Dear Intelligent American,
See way below for today’s sermon, although if you fancy a spoiler, it is this: None of us are exempt from being philanthropists.
Many of those with plentiful mites, who think about philanthropy a bit more aggressively and intentionally and dutifully, fiddle with donor advised funds—a.k.a. DAFs. As many more are eager to get a better understanding of these (as the terminology goes) financial instruments.
Well, there is indeed plenty to know about DAFs, and why they, like everything else in these United States, have become ensnared in ideological contretemps. Such has motivated the Center For Civil Society to host a “Givers, Doers, & Thinkers” webinar next week (since you asked: it takes place on Tuesday, November 19th, from 3:00 to 4:00 p.m., Eastern) that will unpack how donor advised funds have gone astray, how to find DAFs that are committed to honoring givers’ intent, and yeah—just what DAFs are. Yours Truly will moderate a conversation—between Bradley Impact Fund president Gabe Conger, DonorsTrust vice president Peter Lipsett, and Cecilia Diem, director of donor advisory at AmPhil—that will get to the nub of all these questions (including yours).
A boatload of wisdom will be shared. The cost is free. And the place to sign up is here.
All Aboard for a Boatload of Inspiring Articles
1. At The American Conservative, W. James Antle III laments what has become of the Methodist Church. From the piece:
Many of the more conservative United Methodists, the renewal and confessing movements, sought to defend the denomination’s traditional teachings and take back operational control from the liberals, who were often clergy and even bishops. The liberals hoped to thwart these ambitions and keep pushing the denomination leftward. Both wings of the church coexisted uneasily under the uninspiring banner of “theological pluralism.”
A pastor friend compared the United Methodist Church’s General Conference, the denomination’s quadrennial legislative body, to attending the Republican and Democratic conventions at the same time. My preferred analogy is to imagine the Southern Baptists and the Episcopalians being closer in overall size and then forced to merge into one church. The result is an awful lot of intense debate, to say the least.
Just 20 years ago, it looked like the conservatives were winning. Large majorities voted at the 2004 General Conference to not only retain but in some instances strengthen the church’s teachings on human sexuality. Three-fifths of the delegates voted to preserve language saying that homosexual practice was incompatible with Christian doctrine, with a somewhat smaller majority rejecting language that would have recognized disagreements within that church about that issue. Four-fifths voted against the church performing same-sex weddings and 77 percent backed “laws in civil society that define marriage as the union of one man and one woman,” which at that time were passing virtually everywhere they were placed on the ballot. Eighty-five percent voted that clergy must be celibate when single and monogamous when married, with 72 percent specifically reaffirming the ban on open, practicing homosexual clergy.
2. At The European Conservative, Connor Tomlinson explores how policing in the UK seeks to criminalize thoughts and private conversations and catalogue “non-crime hate incidents.” From the essay:
An egregious example of NCHIs occurred when a 14-year-old autistic boy, after buying a copy of the Bible, lost a bet with friends and was told to purchase a copy of the Qur’an as forfeit. When a friend read aloud from it, he knocked it out of his hands. He and three other pupils were suspended from Kettlethorpe High in Wakefield for scuffing the book. A Labour councillor claimed on social media that the book had been desecrated, prompting a panicked West Yorkshire police force into staging an intervention at the local mosque, where the boy’s mother pleaded, before cameras, to spare her family from reprisal. This hostage situation became a permanent mark on that child’s record, which could someday prevent him from getting a job as an adult.
The most high-profile target of NCHIs was former police officer, and founder of Fair Cop, Harry Miller. After posting a feminist lyric to what was then known as Twitter (now X), Miller received a visit at his workplace from a Humberside Police community cohesion officer, who informed him that “We need to check your thinking.” Citing 30 potential offensive posts within 20 minutes, PC Mansoor Gul told Miller that his jokes about transgenderism constituted step one of five towards genocide—requiring “necessary intervention.” When asked where PC Gul had learned this, he said “I’ve been on a course [run by a transgender person] and what you need to understand is that you can have a foetus with a female brain that grows male body parts and that’s what a transgender person is.” Miller was not given the identity of his anonymised accuser, nor told how the complainant had found his place of work.
Miller took the College of Policing to court. In the ruling, Justice Knowles said, “The effect of the police turning up at [the claimant’s] place of work because of his political opinions must not be underestimated. To do so would be to undervalue a cardinal democratic freedom. In this country we have never had a Cheka, a Gestapo or a Stasi. We have never lived in an Orwellian society.”
