Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger

"Some are guilty. All are responsible."

— Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel

So I'm pretty busy this week grading papers for my sometimes boss Ron Sider. He's the professor who teaches the "Biblical Faith and Public Policy" class I've been T.A.ing this semester. He's probably best known, however, for a book he wrote in 1977: Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger.

That's a dynamite title for a book. All you need is that title and you know what the book is about.

Or you think you do. It's interesting, and frustrating, that many of Rich Christians most enthusiastic critics (and fans) are people who haven't actually read the book. They just assume they know what it's about because of that title.

The centerpiece of the book was an argument for what Sider calls a "graduated tithe." The idea of tithing — giving 10 percent — comes from the Hebrew scriptures. Sider's argument was that 10 percent should represent the lower, and not an upper, limit on how much of their income Christians should give away. He wanted Christians to sit down and honestly figure out how much they need to get by — to pay the bills and provide comfortably for their families. Settle on an actual dollar amount for what you need — tithing included. When your income is below, or equal to that much, then try to give 10 percent. But if your income should grow, increase the rate of your giving. Give away 20 percent for the next $10,000 you earn. Give away 30 percent of the following $10,000. And so forth.

His concern was not with Christians' wealth per se, but that our wealth had outpaced our generosity.

Please notice what this argument is not. It is not a call for mandatory giving. It is not a call for a government program. It is not socialist. It is not anticapitalist. Nor is it a plea for some kind of dependency-inducing, thoughtless giving (Sider is most excited about "teach a man to fish" type solutions, such as microenterprise funds).

It is individual and it is voluntary. But it is costly.

Sider's book includes plenty of criticism of the American way of life, but this criticism is directed toward Madison Avenue, not toward Wall Street. His target is the consumer culture that says too much is never enough. He argues, instead, that enough is enough. And that until we learn that, we will never be able to give to others, or to be satisfied ourselves.

The book was, of course, attacked as a redistributionist, socialist, Communist, even Stalinist manifesto. It was called a "guilt trip." It was endlessly attacked by rich Christians insisting that the "age of hunger" was not their fault.

This last was particularly odd. Sider wasn't saying that global poverty was their fault. He was saying it was their responsibility, and that it was their opportunity. And his proposed response to that opportunity was wholly individual and wholly voluntary.

But again, it was also costly.

And that, I think, more than the Cold-War-induced ideological blindness of his libertarian and laissez-faire critics, accounts for their obtuse insistence on attacking his proposed individual response as collectivist and his proposed voluntary response as coercive.

When we were working on one of the many updates for Rich Christians, I mused that maybe a less explosive title would mitigate some of the touchiness the book's earlier printings had received. I suggested, perhaps, "Stingy Christians in an Age of Hunger" as a more accurate summary of the book's argument. Or maybe just, "Don't Be Stingy."

I was just kidding, though, and anyway it wouldn't have mattered. "Don't Be Stingy" is, to those critics, just another Stalinist slogan.