, egalitarianism, pro-social value orientations, altruism, and other forms of social responsibilities can be motivators of generosity (Bekkers and Wiepking 2007). Another possible motivator for giving is guilt. Various scholars understand guilt as an emotion that serves as an “internal sanction‫ ״‬arising when one feels responsible for breaking the moral code one adheres to (Greenspan 1995:109) or when one acts (or even thinks of acting) in ways that they perceive as viola‫׳‬ tions of commitments to their relationships or self-conceptions (Abell and Gecas 1997). Yet, guilt also serves to motivate prosocial behavior (Amodio et al. 2007:525). Studies show that people may be motivated to act generously so as to prevent feelings of guilt and thereby preserve their moral commitments, or to alleviate cognitive dissonance and preserve their self-image (Bekkers and Wiepking 2007:32-33). Religious giving can serve to prevent guilt associated with falling short of, or failing to meet, implicit or explicit expectations such as a tithe or other religious giving standards (Smith et al. 2008:109). Previous studies also explore potential obstacles to giving. Perceived resource constraints may be an explanation for the low giving levels of American Christians despite their relative wealth. This echoes an important distinction made in previous research, between the actual versus perceived cost of giving (Wiepking and Breeze 2008; cf. Brooks 2006; Havens et al. 2007; Schervish et al. 2005; Smith et al. 2008). O ther potential obstacles to giving have to do with the understanding givers may have of their own giving levels and the expectations of their giving. For instance, givers can be confused about whether their church teaches that a 10 percent tithe should be the standard, and if so, how to calculate it (Smith et al. 2008:109). Another factor potentially obstructing giving is something Smith et al. (2008:11) call “comfortable guilt,” meaning “living with an awareness and feeling of culpability for not giving money more generously, but maintaining that at a low enough level of discomfort that it was not too disturbing or motivating enough to actually increase giving.‫״‬ Despite previous studies identifying these potential motivations for and obstacles to giving, the nature of the studies as mostly large-scale surveys or purely self-report-based studies has not provided an in-depth exploration of the way these factors operate together to explain variation in actual giving levels. This is largely due to a lack of availability of behavioral data that can be linked to self-reported information on giving. Also missing from previous studies is an exploration of how the motives and obstacles identified may differ MOTIVATIONS FOR AND OBSTACLES TO RELIGIOUS GIVING 193 across different denominational contexts. We know that certain motivations can vary by religious tradition, but the lack of availability of behavioral data has not allowed an examination of the way expressed motivations and obstacles may differ across high versus low givers within different churches. MOTIVES FOR AND OBSTACLES TO GIVING: CURRENT STUDY Based on our previous research (Smith et al. 2008) and other studies described above, we construct a typology of four groupings of reported motiv‫״‬ ations for giving: “socialized giving,‫“ ״‬need giving,” “normative giving,” and “guilt giving.” These categories are not mutually exclusive, but rather are ways of grouping the types of explanations that people provide when describing the reasons why they do or not give. While we present these as analytically distinct ideal types, we acknowledge the potential overlap in their complex, empirical instances. “Socialized givers” are conceptualized as those respondents who describe themselves as giving primarily because that is what they have been taught to do, usually by their parents modeling this behavior for them but also poten‫״‬ tially by other important adults in their childhood. Socialized giving is defined as having been raised by family members or other close adults to give. Parishioners categorized as such will describe themselves as giving because that is what they have been taught to do, appealing not so much to a norm or prin‫׳׳‬ ciple, but rather to habits cultivated under the direct influence of adults whom they were close to during their upbringing. “Need givers” will be considered those respondents who describe them‫״‬ selves as giving primarily because they know about societal problems that need their money, and they therefore contribute to support those causes. “Normative givers” will be considered those respondents who describe themselves as giving primarily because that is what God, the Bible, or the church commands, requires, or teaches them they should do. Regardless of whether they are aware of needs or were taught to give by their parents, these respondents will talk about needing to give out of a sense of obligation, that it is normatively what they should do. Respondents who describe their giving as coming from an obligation or duty to give will be categorized as normative givers. For the purposes of this study, “guilt givers” will be considered those respondents who describe themselves as motivated to give in order to avoid the emotional consequences of not giving. They will describe giving because of the feeling that if they do not give, they would be doing something irresponsible or wrong (e.g., violating a principle or letting someone down). This guilt could flow out of the other types of reasons mentioned above, but is specifically marked by a description of experiencing guilt as a motivator for giving. 194 SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION In the present study, we also focus on three key obstacles to generous religious giving based on the previous research described above. We label these three obstacles as: “wealth insecurity,” “giving illiteracy,” and “comfortable guilt.” “Wealth insecurity” is the term we use to categorize those obstacles to giving based on perceived lack of financial resources. Despite living in one of the wealthiest nations in the world, many American Christians do not feel secure in their possession of wealth and therefore may not want to give away money due to the risk of losing their security and status. Respondents who indicate they do not give as much as they would like due to perceived lack of financial resources will be categorized as “wealth insecurity.” By “giving illiteracy” we refer to a sense of confusion among many Christians as to what the standard of giving should be, and also about how to apply this standard. As a result, we expect that people may see and describe themselves as relatively high givers when in fact they do not give all that much in comparison with similar others. This confusion may be the result of a general lack of knowledge of others’ giving practices, a lack of visibility in the giving process (either in terms of role models or the consequences of generös·‫׳‬ ity), or a lack of awareness about how much they themselves give (perhaps due to not keeping track of finances or giving). “Comfortable guilt” is what previous research has identified as a state of “living with an awareness and feeling of culpability for not giving money more generously, but maintaining that at a low enough level of discomfort that it [is] not too disturbing or motivating enough to actually increase giving” (Smith et al. 2008:110). People in this category will have an evident disconnect between their desired giving level and actual giving, and find no difficulty tol‫״‬ erating this disconnect, despite their awareness of it— it “wouldn’t keep [them] up at night” (Smith et al. 2008:110). We will explore these four possible motivations for and three possible obstacles to giving by investigating the extent to which they are present or absent across different levels of givers in two different church contexts. METHODS This paper extends the previous findings by investigating the prevalence of the types of motivations for and obstacles to religious giving. We connect data collected on church-reported and interviewee-reported levels of giving to analyze how the two match up or not. In so doing, we are able to specifically explore the ways in which stated motivations for and obstacles to giving match up with actual behavior. Through our ethnographic exploration of two churches, we are also able to investigate the ways in which these stated motives and obstacles for giving are similar or different across the two church contexts. MOTIVATIONS