Almshouses are out of fashion, as are, for the most part, alms — the former having been supplanted by alliances, foundations, and the like, and the latter having taken the form of “giving opportunities” to said foundations. “Charity” has become “philanthropy.” What have we gained, and what have we lost, in this transformation? That is the question at the heart of Jeremy Beer’s new book The Philanthropic Revolution: An Alternative History of American Charity, which I review today at First Things:
Jeremy Beer, publisher of The American Conservative, has written a short book on a profound topic: the transformation of the ancient Judeo-Christian tradition of charity into the modern American practice of philanthropy. He approaches by way of theology: “Both [charity and philanthropy] are associated with theological presuppositions,” he writes, “not only in the most fundamental sense that there is no escaping such presuppositions, but also in the historical sense that philanthropy arises out of a reimagining of Christian eschatology and the proper role of Christianity in society.”
For Jews and for Christians, charity was salvific, a laying up of treasure in heaven, and the object of charity, the beggar, was an altar to be reverenced. The centrality of charity to the theology of Catholic Christianity inspired the West’s first hospitals, shelters, food kitchens, and orphanages. But the earthbound clerks of parishioners’ spiritual bank accounts began to accept funny money, and the indulgence system, among other corruptions, impelled Protestant reformers toward the doctrine of sola fide. Thus almsgiving was stripped of its sacramental significance and the beggar of his sanctity.
Centuries later, on a new continent, Protestant dogma, capitalist ambition, and Enlightenment reason would converge in the millennialism of the Second Great Awakening—and the replacement of Jesus’s admonition that the poor will always be with us with a conviction that the Christian reformer’s duty is to end poverty altogether. By the late nineteenth century, a new “scientific philanthropy” had emerged, the goal of which was wholesale social transformation.
Beer explores the mixed consequences of that turn, and maps out an alternative.