Money

In the movie Leap of Faith, Steve Martin plays a traveling evangelist whose faith-healing circus becomes stranded in a small town. Those who have seen the movie likely recall Martin's antics: prancing on stage, singing with the choir, whipping people into a fervor with ridiculous nonsense like "Yakety yak, God's talking back!" Then, once he's off stage, Martin gleefully counts his money and mocks the pathetic dolts who buy what he's selling.

For some, Leap of Faith is truth in a bottle, a distillation of everything they suspect or believe to be true about organized religion. Not surprisingly, this stereotype of the "greedy preacher" is nothing new. Leap of Faith is a loose remake of Elmer Ganty, a 1960 film starring Burt Lancaster. And both films owe a good deal to "Tartuffe", a comedic play written in 1664 by the French playwright Moliere.

Admittedly, the stereotype does not persist without reason. There have been a number of high-profile financial scandals involving clergy in the past two decades. The media has documented instances of televangelists living extravagant lifestyles even as they solicit "money for the poor" from people on fixed incomes. Historically speaking, the history of medieval Europe is replete with examples of church-sanctioned greed. In fact, greed was one of the factors that stimulated the Protestant Reformation.

But those who wish to identify Christianity as some sort of breeding ground for charlatans should first take a closer look at rest of the world. Money and scandal have a long history together, longer in fact than the entire history of Christianity. So before we write the church off completely, we should put the facts in context. Consider the following list of secular financial scandals, all of which took place in the last 20 years.

The financial shell game and document-shredding cover-up known as Enron seems a good place to start. Just a few years ago, Enron was considered one of the most successful energy companies in the world. We now know that executives deliberately fabricated financial statements using phony companies to cover up billions in debt. Enron's auditor (Arthur Andersen) is likely to go out of business for their apparent role in the ruse. A very similar situation took place (almost simultaneously) at one of the world's largest telecom companies, Global Crossing.

In a separate incident, a US citizen named John Rusnak is suspected of orchestrating a $750 million dollar fraud involving Allied Irish Banks. The Bank of England (British equivalent of the U.S. central bank) was sued for 2 billion dollars in 2001 for its apparent negligence in the collapse of BCCI. An Englishman, Nick Leeson, was responsible for bankrupting one of England's oldest financial institutions, Barings Bank.

Back in the states, seven former officials of Cedant Corp. were charged with fraud resulting in billions of losses to investors. In a celebrated case, money manager Martin Frankel disappeared with $3 billion of his client's money. Receiving less coverage was a scam involving the government of Nigeria, which reportedly cost U.S. taxpayers $5 billion over 20 years. The former head of the African nation of Zaire (now Congo), is suspected of siphoning $4 billion in loans and aid money into his personal accounts. One could add to this list the Savings and Loan scandal of the 80's, price fixing at Sotheby's and Christies auction houses, the $32 billion fraud at Daewoo in South Korea, the complicity of Swiss banks with the Nazi's, Michael Milliken, Leona Helmsley, and documented financial scandals at Smith Barney, Sumitomo Corp., etc.

The list of major frauds could easily go on past the patience of most readers. Simply type "financial scandal" into Yahoo and you'll find an afternoon's worth of reading on the subject.

On the other hand, when considering the role of money in the church, we mustn't overlook the good done by Christian ministries all over the world.

• World Vision collected and distributed almost $1 billion to the world's poorest areas in 2001.


• Food for the Poor raised over $316 million this past year for food, medicine, housing materials and other aid for the poor of the Caribbean and Latin America, and over $1 billion since 1982.


• The Salvation Army raised and dispersed $2.1 billion for the poor in the year 2000.


• Catholic Relief Services raised $650 million in the last two years for disaster victims.


• Children's Hunger Relief raised and spent over $20 million on food for children in poverty-stricken areas around the world in 2001.


• Children's Hunger Fund is another Christian organization that serves poor children and their families, raising over $69 million in 2001.


• World Emergency Relief Organization provided $29 million in 2001.


• Feed the Children raised $396 million in 2001.


• Compassion International raised over $81 million in 2001 for needy children around the world.

All of these figures can be verified, and these are just a few of the thousands of Christian organizations, churches and ministries that use money in noble and sacrificial ways year after year. In fact, since the start of the twentieth century, Evangelical Christians have led the way in compassionate philanthropy in the United States. This is evidenced not only in the disaster relief organizations listed above, but also in the building of domestic human-service agencies such as summer camps, women's centers, urban rescue missions, drug and alcohol treatment centers, daycare facilities, senior centers, homes for the disabled, prison ministries, youth programs, counseling services, and urban development initiatives. Total spending this past year in this area alone is estimated at $3 billion. And this number does not include the enormous value of volunteer time, nor does it include the stacks of money evangelicals give to non-religious human-services organizations. One study, in fact, found that two-thirds of all such donations in the U.S. come from churches and church members. All of this amounts to a sum in the tens of billions per year.

In our culture, every organization requires money to function. And wherever there are people and money in close proximity there will be temptation and, occasionally, failure. Still, the overwhelming majority of Christian organizations understand that money is not the reason they exist. Put simply, the bottom line is not their bottom line. Rather, money is seen as a means to an end, a way to accomplish the work given them by the author of their faith. This includes feeding the poor, caring for orphans and widows, the ill, the infirm -- loving one's neighbor around the globe in innumerable, tangible ways. Leap of Faith not withstanding, this is exactly the kind of track record the church has established, a record of generosity that borders on being garish. More than a mere rebuttal, it's enough to embarrass any honest critic.

Christians really do put their money where their mouth is.