FOR AND OBSTACLES TO RELIGIOUS GIVING 195 Data analyzed are from the Northern Indiana Congregation Study (NICS). NICS was a collaborative, mixed-method research project that collected data in five phases, beginning in 2007 and concluding in 2009. The first phase con‫׳‬ sisted of phone surveys conducted with all congregations located in three midsized contiguous cities with a response rate of 98.9 percent (n = 269). Next, the U.S. Census (2000) data were linked to the congregational survey data by postal codes. Third, in‫״‬person interviews were conducted with a stratified quota sample of youth ministers from these congregations (n = 42). The first three phases of data collection are detailed more thoroughly in Snell et al. (2009). The fourth phase entailed a continuation of the project via content analysis and participant observations with four religious congregations selected to rep‫״‬ resent each of four aggregated Christian denominational categories defined by Steensland et al. (2000) as MP, EP, black Protestant (BP), and CA. Religious worship services, youth groups, Bible studies, confirmation classes, Sunday schools, and other congregational meetings were observed throughout the course of a year. A total of 229 discrete events were observed with a total of 724 recorded pages in field notes in each of the congregations (MP: 62 events and 162 pages; EP: 83 events and 311 pages; BP: 13 events and 34 pages; CA: 71 events and 217 pages). Content analysis included mission statements and other belief explications located on website and printed materials. Finally, the fifth phase of the study consisted of additional in‫ ׳‬person inter‫׳‬ views with congregation members, youth participants, and parents of youth participants (n = 233) with a response rate of 87.6 percent. Congregation members were selected from a list provided by each congregation in which individuals were categorized by their giving and participation level—allowing us to use a stratified random sample to interview congregants with varying church participation. The interviews lasted an average of an hour and were recorded and transcribed. The current analysis is based on data from a conservative EP church and an MP church. A t the EP church, a total of 84 interviews were completed with an 89.4 percent response rate. Interviews were conducted with one pastor, one youth minister, two financial officers, 35 congregation members, 26 participate ing youth, and 19 parents of the participating youth. Interviews at the MP church were conducted with a total of 70 respondents with a 90.9 percent response rate. The interviews consisted of one with the pastor, one with the youth minister, two with financial officers, 30 with congregation members, 23 with participating youth, and 13 with parents of participating youth. This analysis focuses on the congregation member interviews from both churches that fell into a categorization of low or high givers (as described below). The number of interviews conducted was 31 (17 from EP and 14 from MP), of which three interviews were with couples, totaling to 34 interviewees. The two churches in this analysis are quite similar across various characteristics (e.g., racial composition, church budget per person, and relative socioeconomic status of members). The main variation between the two churches is 196 SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION their religious tradition, one being an EP church and the other being an MP church. Another variation between the two congregations is their size, or number of regular attendees. MP reports 210 regular attendees, and EP reports 600 regular attendees. W ithin the broader population of congregations from which these two are drawn, the sizes make them closer in size to each other than the vast majority of congregations. Roughly 40 percent of congregations are very small (consisting of 0 -7 5 regular attendees), roughly 30 percent are small (75-150 attendees), 17 percent are medium (151-470), 7 percent large (471-1199), and 5 percent very large (1200+) (Snell et al. 2009). Differences in size are actually found to correlate with the denomination, with most EP congregations (73 percent) falling into the very small or small category, and most MP congregations (72 percent) also falling into one of those two cat·‫׳‬ egories. Thus, the medium‫״‬sized MP and large‫ ׳‬sized EP selected for this study fall into the 26 percent of EP and 27 percent of MP congregations that are larger sized.2 Both churches are majority white congregations with no significant (i.e., 15 percent or more) racial or ethnic minority. Findings from previous phases of this project (Snell et al. 2009) indicate that about a quarter of congrega·‫׳‬ tion budgets per person are in the $0-1,000 range, about a quarter in the $1,001-2,000 range, a little under 10 percent over $2,001 per person, and about 40 percent of churches report that they do not know or refuse to provide their annual budget figures. W ithin this distribution of average budget amount per person, these two churches also have relatively similar ranges. They both fit in the roughly quarter of churches that report a range of $1,001-2,000, and the average budget amount per person is $1,794 at the EP church and $1,118 at the MP church. The regular parishioners of both congregations are middle class with typically some college or higher education levels and primarily professional occupations. Because of the relative similarity of the two churches, we are able to compare pastor and parishioner responses across the two churches to examine similarities and differences between the two church cultures and religious traditions. To protect the con‫׳־‬ fidentiality of the church names and highlight the religious tradition of each church, we refer to the two churches as “MP‫ ״‬for mainline Protestant and Έ Ρ ” for Evangelical Protestant. Pastors of both churches were asked to provide a list of parishioners’ names and financial giving information differentiated in categories of low, middle, and high giving in terms of absolute dollar amounts. The pastors assigned this task to their financial officers, who reported their own designation as to what dollar ranges constituted the boundaries of low, middle, and high giving, based on splitting the congregation into a relative distribution of giving levels. Thus, 2For discussion of possible effects of church size on giving, see Bekkers and Wiepking (2007:27). MOTIVATIONS FOR AND OBSTACLES TO RELIGIOUS GIVING 197 if anything, we oversampled here for more involved congregation members. The categories used in this analysis were set by the congregations themselves and thus are meant to represent church reports of low, middle, and high dollar givers.3 The MP church categorized donors into the following categories: $0-$500 (low), $500-$3,500 (middle), $3,500-$20,000 (high), and more than $20,000 (very high). The EP church reported the dollar figures in the following categories: $40-$500 (low), $2,250-$3,750 (middle), and $7,200$32,000 (high). Thus, this measure provides a representation of church*‫׳‬ reported religious giving behavior as measured within the boundaries of low, middle, and high absolute giving levels defined by the church.4 The parishi‫׳־‬ oners were then asked to report their annual income as one of the following: below $20,000; $20,000-$40,000; $40,000-$60,000; $60,000-$80,000; $80,000-$ 100,000; or more than $100,000. Because income questions often have a high nonresponse rate bias, this question was presented as a range and was requested upon completion of the in‫״‬person interview. The question returned a high response rate of 82 percent and thus allows for the calculation of religious giving amounts reported by the church to reported annual income ranges. Based on the idea that (i) people who give more of their money do not necessarily have more income and (ii) church members offer different descriptions of their motives for and obstacles to giving, the interest of the current study is to attempt a different approach to understand differential financial giving by relating interview responses to the proportion given to 3Prescribing absolute cutoff points might have had the advantage of clear comparabil· ity across congregations, but would have been an inaccurate representation of giving levels in different churches. Allowing churches to make their own assessments of these cutoff points prevents us from being biased towards a congregation in which people donate objectively larger sums of money. This also allows us to understand differences between congre‫׳‬ gâtions in what counts as a generous donation. The disadvantage of our method is that the range within which our estimated percentage donation of each respondent falls varies across the churches in our study. However, these variations represent the real, lived experience of congregants in each church. For example, EP simply does not keep records of congregants who have not contributed at least $40 or more annually to the church, and therefore these congregants are not considered among the regular financial contributors to whom giving appeals are made and could not be selected for interviews. MP, however, does keep records on congregants who have contributed less than $40, or even $0 dollars, and therefore was able to give us their names for sampling. 