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<\/a><\/p>\nBy Fred Smith<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n As president of The Gathering<\/a>\u2014a community of individuals, families, and private foundations making financial gifts to Christian ministries around the world\u2014for some time now, I often wonder if philanthropy is one of those words that has either lost its traditional definition (love of mankind) or never should have been used to describe giving in the first place.<\/p>\n In fact I wonder if our use of \u201clove of mankind\u201d actually is possible or even desirable. Yes, there are numerous examples where giving springs from sincere feelings about the poor or a genuine desire to alleviate suffering, spread the gospel, deliver health care, rescue young girls and boys from the bondage of trafficking, and restore dignity to people. No doubt these are good things. But are they really philanthropy? Are they charity? Are those actually two different things?<\/p>\n Jeremy Beer would say they are. Writing in The Philanthropic Revolution<\/i>, a short, well-organized, and thorough Historically, for Jews and Christians, charity, as the spiritual practice of almsgiving, was salvific and redemptive. \u201cFor them, to give generously from one\u2019s wealth to the needy was not merely an act of civic piety; it was to \u2018lay up treasures in heaven,\u2019 and thus it had the deepest and most lasting personal significance possible.\u201d Charity was not a way to solve social ills but to alleviate suffering. Charity, like mercy, recognizes that all of life is a gift and that, like God, we give in turn to others. It is not a means to an end.<\/p>\n The poor and the suffering are not a problem to be solved. Rather, charity is an expression of sheer gratitude and human compassion toward another person. \u201cNo matter how important its acts of charity may have been in winning adherents, the early Christian church did not view these acts first through a utilitarian lens,\u201d Beer emphasizes. \u201cCharity was not a means, at least not primarily, of solving a social problem, redistributing wealth, or even growing the church. To practice charity was to make a statement about the world and the God who had created and redeemed it.\u201d Charity originated with the Creator and, in turn, pointed back to him.<\/p>\n But, like everything, theology evolves. While the Reformation had the positive effect of eliminating many of the less desirable aspects and practices of the Catholic Church, it had negative consequences as well. Instead of charity being linked to personal salvation, the Reformers held that good works, including charity, had no saving merit whatsoever. Salvation was by faith alone, and almsgiving therefore no longer played a special role in putting the believer in contact with God.<\/p>\n \u201cIn other words,\u201d Beer comments, \u201cthe person engaged in an act of charity or work of mercy was no longer engaging in a \u2018merit-worth deed,\u2019 for he or she could win no merit with God by his or her works.\u201d While the Reformers certainly did not intend it, their rejection of redemptive almsgiving frayed one of the primary cords by which charity was tethered to traditional Christian (Catholic) theology.<\/p>\n For several centuries the two theological cousins\u2014meritorious giving and unmerited favor\u2014traveled along the same path. While some differences, like attitudes toward begging, were the cause of disagreements, both Catholics and Protestants focused on the inherent value of charity. However, during the Enlightenment and immediately following, the path forked. For Benjamin Franklin \u201ctraditional charity\u2014giving alms\u2014was self-defeating; the money would be here today and gone tomorrow, and the poor would be as dependent as ever. By contrast, philanthropy removed the conditions it addressed; in its successful wake, charity would go out of business.\u201d<\/p>\n This new idea of putting charity out of business started people thinking about charity itself as a business\u2014a business that would harness the momentum of optimism in the radical improvement of the human condition. Charity would be an effective tool in the project.<\/p>\n Nearly all the antebellum reformers, in fact, believed that it was possible not only to change the world, but also to perfect it, and they spoke of their work interchangeably as benevolent or philanthropic rather than simply charitable. In other words, modern philanthropy\u2019s focus on getting at root causes owes much not only to the Enlightenment tradition represented by Franklin but also to the evangelical movement represented by Finney, Lyman and Henry Ward Beecher, Timothy Dwight, and other prominent figures associated with the Second Great Awakening.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Ironically, the Great Awakening itself and the globally focused millennial beliefs of the evangelists were instrumental in the unraveling of the theological cord that bound Catholic and Protestant understandings of charity. Philanthropy (or what Beer calls \u201cscientific philanthropy\u201d) now found a broader mission to eradicate the very causes of the woes of the world.<\/p>\n With this understanding of philanthropy in place, \u201cthe term charity was rejected as denoting something too condescending and demeaning for respectable people to receive\u2014and perhaps as something dangerous for a self-respecting person to offer.\u201d In fact, it was outright scorned as detrimental and counterproductive, an embarrassment to those who wanted to compel the poor to change their moral habits. It appeared to be an excuse for laxness and a failure to make needed change. One critic of charity, Orestes Brownson, was a committed reformer himself but changed his views radically after a conversion experience. \u201cThe universal lust to reform society,\u201d he said, \u201cto reform other people in a spirit of ideology rather than faith, must at the last come to this. . . . Love me as your brother, or I will cut your throat.