Practices

Almsgiving / Charity

Charitable Practices

Citation Formats

General Reference

Divinity Atlas. "Almsgiving / Charity." Accessed August 30, 2026. https://www.divinityatlas.com/practices/almsgiving-charity.

APA Style

Divinity Atlas. (n.d.). Almsgiving / Charity. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://www.divinityatlas.com/practices/almsgiving-charity

BibTeX

@misc{divinityatlas-almsgiving-charity,
  author = {Divinity Atlas},
  title = {Almsgiving / Charity},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://www.divinityatlas.com/practices/almsgiving-charity},
  note = {Accessed August 30, 2026}
}

Origin No datable origin

The giving of money, food, or aid to the poor and needy as a religious duty and an expression of compassion and justice, taught by every major faith. Judaism calls it tzedakah, righteousness, an obligation rather than mere kindness; Islam commands both obligatory zakat and voluntary sadaqah; Christianity ranks charity among the chief virtues and works of mercy; Hinduism and Buddhism praise dana, generosity, as a foundation of the spiritual life. Given openly or in secret, it relieves suffering, redistributes wealth, and binds community. Almsgiving is held to purify the giver of greed, atone for sin, generate merit, and reflect divine mercy.

Facts

Practice

Category of Practice

Charitable 1

Who Performs It

All adherents of the tradition 1

Obligation Detail

Obligatory in Judaism as tzedakah and largely obligatory in Islam through zakat, though voluntary as sadaqah; commended as a chief virtue in Christianity and praised as dana, a voluntary foundation of the spiritual life, in Hinduism and Buddhism. 2

Cadence Detailthe subject's own account

Occasions vary by tradition: Islamic zakat is due annually once wealth has been held a full lunar year, alongside voluntary sadaqah given at any time; Jewish tzedakah is treated as an ongoing discipline alongside prayer and repentance; the Christian offertory collects alms at the point of worship; and Theravada monks receive daily alms rounds, replaced in Japan by a weekly or monthly takuhatsu round. 3

Solitary or Communal

Performed alone or together 1

Status

Status Within the Tradition

Held across traditions to purify the giver of greed, atone for sin, generate merit and reflect divine mercy, rather than being valued only as material relief. 2

Current Status

Almsgiving persists both as an everyday personal act and through standing institutions built specifically to carry it out. 3

the subject's own accountPre-packaged alms kits are sold today for donation to monks, and in Hinduism the satram or dharamsala, a rest house for travelers and the poor, remains a living institutional form of almsgiving.

Status Today

Living tradition, practised today 1

Origins

Origin Period

No datable origin 1

Origin Period

Obligatory and meritorious giving is set out in the earliest law codes and scriptures of several traditions 1

Meaning

Literal Meaning

Judaism calls it tzedakah, righteousness, naming almsgiving as an obligation of justice rather than mere kindness. 4

Attributions

Tradition

Practiced as a core religious obligation across Judaism, Christianity and Islam, and as a devotional virtue within Buddhism and Hinduism. 1

Learn More

Duty with a Number Attached

The distinction that matters most here is whether giving is a duty with a figure attached or a virtue left to conscience, and traditions divide on it sharply.

Zakat is the clearest case of the first. It is a fixed proportion of accumulated wealth above a threshold, owed annually, with the categories of recipient named in scripture, and in several countries it is collected by the state. It is not charity in the ordinary sense: the framing is that the poor hold a right in the wealth of the rich, so paying discharges an obligation rather than earning credit for generosity.

Tzedakah carries the same logic in its name, which means righteousness and not love or pity. Rabbinic law sets a customary level of a tenth of income, treats the obligation as enforceable in principle, and Maimonides ranked the ways of giving in eight degrees: the highest is a loan, a partnership or a job that ends the need for charity altogether, and the lowest is a grudging gift handed over unwillingly. Anonymity ranks high on both sides of the transaction, with neither party knowing the other.

Christian teaching has generally kept giving as a virtue rather than a tariff. The tithe survives as a strong convention and in some churches as an expectation, but the emphasis falls persistently on the disposition of the giver rather than the sum.

Dana in Buddhism is framed differently again. It is the first of the perfections and the foundation of lay practice, and the monastic order depends on it materially, monks in the Theravada countries still walk for alms each morning and may not cook or store food. But its stated function is to erode the giver's attachment, and the merit generated is held to depend on the state of mind in giving. That makes it psychological in a way the Abrahamic versions are not, and the recipient's need is not the measure of the act.

From Alms to Institutions

Organised charity is one of the largest things religions do, and it long predates the state doing it.

The waqf, an endowment of property whose income supports a stated purpose in perpetuity, financed much of the public infrastructure of the Islamic world: hospitals, colleges, fountains, soup kitchens, road stations. Because a waqf was legally inalienable it also served to protect family assets from confiscation and division, which is one reason so many were created and a reminder that pious institutions have mixed motives. Colonial administrations and later national governments took control of waqf property across much of the Muslim world, and the institutions it had funded suffered accordingly.