4Individually broken down giving levels were not available in the current study. In an effort to protect the confidentiality of such sensitive data, our Human Subjects Institutional Review Board approval and church data permission request state that we would not collect data about individual giving levels but would collect the information via an aggregated sample provided by the church. The churches therefore provided a sample of respondents from each of the groupings (low, middle, high) that they identified, using the data they had available to them. We then were given the names of respondents within each grouping, and were not given the specific giving amount of any individual. This method allows us an unprecedented investigation of this aggregated data, but it does not allow us to investigate any specific individual’s giving level. 198 SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION churches. Based on the donation estimates given to us by churches and the income estimates given to us by respondents, we were able to ascertain who gave high proportions of their income to their churches and who gave low proportions. Respondents from EP were categorized as high-percentage givers if (i) their self-reported annual household income was less than $40,000 and their church-reported donation was in the “middle” category ($2,250-$3,750) or higher (thus amounting to a minimum of 5.6 percent of their annual income), or (ii) their self-reported annual household income was less than $100,000 and their church-reported annual giving was greater than $7,250 (i.e., a minimum was 7.25 percent of their income). Those whom we categorized as lowpercentage givers at EP donated $40-$500 and reported earning $40,000 or more (thus donating a maximum of 1.25 percent of their annual income). Some individuals claimed that they intentionally did not donate a lot of money to EP because they had prioritized other churches or charities; these cases were excluded from the category of low givers. We categorized respondents at MP as high-percentage givers if they either (i) reported an annual household income of less than $40,000 and their church-reported giving was in the “middle” category ($500-$3,500) or higher (thus donating a minimum of 1.25 percent of their annual income); or (ii) reported annual household income as less than $100,000 and their church-reported annual giving was greater than $3,500 (thus amounting to a minimum of 3.5 percent of their income). We categorized as low-percentage givers those respondents who reported their annual income as being greater than $40,000 and whose church-reported annual giving was less than $500 (thus donating a maximum of 1.25 percent of their income). Thus, the following analysis entails an examination of motivations for and obstacles to religious giving across two sets of dimensions: (i) MP and EP givers and (ii) high- and low-percentage givers, based on church reports. For the sake of parsimony, we will refer to these groups in the remainder of the paper as “high givers” and “low givers” (Table 1). TABLE 1 Characteristics of High- and Low-percentage Givers at EP and MP EP High Respondent (s) Individual Couple Gender3 Female Male EP Low MP High MP Low Total 7 3 7 0 8 0 6 0 28 3 7 6 2 5 4 4 5 1 18 16 Continued MOTIVATIONS FOR AND OBSTACLES TO RELIGIOUS GIVING 199 TABLE 1 Continued EP High Age3 0 20-29 30-39 4 1 40-49 3 50-59 5 60+ Marital status15 9 Married 1 Widowed 0 Remarried 0 Divorced Number of kidsb 0 0 3 1-2 7 3-4 Years attending church15 1 Less than 5 years 1 5-10 years 5 10-20 years 3 20 years or more Attendance frequency15 10 Weekly or more 0 Less than weekly Annual household income13 1 Less than $20,000 3 $20,000-$40,000 0 $40,000-$60,000 2 $60,000-$80,000 $80,000-$100,000 4 0 $100,000 or more 0 Don’t know or refused Claimed giving levelb Tithe, 10% or more 7 3 Middle, 3-5% 0 A percentage 0 Does not tithe 0 Outside church 0 Don’t know EP Low MP High MP Low Total 0 2 1 2 2 1 0 1 3 3 0 2 0 1 3 1 8 3 9 13 5 0 1 1 6 2 0 0 3 2 0 1 23 5 1 2 0 5 2 0 4 4 0 3 3 0 15 16 1 1 4 1 0 1 7 0 2 0 4 0 4 3 20 4 5 2 6 2 3 3 24 7 0 0 1 3 2 1 0 0 2 1 2 2 1 0 0 0 2 1 0 1 2 1 5 4 8 8 3 2 3 2 1 0 0 1 6 0 0 2 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 4 17 5 1 2 1 5 Source: Northern Indiana Congregation Study (NICS) (2009). 3Reported on individual respondents. 15Reported on couple as combined respondents. 2 0 0 SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION FINDINGS High Qivers: Characteristics and Motivations The first set of findings reports characteristics and motivations for giving provided by those respondents who were designated as high givers. Socialized giving Most respondents—high givers as well as low givers— stated that they had learned the importance of giving from their parents’ example. “My parents always gave; it’s just what they did‫ ״‬reflects a common theme. In addition to modeling, however, high givers often mentioned that their parents raised them with the belief that it was important to give money to church, and encouraged children to act on this. As one high giver at MP noted, “I guess, probably like most families, my parents would give us a quarter to donate at church every Sunday, so it was through them doing it [that I learned to give].‫״‬ Some of the high givers at EP said that their parents had taught them specifically to tithe, and that they developed this habit at an early age. I remember when I was working as a teenager. I got paid in cash. So every babysitting job you know if Î got twenty dollars babysitting I put two dollars aside. The ten percent rule. And even when I started working a job , every twenty dollars I got I put two dollars aside. Fifteen dollars I’d save and three dollars Vd spend. Some others mentioned that they had received other education on giving as well, in addition to their parents. One respondent from MP mentioned learn‫״‬ ing about giving “when I was in my youth programs,” in addition to “watching my family, my parents.” Similarly, another respondent at EP noted, “I think it’s mostly through my family, my parents. But I also do remember having some children’s church type things.” Many pass on to their children the same prac‫׳‬ tices they learned from their own parents: “As children, I expected them [my children] to save 10 percent, give 10 percent, and they could spend the other 80.” Another older couple mentioned having allocated their money in this way when they were younger, placing it into three jars at home, labeled: “spend,” “save,” and “give,” and taught their children to do the same. In addition, there were a few high givers at both MP and EP who had learned the importance of giving only later on in life. One respondent described: “I made regular wages in the summer time and I would practice giving a tithe out of the money that I received from working as a construction laborer. That was a brand new concept to me as a young believer.” Similarly, one couple men‫־׳‬ tioned that they did not attend church much when they were children as they do now and developed the habit of tithing only later on in life. Before they joined the EP, where they learned to tithe, one young couple mentioned that they would throw their spare cash into the collection basket. They added: “I would say really it’s been through the process of study and being exposed to the preaching here, somewhat of a transformation in the last 10-15 years.” Another couple at MP, who started to tithe recently, noted that they had always seen MOTIVATIONS FOR AND OBSTACLES TO RELIGIOUS GIVING 201 “that the collection plate is passed every Sunday,” but only started thinking about the importance of giving three years ago. In all these cases, tithing was a habit that respondents either practiced from an early age or learned to practice