What about Altruism/Charity/Philanthropy?

Why do people give money to needy people or public causes? Why should people make charitable or philanthropic contributions? What is altruism and how can it best be implemented? These are questions worth careful consideration.  

Give because of Greed?

Some of us grew up in churches that stressed tithing—and I have been a tither my whole life and encouraged tithing when I was a pastor. But I never told people that tithing was a means for receiving God’s blessings and to receive more from God than they ever gave to God and God’s work.

There are preachers, though, who have appealed to people’s “greed” to encourage them to tithe. “If you tithe, God will reward you by increasing your income” was the appalling “pitch” some preachers used, seeking to bolster the church’s financial income.

More generally, there are those who give because of the “greedy” desire for the good feelings they get from contributing to the emotional appeals by charitable organizations and/or needy people.

Perhaps greed is too strong a word to use here, but I simply mean the strong desire to get more of something, such as more blessings and (maybe) money or more feelings of self-satisfaction.

Give because of Guilt?

Historically, two of the most generous philanthropists in the U.S. were Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller.

Carnegie (1835~1919) made his fortune in the steel industry, and the wealth of Rockefeller (1839~1937) came largely from profits he made from the Standard Oil Company, which he established in 1870.

The philanthropy of those two industrialists is clearly visible in the worldwide Carnegie libraries and the work of the Rockefeller Foundation. And without doubt, multitudes of people have been helped by the philanthropic gifts of those two men .**

However, recently June and I have watched (on DVD) The Men Who Built America, the six-hour miniseries docudrama originally broadcast on the History Channel in 2012, and we have seen an apparently accurate portrayal of the ruthlessness of those two tycoons and the harm they did to so many.

Particularly horrifying were the catastrophic Johnstown Flood of 1889 and the Homestead Steel Mill Strike/Massacre of 1892. The docudrama clearly depicts Carnegie’s culpability in both of those tragedies.

That excellent miniseries, though, fails to note that those catastrophes occurred during the very time Walter Rauschenbusch was pastor in the Hell’s Kitchen area of New York City and beginning to emphasize what came to be known as the Social Gospel (see my 9/30 blog post).

Even though Carnegie had built a few libraries before those events that significantly tarnished his good name, most of his philanthropic work was after them and most likely at least partly rooted in his sense of guilt and his desire to restore his reputation.

Give because of Gratitude?

In the New Testament, Matthew quotes Jesus as saying, “Freely you have received; freely give” (10:8, NIV). Accordingly, it is obvious that the best reason for altruistic giving is not because of “greed” or guilt but because of gratitude.

A strong sense of gratitude goads us to give graciously to help others. But how is the best way to give? Just acting upon our subjective feelings may not be best.

In recent years, an “effective altruism” movement has been popular in some circles. It recommends rationally considering ways to give that will produce the greatest good for the greatest number of people rather than giving on the basis of emotional appeals and feel-good causes.

(You may want to check out this website: Using reason and evidence to do the most good - Effective Altruism.)

Interestingly, two major proponents of effective altruism are non-religious thinkers/writers: Peter Singer (b. 1946) and Steven Pinker (b. 1954). To learn more about them, see Singer’s 2013 TED talk and this 2021 interview with Pinker.

There is also an Effective Altruism for Christians website (see here). I also encourage you to (re)read Guidelines for Charitable Giving, my blog post for Nov. 30, 2010.

Yes, there is much to consider with regard to altruism/charity/philanthropy.

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** I wrote about those two outstanding philanthropists in my Sept. 15, 2017, blog post titled “Problems with Philanthropy,” and it is worth reading again.

A Penney Worth a Lot

Most of you know about the J.C. Penney chain of stores. But do you know who J.C. Penney was? Perhaps only a few of you have ever been to his hometown of Hamilton, Missouri. And probably none of you have played basketball in the Penney High School in Hamilton as I did as a high school student. 

Penney’s Early Life

Since I received more-than-expected responses to the blog post I made on my birthday last month, the post in which I wrote about being a Missouri farmboy, let me introduce you to another northwest Missouri farmboy, a Penney who came to be worth a lot.

James Cash Penney was born 145 years ago (on September 16, 1875) on a farm two miles east of Hamilton, Missouri, about 75 miles mostly south of Grant City, my hometown, and a long drive home after a night basketball game.

J.C.’s father was a farmer—and an unpaid Primitive Baptist preacher. Even though the Penney farm was a fairly large one, the family was rather challenged financially, and J.C. started earning his own money at an early age—raising pigs (as I did) and watermelons (which I certainly never did.)

Penney’s Successful Life

Since he was financially unable to go to college, J.C. Penney worked locally for a while then moved to Colorado. In 1898, he began working for the Golden Rule dry goods stores in Colorado and Wyoming.

After buying one-third interest in a Golden Rule store in 1902, just five years later he was able to become not only the sole owner of it but of the other two stores. In 1912, he changed the name of all the Golden Rule stores, of which there were then 40, to the J.C. Penney Stores—but he never forgot the Golden Rule.

