VOA双语新闻：美教会对周边社区影响的价值

　　Religious congregations help the homeless, provide counseling, offer spiritual guidance and celebrate life cycle events. Churches and synagogues have played these roles for hundreds of generations. But for the first time, a new study has put an economic value on those contributions.

宗教聚会帮助无家可归者，提供咨询，在生老病死等人生大事上给予人们精神指导。千百来，教会一直在扮演这些角色。不过，一项新的研究首次给宗教聚会加上了经济价值。

After struggling with AIDS since the mid-80s, Dennis Wright met with a few support groups, but says he wanted something on a more spiritual level.

登尼斯. 莱特1980年代中期起跟艾滋病抗争之后，曾跟几个援助团体见面，不过他说，他需要一些更具有精神层面的东西。

"I lost a partner when I came here, I was very much in need of a place," he says.

That’s when he joined the Hospitality Center at Saint Luke and the Epiphany Church in Philadelphia. The group offers faith-based comfort for people living with AIDS. There is no fee to participate, and Wright admits he never thought about the value of being part of that group.

于是，他加入了费城的圣卢克的亲善接待中心和主显教会。这个团体为艾滋病患者提供以信仰为基础的安慰。参加这个教会是免费的。莱特承认，他从未想过加入这个团体的价值。

"A dollar value? I don’t know what I would put for that. I owe my life to the church."

“换算成美元的价值吗？我不知道怎样估算。教会救了我的命。”

Holy finance

But Ram 1 Cnaan says he can put a price tag on goodwill 2 and, in a study called "Valuing Urban Congregations," he did.

不过，拉姆.克纳安表示，他能给善意标上一个价格。而且在一个叫作“给城市地区教会估价”的调研里，他这么做了。

"If you ask yourself ‘What is the financial value of feeling good?’ it’s very hard to quantify because there is no understanding of what feeling good means and how to pay for it," says Cnaan, a professor of social policy at the University of Pennsylvania.

克纳安说：“如果你问自己感觉好值多少钱，这很难量化，因为感觉好意味着什么，没有一个定义，也没有人知道怎样花钱去买。”

He calculated the economic worth of a dozen places of worship around Philadelphia, including Catholic, Protestant and Jewish congregations. "Everybody thinks of congregations as a place to worship and meet their spiritual needs and go home. Congregations have a much wider impact on the community."

克纳安是宾夕法尼亚大学的社会政策教授。他计算了费城周围十几个礼拜活动场所的经济价值，其中包括天主教、新教和犹太教教会。他说：“每个人都把教会当成敬拜、满足他们精神需求的地方。教会对社区有广泛得多的影响。”

Cnaan says the monetary 3 value of that impact has always been considered too sacred to measure. But Bob Jaeger, who also worked on the study, hopes their findings will help churches around the country exert more influence during neighborhood planning.

克纳安说，这种影响的金钱价值一直被认为太神圣，不能衡量。不过，参与这项调研的鲍伯.耶格希望，他们的调研结果会帮助全美国的教会在社区规划方面发挥更多影响。

"All too often when we invest in neighborhoods, the church or synagogue is overlooked. We just assume that it’s always going to be there. We don’t fully 4 understand what value it has," says Jaeger, who is president of Partners For Sacred Places, a national non-sectarian organization which promotes houses of worship as community assets. "If a pastor 5 persuades someone to not commit suicide, what is the value of a human life? What’s the dollar value, how many millions of dollars?"

耶格是全国性非宗教组织“神圣场地合作者”的董事长。这个组织认为礼拜场所是社区的资产。耶格说：“我们在一个社区投资的时候，教堂或者犹太教堂往往都被忽略了。我们觉得它总是会在那里的。我们没有充分理解它的价值。”

According to the study, preventing a suicide is worth about $20,000 while counseling that saves a marriage has a value of $18,000.

'Halo effect'

The researchers attached a price tag to just about anything involving interaction with a congregation. They considered a total of nearly five-dozen categories, from the money churches receive for performing funerals and weddings, to the salaries they pay their staff, to the social values and principles they promote and foster.

