Moving money to support social justice movements: A spiritual practice.

Abstract

Wealth inequality is rising, and millennials will be the future recipients of the largest intergenerational wealth transfer. Meanwhile, there is a need to move more money to support transformative social justice movements. This study examines the impact of spirituality as a motivator for the social justice movement giving among progressive young adult activists with wealth and class privilege, organizing toward the equitable redistribution of wealth, land, and power. Using survey data (n = 560), regressions and mediation models suggest that spiritual motivation was a significant positive predictor of how much participants monetarily gave to social justice movements. While religion did not significantly predict movement giving, indirect effects models showed that spirituality positively mediated the effect of being raised with any religion on movement giving compared to those indicating no religion. Implications are explored for how transformative organizing models draw upon secular spiritual practices in their pursuit of individual and collective change.