Act Of Charity Research Articles

The Wordsworths, the Greens, and the Limits of Sympathy

ON MARCH 19, 1808, GEORGE AND SARAH GREEN, HUSBAND AND WIFE, perished in Langdale Fell during storm, leaving behind eight orphaned children, all under age of sixteen and six under age eleven, an event which threw the whole vale, in Dorothy Wordsworth's words, into the greatest consternation. (1) Immediately Dorothy and Mary Wordsworth (William was in London) were employed in laying schemes to prevent children from falling into hands of persons who may use them unkindly, which they regarded as likely if children suffered usual fate of orphans, being boarded out by parish for meager two shillings per week. (2) They began to solicit donations, and when William returned to Grasmere following month Wordsworths wrote brief account of events that they circulated to those who might be willing to contribute. (3) It seems that they were tireless in their efforts, as William was soon apologizing to Francis Wrangham for dim transcript by multiplying writer, we having had occasion to make so many copies. (4) One month after tragedy, William sent S. T. Coleridge Elegiac Stanzas composed in Churchyard of Grasmere, Westmorland, few days after Internment there of Man and his Wife, Inhabitants of Vale, who were lost upon neighbouring Mountains, on night of nineteenth of March last. The first lines read: Who weeps for Strangers?--Many wept / For George and Sarah Green. He urged Coleridge to turn these verses to any profit for poor Orphans in any way, either by reciting, circulating in manuscript or publishing them. (5) Dorothy began her own record of events, Narrative Concerning George and Sarah Green of Parish of Grasmere addressed to Friend, in April. Her Narrative was read by family members and close friends but remained unpublished during her lifetime. (6) By middle of May than 300 [pounds sterling] had been raised, and by September subscription for Green children approached 500 [pounds sterling]. For next twenty-one years, distribution of funds to families who had taken in orphans was overseen by group of local women (including Mary Wordsworth), deservedly earning Ernest de Selincourt's praise as a model of simple act of charity wisely conceived and scrupulously administered (11). For William, their involvement with Greens represented enormous potential of human sympathy to relieve poverty. But one could read story of Wordsworths' involvement in Greens' suffering quite differently. The brief account that William and Dorothy wrote immediately after tragedy to raise money might be examined for way it establishes rigid requirements for truly deserving poor. Compassion for children is more deeply felt, and there is a general desire that than ordinary exertions should be made because of parents' frugality and industry and even endurance of extreme poverty, as well as their independence, for they went without any assistance from parish. (7) That children were deemed worthy of private assistance because their parents had been cheerful in their suffering suggests far qualified sympathy for poor. We might also look at decision to cap subscription at 500 [pounds sterling], subject of some controversy between Coleridge and Wordsworth. While Coleridge's letter on subject is not extant, from Wordsworth's defensive reply--he felt compelled to offer no less than six reasons, which he enumerates one by one, for his decision to accept no donations--we may surmise strong objection on Coleridge's part. Michael Friedman, one of few scholars to consider William's involvement with Greens, reads this explanation to Coleridge as exemplifying a Tory humanist conception of community structured by traditional social rank and degree and belief that such hierarchic community must be preserved. …

Committing Altruism under the Cloak of Self-Interest: The Exchange Fiction

Two field studies tested the hypothesis that people's willingness to help a charitable organization is greater when the act is presented as an economic transaction than when it is presented as an act of charity. In Study 1 participants donated more money to a charity when offered a product in exchange for their donation, even though the product itself held little appeal for them. Participants' donation rates were also more responsive to the level of need of the victim group when they were offered a product in exchange for their donation, consistent with the idea that the exchange provided psychological cover for their act of compassion. In Study 2 participants' willingness to purchase a product from a charitable organization increased the more of a bargain the price was purported to be, but only when the victims' need was high. The source of people's desire to not reveal or even to recognize the full extent of their prosocial motivation is discussed, as are the implications of the exchange fiction for charity appeals.

Venezuelan response to Yanomamo book.

Venezuelan response to Yanomamo book.