later on in life. Low givers, on the other hand, mentioned having watched their parents giving money, or how their parents instilled in them the importance of giving, but would rarely mention practicing giving at an early age. Normative giving We define normative giving as when people expressed their explanation for financial giving as God, the Bible, or believing the church teaches or encourages them to do so. We found in interviews that, across both churches, the majority of respondents who gave a high percentage of their income specified a normative dimension in their rationale for financial giving. There were, however, important differences across churches. In the EP church, respondents articulated this normative dimension in religious terms, making explicit references to God, Jesus Christ, or the Bible. All of the high givers at EP claimed to tithe, whereas only half of the high givers at MP claimed to tithe. The most prominent theme that emerged from the respondents at EP was the belief that everything belongs to God—including one’s material possessions. They felt that God had given them much, and they owed it back: We believe that financial blessings and material blessings are a gift from God so they’re realty his anyway. I see it as none of this is mine anyway. It's a gift from God and just giving back. God calls us to. We are called. I mean you put your money where your blessing is. Some older respondents mentioned having been raised with an understanding of tithing as a moral obligation: “That’s expected. I think the Lord expects us to give back, the Bible teaches that. I feel that Scripture tells us to do that.” Others insisted that being financially generous was part of the person God expected them to be: “God loves a cheerful giver.” Some younger respondents articulated this normative dimension less as an unconditional duty expected of them, and understood it more as an expression of love or gratitude for the blessings God had given them: “It’s already God’s,” “we’re stewards,” and “you can’t out-give God,” they said. In contrast to the spiritual emphasis at EP, all high givers at MP, with only one exception, professed two other normative reasons for their financial giving: (1) Tradition: several respondents denied a theological or spiritual motivation for giving, and claimed instead that they were merely following a tradition in which they were raised. One respondent said, “Tithing is ten percent, and that’s just what I’ve always based it on.” A nother high giver said, “I don’t think there’s anymore to it than sort of the traditional—and I think it’s, and correct me if 20 2 SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION I’m wrong, but I think it’s in the Bible somewhere that ten percent number—so I don’t know if that’s where that came from or if it’s just the traditional.” This was similarly expressed by another respondent who said: I don't know whether this is theological or not, but I just feel Γve been pretty fortunate in my Ufe and so some of that fortune, I just would pass on to somebody else and benefit them. It's not like we say, ‘Okay, let's tithe. ’ It’s just kind ofended up that way. These respondents thus all expressed a traditional version of the normative rationale for giving. (2) Duty or responsibility: a second theme among these respondents in addition to tradition or upbringing was a belief that they had a certain duty or responsibility to the church. One female respondent, when asked what motivated her, replied, “Well of course it’s part of being in the organization of the church. You’re in the organization, so you’re going to follow what they, what the rules are.” Another couple said: There’s the term ‘tithing.’ That’s an obvious spiritual giving term, but we just give what we feel is necessary to fulfill our own obligation.” Need giving. The theme of giving to the church in order to meet specific needs, either in the church or in society, was expressed as a motivation for giving by some high givers at MP, but by none of the high givers at EP. One respondent at MP, for example, insisted that “The purpose is to make sure, number one, that the church is able to sustain itself, and number two, that the church is able to have outreach to people in need.” A nother respondent expressed his motive for giving to the church in very pragmatic terms: “Well, they have to have money, just like any other business. The church is a business, whether they like to say it or not, that’s what it is.” One MP respondent described the perception of needs as such: I think the purpose is, I guess, I would put it in three categories: First, the structural needs of the church, to keep the building running, supplies and all that type of thing. Second, I don't know that these are in this order, but they’re kind of building blocks, is the ministerial support. You need to have ministry to be able to support our church community and the community as a whole and to do that you need salaries and you need to have the coverage and expenses of that. And then the third part of the giving is the outreach, outreach within the church, outreach locally, nationally and then globally. This pragmatic theme of need giving seems to go hand-in-hand with the normative motivations of MP high givers. While EP high givers did not claim that the purpose of their giving was to serve the needs of the church or of the community, the majority of them expressed that it was extremely important for them to know how their money was being used by the church. Several of them MOTIVATIONS FOR AND OBSTACLES TO RELIGIOUS GIVING 203 mentioned attending congregational meetings or sitting on the board, and this contributed to their awareness of how the money gets used. Many also mentioned having done research in order to assure themselves of the trustworthiness of the organization. Knowing where the money goes, for these respondents, serves as an incentive for financial giving: We know very clearly where [the money] is going. We sit in a congregational meeting and we see the budget and we can see what a huge percent of the money goes directly to mission. We know it's not getting lost in the shuffle of a bureaucracy of an organization. That's what I like about it, because I really trust what they are doing with it here. Similarly, one EP respondent who insisted that his primary rationale for giving was moral (i.e., God and the scriptures commanded this of him) expressed else-‫־‬ where that there were specific needs he was concerned that the church should meet, and this also motivated his financial giving: I definitely have a heart for missions and want to make sure that our mission teams are being supported. And want to make sure that people in our local community have that support, especially with the economic crisis that’s happening now. Our pastoral staff does an excellent job. And I think all the opportunities that we have in our church, bring in a b t of people and I don't want to see [any] of those start to back off. Curiously, high givers at EP said that once they had begun to trust the organiz‫׳־‬ ation, they had no need to continually verify how the money was being used. Many would mention that it was enough for them to know that they could access such information if they wanted to. One woman, for example, who had insisted on the importance of knowing how her donations were being used, said, “I trust so much that they’re going to do the right thing with the money here, that’s it’s not that important to me. I go to the meetings and I see it, but I don’t question it. I have a high level of trust that they’re doing the right thing with it.” Similarly, another respondent who is on the church board, and insisted on the importance of knowing that her donations were being used wisely, said that she does not attend congregational meetings because they are “so dry, so boring,” and that “very few people attend.” She explained her rationale: Respondent: It's pretty important that I realize how [the donations] are being spent. Once I know and Vm secure in the fact that they are being spent wisely, I trust you. . . . Interviewer: So initially it was really important, but now? Respondent: Right. And now it's not so much. Guilt giving. The theme of guilt emerged among high givers particularly when they talked about what the consequences would be for them if they were to give less money or stop giving money to the church altogether. Several high givers in both churches responded that they would feel guilty for not fulfilling something that was required of them, and that they