Status
Available
Call number
Collection
Publication
HarperOne (2012), Edition: 1, 208 pages
Description
Veteran urban activist Robert Lupton reveals the shockingly toxic effects that modern charity has upon the very people meant to benefit from it. Toxic Charity provides proven new models for charitable groups who want to help-not sabotage-those whom they desire to serve. Lupton, the founder of FCS Urban Ministries (Focused Community Strategies) in Atlanta, the voice of the Urban Perspectives newsletter, and the author of Compassion, Justice and the Christian Life, has been at the forefront of urban ministry activism for forty years. Now, in the vein of Jeffrey Sachs's The End of Poverty, Richard Stearns's The Hole in Our Gospel, and Gregory Boyle's Tattoos on the Heart, his groundbreaking Toxic Charity shows us how to start serving needy and impoverished members of our communities in a way that will lead to lasting, real-world change.… (more)
Media reviews
Booklist
A must-read book for those who give to help others.
User reviews
LibraryThing member addunn3
Interesting concepts around charity. Looks at charity as either "crisis" intervention or "community development", but often charity ends up in the first category simply because it is easier, quicker and gives the donor a positive feeling. Stresses looking at charity and its effects from the
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receiver's point of view. Worth the read but a bit disorganized and repetitious. Show Less
LibraryThing member John_Warner
Christians are frequently very charitable people. However, sometimes our charity given to the most disadvantaged can ultimately be ineffective or harmful. Our best intentions may too frequently disempower the individual, strip away the work ethic and foster and sustain dependency. The author, who
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worked 30 years in urban renewal in Atlanta informs the reader in the charitable pitfalls and provides strategies in providing assistance while maintaining the dignity of those being helped. This book is an eye-opener and a must read for anyone who coordinates assistance to the disadvantaged. Show Less
LibraryThing member ChristinasBookshelf
The primary takeaway for this book:
"1. Never do for the poor what they have (or could have) the capacity to do for themselves.
2. Limit one-way giving to emergency situations.
3. Strive to empower the poor through employment, lending, and investing, using grants sparingly to reinforce achievements.
4.
5. Listen closely to those you seek to help, especially to what is not being said--unspoken feelings may contain essential clues to effective service.
6. Above all, do no harm."
There is a lot of charity being done by Americans that is net-damage to the world. When Americans give away for free shoddy Chinese-slave-made goods to people who sometimes don't need them and if they do need them would rather own better-quality local-made products that would work better, it's a lose-lose-lose situation all around.
As someone who has been a beneficiary of well-meaning charity that ended up harming me more, I really wish that churches and charities would evaluate their efforts based on the long-term effects.
For me, I look at all of the thousands of dollars that were directed to completely ineffective marriage counseling that told me to shove my ex-husband's sins under the carpet and ignore them and focus on bettering myself as a wife so that my goodness would motivate him to do better. (And they would blame me fully [and let him off the hook] for not being good enough as the cause of him not doing better. They didn't see any fault in him yelling at me, insulting me, blaming me for his own sins, using massive quantities of porn, abusing alcohol, using drugs, abusing our children, etc.) What would have made the biggest difference is if they would have beaten him over the head constantly with Ephesians 5:25 instead of beating me over the head with Ephesians 5:22 with Ephesians 5:21 completely ignored. Any pastor could have spent a few hours a week going over Ephesians 5:25 and Ephesians 5:21 and intensively held him accountable for his own actions and his entitlement mindset. And that would have been so much cheaper and better for himself, myself, our children, our churches, our community, and our government since the finances of all of the above have been harmed by this. But nooooo, because 99% of evangelical pastors and people helpers have a mindset of authoritarianism, patriarchalism, male supremacy, and entitlement to power, they don't want to hold other men to God's standard because they don't want God to hold them to God's standard. They gotta all drop the bar for being considered a godly man down into the gutter where any man can trip over it, fall over it clumsily, and somehow be considered godly when really they are demonic. They don't want to listen to the voices of millions of women because that would mean that they would have to admit that they were really, really, really wrong. My ex-husband is still mired in the pit though much, much deeper in the pit that he began digging 25 years ago. But I digress.
This book and my lived experience agree, for certain.
The "bad" with this book: this book is 95% an argument that nearly every charity and church and government is hurting people with almost all of their attempts to help. It doesn't provide much guidance for how to do things right. That's the job of the sequel Charity Detox: what charity would look like if we cared about results.
If you already know for certain that your charitable efforts are hurting more than they are helping, you can skip this book and get the sequel. That book is much more DIY on how to create a charity that doesn't hurt people.
"1. Never do for the poor what they have (or could have) the capacity to do for themselves.
2. Limit one-way giving to emergency situations.
3. Strive to empower the poor through employment, lending, and investing, using grants sparingly to reinforce achievements.
4.
Show More
Subordinate self-interests to the needs of those being served.5. Listen closely to those you seek to help, especially to what is not being said--unspoken feelings may contain essential clues to effective service.
6. Above all, do no harm."
There is a lot of charity being done by Americans that is net-damage to the world. When Americans give away for free shoddy Chinese-slave-made goods to people who sometimes don't need them and if they do need them would rather own better-quality local-made products that would work better, it's a lose-lose-lose situation all around.
As someone who has been a beneficiary of well-meaning charity that ended up harming me more, I really wish that churches and charities would evaluate their efforts based on the long-term effects.
For me, I look at all of the thousands of dollars that were directed to completely ineffective marriage counseling that told me to shove my ex-husband's sins under the carpet and ignore them and focus on bettering myself as a wife so that my goodness would motivate him to do better. (And they would blame me fully [and let him off the hook] for not being good enough as the cause of him not doing better. They didn't see any fault in him yelling at me, insulting me, blaming me for his own sins, using massive quantities of porn, abusing alcohol, using drugs, abusing our children, etc.) What would have made the biggest difference is if they would have beaten him over the head constantly with Ephesians 5:25 instead of beating me over the head with Ephesians 5:22 with Ephesians 5:21 completely ignored. Any pastor could have spent a few hours a week going over Ephesians 5:25 and Ephesians 5:21 and intensively held him accountable for his own actions and his entitlement mindset. And that would have been so much cheaper and better for himself, myself, our children, our churches, our community, and our government since the finances of all of the above have been harmed by this. But nooooo, because 99% of evangelical pastors and people helpers have a mindset of authoritarianism, patriarchalism, male supremacy, and entitlement to power, they don't want to hold other men to God's standard because they don't want God to hold them to God's standard. They gotta all drop the bar for being considered a godly man down into the gutter where any man can trip over it, fall over it clumsily, and somehow be considered godly when really they are demonic. They don't want to listen to the voices of millions of women because that would mean that they would have to admit that they were really, really, really wrong. My ex-husband is still mired in the pit though much, much deeper in the pit that he began digging 25 years ago. But I digress.
This book and my lived experience agree, for certain.
The "bad" with this book: this book is 95% an argument that nearly every charity and church and government is hurting people with almost all of their attempts to help. It doesn't provide much guidance for how to do things right. That's the job of the sequel Charity Detox: what charity would look like if we cared about results.
If you already know for certain that your charitable efforts are hurting more than they are helping, you can skip this book and get the sequel. That book is much more DIY on how to create a charity that doesn't hurt people.
Show Less
Language
Original language
English
Physical description
8 inches
ISBN
0062076213 / 9780062076212