“The way stewardship is practiced in North America often has little to do with the Bible. It stems primarily from the most influential American “theologian”, Andrew Carnegie…
In an article published in 1889, Carnegie argued that it would not behoove the Christian faith to say anything about how money was made, since the process of producing wealth is determined by inexorable natural laws…
These laws [from his perspective] determine the determine the acquisition of wealth and fully justify the discrepancy in wealth between rich and poor…
The Christian religion, Carnegie maintained, becomes pertinent only after the production process has run its course and money has been made and reinvested. [In his thinking], only then should Christianity enter the scene to help successful producers and acquisitors know how to disperse their surplus money prudentially, that is, charitably.
Carnegie even provided the rules for distributing surplus money. It should be given only to the “deserving poor” and only to those who support the system under which the wealth was produced in the first place.
In other words, the Christian faith [according to Carnegie] has to do with charity, and charity does not extend to the basic questions of economics. Thus we have the basic understanding of stewardship in old-line and newer churches in North America: the voluntary giving of left-over money and time.”
Doug Meeks in God the Economist, (Augsburg Fortress, 1989) 20-21, as partially cited by Gary Moore in Look Up America! (Keller, TX: Austin Brothers, 2012) 139.