Almsgiving

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ALMSGIVING

ALMSGIVING may be defined as unilateral gifts to the poor or the religious. In its purest form, the gift of alms is given gratuitously without expectation of return, and is in this sense "free." Almsgiving thus stands apart from reciprocal gifts, which forge human relationships of solidarity by principles of give-and-take. Moreover, alms are praiseworthy when given voluntarily, out of the free will and generosity of the donor; yet almsgiving is often configured as a binding religious duty. Deliberation on almsgiving raises intriguing questions about whether purely gratuitous charity is possible, or whether it is always at bottom motivated by considerations of reciprocity, spiritual reward, or simply the fulfillment of obligations. Reflections on almsgiving have also stimulated considerations of the plight of the poor and how to best serve their needs.

A Free Gift?

For some, gifts should be given freely and disinterestedly by the donor, yet should simultaneously inspire reciprocation by the recipient. The Roman philosopher Seneca (4 bce–65 ce) praised the graciousness of the unconditional gift, even while enjoining the recipient to respond with gratitude and, in turn, future service. This view of gift giving as a form of gracious exchange finds modern expression in studies of gift behavior inspired by Marcel Mauss's classic The Gift (1923). Noting that in many tribal societies, social cohesion is made possible through the back-and-forth flow of gifts, Mauss saw the gift as a circuit or loop entailing three obligations: to give, to receive, and to reciprocate. Mauss and his followers were skeptical of the free gift because it appears to be free of social obligations; in not eliciting a return it interrupts the mutuality on which social solidarity rests, leaving asymmetry and imbalance.

Others have doubted whether a gift can truly be free of any expectation whatsoever. While it may not result in direct material recompense by the recipient, every gift returns some benefit to the giver, whether that benefit arrives in the form of enhanced social prestige, a position of dominance over the recipient, or merely a sense of self-congratulation.

Amid these interpretations of the gift, we find religious ideologies proposing that not only are free gifts possible, they are highly commendable. Alms are aimed in two directions: to the poor and dispossessed and to religious professionals living in voluntary poverty, such as priests, monastics, renouncers, or the institutions that support them. Such beneficiaries are little expected to make a direct return on the gifts offered. The resulting asymmetry is part of what make such gifts laudable: they appear to be made without calculation or anticipation of return.

Yet, the absence of direct reciprocity from the recipient may not always entail that the giver be entirely free of interest. Almsgiving may bear the imprint of an older sacrificial order that in many traditions it supplanted: explicit bartering with the gods is replaced by more implicit arrangements. Almsgiving gratifies the cosmic order, which in turn grants further bounty. A donor might legitimately engage in almsgiving as a form of merit-making, with an eye fixed on future meritorious rewards bestowed, for example, through the causality of karma in the religions originating in South Asia, or in the form of God's blessings in the Western monotheisms. Almsgiving may thus be regarded as a spiritual investment wherein sacrifices and good deeds in this life are amply rewarded in the hereafter. Almsgiving may also be motivated by a desire for atonement; here the gift may balance the karmic "bank account" by offsetting bad deeds, or offer reparations and expiation for sins committed.

At the same time, within religious traditions there occurs frequent discussion on whether such calculations are appropriate. For some, almsgiving is a purely magnanimous act, a complete and genuine expression of compassion for the poor, esteem for the religious, contempt for worldly goods, or devotion and gratitude to God. Many South Asian theorists posit almsgiving (dāna ) as a gesture toward the recipient in which either esteem or compassion—rather than interest in merit—prevails. Simultaneously, dāna is an act of renunciation, of loosening one's attachments to material possessions. Hindu discourses on dāna, for example, rate gifts made to worthy brahmans out of a sense either of rightness (dharmadāna ) or relinquishment (tyāgadāna ), as estimable above all gifts. Certain Theravāda Buddhist texts assert that the ideal generous intention is entirely suffused with esteem toward the monastic community or compassion toward the needy. Mahāyāna Buddhism, which Jacques Gernet has described as by its nature "antieconomic" and "avid for the incommensurable" (1995, p. 241), regards lavish unilateral and disinterested generosity as a supreme moral and religious achievement.

