Religious Donations Research Articles

Intention of filing tax claims for religious donations: Results from a Muslim American survey

AbstractThis study examined the intention to claim exemption for zakat and other monetary donations on the annual tax return among US Muslims. We used a survey of 575 Muslims living in the United States to test several exploratory hypotheses. Our statistical results suggest that after controlling for other demographic differences, (1) respondents who identified as non‐Sunni (as opposed to Sunni) Muslims, had medium or high (as opposed to low) income, and those who believed that Covid‐19 is a Zakat‐eligible cause had higher odds of claiming an exemption for their Zakat donations; and (2) permanent residents (as opposed to US citizens), high (as opposed to low) income earners, non‐faith‐based donors, and those who believed that Covid‐19 is a Zakat‐eligible cause had higher odds of claiming exemption for their non‐Zakat monetary donations. Implications are discussed.

From Islamic to Christian Donation: Gifts to the Church after the Conquest of Granada

This article examines how the Castilian conquest of Granada and the conversion of its inhabitants to Christianity affected the Catholic Church; specifically, it analyses the role played by parish churches as recipients and administrators of religious donations, first from Muslims and later from converts. This study shows that the Church was not the only beneficiary of the donations it received, since these gifts were part of a strategy on the part of converts to be accepted as legal members of Castilian society and on the part of the Crown in its campaign for the unity of the kingdom.

Monetized Religion in the Public Church

Abstract The quantitative study undertakes a systematic investigation of the church-related donation practice in the context of the Protestant Church in Germany. The characteristic logics of membership and participation in this publicly regulated institutionalized church are considered as well as the multidimensionality of donation practice. Religious donations are located at the interface of the individual and the church institution. Key explanatory factors for financial giving emerge: objective and subjective costs, opportunities and occasions, institutional identification and reputation, social context, prayer practice, competition, and mediatized publics. Rational choice, generalized reciprocity, and risk and trust calculations act as guiding theories. The empirical findings are connected to a general theory of religious behavior. Implications for church fundraising, church financing, and church membership are discussed.

Improvement Of The Community's Reading Literature Culture Through The Alfata Reading Home Belonged To Baroh Village Society

Technology and communication advancements have led in a decline in people's reading habits. It is necessary to conduct an activity that educates individuals about the benefits of family reading habits. The function of the school in fostering a reading literacy culture is not exclusive; it may be played by the community as well. The Reading House was founded with the assistance of institutional funding, corporate and religious donations, and community funds. The objective of this research is to detail numerous initiatives made by Alfata Reading House to enhance reading literacy culture. Alfata Reading House, Baroh Village, Pidie District, Pidie Regency, Aceh Province. This research was done at the Alfata Reading House, Baroh Village, Pidie District, Pidie Regency, Aceh Province. A qualitative descriptive study was employed to conduct this research. Data collecting methods included interviewing and observing. According to the procedures and strategies utilized for data collecting. Meanwhile, observations were made about the development of a reading literacy culture inside the Baroh Village community through the Alfata Reading House. This study made use of the following data analysis techniques: data reduction, data visualization, and conclusion drawing. The study's findings indicate that the Alfata Reading House routinely welcomes Nadhlatul Ulama schools in the Pidie area, connects with Nadhlatul Ulama branch leadership, and collaborates with parents.

The Stakes of Transfers: Ethnography of Discomfort During a Buddhist Initiation Ritual in Myanmar

This article analyses how a transfer of food can become a political act based on the description of a scene of embarrassment during the feast of a Buddhist initiation ceremony called shinbyu. A shinbyu is a religious donation in the full sense of the term (ahlu), crucial in the lives of the Buddhist Burmese. While the shinbyu has been studied for its symbolic and ritual aspects by various anthropologists, this article proposes to analyse it through the social scenes in which different types of transfers (invitation, reception, donations of food, money, mutual help, etc.) intertwine with the religious donation. It focuses especially on “The Plate Scene”, an ambiguous moment where uncertainty about the meaning of the staging—donors posing for a video while feeding the guests—reveals the political work at play in interpreting transfers—when an elderly lady refuses to be caught in the game. Ultimately, this article shows how a typological approach to the forms of transfers can be combined with a more political approach to the stakes underlying them.

