Shrewd Samaritan - Book Review
by Jordan Warner.
In discussions with other members of the Effective Altruism for Christians Facebook group, the Shrewd Samaritan by Bruce Wydick was recommended to me as a Christian perspective on effective charity. As a Development Economist, Wydick is definitely qualified to write this book, and the Shrewd Samaritan references research to explain how and why some interventions are more effective than others, as well as directly appealing to biblical principles to justify this focus on effectiveness.
The title is the best place to start, since it references two of Jesus parables: The Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37) and the Shrewd Manager (Luke 16:1-9). I’d recommend re-reading these passages, while the compassion that the Samaritan shows to a stranger at the side of the road is well known, the story about the Shrewd Manager is more obscure. In this surprising parable, Jesus tells his followers to use their worldly resources to benefit others so that they’re welcomed into heaven, just as the shrewd manager in the parable lowers the debts of his master’s clients so that he’ll have friends to rely on after his boss fires him. In the context of Jesus’s other teachings, it’s clear that the cunning use of resources that Jesus recommends must be driven by compassion for others, rather than selfish concern for ourselves. Wydick relates this to another saying of Jesus found in Matthew 10:16: “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore, be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.”
In addition to establishing this biblical foundation for caring about effectiveness, the first part of Wydick’s book, The Road to Loving Our Global Neighbour, explains that the reality of global poverty make it much more effective to help our “global neighbour” abroad than people in our own wealthy countries, and contains examples of Christians that Wydick sees as exemplifying effective compassion for others. The section ends with Wydick proposing that a misunderstanding of poverty hampers efforts to address it, so the next section, Understanding Poverty, offers an in-depth explanation of the causes of poverty. Effective and Ineffective Poverty Interventions evaluates the evidence for and against various interventions, although most of Wydick’s recommendations will be familiar to anyone that’s read the GiveWell website. Becoming a Shrewd Samaritan is the most practical section, outlining a framework for readers to use to select causes to work on and the best way for them to contribute.
Since this will all sound familiar to anyone involved in the effective altruism movement, for the rest of the review I’ll focus on Wydick’s disagreements with EA, which he directly addresses at the start of part 3. While Wydick is more positive than some critics, he equates EA with materialistic utilitarianism, and then claims that EA fails by not valuing the “spiritual, ethical, social, psychological, nonmaterial, and intangible”. While these may be harder to quantify than health and wealth, I don’t agree that EA completely disregards these aspects of welfare, although this may not be obvious to people outside of the community. The practical implication of this focus on dignity, flourishing and the non-material means that Wydick advocates for holistic/“kitchen-sink” programs (his words not mine!) that try to “graduate” people from poverty, in addition to the more targeted interventions preferred by EAs that simply provide cash or a specific healthcare intervention.
Wydick’s more fundamental disagreement with EA is that he doesn’t really believe in cause prioritisation. Wydick thinks giving can only be sustained if we have an emotional connection to the people we’re trying to help, so we shouldn’t try to impartially identify the cause area where we’re most likely to do the most good, as an EA would recommend. Instead, Wydick recommends that we first find a cause we feel passionate about, then look into how to most effectively help. Wydick is therefore more sympathetic to local charity than most EAs (for example, he recommends supporting charter schools), but because he thinks we can have more impact abroad, he suggests sponsoring children through the Christian charity Compassion.
Wydick cites evidence showing that Compassion’s program does improve educational attainment and job prospects, but while receiving regular letters from sponsored children will be very effective at building an emotional connection, cost effectiveness relative to other interventions is never considered. Wydick’s personal giving is mainly directed towards a school in Guatemala through Mayan Partners, a charity he founded with friends in collaboration with Guatemalan churches. While I’m sure Wydick would recognise that the money could be spent more effectively elsewhere, I think he’d counter that he can’t just choose who he cares about. The EA counterargument would be that prioritising our own feelings above careful analysis of how to help others the most will limit the amount of good we can do, but I think Wydick’s right when he points out that the demand to prioritise utilitarian calculations above our own personal emotions puts a lot of people off the EA movement.
Despite my reservations, I would recommend the Shrewd Samaritan to a Christian EA looking for a more spiritual approach to EA ideas, especially if you’re looking to convince other Christians to consider cost-effectiveness when choosing a charity. I think it would be great if more Christians read the Shrewd Samaritan and tried to make their giving more effective. However, I don’t think they’d all become aspiring effective altruists. While Wydick does recommend donating to the most cost-effective global health interventions, he also recommends more emotionally appealing alternatives like child sponsorship for readers that don’t care as much about cost-effectiveness. This is a significant departure from the philosophy of EA, a movement founded on the idea that people should care more about cost-effectiveness, and more than anything else this is what prevents the Shrewd Samaritan from just being a reframing of EA from a Christian perspective.