In the Western religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—almsgiving is a declaration of devotion and gratitude to God. It thus expresses intentions of the highest order, aimed not so much toward the earthly recipient as the divine one. The Christian Gospels make such sentiment explicit when Jesus declares that "what is done for the least of my brethren, that is done unto me" (Mt. 25:40). Judaism and Islam too find God present in the recipient; a Talmudic passage states that one who gives to the poor receives "the face of the Presence of God" (Avery-Peck, 1999, p. 54), and the Islamic scholar al-Ghazālī's eleventh-century On the Mysteries of Almsgiving asserts that the poor recipient "has made his hand a substitute for that of God" (Faris, 1966, p. 36). Moreover, for all these traditions, since God has given all that one possesses, almsgiving is merely furthering God's work of distributing the bountiful creation. It purifies the donor of stinginess and gives lie to the pretension of human autonomy. Almsgiving is not a matter of self-aggrandizement, but rather of humility and purification.

One of the most poignant ruptures in theologies of calculated giving occurred within Christianity through the Protestant Reformation. In The Gift in Sixteenth-Century France (2000), Natalie Zemon Davis suggests that in a "profound sense, the religious reformations of the sixteenth century were a quarrel about gifts" (p. 100). Reformers were offended by the Mass as a sacrifice and source of grace, priests trafficking in indulgences, and gifts edging, in their view, toward heretical reciprocity with God. For reformer John Calvin (1509–1564), since God gives utterly gratuitously, grace cannot be won by pious acts. All gifts can only be free and unidirectional, flowing "downward from the Lord and outward from us" (Davis, 2000, p. 118).

A Voluntary Obligation?

Covenantal theologies depict almsgiving as a binding human obligation to God. In the Torah, God commands the Israelites to "open wide your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor, in the land" (Dt. 15:11). The practice of zakāt, prescribed as one of the five pillars of Islam, makes almsgiving obligatory for every Muslim; in some Muslim countries it is enforced as a legal obligation. In addition to legal sanctions, severe public opprobrium may attach itself to those who resist almsgiving, enforcing charity by the mandate of social pressure.

Ritual obligations also call forth gifts. Entry into ritual spaces often entails passing through the gates of charity. The ritual calendars in many of the world's religious traditions build ritual almsgiving into festival occasions; the hungry know a meal may always be had during Lent and Easter, the Jewish holiday of Purim, the Buddhist celebration of Vesak, and the Muslim Īd al-Aḍḥā. They might also gather at sacred sites where pilgrims are compelled to be free with alms: supplicants await at the banks of the Ganges in Vārāṇasī to offer themselves as auspicious occasions for pilgrims' devotion. Institutionalized ritual practices, such as the passing of the collection plate during the weekly service, ingrain routine patterns of giving.

Where conceived as an obligation compelled by external demands, the element of voluntarism may be obscured. Only in granting the deed an element of free will can it exhibit the appropriate spirit of generosity. Paradoxically, it may be that gifts can be simultaneously obliged and voluntary. Religious discourses on almsgiving often detect nuances in intention that are explored in rankings of gifts. The twelfth-century Jewish theologian Maimonides' eight degrees of charity capture many of the subtleties of almsgiving that allow for gracious intentions within the context of carrying out duties. At the highest level, the donor strengthens the poor Jew, putting him beyond a condition of dependence; next best is the anonymous gift where neither the donor nor the recipient knows the other; after this comes the gift where the donor knows the recipient, but the recipient does not know who the donor is; then, the gift where the recipient knows the donor, but the donor does not know the recipient; then the gift of one who gives before being asked; then the gift of one who has been asked; then the gift of less than is fitting, but given gladly; and lastly, the gift given morosely.

An intriguing counterpart to Maimonides' eight degrees and another list that detects nuances in the donor's intentionality may be found the eight duties of almsgiving outlined by al-Ghazālī, which explore the mysteries of both zakāt and voluntary giving (ṣadaqah ). These duties include understanding why zakāt is obligatory, respecting the time and etiquette of paying zakāt, giving in secrecy, giving in public (in order to provide an example for others), refraining from taunting or reproaching the beneficiary, belittling the gift (in order to guard against self-congratulation and vanity), giving what is best and dear to the donor, and seeking out particularly worthy recipients (within the prescribed categories of recipients of zakāt ). Here too we find sensitivities that ennoble the fulfillment of duty.

It is noteworthy that both Maimonides and al-Ghazālī recognize anonymous giving, especially when we notice covert giving in other traditions, such as the secret gift (gupta-dāna ) admired in South Asian traditions, and Matthew's instruction that in giving "do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be in secret" (Mt. 6:3). The secret gift spares the recipient disgrace and arrests the donor's vanity. Yet even while hidden, this most meritorious gift does not go unseen or unrewarded by God, nor by the workings of karma.

