Beyond Stewardship
Photo by Aleksandrs Karevs on Unsplash
Hello, my name is Miguel Escobar, and this is my first post for Church Anew. I serve as a transitional deacon (soon to be a priest) in the Episcopal Church, and I write regularly about Christianity’s complicated relationship with money.
As we approach “stewardship season,” I want to question the language of stewards and stewardship. To be clear, this is not a critique of fundraising. I serve a small Spanish-speaking congregation, and I know firsthand how vital annual pledge drives are for a workable parish budget. My concern, rather, is theological. My question is whether stewardship is still the best framework for what we are doing this season.
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The Oxford Dictionary of Christianity defines stewardship as both “the management of property by a servant on behalf of its owner, and particularly in modern times, the organized pledging of a specific amount of money to be given regularly to the Church.”1 In the United States, the late 19th century need to fund missionaries resulted in a “stewardship awakening”, which led to the ‘Every Member Canvass’, and “a process by which American Protestant Churches established denominational agencies to assist parishes' annual stewardship programmes.”2 Stewardship became a firm fixture of mainline Protestantism and “from the 1920s stewardship theology was applied to all aspects of life, often defined as time, talents, and treasure.”3
Despite the relative newness of this theology, stewardship now dominates what the mainline church teaches about money. In surveys and focus groups for his book, Talking Dollars and Sense: Leading Theological Discussions on Money, the Rev. Brendan Barnicle notes: “Stewardship has become a routine part of church life. In fact, based on the surveys for this book, it might be too regular. Many people only think of the theology of money in terms of stewardship.”4 He surmises that stewardship aligns with an American cultural preference for local solutions, individualism, and favorable view of wealth.5 An Episcopal priest and former investment banker, Barnicle is concerned that mainline Christians see the primary application of their faith to finance in terms of how much money they give to the church.6
Writing in the early 1930s, Reinhold Niebuhr warned against this sort of narrowing. In “Is Stewardship Ethical?”, Niebuhr critiques stewardship as a naïve framework that allows churchgoers to avoid the broader ethical teachings of Jesus on wealth.7 Niebuhr offers the example of “the pious businessman” who is both honest and generous, two virtues which “give him the satisfaction of being a Christian.” Yet this pious businessman “regards his power in his factory much as kings of old regarded their prerogatives.” “Any attempt on the part of the workers to gain a share in the determining of policy, particularly the policy which affects their own livelihood, hours and wages, is regarded by him as an attempt to destroy the divine order of things.” The doctrine of stewardship fails to help this businessman see his broader moral obligations but only serves to “sanctify power and privilege as it exists in the modern world by certain concessions to the ethical principle.”
Niebuhr may have had figures like John D. Rockefeller and J.P. Morgan in mind. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, business leaders made enormous fortunes that they attributed to God. While dubbed a “robber baron” by the wider public, Standard Oil founder John D. Rockefeller called himself God’s “wise and responsible steward”. Rockefeller “believed that God had entrusted him to use his money as only he saw fit.”8
This example of J.D. Rockefeller brings us back to the definition of a steward as a servant who manages property on behalf of his owner. In the Gospels, we encounter such examples of stewards, though they are hardly commendable. In the parable of the Unjust Steward, the steward is dominating and exploitative of the laborers in service of his master. At the wedding in Cana, it is the prudent steward who cannot see the miracle unfolding in front of him. In both cases, stewards are the foils of God’s grace. Is this really who we want to be identifying with?
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In many ways, my critique is that stewardship works too well for the mainline church as it is today. Isn’t it telling that of all the characters of the Bible, the mainline chooses to identify with the middle manager? At my most cynical, I worry that stewardship appeals because it allows us to think of ourselves as mini-J.D. Rockefellers, granted by God with wealth and power to achieve God’s purposes. The missionary and colonialist roots of stewardship speak to a time when white wealthy denominations saw themselves as burdened by the special responsibility of being placed in charge, the managers acting on God’s behalf to Christianize an uncivilized world.
Especially important for me, I’ve found that “stewardship” doesn’t translate well for intriguing reasons. In 2010, while doing a Spanish-language presentation on stewardship (mayordomía), I was met with baffled expressions by participants. A participant later shared that a steward - mayordomo - was an exploitative manager, similar to an overseer on a farm (similar to the unjust steward in the Gospel of Luke). While I’ve since learned that the word doesn’t always carry this negative connotation, the translation difficulty points to stewardship as a virtue of managers, while the Gospels offer a vision of God’s Kingdom from the perspective of the managed.
We need to become much more aware of this complicated history, to probe it, and to experiment with alternatives. Working in a Spanish-speaking context, I intend to instead use the language of offerings, highlight early Christian women’s patronage, and teach about Paul’s notion of koinonia. When we ask people to consider their sacrificial offerings of time, talent, and treasure, we connect them to the widow and her mite, Mary of Bethany with her extravagant gift of perfume, Joseph of Arimathea’s care for Jesus’ broken body, and ultimately Jesus’ own offering of his body and blood for God’s Kingdom. When teaching about women’s patronage, we can point to Lydia the seller of purple cloth as well as the intriguing example of Phoebe described by Paul as both a “deacon and patron” of the church. And finally, exploring Paul’s emphasis on koinonia in the Jerusalem Collection, we can learn about how a vision of sharing and economic fellowship was such a key part of the early church.9
I know that critiquing “stewardship” is an uphill battle. Stewardship has become an embedded part of church today. However, if we are to plant a church anew, we’ll need to become more aware of where this doctrine comes from, consider how it narrows and distorts the church’s broader teaching on money, and explore alternatives that better convey the message of extravagant grace in the Gospels.
1 E. A. Livingstone, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. Oxford: OUP Oxford, Kindle Edition, pp. 535–36.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.
4 Brendan J. Barnicle. Talking Dollars and Sense: Leading Theological Discussions on Money. Church Publishing Incorporated, Kindle Edition, p. 55.
5 Ibid, pps 38-40 and 56.
6 Ibid, p. 49.
7 Reinhold Niebuhr. “Is Stewardship Ethical?” The Christian Century, vol. 47, 30 Apr. 1930, p. 555.
8 Barnicle, Brendan J. Talking Dollars and Sense: Leading Theological Discussions on Money. Church Publishing Incorporated, Kindle Edition, pp. 38–40.
9 Ogereau, Julien M. “The Jerusalem Collection as Koinōnia.” New Testament Studies, vol. 58, no. 3, 2012, pp. 360–378.
