by Stephen Parsons
One of the incontestable facts about the Church of England is that parishes designated as conservative evangelical seem to have few problems in raising money. Other mainstream parishes around them are likely envious as they see large sums of money flowing into these churches. Expensive sound systems and huge reordering projects costing millions seem never to be a problem for these conservative congregations. Meanwhile the ordinary non-conservative parish next door struggles to pay the Parish Share and keep their plant in good order. For the first church, money appears easily; for the other it involves a hard and time-consuming struggle. What is the reason for this disparity? The answer is probably to be found in a single word – tithing.
The practice of tithing is held up to be a biblical practice with the authority of passages from Numbers and Leviticus. In a typical passage, like Numbers 18.21-24, it is a compulsory obligation to maintain the work of the Levites from the resources made available from tithe giving. This giving of the tenth or a tithe has been maintained as a model or principle on Jews and Christians ever since. In a typical conservative congregation, all the passages about tithing will be familiar. In many other authoritarian religious groups, whether or not part of the Christian tradition, it is applied as a matter of course. Full membership of that organisation will be withheld unless it can be shown that the member is giving a full tenth of their income.
It is my understanding that the income needed to own property in London, or one of the prosperous areas of the southeast of Britain, is well in excess of £80,000. Any church catering to this section of the population and has successfully persuaded them to give a tithe of their income, will be enormously wealthy. We see evidence of this kind of wealth when we see congregations in London employing and housing up to 14 clergy alongside support staff of various kinds. Tithing, when it is followed through and literally practised, allows many conservative parishes to be both wealthy and exercise considerable power within their dioceses and networks. The power that comes with such institutional wealth is not always used well. Sometimes money is withheld from central church funds as a way of trying to manipulate bishops to follow a particular line of teaching favoured by the conservative group. If we think of the various sections of the Church of England as resembling political parties, we can see clearly how the uber-wealthy right wing conservative section of the Church has the loudest voice in many of the debates over sexuality and other issues, where Christian beliefs and politics coincide.
My reader will not be surprised to learn that I believe that there are other problems to be faced over tithing apart from using parish wealth to promote church political agendas. My comments on the potential dangers of being part of a tithing congregation are based, not on an individual Church of England parish but on the experience of those whose lives were seriously damaged by their membership of Peniel Church Brentwood. This congregation, now Trinity Church, is an independent Pentecostal church formerly under Bishop Michael Reid. Reid, as my long-term readers will know, presided over this cult-like church which attempted to provide for every social and spiritual need among its members. The more involved that the members became in the life of the church, the more their own power for making decisions over things like jobs, careers, relationships and social life came under the scrutiny and control of the church and its leaders. As contact with non-member family lessened, so a dependence on the leadership and its approval for all their life decisions increased. Peniel was clearly at the extreme end of a spectrum of cult-like controlling congregations, but the financial aspects of its life seem to be similar to any church insisting that it has the authority to decide on the level of church giving from its members. There are two major questions that should be asked by anyone who becomes convinced of the necessity for tithe giving. In the Old Testament passages that support the idea of the tithe, the tenth, was clearly money that supported the work of the priests and the maintenance of worship conducted in the temple or elsewhere. The influence of the Temple officials extended to cover a legal system and the areas of administration of society now the responsibility of a civil service. The claim that the money was ‘giving to God’ could be justified since everyone would have accepted the understanding that the whole of society belonged to God. Such a claim would not work today. The resources need to keep our schools, police forces and hospitals are paid for by the taxes we pay. Few people apart from the wealthy can realistically pay a tithe out of the money that remains. Money of course is needed but the teaching that Numbers provides literal guidance over what should be paid is a position that needs to be debated. Meanwhile we note that the money that pours into conservative parishes is not just paying the salaries and housing of numerous curates, it is, as we have suggested, also buying power and ‘political’ influence in a church where power is about control of the entire institution. The genius of the traditional Church of England has always valued the simultaneous coexistence of different styles of worship and even theologies so that everyone may find a spiritual home. The contemporary scene is one where the theology in operation within the powerful conservative congregations is oppositional. There is only room here for a single theological narrative, the one favoured by the leader. The internal logic of having a theology that is inerrant demands that you seek to dominate and even destroy whoever does not agree with you. The language of conflict and raw power is in practice muted in theological discussions, but one still senses in conversations with conservatives how little understanding they have of those who do not understand or concur with the idea that ‘Scripture clearly teaches’. The politicisation of church life, which is in process today, gives us a painful conflict between those who continue to search for and explore truth and those believe they already have it. Members of churches which believe they possess the truth are giving large sums of money, not to God but to enable an unholy conflict aimed at undermining and discrediting those who continue to search and ask questions of their faith.
