The Role of Ethnicity in Money and Religion

In Christian churches, one topic of conversation that is often uncomfortable, for lack of a better term, is money or more technically the budget. For instance, although I have no concrete statistics on giving (donations) in my denomination by Anglo Presbyterian churches and Korean Presbyterian churches, I’ve discovered that in general there is a basic difference: Anglo churches tend to run “stewardship” campaigns asking members to commit to giving for the following year, while Korean churches tend to rely on “tithing” (giving 10% of your income).

When I was growing up, I remember that the Sunday worship bulletins would even list who had given an offering (donation) to the church the previous Sunday, a practice I’m not entirely sure many Korean churches still do currently, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they did. This would be nearly offensive in Anglo churches, I’m sure. Of course, a lot of the mentality behind giving is cultural – while I’m sure there are many Anglo churches that rely on tithing and not simply having to solicit funds, tithing is just a part of the Korean (read – more conservative, “Biblical” or literal) understanding of supporting a church’s ministry. Giving and growing go hand in hand.

To give, families need to have some kind of income. All this is to say that coming across the NY Times article, “Is Religion Your Financial Destiny?” sparked some reflection on the connection between religion and income, as well as ethnicity. According to the article, certain faiths seem to attract people of a certain level of income:

The most affluent of the major religions — including secularism — is Reform Judaism. Sixty-seven percent of Reform Jewish households made more than $75,000 a year at the time the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life collected the data, compared with only 31 percent of the population as a whole. Hindus were second, at 65 percent, and Conservative Jews were third, at 57 percent.

The article seems to infer that the level of income is also tied invariably to the level of education: “[t]he relationship between education and income is so strong that you can almost draw a line through the points on this graph.” But the ethnicity factor doesn’t seem to be consistent:

A few of the religions that make less than their education would suggest have largely nonwhite followings, including Buddhism and Hinduism. Pew also created a category of traditionally black Protestant congregations, and it was somewhat poorer than could be explained by education levels.

It’s interesting to think about the different cross-sections within religions and faiths, but the danger here is the tendency to generalize based on these larger categories. A number of the comments on the article questioned the data – is it a little skewed because there are too many discrepancies when it comes to charting education, income, and ethnicity in connection to religion?

In many ways, the article wasn’t terribly helpful, but seemed to just reinforce the stereotype that the Asian religions tend to have mostly Asian/Asian American adherents – whatever their education level – and that Black Protestants were generally poorer.  Though mainline Protestant Christian denominations generally have Anglo members, surprisingly, the income levels were lower. But many of the 2nd generation Korean Protestant churches I know of seem to have members who have more education and higher income. To go back to the differences in giving, my experience has shown that it isn’t always the case that the richer churches are necessarily the more generous. I know of a church in one of the more poorer (and actually diverse) sections in South Boston where the people, also generally working-class, are quick to give and support the ministry — and it seems to have nothing to do with education or income.

It seems difficult to really map out the relationship between ethnicity, income, education, and religion. In the end, I have to agree with one commentator who said, “The more I thought about it, the less it seems to mean.”