Who Tithes These Days?

You might be surprised what the numbers tell us about who and who doesn’t tithe. In What Americans Really Believe we get a pretty full disclosure of some significant facts about tithing.

But there’s an issue here: some pastors urge the tithe; the NT evidence is hardly clearly in favor of tithing; the NT focuses on generosity; Pope Adrian I in 787 mandated a tithe; many countries have a church tax — Denmark, Italy, Austria and Sweden.

Fact #1: poor people are more likely to tithe and give a higher percent of their income that wealthy people. Thus, Americans who make 10,000 or less give 11.2% of their income, while those who make 150,000+ give 2.7% of their income. There is a basic descent of percent of income given from the poor to the wealthy.

Fact #2: denominationally, the spectrum moves from Catholics (2.2%) to Lib Prots (3.0) to Cons Prots (5.5) to Black Prots (5.7) to Mormons (7.1) in percent of income given to the church. The percent giving a tithe goes like this: RCC (2.5), Libs (5.9), Cons (14.4), Black Prots (13.5) to Mormons (34.0).

Fact #3: those who tithe or who give more correlate with such things as church attendance.

After the jump, two more interesting facts:

Fact: widows and widowers are the most likely to tithe: 20.1% widows vs. 16.7 widowers tithe.

Fact: older people are more likely to tithe. The average age of an American tither is 54.1 yrs.