A Good Man Leaves an Inheritance to His Children S Children
THE SINNER’S WEALTH
A good man leaves an inheritance to his children’s children,
but the sinner’s wealth is stored up for the righteous.
Proverbs 13:22
“I’ve already talked with the Assistant Dean for Financial Affairs, and he can’t think of any account I can draw from. He also says the Dean has already committed his entire discretionary fund. I don’t know how I’m going to fund the new rural immersion program we’ve talked about creating.”
Jane’s colleague responded, “Have you thought of going back to Mr. Richman and seeing whether American Mining Company will give the School more money?”
Jane had thought about going back to Richman and American Mining. She had thought about it a lot, but could she in good conscience accept money for a rural ministry program from a company that engaged in strip mining?
The history of the problem
Five years ago, her seminary had accepted a sizable gift from the American Mining Company to create a program in rural ministry. Specifically, the dean at the time had solicited the funds to hire another staff member in the field education office and to subsidize student internships. These would be internships in the small towns and rural communities surrounding the seminary that could not afford to contribute a stipend and thereby participate in the school’s regular internship program. In the new program, students would work twelve hours a week in a rural advocacy or social service agency and participate in a weekly colloquium on rural ministry
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This case was prepared by Barbara Blodgett, Director of Supervised Ministries, Yale University Divinity School, New Haven CT 06511. Copyright The Case Study Institute, 2001. Distributed by the Case Clearing House, Yale Divinity School Library, New Haven, CT 06511. All names have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals involved.
facilitated by the new adjunct teacher. In other words, the gift would
create a new program where none previously existed due to budgetary constraints. The dean had also hoped that American Mining’s gift would attract even bigger gifts in the future.
The morality of accepting charitable gifts
What the dean had not anticipated when he accepted the money, however, was the attention it would attract. First, some of his own faculty questioned the wisdom of accepting the gift. Then, a few faculty members from a neighboring agricultural school publicly questioned the propriety of funding programs to help farmers with money from a company whose strip mining had systematically devastated the land. Finally, a local reporter got wind of the story and published a negative piece in the paper about the gift. Soon the story had made it into the national publications within theological education.
When interviewed by a reporter, the dean offered the following justifications for his decision to accept American Mining’s money. First, he argued, no company is pure when tested by the highest moral standards. In addition to strip mining, which represented only a small percentage of their activity anyway, the American Mining Company also mined and processed precious metals, thereby creating many good union jobs in the area. Second, he pointed out that the money came with no strings attached. American Mining had expressed no interest in influencing the content of the rural ministry program one way or another. Nor had they insisted that the program bear their name. Third, the dean contended that there was a difference between accepting a percentage of the profits already made by the company and making an investment. Accepting a gift did not entangle the seminary in questionable business activity, nor even encourage it.
Recalling this history, Jane remembered the rejoinders that others had made to the dean at the time. Some argued that while no company is morally pure, there are degrees of purity and morally significant differences between business activities. Others pointed to the unforeseen “strings” that accompany the acceptance of any gift. Still others had reminded the dean that while the seminary might not feel implicated in American Mining’s activities, American Mining would nonetheless probably use the seminary’s name in reports on its charitable giving.
The aftermath and dilemma
Jane knew that although the gift had been received, the rural ministry program had never really taken off, and ties with American Mining had loosened considerably. This made Jane think that going back to Mr. Richman might be quite difficult. Yet she had reason to believe that he and his company might want to support the school again. She knew that Richman had been born and reared in that part of the country, valued rural life and its traditions, and was personally committed to stewardship. She very much hoped to find a funding source for what she considered to be a very worthy project, and, moreover, others encouraged her. A colleague had even volunteered to help write the grant proposal. Still others, however, counseled against it. One admonished her for even considering it, quoting the verse from Proverbs that warned the righteous against profiting from the sinner’s money.
Jane had to make a decision quickly, or put the future of the program in jeopardy.
THE SINNER’S WEALTH
Teaching Note
This case does not so much present a novel dilemma as it does frame an old one: Should one accept “dirty money” for a worthy cause? Accordingly, one challenge in teaching this case is encouraging participants to reflect seriously on how they make such decisions, whichever outcome they choose. What sources ought to inform one’s thinking about such dilemmas? What analogies--in Scripture, tradition, and experience--shed light on them? What theological metaphors are appropriate, and how would they reshape one’s perspective? Teachers may borrow the theological reflection technique of creating metaphors, such as those employed in the Episcopal Church’s Education for Ministry curriculum.
Identify the main stakeholders and their stake in the outcome of the case.
Name analogous dilemmas that participants have known or heard about.
Identify as precisely as possible the conflicting values involved in accepting money from morally questionable sources.
Focusing on one stakeholder (probably Jane), have the group come up with a metaphor that describes the situation that person is in (e.g., “caught between a rock and a hard place”). Several metaphors might be suggested; have the group choose one.
Questions for discussion
1. What is it like to be within the world of this metaphor?
2. What Scriptural, historical, and theological resources can we use in the world of this metaphor?
3. What does Christian tradition have to say to those who find themselves thus situated?
4. Do other metaphors offer relief?
Closing
Return the group to the case at hand, and conclude with their ideas about what Jane ought to do.
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