3. At The Spectator, Jonathan Sacerdoti reports on the Amsterdam pogrom. From the article:
While the reaction from Israeli government figures to the violence in Amsterdam has been intense, it’s worth noting that incidents involving attacks on soccer fans are not uncommon during European matches. Violence, especially at high-stakes games, has been seen before involving European supporters. However, while these confrontations can be brutal, the targeted nature of the attacks on Jewish fans, coupled with the accompanying antisemitic rhetoric, distinguishes this incident from typical soccer-related violence and heightens its significance.
For those who say this is an isolated incident, look closer. The UK’s police forces have themselves admitted to inadequately handling the anti-Israel marches that swept through their streets. These protests, rife with antisemitic chants and rhetoric, were allowed to escalate unchecked under both Conservative and Labour governments. This failure isn’t just an oversight—it is a warning that Britain is dangerously close to allowing the same mob violence to happen there. Keir Starmer should take note: violence is not always carried out by “far-right” perpetrators against pure and innocent immigrants. It is an affliction that can originate from any extremist ideology. While racist attacks against immigrants are rightly dealt with swiftly, a different standard appears to be applied when Jews are the targets.
Consider the infamous chants calling to “globalize the intifada.” What does that mean if not exporting violent, anti-Jewish sentiments into other countries? The fact that such rhetoric is tolerated, even protected under the guise of free speech, speaks volumes about the selective indignation of our governments and law enforcement. This is not theoretical. When calls for “jihad” were heard in London, the response from the police was not arrest but a feeble attempt at theological discourse, debating the meaning of jihad rather than addressing its real-world implications. What happened in Amsterdam is the logical conclusion of allowing such things to go unchecked.
4. At the Institute for Family Studies, Mary Rose Somarriba looks at ways to combat social media’s soul-sucking of our children. From the piece:
These are much-needed changes, and parents can certainly use the help. But there is more we can do at home. Just last year, IFS and Gallup jointly published a report on how parenting and self-control mediate the link between social media use and youth mental health. The conclusion was simple: teens with involved parents who monitor their time online and maintain close relationships with them are less likely to suffer from some of the negative mental health effects of social media use.
Which brings me to what is perhaps the scariest part of all this: when we look critically at how we got here and consider what changes we may need to make to reverse the damage, we begin to see where we’ve fallen short. How we adults are addicted to our phones and “phub” our loved ones. How for too long we have unfairly expected our kids to self-implement boundaries with technology that’s engineered to become their obsession. How we objectify and put down ourselves and others in numerous ways, affecting how young people view themselves. How we’ve let our hobbies and joys go to the wayside while worldly stresses take over. How we’ve gotten lazy in our faith, family time, and other areas of our lives that used to supply the greatest meaning. Many of us have forgotten how to model virtues that lead to happy living. The world will always supply something to fill the space. Now, we have much bigger messes to clean up.
5. At Catholic World Report, David G. Bonagura Jr. analyzes election voting and referenda results and finds a Jim Crow moment facing the pro-life community. From the analysis:
The people have spoken, and they are choosing abortion in droves.
Post-Civil War America, deeply entrenched in its white supremacist ways, crafted Jim Crow to prevent African Americans from exercising their constitutional rights. Post-Dobbs America, deeply committed to sexual liberty and individual autonomy, has created its own form of Jim Crow to deny the unborn the same constitutional protection.
Beyond the votes to continue legal discrimination against the unborn, pro-lifers face an additional challenge: the Republican Party, which in 1980 committed itself to fighting abortion, has, like the northerners post-Reconstruction, quit the contest. In 2024, Republican Congressional and Presidential office-seekers, twisting awkwardly in the political winds, swore they would never ban abortion if elected and enumerated circumstances for justifying it. They somehow forgot to mention the old party line that abortion kills an innocent human being.
Pro-lifers now must learn the lessons of their forebearers in the Civil Rights Movement.
First, they must remain committed to their task while recognizing that success will be measured in decades, not electoral cycles. Today’s pro-lifers likely will not see the fruits of their labors. They must understand themselves as links in a lengthy chain whose end they cannot see.
6. At Minding the Campus, J. Scott Turner admits he cannot think of anything worse than scientists being in charge. From the beginning of the article:
For a time, I worked at a South African university, where my department still upheld the civilized practice of morning tea. One morning, I happened to arrive a few minutes late but found an open seat at a table just as a senior professor was opining—in very orotund tones, naturally—to some Honours students, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if scientists ruled the world?” To which I blurted out, “God, I can’t think of anything worse!” He never spoke to me again.