would be letting down the 2 0 4 SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION church that was relying on their giving. One respondent at MP said he had a “guilt meter” which compelled him to give more when his giving dipped too low. A nother respondent at EP, when asked about potentially giving less money than he currently does, said: “I wouldn’t feel good about that. I’d feel like I was just taking; Pm not committed and I’m not participating.” Similarly, another respondent at MP said, "I would feel that Pm not contributing my part, and Pd feel wrong about it.” While this theme of guilt was expressed by some high givers, none of the respondents claimed guilt to be a primary motiv‫״‬ ation for giving; rather, they explained it as something that would bother them if they were to give less. Low Qivers: Characteristics and Obstacles The second set of findings corresponds to the characteristics and obstacles described by the low-giving respondents. Wealth insecurity. A common perception among several low givers at both churches was that they were giving whatever they felt they could afford. As one respondent at MP said, “I give monthly and I figure out what I can afford.” Similarly, an EP respondent noted, “I look in my wallet on Sunday morning, and I say, ‘W hat can I afford? How much is this week gonna cost me? W hat can I afford to give?” It is noteworthy that these respondents did not say that they were struggling with their finances in general. Rather, it appeared as though giving to church was simply not a priority— it was something which could be addressed at the very end, once all other financial commitments were taken care of. A few of these respondents mentioned going through financial struggles and difficult circumstances. These respondents suggested that they wanted to give more money, but in recent times they have not been able to give as much as they would like to: I give as I have funds available, just by week by week. It's not as much as I'd like to give, but I give as much as I can give. . . . In general Fm a generous person and I like to give more. It's been difficult for me to give. One respondent also mentioned dropping his giving level significantly, because he and his wife had a second child and his wife stopped working. He expressed a sense of regret that he could only now afford to give “a fraction” of his income, and hoped that in time he would be able to raise his giving level. Others expressed the desire to be able to give more, but resigned themselves to the belief that this was not possible. As one respondent at MP said, “I wish I could give more because I know it’s being used well in the church. But, do what you can do.” It was much more common to find among EP low givers a sense of regret that they could not afford to give as much as they felt they wanted to or should. Among MP low givers, people who expressed a sense of wealth MOTIVATIONS FOR AND OBSTACLES TO RELIGIOUS GIVING 205 insecurity tended not to express any guilt; rather, they took comfort in the fact that their church taught that they should only give whatever they were “comfortable” giving. As one man explained MP’s teaching about financial giving: “It’s just if you feel you can and as much as you can. But if you can’t, that’s fine.” Giving illiteracy. Some respondents seemed to believe—or at least claimed—that they were high givers, and that they were giving at least 10 percent of their income. From the church-reported figures and their own selfreported income estimates, we know that this is definitely not the case. In some cases, their claims sounded self-aggrandizing—at least, in comparison to the high givers at their churches. “You know, we don’t have a set limit,” mentioned one woman. “We give very faithfully and give a large portion of our income to the church and to outside organizations.” Another respondent, conversely, claimed, “We have a fixed amount.” He then went on to add, “Frankly, if I were to look at my net income, we’re giving over a tithe, frankly. I don’t care, I don’t pay any attention to it. And then whatever special needs, we’re very quick to put something in.” However, since both these respondents claimed to donate to the church in the form of checks, we see a large discrepancy between their claims and their contribution level reported to us by the church. Others also seemed to suggest that they were giving a high percentage of their income to church. However, a certain vagueness characterizes their claims: We try and stay within a base of 10 percent. I think, you know, most people do that. I know in this economy it may be a little more of a struggle. . . . But, you know, again, 10 percent is, I think, the window of what most people, or at least what we try to profess. They want 10 percent, or is it 15 and I come close to that. I wouldn’t say I’m quite there, but I try, between financial and volunteering, I try and put a number on that and the two together, I think, and I try to get past the 10 percent. So 1 try to weight it all together when I’m tithing. From such responses alone, it would be nearly impossible to ascertain whether respondents were high or low givers. Thus, it appeared that there were different types of giving illiteracy that occurred among low givers. One form of giving illiteracy is to be uninformed or confused about their own giving level, and therefore think that they are giving more than they in fact are. Another type of giving illiteracy seems to be a vagueness around giving that is characterized by the lack of a clear expectation for their own giving level. This obstacle also seems to connect to the fact that some people are confused about what the teaching on giving is in their church and therefore do not know exactly how to gauge their own giving levels. After observing sermons on giving in each of the churches, we noted a number of ambiguities in the way that giving was talked and preached about, and thus our findings underscore that giving 2 0 6 SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION illiteracy on the part of parishioners may also be a reflection of giving illiteracy expressed more broadly within the churches they attend. Guilt. The theme of guilt emerged among low givers in several different ways. Certain individuals expressed a sense of God’s understanding that seemed to assuage their guilt, while others seemed very uneasy about their giving level. Still others, particularly at MP, felt completely confident with their giving level, as they believed they were living out their church’s teachings on financial giving by giving whatever they felt they could. (1) Comfortable guilt. As described in Smith et al. (2008:110), comfortable guilt refers to how people despite experiencing guilt about not giving are still not motivated enough to alleviate it. Interviewees do not themselves call this comfortable guilt; they describe feeling a certain amount of guilt about not acting differ-‫׳‬ ently than they are, while at the same time describing this feeling as being tolerable enough so as to not bother them to act differently. For example, some respondents at EP expressed uneasiness and disappointment with their giving level: I'm relatively uneasy. I mean 'cause everybody feels that they— or at least, I think that everybody should feel that they probably could be doing more than they are, and so if somebody's actually confident and secure in their giving, then I think maybe they are fooling themselves a little bit, ‘cause you could always-not always, but you probably should always have the feeling that whatever you’re doing, you could do more. I'm uneasy, because I used to do more and I feel like I should do more, I'm trying but trying isn't doing something. Although these respondents reported feeling uneasy about their giving levels, apparently due to their experience of a normative expectation that they should do more, they did not suggest having attempted to alleviate this guilt. They remained in the low category for church-reported giving behavior. Despite experiencing a certain amount of dissonance and guilt, this was not discomforting enough to motivate them to give more in order to relieve the uneasiness. (2) “I give what I can.” Most of the low givers at MP, in contrast to EP, did not express having a sense of guilt. They believed that they were only expected to give whatever they could: “Well, they tell you to give according to what you can afford and to keep giving the same amount so they know they can plan on how much they’re going to have to pay the bills,” as one respondent put it. Similarly, when asked about how the church talks about financial giving, another said, “Give what you can is about how simple I can make that. Give what you can.” MOTIVATIONS FOR AND OBSTACLES TO RELIGIOUS GIVING 207 Many MP congregants, as a result, felt satisfied with their current giving level. The theme of “I give what I can” was pervasive among them, and they believed that the church expected no more of them. Many of them also mentioned that they specifically did not tithe: I don’t do a percentage, 1 will say that. So the 10 percent tithe, I don't do that. It’s more based on my abilities and I do try to bump it up a little bit each year; I feel my level of giving is appropriate based on my ability to give. I give. I give what 1 c a n . . . 