Debt relief & social investment: linking the HIPC initiative to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Africa: the case of Zambia

Besides being a global public health emergency, the HIV/AIDS epidemic has become the foremost contemporary threat to the development of many African countries. Past achievements in economic growth, improved life expectancy and decreasing child mortality have been reversed by the rapid spread of the HIV virus. It is estimated that each day in Africa more than 5,000 people die from AIDS or HIV related illness, with the figure expected to climb to almost 13,000 by 2005. In the context of this unfolding humanitarian crisis, creditor nations and institutions should cancel outstanding debt immediately so that resources of affected countries can be directed toward containment of the epidemic, within broader strategies of poverty alleviation. Addressing this crisis should not be construed as an act of charity, but an obligation ‐ and a necessity. Linking debt relief to HIV/AIDS is one small but important step in the long march to eradicate poverty in the poorest developing countries. This article examines a proposal formulated in Zambia to enact such a link.

Contradiction and the Merit of Giving in Indian Religions

AbstractThe gift has been an important focus of research on Indian sociology and religion. However, almost all research has been confined to the Hindu tradition. I believe we can shed new light on religious giving if we focus on common themes in the main religions of the sub-continent. In this article I look at the textual traditions on giving in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism. My thesis is that these traditions share basic contradictions in their ideas of giving. There is, firstly, a contradiction between the gift as a sacrifice and a charitable gift and, secondly, a contradiction between the merit associated with giving as originating from the qualitites of the recipient and from the intention of the donor. These two contradictions are interlinked. Initially, they seem to threaten the institution of giving to the religious renouncer. If giving can be perceived as an act of charity where the merit accrues from the right intentions behind the act, there is no more reason to give to the renouncer than to anybody else. However, it seems that the contradiction also has been used to make giving to renouncers a priori meritorious. When the gift is perceived as a sacrifice to a worthy monk the merit accrues from the qualities of the recipient, but when there are no worthy recipients around the merit accrues from the right intention of the donor.

The Reverend Richard Lamm on Trial for Heresy

In Christian theology, there is the story of Saint Martin of Tours. In the late thirteenth century, late one night outside an ancient city, Saint Martin of Tours was riding his horse down this ancient byway. Right outside the city gates, he comes across a cold and starving beggar. In an act of charity which got him sainted a couple hundred years later, he took his cloak and cut it in half. He took half of his dinner and gave it to the cold and starving beggar. Now, Bertold Brecht, in one of his plays, raises this question: What if instead of one cold and starving beggar, there were 50, or 60, or 100? What is the ethical choice now? What does the ethical person do? It is for asking these hard, but important, questions that you charge me, here and now, in 2007 A.D., with heresy. You charge me with heresy for changing "Love thy neighbor," to "Love thy nearest neighbor/ My answer to you is that this is the new bio-spiritual ethics. This is the new ethical reality. I wish with all my heart it were not, but my mind and soul tell me (tragically) that it is the new reality. Charity must begin at home. The Bible states (Timothy 5:8), "If any provide not for his own house, he hath denied the faith and is worse than an infidel.1" Painfully, but inevitably, mankind must fit itself into its ecosys tem. At some point?we can argue endlessly when that takes place?but at some point, infinite growth in a finite world comes to an end. At that point?whenever it happens?a new ethics must be formu lated.

Social Welfare, Health and Pakistan

Some would claim that charity is a core cultural trait of mankind. The urge to help others is a selfish act of survival of the group and hence individual security. In today’s world, welfare has assumed a wider meaning and is linked with the economy of the state, the concept of human rights of society, structure of society and cultural expression of welfare. The state may be willing to contribute towards welfare but poor economic conditions may not allow welfare programmes or only allow low key programmes. With poor level of governance most welfare work comes to a standstill. In such situations the burden of poor economies can be shared by all rather than the poor alone. Human rights, as defined by the UN, impinge on the basic concept of welfare as seen by individual states. The right of all people to shelter, security, health, job, education as well as freedom to speak, associate and practice religion are concepts difficult to swallow for many societies and states. Social disparity may not allow many to grant rights to others. Yet social welfare is a practical arm of human rights and not an act of charity to be left to individual whims. In Islam, social welfare is the right of the underprivileged and not an act of charity extended by the state or individual. On the other hand the welfare of all the citizens of the state is vital for economic and social development. There are more than 94 indicators to measure social development. Each country’s performance in this area can be monitored following each intervention.

