Where Charity Begins

The First Charity
By Robert Mathews Johnson
Seven Locks Press, 1988
234 pages, paperback, $13.95

I guess I was still in grade school when I picked up the habit of judging a book by its cover. Well, actually, not just the cover; I read all the dust-jacket notes, too, and would do perhaps thirty seconds of skimming around the beginning, middle, and end. During my micro-reviews I might settle down once or twice for whole paragraphs, but they'd better be good or it's over and out and on to browse for a better book.

With time so tight -- and mine's been knotted up pretty well since kindergarten -- I have to make snap decisions and work books into a perpetually compressing schedule. Perhaps ironically, what impresses me most about a book and an author is being proven totally, irredeemably incorrect about one of my snap reviews.

When I picked up The First Charity by Robert Mathews Johnson and gave it the old Warp Speed Review, I apprehended it as a smarmy sociological dissertation that would probably conclude with some sort of statist sales pitch for Something Or Other — or, in the more expansive style of hip slick ‘n cool ultramodern agitation, Everything And More.

After I finished reading the book, I could not for the life of me figure out what I might have read or misread that would have given me that impression; I had been proven completely, embarrassingly wrong. Fortunately, none of my misconceived calumnies about this book reached more than a few people in my most trusted inner circle (and my dogs, of course), since I'm old-fashioned enough actually to read books before I write reviews about them.

In writing The First Charity, Johnson faced the daunting task of explaining charity and philanthropy in their uniquely American incarnations. As a good man too busy helping people change lives to wait around for any grand national solutions, he does it well, living up to the promise of the book's Introduction:

"This book is about what philanthropy can do for American democracy. We seem to have gone about as far as we can go in trying to practice democracy in this country … without becoming more intentional about it. By 'intentional' I don't mean a lot of arbitrary policies handed down from high places; political proclamations and expert attention aren't solving the intractable problems among us.

"Quite the contrary, democracy needs to become a citizens' enterprise. We need to build a competent public life among us so that an increasingly concerned, knowledgeable, and active citizenry can find answers and pursue them from the inside out. That activity starts not in national circles of government ... but in the communities in which we live. [O]ur communities are still the first settings for citizenship for most of us and our families."

I admit it still takes me a few shifts in the chair to get over a lexicon that features such sticky sentence-stuffers as "nurturing," "grassroots," and "sensitive". But I got over these little annoyances, especially when it became clear that Johnson used the words ingenuously and that the author had arrived at truly anti-collectivist, individualist conclusions despite having used some lingo of the left.

Johnson calls the Declaration of Independence "truly a citizens' declaration. Nowhere does it suggest that certain leaders or representatives will do what's best for everyone.… The Declaration of Independence presumes that we will participate in the public life of this country; no one can take charge for us. This is the only way the idea can work." To citizens invigorated for civic participation through voluntarist endeavor, Johnson promises that individual benefits and community benefits of the activity "are all of a piece... It becomes a virtuous circle, a constant regeneration..."

Early in the book, Johnson reminds us about the Founding Fathers' (especially Jefferson's) distrust of representative government, and a preference for direct, local democratic action under law. In succeeding chapters, Johnson examines economic models for individual and social behavior; contemplates the psychology and pathology of giving and getting, and gives examples of charitable and philanthropic ideas and organizations at work in America.

In an especially perceptive analysis of citizen apathy, Johnson warns us that how we're adjudged by politicians

"...is crucial; we get back what we ask for. If we lead them to believe we are willing and able to consider issues seriously and make responsible decisions, they will know it is in their best interests to treat us with respect. [But] if we lead representatives to believe that we aren't interested ... they will feel justified in making more and more policy decisions on their own, dealing only with those strongest of interest groups that press the hardest for certain decisions. To echo Jefferson's words, we then stand ready to be ‘loaded with misery' by our government..."

After lively opening chapters, Johnson launches into descriptions of three different big-city community groups, taking us through the ins and outs of actual initiatives. Johnson then ponders the "Roots of Our Habits" in Chapter Six and "Politics and Altruism" in Chapter Seven; these are the first chapters of "Part Two: The Response of Philanthropy." These two chapters had many thoughtful, original and politically uncategorizable passages akin to those in "Part One", but the three chapters between these and the concluding 11th ("Conclusion: The Need to Trust the Public") are substantively different than the rest of the book. Not bad, just different; they were filled with road-maps and blueprints, operational critiques and organizational criteria, much like appendices. That's my only less-than-laudatory comment about this overwhelmingly positive reading and learning experience.

If you proudly proclaim free-enterprise, voluntarist, close-to-home cures for community ills — but come up short on suggestions for how they might be implemented with little or no apparent money, resources, or personnel -- then you will benefit much from reading The First Charity. But if you're in the charity business, in either the public or private sector, then you'll benefit even more. I was fortunate enough to read the book as a member of both camps and was, therefore, doubly rewarded.