I often wonder if philanthropy is one of those words that has either lost its traditional meaning (love of mankind) and never should have been used to define giving in the first place.
In fact I wonder if our use of “love of mankind” actually is possible or even desirable. Yes, there are numerous examples where giving springs from sincere feelings about the poor or a genuine desire to alleviate suffering, spread the gospel, deliver health care, rescue young girls and boys from the bondage of trafficking, and restore dignity to people. No doubt these are good things. But are they really philanthropy? Are they charity? Are those actually two different things?
Jeremy Beer would say they are not the same. Writing in The Philanthropic Revolution, a short, well-organized and thorough discussion of charity and philanthropy, Beer traces the history of both and comes to a reasoned (although sometimes testy and sidelong) conclusion: philanthropy and charity, while springing from the same root, have parted ways and are not likely to come back together. While both have serious theological presuppositions, they represent very different—even competing—theologies.
Historically, for Jews and Christians, charity, as the spiritual practice of almsgiving, was  redemptive. “For them, to give generously from one’s wealth to the needy was not merely an act of civic piety; it was to ‘lay up treasures in heaven,’ and thus it had the deepest and most lasting personal significance possible.” Charity was not a way to solve social ills but to alleviate suffering and redeem your soul. Charity, like mercy, recognizes that all of life is a gift and that, like God, we give in turn to others. It is not a means to an end. The poor and the suffering are not a problem to be solved. Rather, charity is an expression of sheer gratitude and human compassion toward another person. “No matter how important its acts of charity may have been in winning adherents, the early Christian church did not view these acts first through a utilitarian lens,” Beer emphasizes. “Charity was not a means, at least not primarily, of solving a social problem, redistributing wealth, or even growing the church. To practice charity was to make a statement about the world and the God who had created and redeemed it.” Charity originated with the Creator and, in turn, pointed back to him.
But, like everything, theology evolves. While the Reformation had the positive effect of eliminating many of the less desirable aspects and practices of the Catholic Church, it had negative consequences as well. Instead of charity being linked to personal salvation, the Reformers held that good works, including charity, had no saving merit whatsoever. Salvation was by faith alone, and almsgiving therefore no longer played a special role in putting the believer in contact with God. “In other words,” Beer comments, “the person engaged in an act of charity or work of mercy was no longer engaging in a ‘merit-worth deed,’ for he or she could win no merit with God by his or her works.”
While the Reformers certainly did not intend it, their rejection of redemptive almsgiving frayed one of the primary cords by which charity was tethered to traditional Christian (Catholic) theology. And during the Enlightenment and immediately following, the path forked. For Benjamin Franklin “traditional charity—giving alms—was self-defeating; the money would be here today and gone tomorrow, and the poor would be as dependent as ever. By contrast, philanthropy removed the conditions it addressed; in its successful wake, charity would go out of business.”
This new idea of putting charity out of business started people thinking about charity itself as a business—a business that would harness the momentum of optimism in the radical improvement of the human condition. Charity would be an effective tool in the project.
With this understanding of philanthropy in place, “the term charity was rejected as denoting something too condescending and demeaning for respectable people to receive—and perhaps as something dangerous for a self-respecting person to offer.” In fact, it was outright scorned as detrimental and counterproductive, an embarrassment to those who wanted to compel the poor to change their moral habits. It appeared to be an excuse for laxness and a failure to make needed change. One critic of charity, Orestes Brownson, was a committed reformer himself but changed his views radically after a conversion experience. “The universal lust to reform society,” he said, “to reform other people in a spirit of ideology rather than faith, must at the last come to this. . . . Love me as your brother, or I will cut your throat.” Brownson feared that radical humanitarians would “make war on the people in order to perfect mankind.”
He had reason to fear the worst. Experimentation, eugenics, mass sterilization, and, ultimately, ethnic cleansing all have their roots in the early (and often forced) optimism of philanthropy detached from both merit and favor alike. The poor became a problem to be solved by institutions with little interest in the individuals they were trying to reform. As Proverbs says, “There is a way that seems right to man but leads to the ways of death.”
Developments like these gave the term “philanthropy” an ironic hue and cut it off from its roots in the love of mankind. Philanthropy has become extraordinarily knowledgeable about people while detaching itself from them. As I read Beer’s description of modern philanthropy’s detachment from humanity, I was reminded of The Great Gatsby. Deeply embarrassed by his “shiftless and unsuccessful farm people,” Jay Gatsby reinvents himself and becomes “a son of God . . . about His Father’s business.” It is not love that drives him. “I wasn’t actually in love,” he says, “but I felt a sort of tender curiosity.” I think Jeremy Beer would agree with that. Philanthropy has become a sort of tender curiosity.
Beer’s proposal is the creation of what he calls “philanthrolocalism.” The word does not easily roll off the tongue. In fact, the more familiar and thoroughly Catholic term would be “subsidiarity,” the belief that social problems should be dealt with at the most immediate (or local) level consistent with their solution. Instead of being objective and detached, philanthropy should encourage the possibilities of authentic human communion. Rather than removing itself from commitment to persons, philanthrolocalism recognizes that we have a primary responsibility to look after that which is closest to us. In other words, it might not “change the world,” but it might return us to what we have most deeply in common.
Is his proposal practicable when donors raised as global citizens with fortunes outstripping anything the world has seen turn their attention to philanthropy? Are they likely to embrace primarily their local community and look for ways to establish authentic human communion? Not likely. However, Jeremy Beer, like Wendell Berry, John Gardner, and others who have written about the value of belonging and obligation to our particular place, should not give up. They may not change the world, but their love applied will be far more than a mere tender curiosity.
Note: This book review originally appeared in its unedited version for Cardus, a think tank dedicated to the renewal of North American social architecture. You can read Fred’s review for Cardus here.