The Impact of Government Interference to Religion on Religious Giving: Evidence from European Countries

While the impact of government interference to the religious domain has long been discussed in previous literature, empirical evidence on the nexus between government intervention to religion and individuals’ giving to religious organizations remains limited. In this study, we aim to fill this gap and examine whether government intervention affects individuals’ giving to faith-based charities. To this end, a survey data conducted in 20 European countries and two measures of government intervention to religion were used. Our empirical investigation based on multilevel logistic regression, after controlling for possible confounding factors at individual and country levels, indicates that government regulation of religion has a significant negative impact both on religious donation and volunteering. The findings of the present study add substantially to our understanding of nexus between government and religion and will serve as a base for future studies.

God Insures those Who Pay? Formal Insurance and Religious Offerings in Ghana*

Abstract This article provides experimental support for the hypothesis that insurance can be a motive for religious donations. We randomize enrollment of members of a Pentecostal church in Ghana into a commercial funeral insurance policy. Then church members allocate money between themselves and a set of religious goods in a series of dictator games with significant stakes. Members enrolled in insurance give significantly less money to their own church compared with members who only receive information about the insurance. Enrollment also reduces giving toward other spiritual goods. We set up a model exploring different channels of religiously based insurance. The implications of the model and the results from the dictator games suggest that adherents perceive the church as a source of insurance and that this insurance is derived from beliefs in an interventionist God. Survey results suggest that material insurance from the church community is also important and we hypothesize that these two insurance channels exist in parallel.

Źródła dochodów klasztoru klarysek w Gnieźnie pod koniec XVI wieku na podstawie rękopisu „Regestrum 1593”

The article surveys rents, dues in kind and other revenues of the convent of Poor Clares in Gniezno from their country and town estates in the late 16th c. The analysis was based on the oldest register of income kept in the convent, preserved in the manuscript entitled “Regestrum censuum de bonis de bonis Monialium S[anctae] Clarae Gnesnensis 1593”. The manuscript registered dues from serfs from the country estates with which the convent had been endowed upon its foundation by Duke Przemysl II in the last decades on the 13th c., and from several other villages granted to the convent by King Sigismundus the Old in 1546. The register also noted dues from the inhabitants of Kostrzyn, a town owned by the convent since the end of the 13th c. by the privilege of Duke Ladislaus the Elbow-high, and the convent’s income from the town of Gniezno. This document, however, is not sufficient to estimate the convent’s real proceeds or the sisters’ living standard, since the data in tables (1–4), representing dues in cash and in kind, cover only one of the many sources of the community’s revenue. It may have been the most significant source, nevertheless, the Poor Clares, as any other religious community, had others, e.g. bequests, legacies, mass funds, donations and dowries. It seems that the income from the country and town estates was used to support the nuns and the whole convent community. Judging from its scale, sheep breeding may have been an additional source of income from the convent’s farms, since the demand for wool grew in Greater Poland in the 2nd half of the 16th c. Still, the lack of accounts from that period precludes any estimation of proceeds from that source. Similarly, it is impossible to conclude whether rents and dues in kind were enough to support the community. By analogy to the model of functioning of other orders at that time it can be supposed that the convent in question was primarily supported by income from its landed estate, but due to the lack of other documents from the 2nd half of the 16th c. it is impossible to describe in full the structure of the convent’s revenues or the costs of supporting the community, including the servants, which at that time probably consisted of 30–40 people counting the servants.

