Given the amount of time that I have spent in the academy, it isn’t often that I’ve been called on to preach about tithing. But I did recently, and it occurred to me that laypeople probably find the attitude of clergy toward giving something of a mystery: One: “Apart from making people feel that they should give, do clergy ever preach that message to themselves?” Two: “If they do preach those sermons to themselves, do they think, “Hey, I work... Read more