The short version: American Christians give a far smaller share of their income than most assume. Church member giving has fallen 43% as a percentage of income since 1968, while real disposable income rose 171%. Roughly one in five Christians gives 10% or more. And 2026 is the first year since 2021 that ordinary households can deduct their giving without itemizing.
Generosity is the one financial practice Scripture treats as non-negotiable, and the one where the gap between stated conviction and actual behaviour is widest. The numbers are worth looking at squarely before the theology, because they change what the theology has to address.
What Americans actually give
Total US charitable giving reached $617.20 billion in 2025, according to Giving USA’s 2026 report — the first year it has topped $600 billion in the report’s 71-year history. Individuals accounted for $394.2 billion of it.
Religion remains the largest single recipient category at $151.58 billion. But it was the slowest-growing: up 2.4% in current dollars and down 0.2% after inflation. Education grew 11.7%. Human services grew 5.3%. Giving to churches was flat in real terms while nearly everything else rose.
The longer trend is starker. Empty Tomb, which tracks giving as a share of income specifically, reports that from 1968 through 2022 church member giving fell 43% as a percentage of income — during a period when US per capita disposable income rose 171% in inflation-adjusted terms, from roughly $17,600 to $47,600. Churches received 3.2% of members’ incomes in 1933 and about 2.2% in 2015.
Read those two facts together. Christians became dramatically wealthier and gave a steadily smaller fraction of it away.
Meanwhile the share of American households giving anything at all has collapsed. The Philanthropy Panel Study, which has followed the same 9,000-plus households since 2000, found participation fell from about 66% in 2000 to 49.6% in 2018 — the first time it dropped below half — and kept falling into 2020. Among households headed by someone under 40, only about a third gave.
What Christians give, specifically
Barna’s most recent work on this, surveying 2,016 US adults in November 2021:
- 21% of Christians set their church giving at 10% or more of income
- 42% of practicing Christians do
- Giving varies year to year for 37%
- 25% give nothing to their church
Knowledge lags practice. Only 43% of Christians could decisively say what a tithe is. Among all US adults, 39% could define it and 39% had never heard of it.
Pastors do not agree on the target either. A third favour the traditional 10%; a fifth say give enough to be sacrificial; a fifth say as much as you are willing. Only 27% count giving outside the local church as a tithe.
You may also encounter a much bleaker figure — that only 5% of American adults tithe. That is real Barna data, but it is from 2007, and it measured all adults rather than churchgoers. Both numbers get quoted as current. Neither should be.
What Scripture actually commands
Here is where careful Christians divide, and the textual facts are worth having before the argument starts.
The tithe vocabulary appears ten times in the Greek New Testament. Jesus uses it twice, in parallel rebukes: “You give a tenth of your spices — mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law — justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practised the latter without neglecting the former” (Matthew 23:23). He affirms the practice and condemns its use as a substitute. It appears once more on the lips of the Pharisee in Luke 18:12 — “I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get” — which is the parable’s negative example. The remaining seven instances are in Hebrews 7, discussing Abraham and Melchizedek.
It appears nowhere in Paul. Not once across thirteen letters, including 2 Corinthians 8 and 9 — the longest sustained teaching on giving in the New Testament, where the appeal runs entirely on proportion, willingness and cheerfulness.
That absence is the strongest argument of Christians who hold the tithe is not binding, and it has serious defenders. It is also not the end of the matter, since Paul’s standard is arguably harder rather than easier: “Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver” (2 Corinthians 9:7). A fixed 10% at least tells you when you have finished. Our guide to tithing and giving works through the gross-versus-net question in detail.
On the Old Testament structure: you will read that Israel’s system took roughly 23% rather than 10%. That figure rests on a disputed reading. The three-tithe scheme has ancient witnesses — Josephus states it plainly — but rabbinic tradition holds that the poor tithe replaces the second tithe rather than adding to it, which yields about 20% in ordinary years and nothing in the sabbatical year, or roughly 17% averaged over the seven-year cycle. The often-quoted “23.3%” traces to a single 2017 article whose own author conceded that many scholars read three uses of one tithe. The honest summary: meaningfully more than a tenth, and no agreed figure.