The invisible identity in a visible world: how religiosity mediates consumer culture and the marketplace

Purpose This paper aims to offer a systematic view of religious consumption and its iterative influences on consumers, as well as their differences in attitudes, values and behaviors. Design/methodology/approach Using a mixed-method approach – both qualitative and quantitative – the study develops religious self-transformation and self-categorization scales to empirically evaluate the hypotheses. Findings The convergence of consumption, self-identification and religious attitudes and behaviors proffer an essentially subjective concept useful in understanding the existential reflection and supernatural orientation that individuals may seek through consumption. Cluster analysis (based on product, services, media and practices) reveals four quadrants. The non-religious (religious) group has low (high) consumption in all four consumption categories Self-categorization (self-transformation) group has high (low) level of product consumption, but low (high) in all three other categories. This research presented four invisible identities that are visibly different in terms of life satisfaction, religious brand preference, dollars spending on religious products and monetary donation. Research limitations/implications This research only considers one medium-size city as opposed to all types of cities. All religious affiliated and nonaffiliated respondents are included in the total sample. Practical implications The study offers new insights into the triadic relationship between religious self-identification, religious consumption, and the marketplace that can be used in branding, segmentation, targeting, positioning, and persuasive advertising, public relation and social media, and services marketing. Social implications Religion addresses the nature of existence. In this religion–consumer–brand nexus, consumption is a way for consumers to experience and immense themselves in the sacred to solidify, communicate, transform, improve and transport who they are capitalizing on religious self-identification can affectively promote positive social change. Originality/value This work proposes four invisible identities that are different in consumption of religious products and services in terms of patterns and purposes. These groups of consumers shape the marketplace through the derived utility of their religious consumption based on their self-identification, which in turn influences their religious brand preference.

Sacred remittances: money, migration and the moral economy of development in a transnational African church

ABSTRACTWhile remittances have come to play an important part in debates about migration and development, the link between religion, migration and transnational financial flows has yet to be understood in its full complexity. Drawing upon a multi-sited ethnography of a transnational African church, this article addresses this overlooked dimension of migrant transnationalism by analysing how religious donations converted into ‘sacred remittances’ produce a moral economy of religious life shaped by a politics of belongings at various scales. The article discusses the social meaning that diasporic actors attach to religious donations sent to the homeland (the Congo) and how this compares to the practice of sending remittances to family members. The article also argues that transnational circulation of sacralised money operates within a field of meanings and practices associated with moral expectations, entitlements and differentiated regimes of value. Sacred remittances, as ‘global money’, may generate a diversity of transnational linkages between donors and recipients but they remain embedded in landscapes of status and power.

THE ANALYSIS FISCAL CORRECTION IN THE CALCULATION OF INCOME TAX AGENCY

In the analysis performed on the income statement of commercial PT. Light the Universe Together obtained positive fiscal correction Rp. 157 312 678 while the number of negative fiscal correction Rp. -240 438 974. These results indicate the existence of differences between accounting profits and profits for tax purposes. Commercial profit for 2015 amounted to Rp. 2238427655 whereas the taxable income of Rp. 2,155,301,359 and the amount of corporate income tax on PT. Light the Universe Together is Rp. 487 205 085. The conclusion from this research that the taxation policy applied by PT. Light the Universe Together with the conduct of fiscal correction in accordance with the regulations and taxation law. The cost is a constraint only zakat corrected positively to a company PT. Light the Universe Together, while taxation should not be corrected in a positive, because according to the Finance Ministry Regulation No. 254 / PMK.03 / 2010 paragraph 1 states that Zakat or compulsory religious donations may be deducted from the gross income. while in the calculation of corporate income tax, the calculation was done by the company is accurate and not experience either error in calculating the number of installments of income tax and income tax payable Article 25Keywords: Fiscal Correction ,Calculation ,Tax Agency

Relation Between Intensity of Religious Practices and Organ Donation in Poland

Relation Between Intensity of Religious Practices and Organ Donation in Poland

Associational Capital and Adult Charitable Giving: A Canadian Examination

This article examines the relationship between associational capital, developed through participation in social networks, and charitable giving behavior in Canada. Empirical models are specified to determine whether a relationship exists between associational capital, formed in youth and adulthood, and secular and religious donation expenditures in adulthood. Tobit regression models are estimated using data from the 2010 Canada Survey of Giving, Volunteering and Participating (CSGVP). The results suggest that the formation of associational capital in youth and adulthood is related to larger donation expenditures, although the source of associational capital and the type of recipient organization matters. It is also found that those who participate in a variety of associations are more likely to make larger donations than those who participate in fewer types of associations. The results provide further insight into charitable giving behavior and have policy implications for public and nonprofit sectors concerned with increasing charitable donations.

