Evangelical Christians Give More, New Survey Reveals

A recent survey has shown that evangelical Christians give nine times as much to charity as the average householder, giving more than 12 per cent of their net income in donations each year.

|TOP|The survey also revealed that evangelicals in Britain are also more generous than their American counterparts, who give 10 per cent of their income to charity each year, reports The Times.

Evangelical Christians in Britain also have three times the average household savings, the survey showed, as well as either only a tiny fraction of the debt or no debt at all.

The survey was conducted by Christian Research for the Kingdom Bank, set up by Assemblies of God, an international Pentecostal church, to offer banking with a “Christian ethos”.

“This survey shows that the more people are taught about giving, the more they give,” wrote Bill Lattimer, of Christian Research, in the report.

The survey findings follow warnings from Tim Costello, Chief Executive of World Vision Australia, of donor fatigue as donations petered out just four weeks after the Pakistan earthquake.

“I feel that a lot of what is happening has come about due to donor fatigue, and it is certainly true that the international response has not been able to reach the same amount of giving as we saw with the Asia tsunami.

|AD|“Yet the people in Pakistan are as desperate as people anywhere else in the world, and the levels of trauma are terrible."

Costello continued by telling Christian Today that, “However, we as Christians are called to go on serving, and World Vision is dedicated to doing all it can to provide relief and aid to those desperate and devastated by the Pakistan earthquake.”

Aid agencies have predicted a ‘second wave of deaths’ as the first of the severe winter weather hits the earthquake-affected regions of northern Pakistan.

"Everything is wet," said a weeping woman, Shakina, huddled with one of her three children next to a fire outside here sodden tent in a camp in Muzaffarabad, capital of Pakistani Kashmir.

"This is very difficult for me and my children. We can't survive in this tent."

Hundreds of thousands of earthquake survivors continue to suffer in tent camps across the region with many more dwelling next to the ruins of their old homes in tents or makeshift shacks constructed from the rubble or building materials given by the army and aid groups.

Bad weather forced vital helicopter relief operations to be suspended for the third time since the October earthquake which killed more than 73,000 people in northern Pakistan.

Survivors in one tent camp in Muzaffarabad scrambled to get tarpaulins being distributed by an aid group, with many tents brought down by heavy snow across the region.

Three of the four main roads to Muzaffarabad were blocked by landslides triggered by the heavy rain, said military spokesman, Major Farooq Nasir.

“We were expecting this to happen, it happens every year,” he said, as army engineers continued to work on clearing the blocks. The work has been made more dangerous by the threat of more slides, he said.

The military and UN insist, however, that enough supplies are in the region, thanks to a delay in the bad weather which allowed medical supplies, shelters, beds, food and other needs to be brought into the mountains by plane or truck. They said there was no cause for alarm despite the present disruption to the aid effort.

"In terms of overall relief, it's not the end of the world," said U.N. logistics chief in Muzaffarabad, Natasha Hryckow.

The International Committee of the Red Cross announced, however, that it was expecting a serious increase of new cases of respiratory infections at its field hospitals and clinics once the bad weather subsides, bringing more people out from their tents.

“It's what we've always expected, now it's the reality," ICRC spokeswoman Jessica Barry said of the weather. "If it lasts, it's going to get more and more grim.”

An avalanche killed 24 people last week in Pakistan after being triggered by one of the hundreds of aftershocks that have rocked the region since October, with the Norwegian Refugee Council warning that the snow had increased the dangers of avalanches.

“If fear this tragic avalanche is the first of many to come this winter,” said the Norwegian Refugee Council’s emergency programme officer, Ann Kristin Brunborg. “The danger will increase with more snowfalls.”