Syracuse University professor Arthur C. Brooks is about to become the darling of the religious right wing in America — and it’s making him nervous.
The child of academics, raised in a liberal household and educated in the liberal arts, Brooks has written a book that concludes religious conservatives donate far more money than secular liberals to all sorts of charitable activities, irrespective of income.
In the book, to be released next month, he cites extensive data analysis to demonstrate that values advocated by conservatives — from church attendance to two-parent families to the Protestant work ethic and a distaste for government-funded social services — make conservatives more generous than liberals.
Liberals who only give when hassled by that annoying race-for-a-cause guy at work will reflexively denounce the extensive data analysis. Still, those with any generosity of spirit you have to feel for Brooks. He will be altogether banished from his friends’ wine and brie parties and may even be asked to turn in his Barbra Streisand tickets.
