Like every other church, the UUs do pass the collection plate around and do have fund drives. So not free, although it’s all volunteer. Which also, btw, means that not all atheism is free, since some UUs are atheists.
Edited to add: Malthus, it depends on the congregation, but yes, most UUs meet in some sort of building, whether it is their own building or a rented hall.
I hate that I laughed at this. Now where did that Jewish smilie run off to…
Sure they do. In fact, my sister was married in a Unitarian church. (What else do you do with a nonobservant Jew and a semi-lapsed Baptist, who still want a wedding that feels at least a bit religious?)
The fifty billion churches in my hometown would beg to differ. Every church I’ve ever been to has a “pay what you can” model. Even if they encourage 10%, they don’t send out bills. All those churches seem to be doing just fine.
Side note- my friend dated a girl who attended a church where they were very strict about the 10%- members had to supply W2s and if you refused or if you weren’t paying 10% you were no longer a member. My friend expressed some discomfort with this system, and his girlfriend informed him that she would always give 10%, and when she got married she would continue to give 10% even if she “had to go behind her husband’s back to do it.” That relationship ended pretty quickly.
I understand that “pay what you can” wouldn’t work, because there will always be freeloaders; in fact, probably too many to make such a scheme work.
The problem I’m facing is that, even if I was still working, dues would amount to about 10% of my net income (after taxes, benefits, retirement, and so on). For me, that’s a very heavy financial burden. As a single person, all I do is attend a few young adult activities, and attend holiday services and a regular Friday night service once a month or so.
Meanwhile, let’s take the typical synagogue member. They’re likely to be a married couple with or without children, with a combined annual income of $100,000 to $200,000. They have children attending Sunday school, Hebrew classes, confirmation and bar/bat mitzvah classes. They’re expected to pay only the same $3,000 that I am expected to pay, even though dues will be a much smaller percentage of their take-home income, and they take advantage of more of the services offered.
I understand that there’s the equivalent of a social contract at a synagogue when it comes to dues, but in this case it seems more like a regressive tax, where those who can least afford it are expected to shoulder the burden for those who can most afford it.
The 2 UU churches I’ve attended (both with buildings!) requested that members pledge a certain amount - primarily to assist in budgeting. But I never heard anything like a mandatory dues mentioned. And in my experience $3k would have been a pretty high annual pledge.
You say you like the people in the synagogue, but it sounds as tho it might just be priced out of your league.
Out of curiosity, does the synagogue charge for other activities in addition to dues? I’ve never been a member myself, and when I was a kid, I wasn’t really privy to the financial details that my parents dealt with. I believe most synagogues charge for High Holy Days tickets, but what about Saturday school? Day care? Weddings? Maybe something more weighted toward fee-for-service would be more equitable?
He’s Jewish, not SubGenius.
Eternal salvation or triple your money back!
So you’ve never heard of a church closing it’s doors? Think that would happen if they were all “doing fine”?
Not to mention the self-evident survivor bias with this method.
I’m a member at my UU church. Members are encouraged (but not obligated) to offer a pledge. At our church, each member (or pledging unit as the finance committee likes to call them 
) is free to determine the amount of their yearly pledge. We occasionally have meetings reminding the members “If you want to have these programs at your church, e.g. musicians during the service, a choir director, a music director, an office manager, a sexton to clean up after service, Religious Education for the children, etc. then you need to pledge, and maybe increase what you were planning to pledge for next year!”
The difference between a member and a churchgoer - the member gets to vote at the business meetings on issues affecting the church, and elect the officials at the church (board members, officers like treasurer, etc.) The minister is an employee of the church and hired by the board.
P.S. We have a main building with a sanctuary, a kitchen and a social hall, a children’s playground, and two other buildings with classrooms for religious education and meeting rooms for church committees / choir practice.
Every Christian church I’ve attended as an adult had voluntary giving.
Yes, the Bible says you should tithe, 10%, your income (debatable on gross or net income). My churches have always allowed that you, according to your wishes (and the leading of the Holy Spirit), give a “gift” of higher or lower than that.
My old church used to announce the ushers would coming around to collect our “Tithes and Offerings”. We, as a family, gave an “offering”, not a “tithe”. 10% was just too much out-go for our finances.
We “pledged” at the beginning of the year what we expected we would give through the year. It was for planning purposes for the church, to set budget, but you weren’t billed for it. There were no Guido’s in the lobby breaking knee-caps of those who didn’t achieve their pledge amounts.
In that church and now in my current church, every week in the bulletin there is a three-line summary of the budget: Amounted spent, amount needed to make budget, amount given last week. If I see the budget for the church isn’t being met, I try to find an extra $20 or so to include the next week.