Crucial considerations in grasping the voluntary nature of almsgiving concern socioeconomic realities and the possibility that unilateral giving, especially in class-stratified societies, may be an imperative placed on the rich by the social pressure of the poor. Acts of charity maintain the status quo by legitimizing the wealth of the haves while softening (but seldom fundamentally altering) the lot of the have-nots (see Bowie, 1998). Jean Starobinski (1994) has suggested that both largesse and charity may always contain an element of darkness in that they expose inequalities without eradicating them. Religious ideologies celebrating charity may be merely giving a religious and moral gloss to what is in fact driven by forces of class appeasement.

Where Do Alms Go?

Alms are received in different ways by strangers, neighbors, monks, nuns, holy men and women, the displaced, and the poor. Alms may engender affection and gratitude or they might give rise to humiliation and resentment. Some recent fieldwork studies in India have revealed considerable ambivalence for those on the receiving end of certain types of gifts that bring "poison" and dependency with them (Raheja, 1988; Parry, 1994). In some contexts, recipients may resent the paternalism of those who seek the recipients' moral betterment through charity. Conversely, the poor may distrust the gift that traps them in dependency and degradation, given by those who accept the condition of poverty as part of the created order or as a necessary backdrop for the expression of their good deeds.

Also important is to consider the trajectory of alms that enrich institutions and transform societies. For example, almsgiving practices associated with the arrival of Buddhism in China stimulated the development of an advanced economy through the accumulation of great wealth by monastic institutions. Monastic riches were not hoarded, but were in turn transformed into productive capital that was then redistributed to the poor or deployed for the purposes of conversion and propagation, magnifying Buddhism's reach. Through investing in what came to be called the "Inexhaustible Treasuries"—inexhaustible in that they increase wealth and in turn dispense it in every direction—the pious donor could become a bodhisattva perfecting infinite generosity (see Gernet, 1995). No political, social, or economic institution in Tang dynasty China remained unaffected by these developments.

Gifts in the modern world too have the potential to transform or constrain the lives of individuals as well as effect great historical change. In modern contexts of tremendous global economic disparities, almsgiving may play a crucial role in rectifying the gross injustices and exploitations of the world. Yet the free, unilateral gift does not arrive without complications. Even when given with the noblest of intentions, alms take different courses as they reach the recipient, sometimes leading to help and self-determination, other times to a labyrinth of dependence. A central question from a modern perspective concerns how best to channel human charitable impulses not merely to offer relief, but to effectively dismantle social and economic structures that create oppression and poverty in the first place.

Bibliography

Seneca's De Beneficiis, translated by John Cooper and J. F. Procopé in Moral and Political Essays (New York, 1995), offers a nuanced appreciation of the intricacies of the gift. For Maimonides' eight degrees of charity, see Isadore Twersky, ed., A Maimonides Reader (New York, 1972), pp. 134–139; for al-Ghazālī's book on almsgiving in the Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn, see Nabih Amin Faris, trans., The Mysteries of Almsgiving (Beirut, 1966). A thorough overview of Jewish almsgiving can be found in Alan Avery-Peck's entry "Charity in Judaism" in The Encyclopedia of Judaism (New York, 1999), vol. 1, pp. 50–63. See P. V. Kane's chapter on dāna for Hindu textual reflections on the gift in History of Dharmashastra (Poona, India, 1975), pp. 837–888; and Ethics, Wealth, and Salvation: A Study in Buddhist Social Ethics, edited by Russell Sizemore and Donald Swearer (Columbia, S.C., 1990), for several chapters on Buddhist dāna. Superb historical explorations of almsgiving include Natalie Zemon Davis's The Gift in Sixteenth-Century France (Madison, Wis., 2000); Jean Starobinski's Largesse (Paris, 1994), translated by Jane Marie Todd (Chicago, 1997); and Jacques Gernet's Buddhism in Chinese Society: An Economic History from the Fifth to the Tenth Centuries, translated by Franciscus Verellen (New York, 1995). Social sciences approaches stimulated by Mauss's The Gift: The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies, translated by W. D. Halls (London and New York, 1990), and particularly fascinating when explored in contemporary South Asia include Gloria Raheja's The Poison in the Gift: Ritual, Prestation, and the Dominant Caste in a North Indian Village (Chicago, 1988) and Jonathan Parry's Death in Banaras (Cambridge, U.K., 1994). For a clear-eyed study of the social and economic pressures bearing on almsgiving in rural Buddhist Thailand, see Kathleen Bowie's "The Alchemy of Charity: Of Class and Buddhism in Northern Thailand," American Anthropologist 100, no. 2 (1998): 469–481. Finally, for a useful anthology with both secular and religious writings on charity and philanthropy, see Amy Kass, ed., The Perfect Gift: The Philanthropic Imagination in Poetry and Prose (Bloomington, Ind., 2002).