Americans, and American Christians in particular, pride themselves on being a generous people. According to the authors of Passing the Plate, that is a rather generous use of “generous.” Giving more than non-religious people is fairly easy to do, since their average giving rate nationwide is 1.1 percent. American Christians, by contrast, give an average of 2.9 percent. The faithful of other religions in America give more—3.3 percent—a figure that is pumped up a bit by the 5.8 percent giving rate of Mormons, who are not treated as Christians by the authors, despite their own claims to that identity.

All of the biblical traditions teach abundant generosity, and many aspire to, if they do not mandate, the Hebrew Bible's principle of a tithe (10 percent). Yet survey data over the past twenty years show that between a fifth and a quarter of all Americans, including Protestants and Catholics, give nothing at all to any charities, religious or secular. Sociologists frequently discuss a “free rider” problem in American congregations, but its financial scope is astonishing.

Sociologists Christian Smith and Michael Emerson, together with research expert Patricia Snell, use their well-practiced techniques of massaging older national survey data, creating some current data of their own, and organizing focus group interviews in several regions to develop a nuanced national portrait of American Christians' giving. The statistics they cite about Americans'—and particularly American Christians'—relative stinginess are readily available, but the reasons behind their parsimony are not well known. Why don't American Christians give away more money?

What they discover is that the problem goes deep. It is not because American Christians do not have the means to give more, or the knowledge of greater needs, or an understanding of the Bible's teaching about giving. American Christians have the capacity to give away many billions more than they do, and a pretty fair sense of their opportunities and obligations. They could change the world if they all tithed. So what hinders them?

There are three main obstacles, the authors say, beginning with the socioeconomic currents in which we swim: Americans act and think “poor,” despite their affluence, because they have succumbed to consumerist inducements to go deeply into debt and to spend almost all that is left on luxury items. Second, a deeper cultural current of expressive individualism makes American Christians resist any communal claims on their personal freedom regarding their giving. The expressive side of our values pushes against proactive planning about one's giving. American Christians largely prefer to give “as I feel led,” or according to “what I feel that I can give now,” rather than to make pledges and to budget their annual giving. Many argue that spontaneous giving is more spiritual. But Smith, Emerson, and Snell show that planned, budgeted giving consistently outperforms ad hoc giving and more often enables those who plan to approach the goal of a tithe.

A third, even deeper, cause, the authors argue, is that Americans worship the golden calf. Personal finance is one of those “sacred” subjects that Americans fiercely guard against discussing. The great American hush-up about these matters reminds the authors that “taboo” is an important part of Durkheim's definition of “the sacred.”

What to do about it? In a refreshing addition to the analytical section of the book, the authors give out some advice. They say there are two approaches that, if they become more widespread, will change religious communities' giving dramatically. The first is to encourage people to give by making sure they understand the ways in which lives are changed and the world is blessed by their generosity. People love to learn that their generosity can make positive things happen. Conversely, the appeal to mundane necessity, such as meeting the congregation's budget and paying all the bills, energizes no one and makes for grudging giving.

Second, the authors argue that people should be encouraged to plan and budget their giving. Especially in a culture that exerts relentless pressure to spend every discretionary dime, “giving as you feel led” is a losing proposition. The authors find that as much as pastors say they care deeply about teaching their parishioners the ways of righteousness, they neglect to give instruction about the spiritual discipline of stewardship and the joy of seeing God's work advance thereby. Churches need to do more teaching about money and giving.

This book is a stunner. It dispels some myths about religious giving, such as who gives more, proportionately, well-off or low-income? Answer: low-income. Does “talking about money too much” turn off givers? No, it is more a matter of how you talk about money. If you have an embarrassed, diffident, “sorry, but we have to talk about this” approach, people cringe. If you give people news about the amazing things that their generosity helped to make happen, they want to hear—and give—more.

The readers of this historical journal will ask what value this book might have for their work. Its deepest probe into the past mentions a survey taken in the 1920s, so it has little to say about how the patterns they discover came to be, or how deep they run in our past. Historians need to ask more probing questions about the financial and philanthropic trends and climates of earlier times. This book probably will serve future historians in ways similar to how we now read the works of Robert S. and Helen M. Lynd and their “Middletown” research teams, in order to better understand religion and society in the 1920s and 1930s. Smith, Emerson, and their research colleagues have done outstanding work describing and analyzing important features of American Christianity in our time. It is historians' responsibility to trace the trajectories that propelled us to this point.