1 don’t tithe. But I give because I want to, I feel like I should. For these respondents, the fact that they do not believe in the concept of tithing as a set standard seems to mean that they are comfortable with giving a low percentage of their income and do not feel any uncomfortable feelings about their lower giving levels. Additional obstacles to giving. In addition to the above factors, some other themes emerged in interviews. Some respondents mentioned bad church-related experiences in the past, which continue to have lingering effects and which could serve as an obstacle to financial giving. Some, for example, mentioned having gone through divorces, after which they have been less involved with their churches. Some other low givers mentioned having had sour experiences of financial giving in the past. One respondent at MP had a fear that if she were to give more money, then the church would hound her for more. Another obstacle was financial obligations, such as “child support obligations” or “a lot of medical bills.” Another important theme that emerged specifically among the low givers at MP was the substitution of time for money. One respondent, for example, mentioned that he was now retired, and was unable to give as much money as he would like: “But I’ve made up for that, I feel in time sp en t. . . I give if I can, and if I can’t, I try to substitute it with volunteer time.” Another respondent, who claimed to tithe 10-15 percent, said that he includes “financial and volunteering” in his calculation: “I try and put a number on that and the two together, I think, and I try to get past the 10 percent. So I try to weigh it all together when I’m tithing.” While EP members claimed that even if their incomes were reduced, they believed that they were obliged to give 10 percent of it to church, several MP members mentioned that if they were not able to give money in the future, they would substitute it with their time: If I couldn’t give any money I think I’d want to give more of my time. Yeah, I would want to balance it out somehow. Um, not that you don’t give of your time but, if I couldn't give any money at all, yeah, I think I would want to give more of my time.” If I stopped giving money 1 probably give more time. I’d figure out a way. I don’t like to, money’s not the only thing I give, so I think I’d just increase my time if we became, if my 2 0 8 SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION husband lost his job or something like that where we couldn’t give the money, I think I’d still help the causes that are close to my heart somehow. A couple of other respondents at EP whose giving levels were low mentioned that they practiced the 10 percent tithe, but distributed this among several religious and charitable organizations. Thus, it appears that a number of additional factors exist as obstacles to higher levels of religious financial giving: difficult life situations, bad previous giving experiences, fear of being hounded by their churches, a substitution of time for money, and a distribution of donations. DISCUSSION Given the current economic climate, in which many families are experiencing tough and stressful financial times, it is particularly relevant to understand in greater depth the complexities of financial giving decisions. This in-depth comparative study of two Protestant churches allowed for an investigation of the many expressed motivators for or obstacles to high giving for respondents in our study, as well as an exploration of how these differ across church contexts. We found that on the whole, “socialized,” “normative,” “need,” and “guilt”-based motivations were prevalent among high givers. However, socia‫׳‬ lized giving seemed to equally characterize low givers. Thus, for some respondents, socialized giving may be a necessary but not a sufficient motivator of giving. Additionally, some high givers did not learn generosity at an early age, but only later on in life, meaning that for some respondents socialized giving is not a necessary motivator. These factors complicate our understanding of the intergenerational transmission of generosity, and merit future study to parse out what other factors socialized giving may or may not be couple with in order to motivate giving. For the purposes of the present study, this finding indicates that socialized giving can be, but is not always, a giving influence. Further, we found considerable variation within the categories of “normative” and “need” giving across the two churches. Normative giving for EP members entailed explicit religious or spiritual motivations, often with the implication that they would be letting God down if they did not give. MP members instead professed either a tradition- or duty-based motivation. While need giving was acknowledged more immediately by MP high givers, we found that EP high givers, who claimed a primarily spiritual or theological rationale for giving, did considerable research into how the church’s funds were being spent. This supports previous research on the importance of visibility of recipients of generosity (Eckel and Grossman 1996). We also found evidence for wealth insecurity among low givers at both these churches. Here, in some cases, the insecurity seems to be due to a genuine lack of financial resources—and it is possible in such cases for people to try and make up for the money they would like to give, by donating time MOTIVATIONS FOR AND OBSTACLES TO RELIGIOUS GIVING 2 09 instead. In other cases, it seemed as though the expressed insecurity might well have been a post-hoc justification—a socially understandable and acceptable answer. While after-the-fact justifications can certainly separate reported reasons for behavior from actual reasons for it, they are not necessarily noncausal. For example, wealth insecurity could be a socially acceptable rationalization for not giving, but that does not eliminate it as a possible cause. In other words, if the respondents did not have a socially acceptable rationalization for not giving, they could in fact donate. It, therefore, can still function as an obstacle to giving behavior, since giving does not occur at one point in time and then never again. Especially for regularly attending parishioners, every worship service provides another opportunity to give, and so an after-the-fact justification for not giving last week can be an obstacle to not giving next week. Evidence for giving illiteracy was prevalent. The types of giving illiteracy entailed confusion over parishioners’ own giving levels—ambiguity about what the standard was that they were expected to meet, about what went into these calculations, and about how their giving compared with similar others in their church. Several low givers’ accounts of their beliefs about and practices of financial giving were such that we found it almost impossible to distinguish them from high givers. Some of them explicitly claimed to tithe—although sometimes with exaggerated claims about their generosity, based on our knowledge of their giving behavior—and others articulated their responses to sound as if they were giving 10 percent or so of their income. Their accounts, thus, were far off the mark in comparison with the range of their financial contributions that their churches disclosed to us—whatever these respondents meant when they claimed to be tithing, the church reports showed that they were giving nowhere near 10 percent. This does not mean that these respondents were being intentionally deceptive. It may be possible that they genuinely believe that they are contributing a high proportion of their income. They may have done so in the past, perhaps when they had a lower income, and maintained this amount as their tithe. They may have contributed generously some years ago, or contributed large sums on single occasions, which shaped their self-understanding as generous givers. It may also be the case that they were conceptualizing “income‫ ״‬differently—for example, as the left-over disposable income after paying off their mortgages and other bills. This finding is consistent with previous research on the LDS church, which found that people, when calculating tithes, usually conceptualize income predominantly as cash available for immediate consumption, which would differ from more comprehensive conceptions that an economist or tax accountant would use (Dahl and Ransom 2002). It may also be the case that more religiously involved respondents held to a broader definition of income, as Dahl and Ransom (1999) found, although we were not able to assess this in our study. The vagueness that characterizes some of their accounts may also be due to social desirability effects, especially if these respondents wanted to portray themselves as “committed Christians.