I tell this little story because it illustrates a political dilemma that, in one form or another, has persisted in our culture since Socrates: What should be the relationship between scientists—or philosophers, in Socrates’ day—and the society in which they live? The professor’s lament was rooted in a view of scientists as nobility, as philosopher-kings who are the unique custodians of wisdom and knowledge. My point that day, though I never got to make it, was that scientists, of all people, are particularly bad candidates for political power. Successful scientists tend to focus on small things to the exclusion of all else, are easily distracted, are often wrong, and are always changing their minds—the very opposite of the traits necessary for good governance. In short, which is the better sovereign: scientists or the people?
7. At City Journal, the great Troy Senik, historian of President Cleveland, reminds us of the importance of the Gilded Age and its relevance to recent elections. From the article:
Does the Gilded Age offer any clues about what comes next? Only in the faintest of outlines, perhaps. The Grover Cleveland of the second term, mindful of his first-term failures, came to office with a more expansive view of executive power (though it was still remarkably restrained by modern standards). For those who fear that Donald Trump will seek to push constitutional limits, it’s a worrisome precedent.
Another related trend bears noting, however: the second-term Cleveland also fell victim to his first-term track record. The one-time patron saint of limited government saw his popularity within his own party plummet, for example, when he deployed federal troops to Chicago—over the objections of Illinois’ Democratic governor—to put down the Pullman Strike. A potentially symmetrical irony awaits Trump if, like virtually all twenty-first-century presidents, he tries to use executive power to do an end-run around Congress. The foremost obstacle to such a scheme? Probably the Supreme Court majority he assembled in his first term.
The most important lesson the Gilded Age can give us, however, is that the present shape of American politics has little predictive power for its future. In 1892, Grover Cleveland achieved a comeback unrivaled in political history. Four years later, his party abandoned him and his governing philosophy. By the time Cleveland died in 1908, the Republican William Howard Taft, soon to be sworn in as president himself, sounded more like Cleveland than most Democrats, who would soon migrate from Bryan’s populism to Wilson’s progressivism.
In the long view of American history, such dramatic and unexpected reconfigurations of our politics are not remarkable. Only their absence is.
8. At Tablet Magazine, Jeremy England explains how best to read the Torah, starting with Genesis. From the essay:
You don’t have to be an Albert Einstein or a Richard Feynman to know that plants need sun to grow. So when plants make their first appearance in Genesis “before” the sun does, even the most skeptical student of the text might conclude that he is not, in fact, perusing a simple chronology. If he manages, just for a moment, to forget how our post-biblical culture expects us to read biblical text, he might even notice that a basic message of the seven days of creation is that true statements about God are guaranteed to sound enigmatic in some way. . . .
I too was once a Jewish atheist theoretical physicist, who, like many others, grew up worshipfully reading Feynman’s memoirs, hoping to understand “the universe” as profoundly as he and Weinberg and a dozen other Torah-rein 20th-century yidden had. However, through a series of providentially happy accidents, I managed eventually to get a glimpse past the smokescreen. Imagine my shock to discover that the most profound and free-ranging intellectual pursuit I had ever experienced—Torah study—had been distorted or even deliberately obscured from view by the pontifications of my childhood heroes. Weinberg once said, “[Scientific education] is corrosive of religious belief, and it’s a good thing, too!” Today I can retort that quantum field theory may be fun and useful, but it only ever amounts to playing around in one little sandbox according to a stultifyingly narrow set of mathematical rules. Maybe one day I will forgive Weinberg and Feynman for the way they stunted my understanding of the world and mankind’s condition in it, but I’ll have to avenge myself on them first.
9. At Law & Liberty, Elizabeth Grace Matthew reflects on the continuing importance of Wendy Shalit’s A Return to Modesty. From the piece:
“Today modesty is commonly associated with sexual repression,” observes Shalit, “with pretending you don’t want sex though you really do. But this is a misunderstanding, a cultural myth spun by a society which vastly underrates sexual sublimation.”
Shalit’s defense of modesty rests on the claim that so-called “women’s empowerment” predicated on the sexual revolution has sold women a bill of goods: “I propose that the woes besetting the modern young woman . . . are all expressions of a society that has lost its respect for female modesty.”