Christian monasteries, guilds and confraternities ran hospitals, almshouses and hospices across medieval Europe; the word hospital carries the origin in it. The dissolution of the English monasteries in the 1530s removed that system, and the state took over the relief of poverty by statute within a generation. It is a rare case where the handover from religious to public provision is directly visible in the record.

Sikh practice built the principle into the architecture. The langar of a gurdwara serves a free meal to anyone who comes, seated together on the floor regardless of caste, religion or wealth, and the seating is the argument: it was a deliberate attack on ritual hierarchy and not merely a way of feeding people. The kitchen at Amritsar serves on a scale of tens of thousands a day and has done so for centuries.

The modern position is that faith-based organisations remain among the largest non-state providers of relief in the world, which raises the question every such body now faces: whether aid is conditional. Most major religious relief agencies publish commitments not to proselytise while distributing. Those commitments exist because the practice was once otherwise.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Belongs to Tradition

African Methodist Episcopal Church

Kept in the African Methodist Episcopal Church, the first denomination in the United States founded by Black people. Works of mercy stand beside works of piety in the Methodist account of the Christian life, and neither is optional.

African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church

Kept in the African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church. Works of mercy stand beside works of piety in the Methodist account of the Christian life, and neither is optional.

Amish

Mutual aid replaces insurance: the community rebuilds a burned barn and pays a member's medical costs, and this is the practical form charity takes here.

Anglican Communion

Kept across the provinces of the Anglican Communion. The offertory sentences of the communion service are a sustained instruction on giving to the poor, and the alms are collected at that point in the rite.

Anglicanism

The offertory sentences of the communion service are a sustained instruction on giving to the poor, and the alms are collected at that point in the rite.

Source The Book of Common PrayerChurch of England; ed. Brian Cummings

Armenian Apostolic Church

Kept in the Armenian Apostolic Church. Almsgiving is tied to the long fasting seasons, which are the longest kept anywhere in Christianity.

Baptist

Giving to the needy is treated as a duty of stewardship over what is held in trust from God.

Source The Baptist Faith and MessageSouthern Baptist Convention

Breslov Hasidism

Kept in Breslov Hasidism. Tzedakah is a duty of justice rather than an act of generosity, and the word does not mean charity.

Buddhism

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Calvinism (Reformed)

Almsgiving is treated as a duty of the whole congregation and was made an office of the church, the deacon's, rather than left to private charity.

Chabad-Lubavitch

Kept in Chabad-Lubavitch. Tzedakah is a duty of justice rather than an act of generosity, and the word does not mean charity.

Christian Methodist Episcopal Church

Kept in the Christian Methodist Episcopal Church. Works of mercy stand beside works of piety in the Methodist account of the Christian life, and neither is optional.

Christianity

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Church of Cyprus

Kept in the Church of Cyprus, autocephalous since the Council of Ephesus in 431. Almsgiving is bound closely to the fasting seasons, what is not spent on food being given away.

Church of England

Kept in the Church of England, the province from which the Prayer Book tradition comes. The offertory sentences of the communion service are a sustained instruction on giving to the poor, and the alms are collected at that point in the rite.

Church of Greece

Kept in the Church of Greece. Almsgiving is bound closely to the fasting seasons, what is not spent on food being given away.

Church of Ireland

Kept in the Church of Ireland. The offertory sentences of the communion service are a sustained instruction on giving to the poor, and the alms are collected at that point in the rite.

Church of Scotland

Kept in the Church of Scotland, the established Presbyterian church of that country. Almsgiving is treated as a duty of the whole congregation and was made an office of the church, the deacon's, rather than left to private charity.

Church of Sweden

Kept in the Church of Sweden, which retained the historic episcopate through the Reformation as few Lutheran churches did. Almsgiving is treated as a fruit of faith rather than as a work that justifies, which is the whole of the Lutheran difference on the point.

Church of the Nazarene

Kept in the Church of the Nazarene, which stands in the Wesleyan holiness line. Works of mercy stand beside works of piety in the Methodist account of the Christian life, and neither is optional.

Coptic Orthodoxy

Kept in the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria. Almsgiving is tied to the long fasting seasons, which are the longest kept anywhere in Christianity.

Disciples of Christ

Giving is congregational and is directed by the congregation.

Dutch Reformed Church

Kept in the Dutch Reformed tradition, which holds the Heidelberg Catechism among its confessional standards. Almsgiving is treated as a duty of the whole congregation and was made an office of the church, the deacon's, rather than left to private charity.

Eastern Orthodoxy

Almsgiving is bound closely to the fasting seasons, what is not spent on food being given away.

Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople

Kept in the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, the see of first honour among the Orthodox churches. Almsgiving is bound closely to the fasting seasons, what is not spent on food being given away.

Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church

Kept in the Eritrean Orthodox Tewahedo Church. Almsgiving is tied to the long fasting seasons, which are the longest kept anywhere in Christianity.

Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church

Kept in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church. Almsgiving is tied to the long fasting seasons, which are the longest kept anywhere in Christianity.

Evangelical Lutheran Church in America

Kept in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Almsgiving is treated as a fruit of faith rather than as a work that justifies, which is the whole of the Lutheran difference on the point.

