The welfare poor have simply become the working poor. The National Association of Evangelicals and 50 other leading religious organizations articulated the same concern two months ago as they signed the Covenant to Overcome Poverty. Even as ebullient shareholders count their paper wealth from 1990s stock-market gains, there are more people in prison, more homeless, and more working poor than nine years ago when the long boom began. Greater prosperity should be accompanied by greater generosity. Most Christians are aware of the biblical tithe as a standard for giving.
Christians often perceive tithing as the ceiling for giving, but that is untrue.
The early Christians, motivated by their new life in Christ, demonstrated abundant generosity. There is no evidence they relied on pledges or percentage giving. If a genuine need existed, they often took responsibility to meet it. American generosity has not gone out of style, but it is not keeping pace with burgeoning prosperity. A Chronicle of Philanthropy survey reports that private donations to the nation's top 400 charities rose 16 percent in 1998, the largest gain since 1991.