Our myopic focus upon greed as the sum and substance of our problems with giving has allowed us to ignore another reality that is seldom talked about in America – the way in which the tyranny of pride and the desire for power over others shapes our actions as givers.

The late James F. Hopewell told an instructive story about a well-to-do donor called – behind his back, of course – “the Godfather.”  In his small Southern Baptist church the “Godfather” “and persons subservient to him held everything together – and down.” He was “so powerful and wealthy that projects were never finished by congregational effort. ‘We’d always look at him, and he would say, Well, I’ll do the rest of it.’” [P. 126, James F. Hopewell. Congregation: Stories and Structure (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1987)]. There was also no doubt about who ran the church.

The crudity of the “Godfafther” might lure us into believing that we would never find ourselves so bereft of self-knowledge, if ever we confront similar temptations – let us say, in a small-scale institution where our donations make the difference. Surely we could summon the discipline of secret giving and thereby avoid the dangers of pride.

In such circumstances, the warning of Judith N. Shklar, a political philosopher at Harvard in the late twentieth century, are sobering: “Genuine secret charity and a constant and severe self-scrutiny are psychologically unthinkable without the moral pride that is all but inseparable from spiritual energy.”  [P. 49. Judith N. Shklar. Ordinary Vices (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1984)]. Chapter 2, “Let Us Not be Hypocritical,” pp.45 – 86, is worth reading.

The most important resource is an extraordinary medieval document – a page in length and a distillation of true wisdom. It can be found in Moses Maimonides, "Laws Concerning Gifts to the Poor: The Book of Seeds” (A Perfect Gift), pp. 125-126. A recent interpretation of this document is available in Julie Salamon, Rambam’s Ladder:  A Meditation on Generosity and Why It Is Necessary to Give (New York: Workman Publishing, 2003).

The phrase – “the glow of benevolence” – is borrowed from an essay by Jane Addams. See Jane Addams, “A Modern Lear” in The Social Thought of Jane Addams, Ed. Christopher Lasch (New York: Irvington).