If we recover a foundational understanding that “a woman’s experience of love and sex is fundamentally different from a man’s,” Shalit contends, we could save young women an enormous amount of heartache. We could also keep them from the pathologies that show up in too many of their lives around adolescence, from eating disorders to self-cutting. These self-harming behaviors, Shalit argues, are ways for girls to regain control of their bodies and their sexuality in a sexually permissive, amoral culture that seems to lay casual claim to both.
10. At The American Mind, Michael S. Kochin reminds us of the troubling power of the managerial state. From the beginning of the essay:
In his 1941 classic of political science, The Managerial Revolution, James Burnham claimed that the need for managerial skill and technological competence had made the inherited forms of capitalism and democracy utterly unsuited to the challenges of his time. Ruling would belong not to capitalist entrepreneurs or elected politicians but to skilled managers. For only the managers had the sufficient training—that is, the training necessary to produce, mobilize, and deploy human and nonhuman resources to achieve victory in war and prosperity in peace.
Events and ideas since Burnham have made much of his book appear dated. The owner-entrepreneur has returned: just as Henry Ford took the automobile to mass production, Elon Musk has done the same for space rockets, while at the same time revolutionizing the electric car and social media. Moreover, thanks to the work of Friedrich Hayek and our experience of Communism, nobody today has the faith that managers have the ability to plan the nation’s or the world’s economy, or even conduct a business efficiently, without being subject to prices that float more or less freely according to supply and demand.
Nonetheless, the managers are still with us, and returning to Burnham can help us understand their aspirations and limitations. Returning to Burnham will also help us understand the present form of political conflict that is occurring in almost every democracy, between one faction that represents the credentialed professional-managerial class and the other that seeks to constrain, chasten, or, even in its more delusional moments, dissolve that class.
11. At TomKlingenstein.com, Pavlos Papadopoulos explains the important distinction between indoctrination and ideology. From the piece:
To appreciate the true political character of education, we should distinguish the very old phenomenon of indoctrination from the very new phenomenon of ideology.
Indoctrination is simply instruction in opinion. When an opinion is correct, it may serve as a solid foundation for higher forms of education.
Noah Webster defined doctrine as “in a general sense, whatever is taught; hence, a principle or position in any science; whatever is laid down as true by an instructor or master.” To call something a doctrine is not yet to comment on its epistemic status: “a doctrine may be true or false; it may be a mere tenet or opinion.” Indoctrination, far from having today’s pejorative sense, simply means “instructions in the rudiments and principles of any science; information.” Every attempt at upbringing and teaching begins with indoctrination into certain opinions. Such opinions are always initially held by the student as opinions.
Plato distinguished correct opinion (having the right answer without knowing why or how or even whether it is correct, and thus not really knowing the truth at all) from incorrect opinion (having the wrong answer without knowing it’s wrong). The purpose of a higher education is to refine, and ascend from, mere opinion to genuine knowledge. This task is made easier when the original opinions, acquired at an earlier stage of education, are correct. But an important mark of any genuine education is that it will interrogate opinions, compare preconceived notions and prejudices to new facts, and revise what one previously believed to be true. Even when the truth accords with the originally held opinions, a great deal of refinement will have occurred along the way, as the original opinions are seen in a new light.
12. At the Heritage Foundation, Rachel Sheffield explores modern approaches to relationships, and how they decrease the likelihood of healthy marriages. From the report’s introduction:
There are benefits to some increase in age at first marriage. Those who wed in their teens are significantly more likely to divorce compared to those who wait until their early to mid-20s to marry. The decline in teen marriages during the past several decades has contributed to the decrease in divorce in recent decades.
Delay in marriage also reflects increased educational and career opportunities, particularly for women. This has opened doors for more people, especially women, to receive higher education, develop talents, and contribute to their communities, both in the labor force and otherwise.
But the approach to relationships today says that marriage should happen only when people have completed a list of personal achievements that seems continually to grow. Education, career, travels, and hobbies are prioritized for young adults, while marriage often takes a back seat.
The delayed path to marriage that contemporary culture broadly supports is one that frequently includes multiple sexual partners and cohabitation outside of marriage. For much of the population, the delayed path to marriage also means unwed childbearing. These are all factors that decrease the likelihood of a strong marriage.
Lucky 13. At the Journal-News, Michael D. Clark reports on an Ohio school fundraiser helping a teacher who’s battling cancer. From the article:
Fairfield students and school families have combined with local businesses to raise a record $17,000 to help a local teacher battling cancer, Fairfield school officials recently announced.
