Last year, there was a whole media dust up about Pastor Alois Bell who refused an 18% autograt (automatic tip on large parties), writing on the receipt, “I give God 10 percent why do you get 18?” It was an unfortunate incident that the Pastor later apologized for. But there is a larger question here, which Karen Swallow Prior grapples with in her Christianity Today article, Why Are Christians Such Bad Tippers?
On one level, it is a puzzler. In general, Christians are generous; they give more money to charity than non-Christians. But they seem to be lousy tippers. The truth is, we don’t know that Christians are bad tippers. The anecdotal evidence we have suggests only that ostentatiously Christian people are bad tippers. You know, the Matthew 6:5 Christians, “When you pray, you are not to be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners so that they may be seen by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full.” Do we know if the more reasonable Christians are bad tippers too?
Another question is whether the ostentatious Christians are generous in charitable giving. Maybe they’re not. But I suspect they are, for the same reason that they make a big show of proclaiming their faith after church at the local Denny’s. Prior thinks this has to do with Gnosticism and the way many Christians separate the holy from the profane. Giving to starving children in Africa is part of the holy, so they are generous. But tipping a server is part of the profane, so they aren’t.
That strikes me as a bit too tidy. I think there a couple of things going on. One is the “Hitler was nice to his dog” effect. The server right in front of you is very real and so complicated and flawed. But the starving African child is an ideal: perfect and pure. And if humans can come up with reasons not to part with money, they will! I think to a large extent, that explains the paradox of Christians giving to Good Causes but not to the good cause of a server making rent.
But this doesn’t explain why these Christians tip worse relative to others. Here I think you have to look at the kind of people who are ostentatious Christians. They are also: conservative Christians. Just in the simplest of terms, these people may not tip for the same reason they won’t go to see Noah: they don’t want to give money to those kind of people. But in this case, it’s even worse because there are all kinds of issues of class and identity. If servers were the right kind of people, they wouldn’t be servers. Servers tend to be younger and female; they really ought to be married. There are all kinds of extra reasons there to hang onto your cash.
In general, people tip based upon how they want to be seen. Mr Pink in Reservoir Dogs doesn’t tip because he sees himself as smarter than the bleeding hearts who voluntarily throw away money they don’t have to. I tip well because being a bleeding heart and ostentatiously generation is important to my self image. And I think that everyone fits somewhere in that continuum. But Christians can see themselves as not giving money to servers because they are saving it to give it to more deserving recipients.
Either way, tipping doesn’t actually say anything about you other than whether you are a total jerk to the people who serve you. As Jesus said, “Blessed are the meek, but even servers have bills to pay.”
Let’s stop calling church giving charity. It is spent on buildings, land, and salaries. From what I have read, and what I saw when I was a practicing christian, about 2 to 20 percent gets converted to actual charity. The Red Cross is around 80 percent. All those 501(c)(3) exemptions subsidize a retail store that provides performance art. What does make it to the poor, here or abroad, is often encumbered by compulsory religious indoctrination. The charity,in those cases, is only intended as a means to coerce the indoctrination. Else why would they bother with the condition? Your point about the ostentatious being conservative is spot on.
@Lawrence – I’m with you. However, I had read that even throwing out the religious charity, Christians still give more. But I don’t know if that does or doesn’t include religious giving in the form you are talking about. Because that is very true: it is tit-for-tat "charity."
I read an interesting Thomas Frank [url=http://www.salon.com/2014/04/06/tom_frank_interviews_barbara_ehrenreich_youre_the_anti_ayn_rand/]interview[/url] with Barbara Ehrenreich and she made a really interesting point. She commented that Christianity has just become a system where people act good for the reward of getting into heaven. That’s well know. But she added, "What bothers me about that is it seems to me that what Jesus would say is you must give up your space in heaven to some poor sinner." That would be real Christian love! I could get behind that church!
http://stevegilliard.blogspot.com/2004/11/they-voted-for-this-mess.html
I am reminded of the case of Laura B, at the top of this post. This anecdote is an example, and not the entire basis, of my issue with religious charity. You have probably read the linked post before. Long, but worth the effort.
@Frank — According to Putnam’s book "American Grace," once you throw out church charity, Christians rank pretty low in charitable giving. However that has to be taken while considering how much many DO give to religious charities, as ineffective as many of those charities may be. Most Christians, like most Americans, don’t have a ton of money to throw around.
I think the chapter in Putnam’s book was 13 or so; around thereabouts.