Abstract
With the publication of Paul G. Schervish and Keith Whitaker Wealth and the Will of God: Discerning the Use of Riches in the Service of Ultimate Purpose and David H. Smith (Ed.), Religious Giving: For the Love of God, Indiana University Press continues to extend the work on religion and philanthropy that has been an important and growing area of research since the early 1990s. This growth can be tracked by the increase in the number of ARNOVA sessions and NVSQ articles devoted to issues religious. Although there remain significant theoretical and conceptual weaknesses and gaps that must be overcome in the study of religion and philanthropy, religion and civil society, and even religion and giving, the recognition of religion’s importance in the overall philanthropic environment is most welcome.
At the outset of this review, full disclosure is necessary. I have known the editor of one volume and one of the coauthors of the other for nearly two decades during which time both of them have been valuable conversation partners. In the edited volume, the contributors also include a former student and two former colleagues of mine, including one who attended the same synagogue that I did in Indianapolis.
Paul Schervish’s and Albert Whitaker’s, Wealth and the Will of God: Discerning the Use of Riches in the Service of Ultimate Purpose is a most valuable book. To a great extent its strength rests in its coherency of voice and, more importantly, a coherency and consistency of argument, an impressive feat given the variety of individuals examined.
Growing out of the authors’ work at the Center on Wealth and Philanthropy, Schervish and Whitaker aim to provide deep theological and philosophical insights to help individuals determine how to distribute their charitable or philanthropic dollars. Assuming that religion plays a major role in how individuals construct their moral universes, the authors examine the writings of five dominant figures in the history of Western Christianity. They also include one ancient Greek philosopher, Aristotle. Although some may find the inclusion of Aristotle anomalous, it strikes this reviewer as perfectly reasonable. For if all philosophy is footnotes to Plato, nearly all discussions involving practical wisdom, phronesis, are footnotes to Aristotle. This volume, regardless of the language of the various thinkers, is about practical wisdom.
All the individuals discussed in this volume—Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Ignatius, Martin Luther, John Calvin, and Jonathan Edwards—are convinced that humans are preeminently social beings, that property and wealth are mere instrumentalities that individuals hold, at best, in usufruct, and that property is not an absolute right. These understandings connect the thinkers and make it possible to bring them into conversation. What distinguishes the various thinkers from one another is their initial assumptions about the nature of the divine, of human beings’ relationship to the divine and, derivatively, to other human beings and the ways in which one acts on those convictions. The differing theological doctrines lead to varied perspectives on an individual’s approach to the world, material existence, reason, and giving.
Schervish and Whittaker lead the reader through the perspectives of these thinkers on the ultimate purposes of human life, individual capacities, and deliberation. The last directed mainly on discerning how one ought to use one’s capacities to serve ultimate purposes. This schema provides powerful insight into the various thinkers’ views of wealth and about the individual’s use of it. The goal of bringing this knowledge to a wider audience is the purpose of the book. The authors feel obligated to provide readers with ways to think more deeply and productively, not only about their giving, but also about their relationship to wealth and money. This presents an ongoing tension in the volume, as the authors attempt to avoid coming across as overly normative and prescriptive within the confines of a book that is inherently about normative claims and prescriptions.
Although all the book’s chapters are superb, several stand out. Undoubtedly the strongest is the one on Ignatius of Loyola, reflecting, to some extent, Mr. Schervish’s training and education. Ignatius’ own method in The Spiritual Exercises lends itself to the method the authors use in this volume, particularly their emphasis on discernment. Discernment is a deep, reflective process undertaken by an individual to discover, articulate, and implement the actions essential to becoming what one ought to be or doing what one ought to do. This is not about being who one is or doing what one wants. It is about determining, within a set of normative claims about the ultimate purpose of human life, how one ought to use one’s distinctive capacities to effect or serve ultimate purposes.
Religious Giving: For the Love of God, however, begins with the idea that the normative claims detailed by Schervish and Whitaker already operate, and then strives to illustrate how they do so within the area of religious giving in the United States. Although each essay in the volume is worthwhile independently, they do not really make a book. Ranging from Patrick Rooney’s article on giving to religious institutions to Shariq Siddiqui’s essay on Muslim Philanthropy in the United States (which demonstrates the volume’s potential) to Robert Katz’s essay on what the rise and fall of Jewish hospitals says about Jewish philanthropy in the United States, the essays give us snapshots of episodic connections between religion and giving in the United States, including Byron Bangert’s claim that religious giving really ought to be about changes in governmental policy.
The lack of consistency is the volume’s greatest weakness, a weakness the overall quality of the individual essays cannot overcome. That said, however, there would be value in using it for a class with different essays being chosen for different topics in the semester, or as bases for conversation.
To my mind, no essay better illustrates the missed opportunities in the volume than Judith Lynn Failer’s on tikkun olam. This essay could have highlighted the role of a metaphor in driving activities of giving and serving within a distinctive tradition, seeking out its roots and illustrating not only contemporary uses but also the controversies surrounding the term. As she rightly points out, tikkun olam is preeminently associated with the kabbalistic/esoteric tradition within Judaism. It is based on a theurgical model that actions undertaken in this, the lower world, have correspondences in the higher world. Charitable acts both improve our material world and minimize the separations in the supernal world. Such acts are not only religious obligations, they also have a very real, instrumental effect of righting the cosmos. As Moshe Cordovero wrote in Tomer Devorah (Palm Trees of Deborah), “When a person undertakes chesed (deeds of loving kindness) in this world, he should intend to reinstate its parallel Supernal quality—this is called doing kindness to his Creator.”
Picked up primarily by the more liberal wings of American Judaism, its significance among more observant Jews has diminished. Many of them simply view it as appropriating a Jewish term for a secular, social justice agenda. At the same time, however, other members of the tradition have embraced the term but articulated it in light of their view of the essence of the Judaism, as her quotation from Rabbi Jonathan Sacks demonstrates.
If Failer’s essay had explored the complexity of the use of this term within the history of philanthropy in Judaism, illustrating its uses, the transformations of its meaning and uses, as well as the recovery of the term by Orthodoxy in a particular manner, it would have done a tremendous service. Rabbi Sacks’ discussion of the meaning of tikkun olam is important because it reminds us that charity and philanthropy are about producing goods that a community (or an individual) values. It is about what is necessary for a good life. Although there may be many of these things, all traditions have preferred gifts, and some things are more important than others. Rabbi Sacks’ quotation illustrates this. I give what I think is good, or to realize what I am convinced is good. Greater specificity about this relationship would have been invaluable, as would have essays focused on similar discussions regarding other traditions.
This essay, therefore, although valuable, fails to reach its potential. The weakness of this essay is indicative of the volume on the whole. It informs, its raises valuable issues, but it does not illuminate the discipline. The volume provides a series of snapshots of relationship between giving and religion in the United States but does not present a coherent and compelling exhibition. Given the growth in research and interest over the past two decades, however, it is time for such a volume.