A second question to be asked of those who give a tithe of their income is whether it is being given freely and with joy. Without knowing, of course, the precise message that accompanies the call for a tithe in conservative churches, one suspects that there is often a hidden element of compulsion about the appeal. At Peniel the compulsion was open and blatant. If you don’t give what we determine is your due, then you cannot claim membership of this congregation. Another way of saying the same thing is to say ‘unless you give a tithe, you do not belong’. Belonging involves the fulfilment of a powerful area of human need. Not to belong is to feel the chill air of loneliness and rejection. In a Christian context the failure to belong evokes another deeper anxiety, the loss of salvation and a rejection from the hope of heaven. Thus, the giving of a tithe is not being on a path to the joy of spontaneous giving. Rather, it is a way of avoiding the burden of fear, one that has been placed on one’s back by a manipulative leadership. This leadership may well be interested also in using the tithe from their members to increase their prestige and power. In independent churches like Peniel the tithe allowed for for the boosting of the financial status of leaders to an extraordinary degree. In the case of Michael Reid and his successor, Peter Linnecar, this involved enormous salaries of £70k+ being received by these leaders. Another financial ‘scam’ that allowed leaders to benefit from the wealth of other tithing churches within their network, was to invite their leaders to preach and then, after accommodating them in luxury hotels, reward them with an enormous love offering. This invitation would naturally be reciprocated and Peniel’s leaders would jet across the world to preach and receive the same lavish hospitality. Looking at the practice of giving and receiving business class preaching invitations, one sees something close to a simple racket. Whether the multimillion tithe giving congregations in the Church of England ever practise the same system of sponsoring each other’s leaders is not something I can know. Certainly, extravagant pulpit swaps are a feature of church life in the States, and it must be tempting for aspiring leaders in the conservative circles in this country to be on the look-out for such opportunities.
Tithing one’s income to give generously to the local church would appear a way to stave off the ever-present threat of insolvency and debt in many congregations. But, as we have claimed, the successful imposition of such an incredibly high standard is likely to be combined with a darker narrative. Within the world of tithing congregations, there is likely to be manipulation, stress and straightforward fear. I find that even the use of the word brings into my mind controlling and coercive relationships in which emotional blackmail is widely practised. I end with my two questions. Where does the money really go? Is this high standard of giving really being achieved without the benefit of manipulative methods, such as bullying, indirect threats and the imposition of fear? The Lord loves a cheerful giver. I am not sure he wants anyone who has been bludgeoned into parting with more that can be afforded.
There still does need to be a sense of realistic giving in our’normal’ congregations. £5 in an envelope is totally unrealistic; that’s less than a week of the Daily Mail which sadly many of our people read and believe! A daily Starbucks is more than this as well. In my parish, probably well over 50% at least of income comes from about 6 families (interestingly former evangelicals). I know as I do the banking and analysis!
If the twin sacraments are baptism and the eucharist, then £5 a week might suffice. What kind of bread, or wine, or water do your congregation really need?
Lots of UK people, in the current inflationary context, now avoid newspapers, daily coffees or daily papers. £5 a week contributors could be reflecting on 1 Tim 5:8.