Beyond Benevolence: A Confucian Women's Shelter in Treaty-Port China

Beyond Benevolence: A Confucian Women's Shelter in Treaty-Port China Ruth Rogaski In the spring of 1878, at the height of one of the worst famines in history, merchants and officials from South China estabUshed a home for widows and orphans in the northern city of Tianjin. The founders called their institution the Hall for Spreading Benevolence [Guangren tang], claiming that through this act of charity, they would extend the benevolence of the emperor to save the beleagured North. By the turn of the century, the Hall for Spreading Benevolence had become the largest welfare institution for women and girls in North China, with massive corporate real-estate holdings that made its Board of Directors one of the largest and most powerful landowners in the city of Tianjin. Because of the power and influence of the men who ran it, the Hall for Spreading Benevolence was a microcosm of the complex political order in late-Qing treaty-port society. I examine the Hall for Spreading Benevolence in order to locate women within that society: to understand how the changes and continuities in late nineteenth -century China affected one particularly vulnerable group of women and to explore how these changes shaped Chinese male elites' attitudes about their responsibility for women's welfare.1 Scholars have previously studied the orphanages and widow homes of the Qing through the writings of their gentry-managers found in local histories and published institutional annals. The rich archival materials avaüable on the Hall for Spreading Benevolence aUow us to go beyond the public rhetoric of its founders—statements steeped in the language of Confucian piety and female chastity—and understand the more immediate circumstances that motivated the founding of the Hall.2 An analysis of these records reveals a central tension between the Hall's Confucian rhetoric and its urban reality. Although portrayed by its directors as a stately Confucian refuge for chaste widows, the HaU functioned primarily as a shelter for adolescent females who had been abused or sold as sexual commodities on the emerging national market in women. A startling dissonance existed between the public facade of the Hall for Spreading Benevolence and the changing conditions of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century China. The Hall for Spreading Benevolence was a type of multi-purpose benevolent society, or shantang, sirrdlar to those established by gentry in the southern provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang. A central goal of this article is to Uluminate the chain of events that led merchants and officials © 1997 Journal of Women's History, Vol. 8 No. 4 (Winter) 1997 Ruth Rogaski 55 from the South to establish a shantang for women and chUdren in the northern city of Tianjin. By placing the genesis of this institution in the context of Tianjin local history, we are able to locate women within the complex combination of inter-regional rivalries, foreign intervention, and domestic discord of late nineteenth-century treaty-port cities. This study also considers the day-to-day lives of the women and girls who Uved inside the Hall: how they came to the institution, how their lives were structured inside the institution, and how they left the institution. The Hall for Spreading Benevolence brings to light the merits and the limitations of Confucian solutions to the problems of women's weUare in the rapidly changing urban environment of modern China. A Southern Tradition: Welfare Institutions for Women and Girls Several scholars have noted the emergence of gentry-established welfare institutions in the southern Chinese provinces of Jiangsu and Zhejiang during the high Qing.3 Beginning in the late eighteenth and extending throughout the nineteenth century, orphanages, widows' homes, and multi-purpose benevolent societies flourished in the highly commercialized areas around the cities of Hangzhou, Suzhou, and Yangzhou. Founded by local elites to provide for local needs, these institutions fiUed in the gaps left by a government bureaucracy that was not expanding to meet the needs of a rapidly growing society. These institutions also served to further the reputation of their founders as exemplars of orthodox Confucian benevolence in a time of increasing commercialism and social stratification. For the most part, scholars have interpreted the extraordinary expansion of locally...

Rapprochement based on common interests between the ETUC and the trade unions in Central and Eastern Europe

Many people in Eastern Europe found that their living conditions actually worsened during the transition from one old régime to another old-established - but pretty sound and adaptable- system. For the most part, the anticipated and in some cases publicised direct benefits of the free market economy failed to materialise. The governments of the Eastern European countries are all faced with inescapable dilemmas in the short term. Even those governments which claim to have close links with trade unions are implementing an economic and monetary policy that will inevitably lead to confrontations with the unions. Some governments regard the tripartite system as an instrument for appeasement, but not as a starting point for autonomous social relations. Their interest lies more with short-term conflict management and less with the development of independent interest-oriented structures. The ideal path that could be taken by the trade unions will have no other milestones than representativeness, the strength embodied in high numbers of members, the ability to mobilise them, and high acceptance among the public. The process of integration has not yet been concluded. The fundamental changes in Europe demand that the states in Central and Eastern Europe be involved in this process. The enlargement of the ETUC to include trade unions from Eastern Europe is no act of charity; it is in the direct interests of the ETUC and its affiliates. No longer can the developments in Eastern Europe be regarded as external affairs - they must now be integrated into the ETUC's policy.

