From the moneychangers in the temple to vestry members grousing about the latest church budget-buster, religion and money have always had a love-hate relationship. But how much does your religion affect your wallet? The short answer: somewhat, but less than you might expect (unless you're a sociologist or a pastor, in which case you have low expectations from years of research and hard experience, respectively).

The data in the tables below come from The Economic Values Survey, which was constructed specifically to investigate the intersection between religion and economic life. While it's possible to slice and dice this survey many ways, The Oracle has focused on a few questions that highlight the similarities and differences among Catholic and Protestant Christians, the two largest groups of respondents to the survey. (Alas, Orthodox Christians, in spite of their immense significance in the global church, are too few in number in the United States to be statistically comparable to the other two traditions.)

Compared to the public as a whole ("All Respondents" in the tables), fewer Catholics and high-attendance Protestants failed to put a single dollar in the plate in the previous year (Table 1). But in absolute terms these numbers are still pretty remarkable-between a fourth and a third of the active membership of churches gave no money to religious organizations of any kind. Even granting that personal property rights are important to an efficient economy, these active church-goers treat their property very personally.

Then there is a curious group, the low attending Protestants, over three-quarters of whom give no money to religious organizations-thus proving to be more stingy with religion than the general public that includes those who never darken the door of a church. Interestingly, low-attending Catholics are not as prone to this effect-perhaps because even a Catholic who does not now attend church was once schooled in the church's religious values.

When we look at giving to all charitable organizations (not just religious ones), we see similar patterns (Table 2). Americans as a whole fare remarkably generous, and religiously active Americans are more generous still-except those low-attending Protestants, especially those in their twenties, who continue their tightfisted ways.

Finally, Table 3 looks at a different kind of question. In his provocative book Trust, Francis Fukuyama suggests that capitalist societies have to hold economic and non-economic values in tension in order to survive. How well do Christians maintain that balance-in this case, balancing finding a good deal on a car (an economic value) with protecting the environment (a non-economic value)? On this one, active Catholics are particularly vigilant, while once again the low-attending Protestants manage to out-secularize the culture as a whole. Overall, though, you can count on your average churchgoer to be a lot more concerned with getting a good deal than protecting creation. (And so much for the ecological sensitivity of Generation X, who on this question at least display less concern than their elders.)

While these results aren't dreadful, they show a lot of room for growth. Teaching on "stewardship" has tended to be in the hands of pastors, who have always seemed to have an awkward conflict of interest. Maybe it's time for some energetic and thoughtful lay people to step up to the plate. It's going to take something more than Stewardship Sunday as usual. RQ