Christianity inherited the language of the tithe, and through the medieval period the church tithe became a compulsory tax levied on the produce of the land across much of Christian Europe, collected by the church and a major part of its wealth and of ordinary people's burdens, until it was gradually abolished or commuted in the modern era. With the end of the compulsory tithe, giving to the church became voluntary, and many Protestant traditions revived tithing as a personal spiritual discipline, the free dedication of a tenth of one's income, rather than a legal due. Some churches, especially in the evangelical and Restorationist traditions, teach tithing as a binding obligation and a test of faith, citing the same scriptural passages; others treat the tenth as a guideline for proportionate, cheerful giving rather than a fixed law.
Proportional religious giving of this kind has close counterparts in other traditions, the Islamic zakat, calculated as a fixed fraction of accumulated wealth, and the various fixed offerings of other faiths, reflecting a widespread religious intuition that giving should be measured against what one has rather than left wholly to impulse, so that the poor have a defined claim and the giver a defined duty.