HARVEY REEVES CALKINS
Harvey Reeves Calkins was a stewardship secretary for the Methodist Episcopal Church. In his book A Man and His Money, targeted at clergy and church leaders, he argues that stewardship was “the very kernel of Christ’s teaching.” In this excerpt he argues that each man is called, first, to care for his family and, second, to tend to his city, state, and country. This excerpt includes something rare, a defense of taxes. Not many today would defend taxes as a way of honoring and maintaining “the glorious institutions of the Republic.” Many of us believe there are way too many taxes in our time, but surely at least some few taxes serve this purpose, and we should be mindful of that.
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The obligation of life covers a threefold duty of stewardship: First, provision for the family; second, maintenance of the state; third, relief of the poor. The family must be first. Thus it is written, “God setteth the solitary in families”; and again it is written, “Children are an heritage of the Lord.” The question has been carpingly asked, “Would you take bread from the children and give it to the church?” Such a question requires no answer. Rather let it be asked, “Should a man deny himself in order to render acknowledgment unto God, and should he teach fidelity and self-denial to his children?” The sincere question brings its own sincere answer. The only real difficulty that ever comes to a man is his failure to frame the sincere question . . .
The second element of stewardship in a man’s obligation of life is maintenance of the state. It was the command of the apostle that “supplications, prayers, intercessions, and giving of thanks be made for all men, for kings, and for all that are in authority; that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty.” By ‘‘the state” is meant that remarkable fusion of federal, State, county, and municipal government, which, in America, is administered by those “in authority,” that is, by the people themselves through their chosen representatives. A citizen’s responsibility for taxes, rates, and assessments marks an element of stewardship which is not always recognized as such. Taxes are not infrequently resented as though they were an arbitrary imposition, laid upon one by “an outsider,” something which it is a citizen’s duty to resist. We pay our grocer bills with a sense of value received, but the cost of maintaining the glorious institutions of the republic is a weariness to us. Some day our citizenship shall be a finer thing. Stewardship is the kingly doorway into all the higher life of our civilization.