Faithful tithepaying is waning

Jean and Jim Darrell are a Los Angeles couple of modest means who live frugally by necessity.

He works part time for an internist, doing office work, and she augments the family income by house-sitting and taking care of a friend's pets. They drive a 1989 Mazda and seldom go out to eat.

Yet they've been giving one-tenth of their gross income to their church for the past 20 years -- even when Jim Darrell was laid off.

"Leaping out in faith" to commit 10 percent of their earnings ahead of time has been "an adventure," they concede. But, they say, they have always managed.

"God always provides," says Jim Darrell, who, with his wife, is a longtime member of the First Presbyterian Church of Hollywood. "Nothing extra -- just the essentials, which is all we need."

But people such as the Darrells -- those who hew to the biblical mandate of tithing -- are increasingly rare, according to surveys and church records of contributions. Churches and nonprofit Christian ministries across the United States have been reporting a significant decline in financial support in the past year and a half. Some attribute the change to competition for charitable dollars since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks; others blame the poor economy.

Consistent tithers are a small group -- about 3 percent of American adults last year, according to a recent study. And the proportion of tithers appears to be dropping, the survey indicates. In 2001, 8 percent of adults surveyed reported that they tithed, according to the poll of 1,010 adults by the Oxnard, Calif.-based Barna Research Group. The independent marketing research firm has tracked cultural trends related to beliefs, values, attitudes and behaviors since 1984.

Even among born-again Christians, just 6 percent tithed last year, compared with 14 percent in 2001, the survey shows.

Among evangelicals -- defined for the survey as people who believe they have a personal responsibility to share their religious beliefs about Jesus with non-Christians -- 9 percent tithed, according to the survey.

Pollster George Barna attributes the decline in the number of people tithing to the soft economy, the threat of terrorism, the scandals involving Catholic priests and long-term demographic shifts.

"We are losing many of the people who have a habit of tithing," he says, "while the proportion of homes headed by younger adults, who have never tithed and don't plan to, is growing."

According to Barna's survey, people older than 55 are far more likely to tithe than younger people. Tithing has more typically been a significant tenet of Protestant than of Catholic traditions.

Maria Leon, a Mexican immigrant who cleans homes and offices to support her family, earns $10 an hour and gives one day's wage to her church every Sunday.

Five years ago, when she wasn't working Wednesdays, she prayed that God would fill that day with gainful employment, she says. When she found work, she promised to turn over the day's earnings to God. She has kept the vow.

"I am so happy" to be able to tithe, says Leon, a member of the Iglesia de Dios, a Pentecostal church in Los Angeles. "I don't have much money, but I am rich because God is my father," she says.

For Jeff Traintime, a Universal Music Sales Division executive, working up to tithing was a 10-year process.

"I was the kind of a person who thought that it was a big deal if I dropped $5 on the plate at church on Sunday," Traintime says. But in the 1980s, when he returned to the church after a 20-year hiatus, he began to think differently.

After he and his wife, Jana Loner, talked it over, they pledged 2 percent. When that worked out, they upped it to 3 percent the following year, until they finally reached 10 percent a decade later.

"It was a step-by-step process of learning that we could do it, and we would be taken care of even though we didn't have that money in our pockets anymore," Traintime says.

He still has no earthly explanation for what happened to him within three months after making the pledge.

"This may seem a little too spooky for a newspaper, but ... I suddenly got the biggest raise I'd ever had," he recalls.

The bonus exceeded the sum he had committed. "I've never quite gotten over the astonishment of that."

For Lauralil Evans Deats, a charter member of the Bel Air Presbyterian Church in the Los Angeles area, tithing is a practice she learned as a child, when her parents taught her to set aside a dime for every dollar she received.

That habit has continued throughout her life, she says. Although decades have passed since she and her husband were newlyweds with a monthly income of $275, Deats still remembers with a smile how much joy it gave them to write a $27.50 check to their home church.

"It's so painless to do it, if you give your first 10 percent," she says. "If you wait until the end of the month, there is never enough."

The Rev. Ken Fong, senior pastor of the predominantly Asian- American Evergreen Baptist Church of Los Angeles, says the traditional way of urging congregants to tithe -- "because it's the right thing to do" -- won't persuade the younger generation.

"When you look at the generational shift, they don't give to support a budget or an institution," he says. "But, at the same time, they say, 'I want my life to count for something."'

Churches need to take a different tack by making congregants "investors" in their ministries, he says.

Even though his church has no wealthy members, he says, there has been more than a 10 percent increase every year in congregational giving. And although he seldom talks about tithing, 10 percent of his congregation tithes -- up from 3 percent just a few years ago.

Tithing appears more common in some Korean churches, many of which routinely print the names of tithers in their bulletins and report a tally of weekly congregational giving.

At the 7,000-member Young Nak Presbyterian Church, a predominantly Korean congregation near downtown Los Angeles' Chinatown, nearly 70 percent of the members tithe, said Young-Nam Chun, an elder who oversees tithes and offering.

Elderly women on welfare, who receive about $700 a month in government checks, are among the most faithful, he says.

"You see a whole bunch of $70 contributions about the time they get their checks," he says. "That stirs your heart."

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