The two texts that reframe the question
Two passages do more work than any percentage.
The widow’s coins. Jesus watches people putting money into the temple treasury and singles out a woman who contributes two lepta — the smallest coins in circulation, a fraction of a day’s wage. “They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything she had to live on” (Mark 12:44). He says she gave more than all of them. Not more proportionally, as a consolation. More.
That is a redefinition of the measurement. The relevant quantity is not what left your hand but what it cost you — which means a $500 gift from a household with margin can be genuinely smaller than a $20 gift from one without.
Paul’s Macedonian churches. “In the midst of a very severe trial, their overflowing joy and their extreme poverty welled up in rich generosity… they gave as much as they were able, and even beyond their ability. Entirely on their own, they urgently pleaded with us for the privilege of sharing” (2 Corinthians 8:2-4). Paul holds up poor churches as the model for a wealthier one, and the word he uses for their participation is koinonia — the same word translated “fellowship” elsewhere, here meaning money sent to believers they would never meet.
Both passages point the same direction. Scripture consistently treats generosity as a function of sacrifice rather than of surplus, which is precisely why rising income tends to produce falling percentages. Surplus is easy to give from and easy to expand into.
What changed in 2026
Three tax changes take effect this year, and together they meaningfully alter the arithmetic of giving.
The non-itemizer deduction is back, and permanent. Households that do not itemize can deduct up to $1,000 of cash giving, or $2,000 filing jointly. Churches qualify. Donor-advised funds do not. Since roughly nine in ten filers take the standard deduction, this is the first year since 2021 that ordinary tithing is deductible for a typical household.
Itemizers face a new floor. Charitable contributions are now deductible only above 0.5% of income. A household at $150,000 loses the deduction on its first $750 of giving. And for top-bracket taxpayers a new limitation caps the benefit of itemized deductions at an effective 35%.
Together those make bunching more valuable than it used to be — concentrating two years of giving into one calendar year to clear the floor once rather than twice.
For those 70½ or older, the qualified charitable distribution limit rises to $111,000 in 2026. Money goes directly from an IRA to a charity and is excluded from income rather than deducted, which is better — it never enters your adjusted gross income, so it cannot raise your Medicare surcharge or the taxable portion of your Social Security. It also counts toward your required distribution.
The mechanics almost nobody uses
Two practical points that cost nothing and are widely missed.
Give appreciated shares, not cash. If you hold stock or a fund that has gained value, donating the shares directly lets you deduct the full market value while never realizing the capital gain. Sell first and you owe tax on the gain, then give what remains. Same generosity, materially different outcome — and most churches can now accept securities, or will through a donor-advised fund.
Decide the percentage before the income arrives. Paul’s instruction is specific about timing: “On the first day of every week, each one of you should set aside a sum of money in keeping with your income” (1 Corinthians 16:2). Scheduled, first, and proportional. A percentage decided in advance scales automatically with a raise. A dollar amount gets frozen and quietly shrinks in real terms — which is a fair description of what happened to American church giving over fifty years.
Where generosity and investing meet
Christians who care about how their money is invested sometimes treat screening as the main event and giving as a separate matter. That gets the weight backwards.
Screening determines what your capital funds while you hold it. Giving determines what leaves your control permanently. Scripture has a great deal to say about the second and, by necessity, nothing direct about the first — the instruments did not exist. A portfolio screened immaculately by a person who gives 2% of a comfortable income has satisfied a standard Scripture never set while missing one it states repeatedly.
That is not an argument against screening; our guides to biblically responsible investing and Christian stock screener tools exist because it matters. It is an argument about proportion.
Jesus makes the ordering explicit: “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven… For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also” (Matthew 6:19-21). The logic runs from treasure to heart, not the reverse. He does not say your giving will follow your affections; he says your affections will follow your money. Which makes generosity a means of formation rather than evidence of it — and explains why waiting to feel generous before giving generously does not work.
Our guides to what the Bible says about money, wealth and investing, generosity and wealth and contentment and money in the Bible take up the two habits that make it sustainable.