By the early 1920s, the J.C. Penney Company was one of the largest retail organizations in the country. But then in 1929 financial disaster struck. The stock market crash caused Penney to lose some $40,000,000.

Following a period of despair and then a period of rest in a sanitarium, he began to fight back, and he and his company became financially successful again.

In the 1930s he purchased the farm once owned by his parents. In later years, he gave money for the construction of a new library and then a new high school in his hometown of Hamilton.

Even though he had made numerous charitable contributions, at the time of his death in 1971 his estate was valued at $25,000,000. Truly, he was a Penney worth a lot.

But throughout his life, he sought to live by the Golden Rule, which was more than just the name of a dry goods chain store. In 1950 he published an autobiography titled Fifty Years with the Golden Rule.

Penney and Polk County

Many of you who are my personal friends know that June, my wife, is from Polk County in southwest Missouri, and you may even remember that she is a graduate of Humansville High School. But I didn’t know of J.C. Penney’s indirect connection to Humansville until earlier this year.

In 2012, the George Dimmitt Memorial Hospital in Humansville was added to the National Register of Historic Places.

In a lengthy PDF document about that hospital, I learned that Charles Dimmitt, the son of a pastor of the Methodist church in Humansville, donated funds for the construction of that hospital as a memorial to his son George, who died in 1928.

It turns out that Charles Dimmitt had been employed by the Golden Rule stores and then between 1913 and 1922 had become wealthy as an executive in the J.C. Penney Company.

The same document says that Dimmitt also purchased and donated the site for a city park and made a substantial contribution toward the community building in Humansville, which was the venue of June’s high school graduation service.

All of this, it says, was perhaps because of “the example for philanthropy set by J.C. Penney.”

Yes, J.C. Penney was worth a lot—and in ways other than financial.

Problems with Philanthropy

To the Stars through Difficulties is a new book by Kansas author Romalyn Tilghman. I recently read Romalyn’s delightful novel and enjoyed hearing her discuss it on Wednesday afternoon.

The Case of Andrew Carnegie

The Carnegie libraries of Kansas are the backdrop of Tilghman’s novel. Early on she informs her readers that industrialist Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919) built 59 libraries in Kansas in the early 1900s and that “he gave the country 1689 libraries that served thirty-five million people by 1919.”

That is impressive philanthropy! And it is only part of what Carnegie did with his great wealth.

But on the same page Romalyn acknowledges Carnegie’s “despicable treatment of mineworkers, including the murder of seven men in his attempt to break up the union,” and reports that some Kansas communities “refused to take his tainted money even for the promise of a library.“

She then rightly states that Carnegie was “both a philanthropist and robber baron (p. 7).”  

The Case of John D. Rockefeller

Andrew Carnegie vied with John D. Rockefeller as being the richest man in the world. Like Carnegie, Rockefeller (1839-1937) also started life in rather humble circumstances but through hard work, ingenuity, and shrewd business deals he also became a man of great wealth.

From boyhood and throughout his lifetime Rockefeller was a faithful Baptist church member—and a tither. From his early 50s, he deliberately began his philanthropic activities.

A chapter in Ellen Greenman Coffey’s small book John D. Rockefeller is titled “The Pious Robber Baron.”

In a later chapter, “An Investment in Good Works,” Greenman tells of Rockefeller’s increasing involvement in giving his money away under the tutelage of Frederick T. Gates, a young Baptist minister whom he employed.

Among the many projects Gates (1853-1929) led his boss to support, one of the best-known is the Rockefeller Foundation, established in 1913 after years of planning.

Rockefeller’s philanthropic work, however, was partly in response to the negative publicity he had suffered from Ida Tarbell’s 1904 book, The History of the Standard Oil Company, in which she depicted Rockefeller as “miserly, money-grabbing, and viciously effective at monopolizing the oil trade.”  

The Case of Joan Kroc

Recently, June and I watched “Founder,” the 2016 movie about Ray Kroc, the man who built McDonald’s restaurants into the wealthiest fast food chain in the world—but not without the use of devious means.

Joan was Krok’s third wife. They married in 1969, when Ray was 67 years old, and she inherited his wealth after his death in 1984. Their story is told in Lisa Napoli’s 2016 book titled Ray & Joan: The Man Who Made the McDonald’s Fortune and the Woman Who Gave It All Away.

Joan’s $1.5 billion gift to Salvation Army is said to be the largest philanthropic gift ever made by an individual in the U.S. The bulk of that gift has been used to build and maintain 26 Kroc Centers throughout the country.  

Problems with Philanthropy

Very summarily, here are some problems with philanthropy, clearly seen in that of the three people mentioned above:

(1) There is a problem of how the wealth of the philanthropists is gained, particularly when it is by exploitation of workers and shrewd (bordering on illegal) business practices.

(2) Then, most philanthropists tend to aggrandize themselves in their charitable giving. Everyone knows of Carnegie libraries, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Kroc centers.

(3) And then consider these insightful words by William Jewett Tucker, a contemporary critic of Carnegie:

I can conceive of no greater mistake, more disastrous in the end to religion if not to society, than of trying to make charity do the work of justice.