Free Methodist Church

Kept in the Free Methodist Church. Works of mercy stand beside works of piety in the Methodist account of the Christian life, and neither is optional.

Georgian Orthodox Church

Kept in the Georgian Orthodox Church, which has used its own language and script in worship since the fifth century. Almsgiving is bound closely to the fasting seasons, what is not spent on food being given away.

Global Methodist Church

Kept in the Global Methodist Church, formed in 2022. Works of mercy stand beside works of piety in the Methodist account of the Christian life, and neither is optional.

Greek Orthodox Church

Kept in the Greek Orthodox churches. Almsgiving is bound closely to the fasting seasons, what is not spent on food being given away.

Haredi Judaism

Kept in Haredi Judaism, where the halakhic standard is the strictest and the most stringent opinion is ordinarily followed. Tzedakah is a duty of justice rather than an act of generosity, and the word does not mean charity.

Hasidic Judaism

Kept in Hasidic Judaism. Tzedakah is a duty of justice rather than an act of generosity, and the word does not mean charity.

Hinduism

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Humanistic Judaism

Ethical action in the world is held to be the whole of what the tradition asks, there being no one to petition.

Islam

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Judaism

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

Lutheranism

Almsgiving is treated as a fruit of faith rather than as a work that justifies, which is the whole of the Lutheran difference on the point.

Source The Augsburg ConfessionPhilipp Melanchthon

Mennonites

Relief work carried out as a body, and the refusal of military service, are treated as two halves of one testimony rather than as charity and politics.

Methodism

Works of mercy stand beside works of piety in the Methodist account of the Christian life, and neither is optional.

Modern Orthodox Judaism

Kept in Modern Orthodox Judaism, alongside full engagement with secular study and with the state. Tzedakah is a duty of justice rather than an act of generosity, and the word does not mean charity.

Moravian Church

The support of overseas mission, begun before any other Protestant body attempted it, has been the characteristic corporate giving of this church.

National Baptist Convention of America

Kept in the National Baptist Convention of America International. Giving to the needy is treated as a duty of stewardship over what is held in trust from God.

Oriental Orthodoxy

Almsgiving is tied to the long fasting seasons, which are the longest kept anywhere in Christianity.

Orthodox Judaism

Tzedakah is a duty of justice rather than an act of generosity, and the word does not mean charity.

Source Shulchan AruchJoseph Karo

Presbyterianism

The care of the poor belongs to the deacons, a standing office of the church rather than a committee.

Progressive National Baptist Convention

Kept in the Progressive National Baptist Convention. Giving to the needy is treated as a duty of stewardship over what is held in trust from God.

Quakerism (Religious Society of Friends)

Giving belongs with the testimonies, and the meeting's concern for the poor and for prisoners is minuted and acted on as a body rather than left to individuals.

Source Quaker Faith and Practice: The Book of Christian Discipline of the Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends in BritainBritain Yearly Meetingthe holders' own account

Reform Judaism

Social justice work is treated as the central religious obligation of this movement, and the prophetic writings rather than the legal ones are the ground it is argued from.

Source The Pittsburgh PlatformCentral Conference of American Rabbis (predecessor gathering)the holders' own account

Roman Catholicism

Almsgiving stands with prayer and fasting as one of the three works of penance this church names, and the corporal works of mercy give it its shape.

Source Catechism of the Catholic Church, 2nd editionHoly Seethe holders' own account

Romanian Orthodox Church

Kept in the Romanian Orthodox Church, the one Orthodox church of the Byzantine tradition whose language is Romance. Almsgiving is bound closely to the fasting seasons, what is not spent on food being given away.

Russian Orthodox Church

Kept in the Russian Orthodox Church, in the Slavonic recension of the Byzantine books. Almsgiving is bound closely to the fasting seasons, what is not spent on food being given away.

Serbian Orthodox Church

Kept in the Serbian Orthodox Church. Almsgiving is bound closely to the fasting seasons, what is not spent on food being given away.

Shakers

Property was held in common, and the produce of Shaker workshops supported the community and was sold to the world outside.

Sikhism

Source Encyclopedia of ReligionMircea Eliade (ed.); Lindsay Jones (ed., 2nd ed.)

The Episcopal Church

Kept in the Episcopal Church, whose own Prayer Book descends from the Scottish rather than the English line. The offertory sentences of the communion service are a sustained instruction on giving to the poor, and the alms are collected at that point in the rite.

The United Methodist Church

Kept in the United Methodist Church. Works of mercy stand beside works of piety in the Methodist account of the Christian life, and neither is optional.

Ukrainian Orthodox Church

Kept in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. Almsgiving is bound closely to the fasting seasons, what is not spent on food being given away.

Wesleyan Church

Kept in the Wesleyan Church. Works of mercy stand beside works of piety in the Methodist account of the Christian life, and neither is optional.

Depicted In

The Seven Works of Mercy (Caravaggio, 1606-1607)

Painted as the confraternity's own altarpiece for a charity founded to carry out precisely these acts, so the painting documents almsgiving and charitable works as the tradition's own lived religious duty rather than depicting it from outside.

Source Pio Monte della Misericordia, official institutional page on the Caravaggio altarpiecePio Monte della Misericordia