Rubbish.
The is no difference in giving time through volunteering between christians and non religious people. From a recent survey of volunteering in the UK the results demonstrating the following rates of volunteering:
Christian
Formal 39%
Informal 68%
Non religious
Formal 39%
Informal 68%
Yup - exactly the same.
On giving, once donations to the church that active christians directly benefit from are removed there is no difference in giving either. Again from a recent report:
'Across all denominations, those respondents actively practising a religion were significantly more likely to have given than those who said that they had a religion but were not active. This finding is due to the fact that those actively practising were more likely to have given to charity via donations at their place of worship; once we exclude religious giving, those actively practising were no more likely than other respondents to have donated in the last four weeks.'
I could just as well claim that amateur choir members are more generous in their charitable donations than average - and I could point to incontrovertible evidence that I can be certain that every single member of my choir gives more to charity than average. Why - well because average charitable donation per annum is about £150 and our choir subscription (which is classified as a charitable donation) is £190 per annum.
But of course this donation provides a direct benefit to those people making that donation, just as donations to a church do. In most people's minds a real charitable donation is one that benefits others not yourself.
My wife has no time for belief in religions and at the same time loves gospel singing, even so the local choir my wife sings with is being run by a few religious believers that have spread their brand name of the choirs quiet widely over the country and they're registered as a charity.
There are few towns around where we live and my wife likes to sing with some of the other towns choirs from time to time dependent on where they're going to perform, in the process she mixes with lots of the other members where they all share this love of the gospel sound and the most often feeling that's conveyed from all of these choirs is, love the singing but not interested in the content, i e most members seem to not be the least interested in the religious content.
So even though the choir is a registered as a christian charity the majority of the members don't give a fig or a stuff about christianity nor any other religious belief but the money they raise goes to religious charities which in turn makes me wonder if this is much the same as many other charities headed supposedly as christian charities where they're not anywhere near as christian based as they are painted yet we no doubt get to look at the money as money the religious give to charity.
This in turn reminds me of how the church gives figures out based on how many baptism certificates it dispenses to babies when they're still only babies in arms and then uses these figures in various efforts where they think the figures may gain them an advantage.
The religious authorities soon got upset by what at first glance looks odd, the 'debaptism certificates' idea of Barbara Smoker's, it was cutting down on their baptism figures and all that they thought they could gain with them.
ippy.
