WHO’S GENEROUS? The wealthiest Americans–those in the top 20 percent–give 1.3 percent of their income to charity; those in the bottom 20 percent give 3.2 percent of their income, even though many of them can’t itemize their contributions as a tax deduction.
One theory about why the rich give less is because they are more isolated from and therefore have less empathy toward truly needy people.
Lower income people may give more because they are more acquainted with the challenges of meeting basic human needs.
Rich people tend to give to the arts and education, whereas poorer people tend to give to social service and religious organizations (Atlantic, March 20).
NEURAL HEALTH: Just as our muscles atrophy with inactivity, our ability to connect with other human beings weakens if we spend too much time alone or engage them only via technologies like smart phones, according to Barbara L. Fredrickson, psychologist at the University of North Carolina, and her team of researchers.
Social connection also enhances health. “When you share a smile or laugh with someone face to face, a discernable synchrony emerges between you [and the other person], as your gestures and bio-chemistries, even your respective neural firings, come to mirror each other,” Fredrickson wrote.
“It’s micro-moments like these, in which a wave of good feelings rolls through two brains and bodies at once, that build your capacity to empathize as well as to improve your health” (New York Times, March 23).
WOMEN IN HISTORY: When the Washington Post in 1943 tried to come up with a list of the “Ten Outstanding Women in the Modern World,” it could name only eight.
Three of the women were the wives of world leaders at the time: Eleanor Roosevelt, wife of President Franklin D. Roosevelt; Madame Chiang Kai-shek, wife of the Chinese nationalist leader; and Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, wife of the King of England, George VI.
The others were Margaret Meade, American anthropologist; Evie Curie, Marie’s daughter; Dorothy Thompson, journalist and foreign correspondent; Sigred Undset, Norwegian writer who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1928; and Louise Boyd, who had made an expedition to Greenland (History Today, March 2013).
ORDINARY LIVING: In a tribute to outgoing Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, ethicist Stanley Hauerwas said that what Williams taught us is the art or ordinary living.
This means giving up notions about grand gestures or heroic actions. It involves learning to live without fear of the complexity of ordinary life.
Williams confessed that he longed for a Church that was more true to itself. Yet, said Williams, the art of ordinary living means that I must also learn to live in and attend to the reality of the Church as it is, to do the prosaic things that can be and must be done now, and to work at my relations now with the people who will not listen to me . . . because what God asks of me is not to live in the future, but to live with honesty and attentiveness in the present. That is, to be at home” (Religion and Ethics, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, March 20).
PATH TO CITIZENSHIP: According to the Public Religion Research Institute, 63 percent of Americans agree that the immigration system should allow immigrants already living in the U.S. illegally to become citizens, provided they meet certain requirements. Particular groups polled consisted of the following:
Democrats (71%), Independents (64%), Republicans (53%).
Hispanic Catholics (74%), Hispanic Protestants (71%), Black Protestants (70%), Jews (67%), Mormons (63%), White Catholics (62%), White Mainline Protestants (61%), White Evangelical Protestants (56%).
SPIRITUAL BUT NOT RELIGIOUS: “Spirituality is an emotion. Religion is an obligation. Spirituality soothes. Religion mobilizes. Spirituality is satisfied with itself. Religion is dissatisfied with the world. Religion creates aid organizations . . . the largest U.S.-based international relief and development organization is . . . World Vision, a Seattle-based Christian group” (Rabbi David Wolpe, Time.com, March 21).
[These excerpts are from the April 17 edition of the Christian Century. I’ve been grading papers this week, instead of writing my blog. Since most people I know don’t read the Century–as I have, faithfully, for over 40 years–periodically sharing portions of this rich resource of religion, culture and society, even politics, seems a worthy thing to do.]