‫ ״‬Thus, like Bekkers 2 1 0 SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION and Wiepking (2010), the current study highlights some of the problems of relying exclusively on self-reported data when it comes to financial giving. We do not intend to dismiss self-reported data as altogether unreliable; we certainly depend upon this source ourselves in order to understand people’s actions to a great degree. However, we underscore the importance of in-depth ethnographic and interview research to study this phenomenon, and find that linking self-reported data to other forms of behavioral data can help overcome some of these difficulties. Another complication that this study reveals about giving illiteracy is the extent to which parishioners’ false awareness of their giving behavior can act as an obstacle to religious giving. In other words, to the extent that some parishioners already rate themselves as high givers, when in fact they are not, then they are essentially able to ignore messages about giving—they would interpret such messages as not pertaining to them but to somebody else. This obstacle points to the difficulty that churches face in talking about giving to parishioners who approach the topic from a multitude of directions and may have any number of religious giving motivations and obstacles. Thus, even if parishioners have any one or more of the motives for giving, have heard and understand a call for giving, and have the desire and ability to act upon that call, they may still fail to meet their own giving expectations simply out of a lack of awareness, or out of a false consciousness, of their actual giving level, and the extent to which it does not match what they think or profess it to be. While we find that guilt serves as a motivator for many high givers in both churches, none of our respondents were motivated primarily by guilt. High-giving respondents wanted to avoid the unpleasant emotions associated with going against their normative commitments to tithe, or letting down people in the church whom they saw as depending on them, or letting down God. Our findings thus support previous studies that find people to be more likely to give if they would feel guilty or irresponsible for not giving (Basil et al. 2006; Smith and McSweeney 2007), especially if they perceive that their reduction of giving might have negative consequences for recipients who rely on them (Sargeant and Woodlifife 2005). Our findings also support studies that relate guilt to people’s attempts to regulate their self-image (Bekkers and Wiepking 2007:32). Respondents who see themselves as a certain type of person—for whom financial giving expresses commitment and participation— anticipate feeling guilty if they were to act in ways that violated this selfperception; it would mean becoming a kind of person they did not want to become. Participation in certain religious environments thus seems to compel some people to contribute financially as part of their religious role or identity, and not giving (enough) would create a sense of role dissonance that they would need to alleviate by giving. A t the same time, our findings also show that guilt is not a sufficient primary motivator. Several low givers described feeling a sense of guilt, and articulated a belief that they should give, but it appears that they did not feel MOTIVATIONS FOR AND OBSTACLES TO RELIGIOUS GIVING 211 this dissonance at a high enough level that they needed to alleviate it by giving. Guilt thus seems to act as a form of negative reinforcement (Amodio et al. 2007) that serves to bolster other primary motivators for giving (e.g., continuing long-standing habits, alleviating perceived needs, or following normative principles), but only for people for whom these influences are salient priorities. But if these factors are not as influential (e.g., when people have other priorities that they consider more important), the guilt may not inconvenience them enough to act in order to alleviate it. Certainly, some respondents, who did not have the financial means, were able to alleviate the sense of guilt about not contributing by engaging in nonmonetary forms of giving. But some other low givers, particularly at MP, did not express any sense of guilt about not giving; their reported income levels suggested that they did have the means to give, but they justified their lack of giving by stating that they were giving what they felt they could. Their church only taught they should “give what they can”; thus, they did not feel any guilt about falling short of any standard, since the latter was up to them to decide. The current in-depth analysis of professed motives for and obstacles to religious financial giving reveals a complicated pattern of variance across (i) high versus low givers and (ii) religious tradition and church context. One of the primary contributions of this study is the typology developed for different types of motives for and obstacles to giving. Professed motives for giving do not necessarily differentiate high from low givers, but particular types of motives for giving appear to interact with particular types of religious traditions and church cultures to produce different outcomes in described understandings of religious giving. One implication of this is that pastors interested in talking to their parishioners about giving can clearly not take a one-size-fits-all approach. Instead, they need to find a style of talking about religious giving that matches well with the church culture and religious tradition in which they are located. W hile talking about giving as freely chosen and not obligated appears to be important at both churches, the way in which a normative basis of giving is defined appears to be an important distinction between the two churches. Thus, EP high-giving parishioners appear to be like hearing religious giving talked about within the context of providing back to God what has been provided to them. This is in contrast to MP high-giving parishioners who, on the whole, specifically mention not wanting to think about religious giving in such a manner, and prefer instead to focus on normatively based giving as a way of acting on beliefs regarding tradition and community. Parishioners thus profess that they prefer to be told the needs of the church in a manner more akin to what one might find in a nonprofit organization. Even with ethnographic and in-depth interview data, we thus see the tremendous difficulty in identifying the mechanisms which underlie financial generosity, or serve as obstacles to it. Nevertheless, the typology we developed provides some categories for motives and obstacles to giving that can be 21 2 SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION investigated further in future investigations. Naming the expressed motivations of a high giver and the expressed obstacles of a low giver are both done with the intention of understanding the causal mechanisms5 at work in the giving process. The lack or inhibition of a motivation expressed by a high giver is also a potential explanation for low giving, just as the lack or inhibition of an obstacle can explain high giving. Thus, this study provides behavior-based and self-report-based qualitative evidence of the ways that various causal mechan‫*׳‬ isms can motivate or obstruct giving. Future studies can further develop these ethnographically based types to design specific survey and interview questions to investigate their prevalence within larger samples, especially across additional congregational contexts, and to analyze the origins of these poten‫׳‬ tial motivations and obstacles. REFERENCES Abell, Ellen, and Viktor Gecas. 