There is no need for all those excuses. Democrats are stingy when it comes to charity. Cherry pick all you want. As to Osteen, his church is filled with poor minorities. They aren't some big GOP hub. He grifts through book sales, not charitable receipts.
Libs always want to discount giving to churches. It's not like they do any good in the community or build hospitals and schools. They don't open their facilities for use by other nonprofits.
Taken from your links:
These “giving ratios” reveal a consistent pattern. Measured by how much they share out of what they have available, the most generous Americans are not generally those in high-income, urban, liberal states like California or Massachusetts. Rather, people living in states that are more rural, conservative, religious, and moderate in income are our most generous givers.
Religious practice is the behavioral variable most consistently associated with generous giving. Charitable effort correlates strongly with the frequency with which a person attends religious services. Evangelical Protestants and Mormons in particular are strong givers. Compared to Protestant affiliation, both Catholic affiliation and Jewish affiliation reduce the scope of average giving, when other influences are held constant.
Finer-grain numbers from the PSID show that the faithful don’t just give to religious causes; they are also much more likely to give to secular causes than the non-religious. Among Americans who report that they “never” attend religious services, just less than half give any money at all to secular causes. People who attend services 27-52 times per year, though, give money to secular charities in two thirds of all cases. (See page 1138.)