Church scandals do reduce the inclination to give. The other disincentive is some evangelical gurus (like Ravi Zacharias) having gigantic property or money assets.
Assuming you need a priest for the eucharist, and they are stipendiary, they will cost roughly £50k per year to support (stipend, housing, training, pension, on costs, etc.). If all giving £5 per week are tax payers and are Gift Aiding their donation you would need a congregation of 154 just to cover the costs of having a priest.
I assume you are holding the eucharist outside? Otherwise you have the costs of running and maintaining a building. Some admin support for the priest, so they’re not having to cover absolutely everything (and you can’t get volunteers so easily to cover those roles)? For many C of E churches the additional costs are usually about the same as their stipendiary ministry costs. So we’re now up to a congregation of over 300, if £5 per week is all they can stretch to.
For some people £5 per week is a lot and they shouldn’t feel they have to give more. But many can give a lot more, and should be encouraged to do so. Not pressured, but most people don’t have a clue about how church finance works. It’s not cheap – it’s valuable, and it comes with a cost.
The New Testament Church conquered the ancient world without any need for great halls or rectories. The relative poverty, of the Book of Acts Church vs. the contemporary Anglican Church, tells a story.
When a parish priest in a northern post-industrial town, I spent some time working with a family who’d fallen in with a large, ‘biblical’ charismatic church. Despite their being on benefits, no exemption was made for them from the tithing injunction.
The psychological pressure upon them to conform to the norm of the congregation was immense, and caused much suffering on the emotional and relational level, above and beyond the physical hardships they endured from what appeared to me to be a compassionless and self-satisfied leadership team. They found refuge with us, a small, struggling, unfashionable parish and, I hope, found some healing with us.
It was then that I fashioned my dictum, ‘Never trust a church with a large car park.’
The solution to misuse is not disuse but right use.
We tithe, freely and gladly, and its a privilege to be able to support the work of the church (and the other causes we give to) in this way. I encourage people in our church to consider tithing – though also pointing out that the New Testament doesn’t mention it, only giving cheerfully and generously in proportion to ones income. I don’t think you’ll find ‘manipulation, stress and straightforward fear’ in our church, and would be dismayed if there was. Please be wary of tarring everyone with the same brush.
So why use the word ‘tithe’ at all then?
Because the Old Testament is part of the Bible too, and 1/10 is probably the easiest proportion of ones income to work out.
Are you under the Mosaic Laws? I used to think tithing had some merit. But latterly it looks like an unbiblical tool, which can often be inflicted on vulnerable victims by manipulative leaders. The so-called ‘Church family’ can slip off a senior leader’s tongue, but a NT instruction runs: ‘Anyone who does not provide for their relatives, and especially for their own household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever’.
Like I said, the solution to misuse is not disuse but right use. If tithing is being wrongly used, then it should be challenged, just like any other practice in the church: sermons, choosing hymns, who gets to decide if there are flowers in Lent, control of the church website, who has the keys etc etc. The fact some people abuse the practice doesn’t make it innately wrong. Jesus challenges the Pharisees who tithe herbs but neglect mercy – he doesn’t tell them to stop tithing, but to get their priorities right.
Matthew 23:23-at face value-does not emphasise tithing.
Although only the treasurer was supposed to know what people were giving by direct debit, in reality you could make a fairly accurate estimate of what people might be earning and capable of tithing, by their high profile jobs and influence. For example, the PCC were required to disclose their giving (in aggregate) by the Charities statement of recommended practice. When a person left, the PCC specific giving, dropped. A lot. The requirement was to give potential users of the accounts an idea of the influence their officers might have financially. Money increases your voice, which I find ugly, but tends to be a fact of life.
This is the flip side. On the one hand we have pressure to give, to tithe. On the other, we have pressure on the leadership from the wealthy giver.
I wish I learned about money at school. In the end I took a tricky financial qualification, but even this didn’t educate me in the ways people willingly turn a blind eye to the pastor driving a Ferrari.