\u201d Brownson feared that radical humanitarians would \u201cmake war on the people in order to perfect mankind. Their vaunted altruism was the opposite of genuine love and charity\u2014for it often veiled pride and the will to power.\u201d For this reason, Brownson concluded, Satan\u2019s \u201cfavorite guise in modern times is that of philanthropy.\u201d<\/p>\n He had reason to fear the worst. Experimentation, eugenics, mass sterilization, and, ultimately, ethnic cleansing all have their roots in the early (and often forced) optimism of philanthropy detached from both merit and favor alike. The poor became a problem to be solved by institutions with little interest in the individuals they were trying to reform. As Proverbs says, \u201cThere is a way that seems right to man but leads to the ways of death.\u201d<\/p>\n Developments like these gave the term \u201cphilanthropy\u201d an ironic hue and cut it off from its roots in the love of mankind. Unhooked from its \u201cbrotherly\u201d (phileo<\/i>) concern, such \u201clove\u201d becomes something else entirely. For some, it is now \u201clove of solutions\u201d or \u201clove of fixing intractable problems\u201d but not true phileo<\/i>\u2014the love of someone with whom you share an interest outside of yourself. As C.S. Lewis puts it in The Four Loves<\/i>, it\u2019s not so much love of the other person (and certainly not mankind in general) but a love of something shared in common.<\/p>\n Philanthropy, to exist at all, requires a relationship with another person. But philanthropy has become extraordinarily knowledgeable about<\/i> people while detaching itself from<\/i> them. In Inc.<\/i> magazine, Timothy Askew writes<\/a> about this mindset among young entrepreneurs: \u201cEven in their publicly bruited avowals of pro<\/i> bono concern for the future of mankind, there seems somehow an unattached sense of being personally outside humanity\u2014above humanity more than part of it.\u201d<\/p>\n As I read Beer\u2019s description of modern philanthropy\u2019s detachment from humanity, I was reminded of The Great Gatsby<\/i>. Deeply embarrassed by his \u201cshiftless and unsuccessful farm people,\u201d Jay Gatsby reinvents himself and becomes \u201ca son of God . . . about His Father\u2019s business.\u201d It is not love that drives him. \u201cI wasn\u2019t actually in love,\u201d he says, \u201cbut I felt a sort of tender curiosity.\u201d I think Jeremy Beer would agree with that. Philanthropy has become a sort of tender curiosity.<\/p>\n Beer\u2019s proposal is the creation of what he calls \u201cphilanthrolocalism.\u201d The word does not easily roll off the tongue. In fact, the more familiar and thoroughly Catholic term would be \u201csubsidiarity,\u201d the belief that social problems should be dealt with at the most immediate (or local) level consistent with their solution. Instead of being objective and detached, philanthropy should encourage the possibilities of authentic human communion.<\/p>\n Rather than removing itself from commitment to persons, philanthrolocalism recognizes that we have a primary responsibility to look after that which is closest to us. Rather than taking a global perspective, it concentrates on local communities. Rather than being merely strategic, it reflects the strength of the moral claims and ties that bind us together. In other words, it might not \u201cchange the world,\u201d but it might return us to what we have most deeply in common.<\/p>\n Is his proposal practicable when donors raised as global citizens with fortunes outstripping anything the world has seen turn their attention to philanthropy? Are they likely to embrace primarily their local community and look for ways to establish authentic human communion? Is the local community capable of absorbing the bulk of their fortune? Are all philanthropists motivated by pride and the will to power?<\/p>\n Not likely.<\/p>\n However, Jeremy Beer, like Wendell Berry, John Gardner, and others who have written about the value of belonging and obligation to our particular place, should not give up. They may not change the world, but their love applied will be far more than a mere tender curiosity.<\/p>\n By Fred Smith As president of The Gathering\u2014a community of individuals, families, and private foundations making financial gifts to Christian ministries around the world\u2014for some time now, I often wonder if philanthropy is one of those words that has either lost its traditional definition (love of mankind) or never should have been used to describe […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":335,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[247,249,248],"class_list":["post-333","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-reviews","tag-charity","tag-giving","tag-philanthropy"],"yoast_head":"\n<\/a>discussion of charity and philanthropy, Beer traces the history of both and comes to a reasoned (although sometimes testy and sidelong) conclusion: philanthropy and charity, while springing from the same root, have parted ways and are not likely to come back together. While both have serious theological presuppositions, they represent very different\u2014even competing\u2014theologies.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/span> Fred Smith<\/a><\/b><\/em>
\n Fred is President of The Gathering, an international association of individuals, families, and foundations giving to Christian ministries.\u00a0 This post originally appeared at <\/em>Comment magazine.<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"