America Is A Charitable Country
To purchase the entire Summit Lecture Series, Vol. 2 on DVD, visit summit.org.
What state is the stingiest state in America?
California.
You from California?
I live there.
You live there? Everyone’s lived there.
They’re all out of … We get them. I live in Prescott. You know where Prescott, Arizona is? Guess who all my neighbors are? Former Californians. Yeah, they’re coming from … Well, I won’t tell you what they call it. Okay, where are we?
Stingiest state is New Hampshire.
Anyone here from New Hampshire? You know what? I’ve been here 50-some years, I don’t remember too many kids from New Hampshire. Isn’t that sad? The second stingiest state in the United States is Rhode Island.
The next stingiest state in the United States is Vermont. The next stingiest state in the United States, Connecticut. And the next is Maine. Do you notice something there? Let me just show you something. You talk about hypocrisy with a small H? These are all Northeastern liberal states. Did you hear what I just said? These are all Northeastern liberal states. They’re the liberals who say that you conservatives are the greedy ones in society. You’re the greedies. If you’re a conservative, you’re the greedy with a capital G, or a J, no matter how you spell it, okay? Did you catch that one?
Oh, my friends. They’re the ones that are stingy. By the way, I have here, in my former nacho stained hands, the most charitable state in the United States is …
Which one? Which one?
Texas? That’s a foreign country.
Mississippi.
Anyone here from Mississippi? Can you spell it? You can spell it, okay. Most of them can’t, you know? They couldn’t spell that if their life depended on it. By the way, you had it until the last two years. You lost it two years ago. And I’ll ell you. The second most generous state is Arkansas. The next one is Alabama, believe it or not, Alabamy.
How in the world? They can only play football. I didn’t think they gave anything. But they have a good coach. How many know that, by the way? How many know that Alabama has a good coach? How many know the name of the coach? How did you know that?
I went there.
You went to Alabamy.
Yeah.
Oh, you transferred where?
Where’s that?
You get beat by them. You should go back to Alabama.
Oh, you go back the other way. Okay, okay, okay. How do we get on that? Oh, Alabama. The next is Tennessee. The next is Louisianer. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, the Cajun. Cajun country, here we come. Anyone from Louisianer?
You’re from Louisiana?
Yeah.
Where?
Baton Rouge.
That’s not Cajun country, tiger.
I know. I know. I have a lot of good friends there too, by the way. In fact, we get a lot of students from that area. And let’s see, what’s … South Carolina. How do you like that? You know what you need to know, kids? These are all Bible Belt states. These are all part of the Bible Belt. I don’t know which one’s the buckle, but they’re all part of the Bible Belt states. And they’re the most charitable. And the greedy ones, I contend, are the Northeast liberals. But then, hey.
Now, who took over Mississippi the last two years? You’ll be surprised. You’ll be surprised. Utah. The Mormons came through. In fact, they came through big time. I have their statistics here too, someplace. They came through big time. In fact, they give nearly 4% more than Mississippi right now, so that’s interesting itself. Now, the book on this subject is called Who Really Cares: America’s Charity Divide. Now, this is interesting because this argument here is you can tell whether a country is right or wrong by its charity. That’s the argument. And you know what? I think there’s a lot of truth to this, my friends. I think there’s a lot of truth to this.
In America, and I won’t go through the whole list, but there is a couple of interesting points here, religious people … Oh, by the way, did I give you the author? Brooks, Arthur Brooks is the author of Who Really Cares. Religious people are far more charitable than non-religious people. How do you like that? Well, that’s John … Oh, did I give the author of that quote before? It was John Dewey. I said he was an atheist, right, who said that evangelical Christians are the backbone of charity in this country. That was John Dewey, an atheist, also considered the founder of progressive education in this country. Some of you are the result of that. That’s why you can’t read or write.
You read and writing? Can you all do that? If you can’t, I’d do that first. You should know how to read it right before you go much further out of high school. In fact, I taught in college for a while. I had a student, he couldn’t even spell his name. He was a junior in college. I said, “Phil, how did you get this far?”
He says, “I play basketball.”
Played basketball. You think his fellow … Well, I won’t get to that. I don’t think you can help a student too much if you don’t really sit on him and make him do what he should do, including knowing how to write his name, because he just put down three Xs. At least he knew X. Yeah, give him credit where credit’s due. Of course, that’s because in basketball, you got Xs on the board: you can sit here and you can sit there, and then you sit down on the floor there and let them run over you. Oh, that’s a Y. Oh, okay. Some of you know what I’m talking about, some of you have no idea. Hey, don’t worry about it. I’m leaving you shortly.
Follow Christian Podcast Central on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter to see our ongoing discussion with Dr. Jeff Myers regarding worldviews.
(This podcast is by Summit Ministries. Discovered by Christian Podcast Central and our community — copyright is owned by the publisher, not Christian Podcast Central.)