Nor did I get my understanding of greed from conventional exams in finance. A retired and elderly priest will have seen such things and most will be disgusted by it. This is, in part, the basis of the prosperity gospel. It relies on poor congregants being duped into thinking they themselves will get a Rolex if they only give more.
When it comes to money many of us like to bury our heads in the sand. Ignorance is bliss. I’ve lost count of the times church accounts are nominated and seconded for approval, with barely a glance of scrutiny.
I grew up in a thriving conservative evangelical church. They had several clergy, but certainly weren’t profligate. The annual series of “giving” sermons were, off the record, rather tedious, but necessary to support the church activities. This included their own TV channel, which you could grimace about, but by mum found it helpful when they rigged up a set in her bedroom as she was dying, so she could watch the services. And she was touched when they mentioned her specifically, in the prayers section.
I think people give more when they see purpose in it. Often that purpose can be in part self-serving, for example often people can get behind an extension appeal, especially if there will be comfortable meeting areas and let’s admit it, proper loos. Of course it’s all in the name of outreach.
The charismatic evangelical wing tends to be even wealthier and influential. It’s hard to estimate the relative size and influence relative to the conservative wing, without extensively reviewing the data, but I reckon about 2 or even 3 to 1.
Both wings exercise their financial clout, partly by threatening to withhold parish share, but also, perhaps more subtly, by setting up new churches, not by planting but by “seeding” congregations. It’s all there in their accounts. I’ve mentioned this before, so will say no more, for fear of boring people.
‘Church inquiry after vicar admits drink driving’ is a 25-11-25 BBC report about an incident in Lincoln. Daily Mail allege the Bishop’s car was a £50,000 Kia Sportage.
The points you make above are all excellent. There is a broader post-modern issue. We live in an age where money can sometimes appear to simultaneously be valueless and also of infinite importance. Jimmy Saville comes to mind!
A personal struggle, to understand money and basic economics, is a tough journey. You learn bold facts but ageing also points us to impenetrable finance mysteries.
Latterly, the charity commission format profiles of Anglican parish accounts have caught my attention. Oversight from outside probably does reduce the chance of parish money being siphoned off.
But the accounts themselves, even with the benefit of being retired and holed up on wet autumn days, can be really hard to understand. How much are vicars and staff actually paid, what exactly does the ‘diocesan share’ cover and why is it so large?
An autocratic and aristocratic oligarchy might appear to be in control of the Anglican Church. I struggle to understand why individual or family parish giving is now anonymised. There may be reasons for this, but it feels less transparent than the yearly accounts of old.
The lack of transparency on finances feels as if it mirrors the opacity of BAH (bullying-abuse-harassment) investigations. Contacts have spoken about a peculiar paradox. Some senior leaders advise ‘not to worry about parish money’ because ‘God will provide’.
Yet do a number of senior leaders have vast personal wealth or rental property portfolios, where greed and shrewdness pays a dividend aided by slick accountancy or legal inputs?
The abuse of power-sex-money underlies a great mass of sin. Is financial abuse yet another Anglican leadership sin, and one which we should be hearing a great deal more about?
During a New Wine/St John’s Notts overseen course I became really fed up at what seemed like shoddy treatment of students. I wondered if I was just grumpy and ageing, and long detached from the education sector.
But I asked a university professor, Cambridge-educated, for advice. Their jaw repeatedly dropped. They thought no secular programme student would ever tolerate the savage bullying and maltreatment of people I described.
As a Baptist minister, I’ve always been supported by my own congregation. We have no “Parish Share” system, although we are encouraged to contribute to Home Mission which then supports denominational posts, new initiatives and some smaller churches. By and large most folk identify strongly with their church and, in my experience, references to tithing were rare. I think the twin and often expressed themes of “the independence of the local church” and “we are the church” (as opposed to “we go to church”) have an important effect.