Whither North-South Solidarity and the Role of Development Agencies: A Case Study of CUSO, Canada, in Latin America

“International solidarity is not an act of charity. It is an act of unity between allies fighting on different terrains towards the same objective. The foremost of these objectives is to aid the development of humanity to the highest level possible”. Samora Moses Machel (1933–86).

Paradoxes associated with the administration of foreign aid

This paper shows that if because of administration costs or other wastes only a proportion of an aid reaches the recipient, then it is possible that the donor is enriched by its act of charity, the extent of the enrichment increasing with the extent of the leakage, and/or that the recipient is impoverished by aid, the extent of the impoverishment increasing with the extent of the leakage. These outcomes are possible even when trade is optimally restricted by donor or recipient.

Talking Turkey With a Turkey

Mr. Mannion responds to complaints about AWWA members and volunteering. He states that AWWA is the creation of the industry and exists because water professionals and water utilities need a forum for common action–a way to do things that an individual or single utility cannot do alone. The economies and technical progress achieved through associations are incalculably greater than any local water utility could accomplish by itself. Mr. Mannion sees professional‐industrial volunteerism not as an act of charity but as enlightened self‐interest, a means of serving a common cause, that also serves one's own interests. He requests encouragement and support for AWWA volunteers.

'Strangely Handled in all Her Lyms': Witchcraft and Healing in Jacobean England

Is it still possible gain fresh insights about witchcraft beliefs in Tudor and Stuart England? I think so. Despite vast amount of research completed by scholars on subject in past decades, there remain areas of discourse that are virtually unexplored. Until recently many historians approached their material with a mixture of romanticism and indignation, of fascination and horror. Hugh TrevorRoper was typical in characterizing witchcraft beliefs as an expression of mental rubbish of peasant credulity and feminine hysteria.1 More recently, another historian has complained how hard it is to reconstruct inchoate prejudices of illiterate multitude, mired as they are in the trivia of folk beliefs.2 Such reservations have not prevented a gaggle of historians from looking at all levels of witchcraft beliefs as a key understanding many dimensions of early modern life, including pagan survivals, heresy, class conflict, religious tensions, relationship between science and magic, individual and social psychopathology, changing social norms, and absolutist pretentions.3 It was not until eighteen years ago, however, with publication of Keith Thomas's Religion and Decline of Magic (1971) and Alan Macfarlane's Witch? craft in Tudor and Stuart England (1970), that study of witchcraft was brought down level of community and social dynamics and beliefs of ordinary men and women.4 Thomas and Macfarlane opened a world of popular mentality that begs for further elucidation and refinement. With increasing interest among scholars in exploring complex connections among various cultural strata, their analyses are more relevant than ever and need be revitalized with new evidence and fresh theoretical insights.5 Both authors employed theoretical frameworks from social anthropology in order offer a structuralist and functionalist account ofthe dynamics of witchcraft at local level. Their interpretation was leavened with an appreciation of distinctiveness of English witchcraft beliefs and prosecutions compared those of continent. Not witches riding brooms, nor kissing devil's behind, nor cannibalizing babies but simple maleficium characterized English witchcraft. Thomas focused on lowest level of discourse he could find get at heart of witch beliefs, and from accusations of simple villagers he constructed a profile of accuser and accused. The theoretical model he constructed emphasized growth of community tension brought about by conflict of values between older, caring, communitarian ethics and a new, more individualistic pattern of thought accompanying Reformation and quickening tempo of eco? nomic change. Thomas alleged that most people who accused someone of witchcraft did so out ofa feeling of guilt after having denied that person some act of charity. Witchcraft beliefs were a double-edged sword, then, offering psycho-

Rationale for organ donation: charity or duty?

