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Admittedly, $85.5 billion doesn't look as big as it used to. The U.S. government spent as much to save the ailing insurer American International Group from bankruptcy. But such an increase in religious giving could be world changing. Smith and his coauthors try to provide some idea of what that money could accomplish:

$10 billion would sponsor 20 million children for a year, and just $330 million would sponsor 150,000 indigenous missionaries in countries closed to religious workers. $2.2 billion would triple the current funding of Bible translation, printing, and distribution. $600 million would be enough to start eight Christian colleges in Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia.

These figures only begin to spend that extra cash. What Christians could do—if they managed their money in a way that gave priority to giving a portion away—is astounding.

Actually, it's not quite true to say that American Christians give only a small portion of their money toward religious endeavors. Looking closer, the picture is more disturbing.

As already noted, a quarter gives away no money at all. The average, regularly attending churchgoer gives 6 percent of after-tax income, but that's a mean skewed by a handful of very generous givers. The median annual giving for an American Christian is actually $200, just over half a percent of after-tax income. About 5 percent of American Christians provide 60 percent of the money churches and religious groups use to operate. (It's these people who skew the average.) "A small group of truly generous Christian givers," say Passing the Plate's authors, "are essentially 'covering' for the vast majority of Christians who give nothing or quite little."

In addition, America's biggest givers—as a percentage of their income—are its lowest income earners. The widow who gave out of her poverty rather than her wealth (Mark 12:42; Luke 21:1-4) has a lot of company, it seems. Yet so does the rich young ruler ().

"Americans who earn less than $10,000 gave 2.3 percent of their income to religious organizations," Smith, Emerson, and Snell write, "whereas those who earn $70,000 or more gave only 1.2 percent." While the actual percentages are slightly higher for Christians who regularly attend church, the pattern is similar. Households of committed Christians making less than $12,500 per year give away roughly 7 percent of their income, a figure no other income bracket beats until incomes rise above $90,000 (they give away 8.8 percent).

In fact, in absolute terms, the poorest Christians give away more dollars than all but the wealthiest Christians. We see the pattern in recent history as well: When Americans earned less money following the Great Depression, they gave more. When income went up, they began to give less of it away.

That giving is so low may be no surprise to those familiar with the adage of the camel and the eye of the needle. But Passing the Plate's authors were not interested in chronicling stinginess. They were instead propelled by a nagging question: Why?

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December 2008, Vol. 52, No. 12