What I would say – and I’m sure that this is true for most denominations – is that few folk have much idea of how churches are financed. If I’d received £5 for each time someone has said, “But the denomination supports you” I’d have a tidy sum! In fact we pay an annual subscription!
Tithing is a relic from a time when the church provided most or all education and hospitals, as well as relief to the poor and much else. Nowadays these are all covered by general taxation. A much more sensible and realistic target, which I believe is the official recommendation of the CofE, is to give 5% of your post tax income. If all the people in CofE congregations gave at that level, most churches would be well provided for.
On the Church of England website is this statement:
“The Church of England General Synod has for some time now encouraged individual Christians to review our giving annually and to give a proportion of our income. The initial target suggested by General Synod is 5% of post-tax income to and through the church and a similar amount to other charities.”
In the parish church which I attend we are encouraged to review our giving annually. As circumstances change some stop giving, some reduce giving, some leave it unchanged and others are able to increase it. I believe this to be a very appropriate approach to regular giving.
So is that 12.5% of gross income when basic rate tax Gift Aid is added? This is higher than National Insurance, which even has a threshold close to £10K before it gets paid at all.
Our Lord and Saviour taught us what God thinks about giving, in the parable of the widow’s mite, of course. She gave all she had. 100%.
Many quiet parish churches have similar people who give of themselves to keep the place clean, arrange the flowers, give out the hymn books or whatever else needs doing, for no pay at all. No thriving congregations exist without an army of committed volunteers. That’s their giving. Sometimes giving is money too.
When I was involved with leadership, what I struggled with most was half-arsed support. Conversely I was embarrassed sometimes and humbled by the level of commitment some people showed. We paid our own way largely, where we were able to do so.
BBC 2024 feature on Terry Waite quoted him: “Act within your own area of influence…and try to do something positive”
Waite’s 1993 book-‘Taken On Trust’-has interesting comment on the final page. He laments ‘a price tag on everything’, and feels society needs ‘reflective pools’ away from ‘the cut and thrust of the market place’.
When we look at a current leadership and finance obsession, in lots of our Churches or related para-Church groups, Waite’s grounded words sound very wise, over 20 years after his book was first published.
Are a lack of transparency on finances-and on leadership decisions-sometimes complementary twins in deranged spirituality groups?
I know that for Stephen, and for many of his readers, Conservative Evangelicals are near the top of the league table of Betes Noires, but deducing the reason for an apparent prosperity of certain CE congregations from the practices of Peniel Church Brentford is a wild leap of the imagination.
CEs do not agree on everything, but there is very widespread agreement among them that one’s giving should be secret (as urged in the Sermon on the Mount) and on two doctrines which undermine Stephen’s thesis. The priesthood of all believers makes it difficult for authoritarian ministers to exert control. I well remember the late Willy Rodda (of Cornish Cream fame) recalling how his father had resisted an authoritarian minister (who was not a CE) by organising a collection strike. “The people in the pew don’t realise how powerful they are, brother,” Willy used to say, “They don’t realise that all they have to do is to stop putting their hands in their pockets.” (The Methodists, of course, have never had support from the Church Commissioners!)
More basic is the powerful reason behind the CE’s motive for giving: they all believe that Christ’s death was a sacrifice which atoned for their sins. Like John Wesley they can conclude their account of their conversions with the words: “and an assurance was given me that he had died for my sins, even mine.” Consequently they mean what they say when they echo the words of the first great CE hymnwriter, Isaac Watts, “Love so amazing, so divine demands my life, my soul, my all.”
Wesley’s sermon on the use of money picked up that “all” and has had its influence on CE thinking. His three headings are “Gain all you can, Save all you can, Give all you can.” He doesn’t mention tithing! It is a rare CE who thinks that his/her giving should stop at ten percent.
George Muller has also been influential. As a pastor, Muller refused a salary; far from coercing his congregation to tithe, he prayed and trusted God to move his people to give. Later he adopted the same method for funding his orphanages and for many years provided for 2,000 orphans without ever making an appeal for funds, except to God in prayer.