Religious Donations, Ritual Offerings, and Humanitarian Aid: Fields of Practice According to Forms of Giving in Burma

AbstractIn this paper, the religious donation–meaning oriented interactions that occur between a lay donor and his or her monastic recipient or between laypeople and religious institutions as a whole–is first examined in the Burmese Buddhist context, in regard to the Maussian theory of the gift. The formal analysis of ‘serving rice’ to monks during their daily alms tour, the main form of religious donation, demonstrates that it is in keeping with the definition of a free gift rather than involving reciprocity, although it is supposed to be rewarded by merit through an impersonal process. Then, moving from a formal analysis of the ethnography of religious donation (ahlu) to the contextual analysis of the differentiated uses of various forms of giving in contemporary Burma, the discussion aims at highlighting differences with practices of ‘ritual offering’ (kadaw bwe) and ‘humanitarian aid’(ke hse yay) showing how these different forms of interaction shape contrasted fields of practice. The transaction occurring in religious donations then emerges as setting into motion a crucial social process, the enactment and reproduction of the difference in status between monastics and laypeople that is one of the main social processes contributing to the differentiation of a Buddhist‐defined ‘religious field’.

Religion as a Tool of Economic Development: Exploring the Idea of Social Justice Through a Comparative Analysis of Religions in India

The scope of this paper is to widen the conversation on critical, moral and ethical implications of economic deprivation in India. The paper analyses how religion can unify the spiritual with the social and material fulfilment of a human being by advocating social justice through ethical economics. In India, coarse poverty co-exists with the cross currents of various ancient philosophies and cultures. This contradiction betrays the idea of social justice that rests on the liberty of the individual and his right to a fulfilled life through physical, emotional, spiritual and intellectual development. Despite fabulous economic growth, 300 million people in India remain poor and half of our children are undernourished. Those who are well off are indifferent to the plight of these hungry and deprived millions. This is borne out of the fact that only 1.7% of the household income in India goes to philanthropy as against 35% for religious donations. The role and relevance of religion in today’s world lie in assuming the values of social capital like trust, honesty, fairness and concern for the less fortunate through concrete social programmes.

Methods of Persuasion for Religious Donations in Comedia de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe y sus milagros

On September 10, 1601, a Spanish Jeronymite by the name of Diego de Ocaña, from the monastery Extremeño de Guadalupe, stood in Potosí Bolivia’s plaza 10 de Noviembre. He watched his own play titled Comedia de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe y sus milagros be performed for the first time in front of thousands of Spaniards, creoles, mestizos, and indigenous peoples. The play, which incorporated one of Ocaña’s Virgin of Guadalupe paintings, highlighted the historical and miraculous moments of the original painting in various individual scenes. Modern critics have tried to explain the play’s meaning and symbolism, as well as Ocaña’s personal interests and intentions. Over time, Comedia de Nuestra Señora has generally and briefly been recognized as a propagandistic play fueled by Ocaña’s economic motives. This article aims to avoid generalities by providing examples that demonstrate how Ocaña employed persuasive methods to obtain religious donations. Some of the ways he achieved his goal were by utilizing varied poetic verses, exemplary characters, and promises of divine assistance. Similarly, he took advantage of the preestablished celebratory and religious ambience, described in Viaje por el Nuevo Mundo , which consequently allowed theatrical spaces to enter religious spaces. This confused the two, making the theatrical more believable and “real.” Finally, Ocaña knew that his performance would take place in Potosí, where reciprocity was an active political and social tradition. Every kind gesture and offering he made to the Potosí residents would have required compensation. I argue that these tactics were used by Ocaña in order to guarantee that participants and spectators would make donations to the Jeronymite monastery and never forget the importance and divine power of the Virgin of Guadalupe. (NG)