A key decision earlier this year to re-focus donated funds to local individuals battling cancer—rather than forward monies to national organizations—played a big role in bringing more effectiveness and energy to fundraising, said the group’s leader.
Fairfield teacher Jessi Grimes, co-founder of the non-profit Fairfield Leads the Fight, said the recent tally of $17,000 in donations is a testament to the soundness of the new strategy.
“This has been our most successful year by far, which we attribute to the ever-growing sense of community. It has been amazing to see so many people from Fairfield—and beyond—unite to do good for one of our own,” said Grimes, who teaches at Fairfield Academy and is the girls head varsity volleyball coach at Fairfield High School.
Bonus. At The Giving Review, Neil Hrab looks at philanthropy in the face of the West’s ideological struggles. From the piece:
After reading Benjamin Soskis’ interesting and thoughtful assessment earlier this week in The Chronicle of Philanthropy of Elon Musk’s role in the 2024 U.S. election, I began to thumb through a copy of Nixon Treasury Secretary and, later, philanthropy executive William E. Simon’s A Time for Truth. Published in the late 1970s, Simon’s influential book can help us broadly understand some of the foundational thinking that shaped the “right” side of the right vs. left American political/cultural/philanthropic “arms race” usefully referenced by Soskis.
The massive Musk spending lamented by Soskis is mostly purely, straight-up political. It thus doesn’t necessarily subsume charity into politics in the way that so much contemporary giving does and that some bewail—including The Giving Review. Soskis’ consciously charity-protective critique can and should be cross-ideological, and I know it holds.
If accepting the conceptual framework of an ideological “arms-race,” however, Simon’s A Time for Choosing offers a detailed call to the right to fully understand the cultural struggle underway with the left. Referencing Irving Kristol, Simon notes that the right must not see the fight purely in terms of electoral politics, because to do so would ignore some of the other side’s most potent weapons—the big philanthropic foundations, the media, most universities, the agencies and bureaucracies constituting what we would today call the “administrative state,” etc.
Together, these make up what Simon calls America’s dominant and “vocal intellectual superstructure.” As outlined in Simon’s book, the goal of the right in building up its capabilities to fight a war of ideas with that hostile superstructure, including philanthropically, cannot be simply to indefinitely keep up some kind of arms race with the left. Rather, it should be to create what military strategists would call a “correlation of forces” leading to victory for the right over the left.
For the Good of the Cause
Uno. At Philanthropy Daily, Therese Beigel asks and answers the question: What can nonprofits learn from political-campaign fundraising? Catch the wisdom right here.
Due. Nonprofit worker bees who have a hand in writing grant applications should avail themselves of the Center for Civil Society’s forthcoming “In the Trenches” Master Class on “Elements of Grant Writing.” The invaluable three-hour training takes place Thursday, December 5th. Get complete information, and register, right here.
Point of Personal Privilege
At Philanthropy Daily, Your Persnickety Writer kvetches about lame-o signatures caboosing thank-you letters. Read it here.
Department of Bad Jokes
Q: What was Beethoven’s favorite fruit?
A: Ba – na – na – na.
A Dios
The readings at church this past Sunday were lessons in charity. The first reading, from the first Book of Kings (17:10-16), told of Elijah visiting Zarephath and requesting food from the impoverished widow, seen gathering sticks so she could cook a truly final meal for herself and her dying son. But she trusted Elijah, and conceded to give her pittance of remaining flour and oil so he could eat—that trust and generosity were rewarded with the miraculous. Neatly paralleling this was the gospel reading, from Mark (12:38-44), where Jesus makes much of those in the temple, in particular the poor believer, through the ages famed for originating the Widow’s Mite, who gave all she had—two small coins—to the treasury, meriting Divine Lauds for such, and the status of a paradigm who has educated billions through the centuries as to the essence of charity.
Maybe these stories proclaim what should be obvious: We are all of us philanthropists. It’s a fancy word that has a downside: It can be used for exclusionary purposes. After all, it’s the “philanthropist” who gives, and you’ve got to be loaded to be a philanthropist, so I ain’t no philanthropist. Alas, no. Lacking a surplus of wealth—how to measure that, by the way?—is no excuse for failing (refusing?) to give. If you’re out of the habit of being generous, get into it. Even if you have to use all of your mite.
May We Steward His Kindnesses with Justice and Selflessness,
Jack Fowler, who is searching for his checkbook at jfowler@amphil.com.