James Hudson Taylor founded and led the China Inland Mission on the same principle and even received generous gifts from Muller.
More recently, the example of Sir John Laing has been significant. As a young man facing a court case which could easily have left him bankrupt he set out a plan for his giving should his business succeed. It specified what he would give and save (an echo of Wesley?) at various levels of income, starting at 12.5%; the percentages increased as his income rose so that, in the words of his biographer, he was “setting himself a maximum standard of living approximating to that of middle and upper management.” The details were not known until after his death but the broad outline was given in a little book, “Money Talks,” by the evangelist, Tom Rees, which captured the attention of many CEs of my generation. I have been unable to confirm the rumour that Laing’s two sons left their Open Brethren roots and became part of the congregation of St Helen’s Bishopsgate but, if it is true, the suggestion that Dick Lucas put them under pressure to give their tithe to his church is as preposterous as to suppose that their giving stopped at ten per cent.
There have been CEs who stress tithing, even a few who thought that the whole tithe should be given to their local church, but most, I think, have noticed that the New Testament has nothing to say about tithing, numerous examples of giving, and nothing to encourage authoritarian leaders. Above everything, it is the supreme authority of the Bible which controls CE belief and practice and that is what explains their giving.
There will be CE’s who apply-‘Anyone who does not provide for their relatives, and especially for their own household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever’-and so give little or nothing to their local Church at times of intense financial difficulty.
That’s a strategy which a stretched couple of pensioners surviving on the State Pension alone, and also with major outgoings, might need to consider. Many will give a nominal amount, but are simply not in a position to realistically come anywhere close to tithing.
There will be evangelical readers or contributors to this blog. The Church of England’s evangelical wing scandals, and cover up of the same by very senior leaders, is unedifying. They are not simply near the top of the bêtes noires league table to readers of this blog, which is what your opening sentence possibly infers. They are actually championship winner material in terms of bullying-abuse-harassment and its concealment, and not only to readers of this blog. Far from it, the media, Church members, the wider public and professionals observing from the sidelines or with more direct involvement, have all come to hate the stink.
CE problems very clearly exist in Ireland as well England. Sadly, the Moderator of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland has just resigned. This follows discovery of safeguarding difficulties dating back years or decades. GAFCON Ireland leaders have drawn media interest. The expulsion of a gay organist, at Drumcliffe parish in Co Sligo, did not see any formal or independent inquiry fixed by the overseeing GAFCON bishop in 2019.
Down and Dromore Diocese has had successive bishops from GAFCON. But this is a diocese which has drawn negative headlines around alleged concealment of abuse
by the late Canon W G Neely. KRWLAW posted: ‘Neely abuse: Church of Ireland Bishop ‘apologises’ for unnamed rector – ignores Belfast-Tipperary transfer’. Why can a GAFCON bishop not name a deceased abuser?
CE (Conservative evangelical Christians) have often been victims of bully-abuse-harassment. This blog space offers all victims, of whatever Church spectrum, a welcome chance to engage and be heard.
Problems arise when CE or other Church leaders are guilty of gross hypocrisy, perhaps shifting dangerously close to blasphemous contempt for biblical principles of justice. A Torah passage runs: ‘One witness is not enough to convict anyone accused of any crime or offence they may have committed. A matter must be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses’. Does the scale of scandal seen with Pilavachi-Fletcher-Smyth reminds us how witness testimony was not allowed to establish guilt for a very long time, even if there were multiple witnesses?
Well said Stephen, an excellent article. The demand to tithe leads to a congregation composed only of rich people, in this country of ours that has had 50 years of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. And a congregation of rich people will not understand what Jesus was about. He created a movement to make sure everybody’s basic needs were met. ‘Give us this day our daily bread’ was about making sure nobody starved. Not about maintaining an institution.