Ron Sellers, Grey Matter Research president, said he finds it sort of “tragically funny” that Christians debate what the tithe is, whether it’s giving to church alone or church and secular philanthropic concerns. Is it based on the net, or the gross income?
“And my point is, stop the debate; it doesn’t matter,” Sellers told Baptist Press. “Almost nobody is tithing.”
The average evangelical Protestant gives 1.66 percent of their household income to the church, researchers said.
“Whether or not you believe Christians today remain under a biblical mandate to tithe, 10 percent is still a well-established figure in both Jewish and Christian history. Today’s evangelicals rarely come anywhere near that goal,” researchers wrote in the report, “The Generosity Landscape: How Evangelicals Give.”
Accounting for mistakes people make in estimating the percentage of their income they give, researchers consider it tithing when people give at least 8 percent of their income to church and/or charity, Sellers said.
“And so we’re providing some grace in what we’re calling a tithe,” he said. This year, the amount of people who gave at least 8 percent of their income to church and charity combined was 9 percent.
That’s up from 8 percent last year, he said, in the study Grey Matter and Infinity have conducted annually since 2020.
The slight increase in those who tithe is further indication that a five-year decline in giving among evangelicals is slowing.
“So that was another flag to us that tells us that things have stabilized at least for a year,” Sellers said. “Now maybe it’s the start of going up. Maybe it’ll remain stable for a while. Maybe it’s going to be a one-year respite, and then this will go down. We don’t know.”
Evangelicals more engaged in church, Bible study and prayer are more generous, researchers said, and thereby more likely to tithe. And levels of volunteering do not indicate evangelicals are substituting giving of their time for giving money.
“So the people who are more actively and more frequently reading the Bible, studying the Bible, attending worship services, being part of a small group, Bible study, prayer group, whatever that is, and praying, the more immersed somebody is in that lifestyle, the more generous they are,” Sellers said. “So can stewardship grow in a vacuum, or does stewardship need to be part of a bigger discipleship growth?”
Stewardship likely stems from discipleship that leads to increased commitment to spiritual disciplines, Sellers said, rather than from classes and preaching on stewardship in particular.
Evangelicals engaged in prayer, Bible reading, church attendance and small groups, researchers said, are:
- 248 percent more likely to give to church
- 73 percent more likely to give to charity outside of church
- 195 percent more generous in church giving as a share of income, and
- 400 percent more generous in charitable giving outside the church.
“Among all the differentiating factors in charitable giving — including age, income, and race — the most significant difference is consistently tied to the Spiritual Engagement score,” researchers said.
Spiritual engagement also impacts volunteering, which varies widely among evangelicals. Nearly half of evangelicals, 48 percent, do not volunteer, compared to 19 percent who volunteer a few times a year. Others are nearly evenly divided in volunteering monthly (9 percent), two or three times a month (8 percent), weekly (9 percent) or multiple times in a week (6 percent).
“Evangelicals who are more generous with their money are not only more likely than others to volunteer, but they tend to do so more often,” researchers wrote. “Among volunteers, 75 percent of the most generous donors volunteer once a month or more. This falls to 56 percent among the least generous donors, and just 42 percent among those who do not give at all.”
Irrespective of the tithe, in the survey of 1,008 evangelical Protestants based on data collected in mid-2025, researchers found that in the 12 months preceding mid-2025:
- Combined generosity to church and charity, among those who give to either one (or both), has declined from 3.96 percent of income to 3.05 percent since 2020, representing a 23 percent decrease in giving over the life of the study.
- The bulk of the 23 percent decrease took place between 2020 and 2024, decreasing 7 percent from 2024 to 2025.
- 62 percent of evangelical Protestants financially supported a church they were attending, whether they attended in person or virtually.
- 51 percent financially supported at least one ministry or charity outside of church.
- 40 percent gave to both church and charity.
- 27 percent did not give a penny to either a church or a charity or ministry outside of church.
Download the free study results here.
— Diana Chandler is Baptist Press’ senior writer.