Motivating Mormons

Despite numerous studies on motivation for generosity, much remains unknown. Given that the lion's share of giving and volunteering is directed toward religious institutions, we aimed to test the motivation for the generosity of Mormons. Previous research has indicated that Mormons (Latter‐day Saints) volunteer and donate at much higher levels than other groups. This study examined how self‐reported motivations to volunteer explain the annual number of hours volunteered and the likelihood of donating toward various causes. We used thirty qualitative interviews with Latter‐day Saints to create a comprehensive questionnaire measuring the time spent engaged in various volunteer activities and whether or not the respondents donated to various causes. The questionnaire also asked respondents to rank how important twenty‐five different motivations were to their service or volunteering. We used factor analysis of the results on the twenty‐five motivation items to identify underlying variables behind volunteer motivations, and we used the scores on the five resulting factors in multiple regression analyses to predict volunteer hours and logistic regression analyses to predict the likelihood of making donations. Different types of motivations predicted different types of volunteering and charitable giving. Theological motivations had the broadest impact and predicted religious volunteering, social volunteering to benefit church members, social volunteering through the church to benefit the community, religious donations, and donations toward social causes made through the church. After inserting control variables into our models, we found that none of the five types of motivations predicted secular volunteering or secular charitable giving. We conclude with managerial and conceptual implications of these and other results.

Perspective of taxpayers toward religious donations and taxes from the viewpoint of religion

This research aims to see the factors establishing the basis of Christian and Muslim taxpayers for being more obedient in paying their religious duties such as donations or zakat. The data were gathered through in-depth interview and analysis of the factors that become the basis for Christian and Muslim taxpayers to be more obedient in paying alms or tithes than in paying tax. The taxpayers interviewed for this study are religious leaders of Muslims, called Ustadz, and religious leaders of Christians, called Pastor. Besides, this research also uses documentation study method, in which the sources are taken from articles, and literature study method, in which the sources are taken from Bible, Qur’an, and Tax Regulations. The result of this research indicates that the biggest factor affecting Christian and Muslim taxpayers to be more obedient in paying alms or tithe than in paying taxes, as their obligation of the Indonesianpeople, is due to the allocation. The allocation of alms or tithe is considered more transparent than that of taxes.

Optimalisasi Pengelolaan Wakaf Uang untuk Kesejahteraan Umum

Wakaf, an obligatory religious donation for certain Muslim, has usefully flexible values and been a significant thing that can improve for prosperity, especially in Semarang. This research explores the donation that is done by BMH Semarang, constraints and step to optimize the management of it for prosperity. Semarang territory is too wide to be used by the BMH Semarang to manage the donation in order to increase the wealth of people in Semarang. However, the BMH of Semarang has not been able to optimize its management. The constraints faced are lack of Human Resources and competence, society culture that is illiterate on the matter, lack of publication and the support of the local government. Steps taken to optimize are to increase the human sources to be more professional and understanding, people understanding, the reference on the issue for the business sectors, the acceptance of the donation and coordinate with the government. The Optimalization of Wakaf Money for Public Prosperity

The Philanthropic Poor: In Search of Explanations for the Relative Generosity of Lower Income Households

In this study we investigate the relationship between income and charitable giving. Previous research shows inconsistent findings regarding both the effect of income on the probability of giving and the proportion of income spent on charitable giving. We test hypotheses with the Giving in The Netherlands Panel Study 2003 (N = 1,316). We do not find an effect of income on the probability of giving, but a consistent negative effect of income on both total and religious donations as a proportion of income. This effect cannot be explained by stronger religious affiliation of lower income groups, or by other differences such as age, and price of giving. We find evidence in favor of a giving standard: Norms concerning the level of donations in specific situations that people in different income groups share, leading lower income groups to donate a higher proportion of their income.