Media appeals encouraging people to sign organ donor cards suggest that donating one's own organs after death or donating the organs of a deceased family member is an act of charity, i.e., something which it would be meritorious for people to do but not wrong to avoid. This paper argues to the contrary that posthumous organ donation is a moral duty, a duty of the type that rests at the base of recently enacted state "Good Samaritan" laws which require a witness to an emergency situation to render aid to the victim(s) when this can be done at minimal cost/risk to the potential rescuer.

Hope and Charity in St. Thomas

HOPE AND CHARITY IN ST. THOMAS DOES the desire of union with God spring from the theological virtue of hope or charity or from neither? We do not intend to speak here of the natural desire of the vision of God and of St. Thomas' classical doctrine on this point. We have in view the love of desire for God traditionally distinguished in Scholasticism from the love of benevolence, the amor concupiscentiae as opposed to the amor benevolentiae, corresponding broadly to the " interested " and " disinterested " love of modem spirituality, without however understanding "self-interest" in a pejorative sense. We consider this interested love of God as supernatural and theological, that is, as a self-regarding love of God which originates from grace and not from nature alone, and which has as its formal object God Himself and not some created goodness as would be the case for an interested love of God in which the primary moving reason would be inan's own happiness. Desire of God, if deprived of this theological character, cannot indeed arise from any of the theological virtues. Of this theological love or desire for God we ask the question: Is it an act of hope or an act of charity? Or can it exist without either hope or charity? 1 As is well known, all three possible answers have been proposed by Catholic theologians. One school, beginning with Scotus and popularized by Suarez, holds that the interested love of God belongs to hope. This would 1 The third alternative mentioned, paradoxical though it may seem to say that a theological act would exist without any theological virtue, refers to the imperfect desire of God presupposed in hope, as will be explained presently.-For recent studies on hope and charity we mention especially the following: C. Zimara, Daa Wesen der Hoffnung in Natur und Ubematur (Paderborn 1988), and the Article, "Charite" (by various authors) in the Dictionnaire de Spiritualite !l, (507-691). 204 HOPE AND CHARITY IN ST. THOMAS seem to be the more widespread opinion to-day. The hope of possessing God in heaven is the desire of heaven. Another school refers the theological desire of God to charity of which it is an essential though secondary act, the primary act of charity being the love of benevolence for God. In this conception , interested love of God, when it is theological, can not exist without theological charity and without sanctifying grace, nor can charity exist without the desire of union with God. This was the position of St. Augustine, and of the ancient Scholastics down to St. Bonaventure and, it would seem, _to St. Thomas; it is Scotus who first made a departure from this traditional view. The third solution, namely, that the desire of God is neither hope nor charity, also has found its advocates. In order to explain that some desire of God is presupposed to hope, as all admit, these theologians conclude that this desire, in its imperfect stage at any rate, can exist before hope or charity and is, therefore, different from both.2 Which of these three answers is the correct one? Which is the answer of St. Thomas and of the Thomistic tradition? Is it correct to say that St. Thomas was an innovator in his conception of charity by restricting charity to the friendship of God and excluding from it the love of desire? In St. Thomas' conception, " there would be no longer room within the structure of charity for that love which seeks God from the motive that He is the supreme Good which appeases man's desire for beatitude; this love can exist along with charity, but it does not originate from charity." 3 The question is not without important practical implications. H the desire of union with God is essentially an act of charity, then it necessarily supposes the state of grace. If it is an act of hope, or different from hope or charity, then it can be found without sanctifying grace. From a Thomistic viewpoint the question whether St. Thomas 2 Cf. E. Harent, "Esperance," in Diet. de Theol, Cathol. 5 (1913) 605-76; and Zimara, op. cit., ~Wl-14. 3 Zimara, op...

IV.—Notes on some small Lake-basins in the Lepontine Alps

Rock-Basins have been getting out of favour of late. The “heckling” which they have suffered from my friend Mr. Marr tempts one to echo Betsy Prig's classic remark about Mrs. Harris. Mr. Brend, however, though “dealing faithfully” with them in the September number of the Geological Magazine, does permit one or two to exist on sufferance, so that I feel minded, were it only as an act of charity to these depreciated securities, to describe two or three examples in the Alps which I think must be true rock-basins.