Daycare during services is provided by church volunteers. Classes are lead by volunteers. Lots of maintenance is done by Volunteers. We just had “church maintenance day” a couple weekends ago where lots of members showed up to fix a rather long “honey-do” list that was accumulating.
Yes, there are paid office staff & the pastoral staff is, of course, paid. It’s their profession, after all. But their pay and all other expenses comes out of the budget based off the pledges for the year.
A church should be a community of people trying to help each other, not a business, IMO.
Sure, there are people that use the services and never once volunteer in return. In every volunteer organization, the 80/20 rule applies. 20% of the people do 80% of the work.
Never once, though, would I suggest that some church service be held back from any member that didn’t meet some sort of “fair share” amount. That just seems too ridiculous to even contemplate.
All this, by the way, is based on three congregationally-lead, churches (One Covenant, one Baptist, one Friends/Quaker). One of those three probably qualifies as approaching mega-church status while the others (including my current one) are not nearly that large. These are not the top-down Catholic/Episcopal/Lutheran variety that receive money from some large pot gathered from all and then redistributed.
Thanks - Ignorance Fought. I have always wondered why the Temples had their dues structure done that way.
I think I’m remembering correctly that Jewish law does not allow financial transactions on the sabbath. This would preclude a collection plate.
My experience of church services is that while giving may be “voluntary,” there is great social pressure to contribute every time the plate is passed.
Oh, crikies, who cares if christians do things differently.
Let’s face it, ALL organized religions are about collecting money one way or another, to do “good” things, one kind or another. Pay a priest or rabbi, baptize pagan babies, whetever.
You may as well Pit a bear for shitting in the woods.
Good luck to you, but don’t expect much. If they make an exception for you, then a hundred others will point at your deal and say, “me too”. And if they change the underlying calculation, they’ll piss off a whole different, and richer, set of patrons.
So… what does your god say about worshipping outside a synagogue?
When I (a Jew) started going to church with my wife (Christian), I was appalled at the collection plate. How crass! To have a holy man schnorring, how incredibly tacky!
Well, as pointed out by others, it’s also a lot more practical from a budgeting standpoint.
I was amused the first time I joined a parish and received the packet of envelopes they send you for your donations. They send them in 12-week packets, but there was something like 25 envelopes! Not only do you get the weekly donation ones, but there are always envelopes for various charitable endeavors, plus extra collections for the parish itself…the building fund, flowers for the altar, etc.
I actually brought that packet of envelopes to show a Jewish coworker who was astounded that the Presbyterian church on her block didn’t charge for membership. They may not, but they get you one way or the other! Not that it bothers me…they have to pay the staff and keep the lights on, just like any other organization. I’ve heard people say that they’ve left religion because it seemed like every time they turned around, the church was asking for money. Well, how do you expect them to run the place?
No, we live in caves, choose our spouses by boinking them on the head with our clubs, bury Grandma out back by the trash pit, and when we have to go out hunting cute fuzzy Disney-like rodents for supper, we put the kids alongside a few cubs and hope that the mother wolf doesn’t notice.
I have to admit to being fairly torn on the issue myself, especially since I don’t attend regularly. When Owls and I got finished our Engaged Encounter weekend, each couple was sent back to the girl’s room with an envelope that we could put donations in to go towards funding future weekends. On the one hand, it’s an idea that we both support, on the other we both found it a bit too preachy (Owls especially) and neither of us was entirely keen on how hard they pushed NFP, especially when being presented by a couple with 8+ kids :smack:
And yeah, I get the 25 envelope packets too. It confused the hell out of me–I’d seen the envelopes before, but thought you had to ask for them. Most of the times I went to mass with my mother we didn’t use them, even if everyone else did. And when you have two for every week…I support a lot of things the church does, even if I don’t agree with all of their teachings, but could they possibly look more grabby?
When my husband was born his father had suddenly lost his job. My husband was the youngest of four children that they were trying to support while looking for work. During my husband’s baptism the Priest commented that he hadn’t been seeing his family’s envelopes lately… They left the church and never came back after that- they were so offended.
:rolleyes: young family of four, father out of work, in the middle of the religious event, chastising them for their lack of donations.
Give me a yearly donation (that I can pay monthly if I want) and leave me alone week-to-week any day.
Well, it’s entirely possible that the couple wanted a big family!
Oh, I don’t know, once I looked at all the envelopes, it didn’t bother me. I mean, the “extra” one for each week were all for good causes…supporting a sharing parish in a poor neighborhood, or feeding hungry children and the like. I mean, isn’t that what the Church is supposed to do? And where’s the money going to come from if not the members?