这些研究人员对跟教会有互动关系的差不多任何事情都标出了价格。他们考虑了总共将近60个类别，从教会承办红白喜事的收费到支付教会员工的工资，再到教会推崇和培养的社会价值观和原则。

Jaeger calls this value a halo effect. "We thought there probably would be some evidence that in a halo of a block or two or more - in a circle around a sacred place - there is probably some impact that is demonstrable, and what we’ve learned, in fact, is that much of this impact is local."

耶格把这个价值称为晕轮效应：“我们以为可能会有某种证据证明在一个神圣场所周围一到两个或者更多街区的圆圈里，大概会有可以显示的某种影响，事实上，我们发现，这种影响的很大一部分就在当地。”

For instance, helping 6 100 people find jobs made up more than half of Calvary Methodist Church’s $2.6 million halo. The 150-member Summit Presbyterian Church houses a day-care center, a room used by a Jewish congregation as a synagogue, and a martial 7 arts program. Despite the church’s operating budget of only $265,000, the study values its halo at almost $1.5 million dollars.

例如，帮助100个人找工作占了卡瓦利卫理公会教会260万美元晕轮效应的一多半。拥有150个成员的巅峰长老会教堂为一个托儿所提供场地，还提供一个房间做犹太教聚会场所，一个房间做武术教室。别看教会的运作预算只有26万5千美元，但这项研究给它的晕轮效应估价为将近150万美元。

The brightest halo in the study - more than $22 million - surrounds Visitation Parish. It includes a church, a community center and a school with nearly 500 students. Located in a diverse neighborhood of Philadelphia, it celebrates mass in English, Spanish and Vietnamese.

这项研究中最亮丽的晕轮效应超过2200万美元，这是在visitation教区。其中包括一个教堂、一个社区中心和一所有近500名学生的学校。这个教会位于费城一个多元化的社区，用英语、西班牙语和越南语做弥撒。

The study won’t be published for about two months, but a report of its findings recently appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer, and not everyone was pleased with its numbers.

这项研究结果大约过两个月才会发表，但费城问讯报已经做了相关报导。并非所有人都对报导中的那些数字感到高兴。

"I opened it up and I smiled. I thought, ‘Oh great, they’re going to have this great stuff about St. Luke and the Epiphany about how important we are in the neighborhood,’" says Rodger Broadley, who has served as pastor at St. Luke for almost three decades. "And then I got to the bottom of the page and I zipped down to the bottom of the list of 12 churches, and there we were at the very bottom as a negative $250,000."

罗杰.布洛德利在圣卢克担任牧师快30年了。他刚看到报导时，觉得很不错，人们可以就此得知圣卢克和主显教会对社区是多么重要。但接下去，“然后我读到这一版的下面，看到12个教会的名单，我们排在名单的最后，估价为负25万美元。”

That’s because the value of a church’s services to its community was offset 8 by a loss of property tax revenue. Religious congregations are exempt 9 from paying taxes, and St. Luke is located in a wealthy area of Philadelphia. So its tax-free property value dramatically hurt its score.

这是因为这个教堂对所在社区的服务被房地产税的损失抵销了。宗教场所不必纳税，而圣卢克位于费城一个富人区。所以，教堂免税的房地产价值大大地减少了它的得分。

Cnaan says recalculating the numbers to account for that would move St. Luke far into the positive column, with a value to its community of $1.25 million.

拉姆.克纳安说，把其他因素考虑进去再重新计算，圣卢克的排名会大大提前。

Cnaan believes the value congregations bring to the city far outweigh 10 any tax loss.

因为，“宗教场所给城市带来的价值远远多于因房产免税而给城市带来的税务损失。”

In fact, Cnaan estimates that all of Philadelphia’s 2,000 houses of worship bring the city the equivalent of $250 million a year. And that’s something everyone can say "Amen" to.

事实上，克纳安估计，费城所有2000个敬拜场所每年给这个城市带来的价值相当于2亿5千万美元。这可是每个人都能说“阿门”的事情。