1997. “Guilt, Shame, and Family Socialization: a Retrospective Study.” Journal of Family Issues 18:99-123. Amodio, David M., Patricia G. Devine, and Eddie Harmon‫ ״‬Jones 2007. “A Dynamic Model of Guilt: Implications for Motivation and Self-regulation in the Context of Prejudice.” Psychobgical Science 18:524-30. Basil, Deborah Z., Nancy M. Ridgway, and Michael D. Basil 2006. “Guilt Appeals: the Mediating Effect of Responsibility.” Psychology and Marketing 23:1035-54. Bekkers, René, and Pamala Wiepking. 2007. “Generosity and Philanthropy: A Literature Review.” Philanthropic Studies Working Paper Series. Amsterdam: VU University. . 2010. “Accuracy of Self-reports on Donations to Charitable Organizations.” Quality and Quantity DOI: 10.1007/slll35-010-9341-9. Brooks, Arthur C. 2006. Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism. New York, NY: Basic Books. Mark Chaves, and Sharon L. Miller, ed. 1999. Financing American Religion. Walnut Creek, CA: Alta Mira Press. Dahl, Gordon B., and Michael R. Ransom. 1999. “Does Where You Stand Depend on Where You Sit? Tithing Donations and Self-serving Beliefs.” American Economic Review 89:703-28. . 2002. “The 10% Flat Tax: Tithing and the Definition of Income.” Economic Inquiry 40:120-37. Eckel, Catherine C., and Philip Grossman. 1996. “Altruism in Anonymous Dictator Games.” Games and Economic Behavior 16:181-91. Finke, Roger, Matt Bahr, and Christopher P. Scheitle. 2006. “Toward Explaining Congregational Giving.” Social Science Research 35:620-41. Giving USA. 2009. Giving USA Foundation: Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University. Greenspan, Patricia. 1995. Practical Guilt: Moral Dilemmas, Emotions, and Social Norms. New York: Oxford University Press. 5See Porpora (2007) for further explanation of causal mechanisms. MOTIVATIONS FOR AND OBSTACLES TO RELIGIOUS GIVING 213 Havens, John J., Mary A. O’Herlihy, and Paul G. Schervish. 2007. “Charitable Giving: How Much, by Whom, to What, and How?” In The Non-Profit Sector: A Handbook, edited by Walter W. Powell, and Richard Steinberg, 542-67. New Haven: Yale University Press. Hoge, Dean R., and Fenggang Yang. 1994. “Determinants of Religious Giving in American Denominations: Data from Two Nationwide Surveys.” Review of Religious Research 36:123-48. Hoge, Dean R., Charles Zech, Patrick McNamara, and Michael J. Donahue. 1996. Money Matters: Personal Giving in American Churches. Louisville: Westminster John Knox. Iannaccone, Laurence R. 1997. “Skewness Explained: A Rational Choice Model of Religious Giving.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 36:141-157. James, Russell N. Ill, and Keely S. Jones. 2010. “Tithing: an Examination of Religious Charitable Giving in America.” Applied Economics DOI: 10.1080/00036840903213384. James, R.N. Ill, and D.L. Sharpe. 2007. “The Nature and Causes of the U-shaped Charitable Giving Profile.” Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly 36:218-38. Lee, Lichang, Jane A. Piliavin, and R.A. Vaughn Call. 1999. “Giving Time, Money, and Blood: Similarities and Differences.” Social Psychology Quarterly 62:276-90. Olford, Stephen F. 2000. The Grace of Giving: a Biblical Study of Christian Stewardship. Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel. Olson, Daniel V.A., and Paul Perl. 2001. “Variations in Strictness and Religious Commitment within and among Five Denominations.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 40:757-64. Porpora, Douglas V. 2007. “Sociology’s Causal Confusion.” In Revitalizing Causality: Realism about Causality in Philosophy and Social Science, edited by Groff Ruth, 195—204. New York: Routledge. Reddy, Richard D. 1980. “Individual Philanthropy and Giving Behavior.” In Participation in Social and Political Activities, edited by David H. Smith, and Jacqueline Macaulay, 370-99. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Regnerus, Mark, Christian Smith, and David Sikkink. 1998. “Who Gives to the Poor? The Influence of Religious Tradition and Political Location on the Personal Generosity of Americans toward the Poor.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 37:481-93. Sargeant, Adrian, and Lucy Woodliffe. 1995. “The Antecedents of Donor Commitment to Voluntary Organizations.” Nonprofit Management and Leadership 16:61-78. Schervish, Paul G., and John J. Havens. 1995. “Do the Poor Pay More? Is the U-Shaped Curve Correct?” Nonprofit and Volunteer Sector Quarterly 21:79-90. Schervish, Paul G., John J. Havens, and A.K. Whitaker. 2001. “Wealth and the Commonwealth: New Findings on Wherewithal and Philanthropy.” Nonprofit and Volunteer Sector Quarterly 30(1 ):5-25. . 2005. “Philanthropy’s Indispensible Ally.” Philanthropy XIX:8-9. Smith, Joanne R., and Andreè McSweeney. 2007. “Charitable Giving: the Effectiveness of a Revised Theory of Planned Behaviour Model in Predicting Donating Intentions and Behaviour.” Journal of Community and Applied Social Psychology 17:363-386. Smith, Christian, Michael Emerson, and Patricia Snell. 2008. Passing the Plate: Why American Christians Don't Give Away More Money. New York: Oxford University Press. Snell, Patricia, Christian Smith, Carlos Tavares, and Kari Christoffersen. 2009. “Denominational Differences in Congregational Youth Ministry Programming and Evidence of Systematic Non-Response Biases.” Review of Religious Research 5 1:21—38. Steensland, Brian, Jerry Z. Park, Mark D. Regnerus, Lynn D. Robinson, W. Bradford Wilcox, and Robert D. Woodberry. 2000. “The Measure of American Religion: Toward Improving the State of the Art.” Social Forces 79:291—318. 2 1 4 SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION U.S. Census Bureau. 2000. “Census 2000 Data for Indiana.” Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Commerce. Available at http://www.census.gov/census2000/states/ in.html, accessed on October 8, 2010. Wiepking, Pamala, and Beth Breeze. 2008. “Feeling Poor, Acting Stingy: The Effect of Money Perceptions on Charitable Giving.” Working Paper Series WP7. Amsterdam: VU University, Department of Philanthropic Studies. Wiepking, Pamala, and Ineke Maas. 2009. “Resources that Make You Generous: Effects of Social and Human Resources on Charitable Giving.” Social Forces 87:1973-96. Wilhelm, Mark O., Eleanor Brown, Patrick M. Rooney, and Richard Steinberg. 2008. “The Intergenerational Transmission of Generosity.” Journal of Public Economics 92:2146-56. Wuthnow, Robert, 1991. Acts of Compassion: Caring for Others and Helping Ourselves. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Zaleski, Peter A., and Charles E. Zech. 1992. “Determinants of Contributions to Religious Organizations: Free Riding and Other Factors.” American Journal of Economics and Sociology 54:459-72. Copyright and Use: As an ATLAS user, you may print, download, or send articles for individual use according to fair use as defined by U.S. and international copyright law and as otherwise authorized under your respective ATLAS subscriber agreement. No content may be copied or emailed to multiple sites or publicly posted without the copyright holder(sV express written permission. Any use, decompiling, reproduction, or distribution of this journal in excess of fair use provisions may be a violation of copyright law. This journal is made available to you through the ATLAS collection with permission from the copyright holder( s). The copyright holder for an entire issue of ajournai typically is the journal owner, who also may own the copyright in each article. However, for certain articles, the author of the article may maintain the copyright in the article. Please contact the copyright holder(s) to request permission to use an article or specific work for any use not covered by the fair use provisions of the copyright laws or covered by your respective ATLAS subscriber agreement. For information regarding the copyright holder(s), please refer to the copyright information in the journal, if available, or contact ATLA to request contact information for the copyright holder(s). About ATLAS: The ATLA Serials (ATLAS®) collection contains electronic versions of previously published religion and theology journals reproduced with permission. The ATLAS collection is owned and managed by the American Theological Library Association (ATLA) and received initial funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The design and final form of this electronic document is the property of the American Theological Library Association.