It's interesting looking at the trendline for church attendance. It seems to start dropping around the year 2000. I guess part of this must be attributed to the rise of the internet and social media platforms. Sort of like how the dominance of the Catholic church began to decay with the invention of the Gutenberg press.
You articulated really well why isolationism is not a viable and sustainable strategy going forward, and how trade isolationism and trade wars only ended up benefitting China, who I think is our biggest geopolitical adversary(with Russia and Iran not too far behind). My biggest beef with the Trump administration's actions on trade, was that it was ham-fisted and impulsively imposed to even countries that are staunch allies of the United States. Those countries play by the rules and don't engage in IP theft and utilize coerced labor from religious/ethnic minorities. Before the pandemic, I travelled to quite a few economically developing countries. And I found that many of these countries established close ties with China, and Chinese made goods and companies are well established there. Many of these countries also benefit from aid from China for infrastructure and other forms of economic help(the Belt and Road initiative). As a result of that, these countries show deafening silence when it comes to exposing the nefarious activities of the PRC government. Especially concerning is the reaction of silence or even denial from many Muslim majority Arab/Turkic countries about China's persecution of Uyghurs, who mostly ID with Islam. It makes me wonder why the US is not doing more to engage in free trade agreements with these countries. We need them to allied with us and the rest of the free world, in order to push back against the PRC government. These countries benefit economically from trade, and if they can't find the US to be a reliable trading partner, they'll look to China and other countries that present a threat to the free world. In short, Trump's trade policies were a failure. Hopefully the Biden administration can rebuild and further expand our economic and political alliances with many of these countries that are nascently being roped in with China.
As for the decline in church membership, that is concerning and sad. From my experience, the #1 reason why people stop attending and/or identifying with a church is hypocrisy. Granted, none of us are perfect, and we will all make mistakes. But we should be striving to be better, and be the very best we can be(Matthew 5:48). It wasn't voting for Trump in itself that I had a problem with(I do understand the realities of the D-R voting dichotomy, even if I didn't vote for him), but more so with Christians who rationalized, minimized, excused, celebrated, and even emulated former President Trump's indefensibly grotesque behavior and character. To those outside of the perspective of Christianity, how can they come to know the the love of our Savior and His grace, when those who bear his name as Christians don't comport themselves and show the love to others that He would want us to have for them? And David, you nailed it perfectly when you said that Christ commissioned us to win souls, and not elections. So I say a big AMEN to that. I hope that we as Christians would think more carefully before too closely trying to align the precepts of the Gospel of Christ with right leaning partisan politics. As a conservative, I'm naturally going to prefer Republicans to Democrats on most policy matters, and believe conservatism is the best governing philosophy for our country. But the Savior and His Gospel is higher than(Isaiah 55:8-9), and transcends partisan political differences that us imperfect human beings have.
Great column David. It was well articulated and on point.
It's interesting looking at the trendline for church attendance. It seems to start dropping around the year 2000. I guess part of this must be attributed to the rise of the internet and social media platforms. Sort of like how the dominance of the Catholic church began to decay with the invention of the Gutenberg press.
There's no such thing as a free Mulligan.
You articulated really well why isolationism is not a viable and sustainable strategy going forward, and how trade isolationism and trade wars only ended up benefitting China, who I think is our biggest geopolitical adversary(with Russia and Iran not too far behind). My biggest beef with the Trump administration's actions on trade, was that it was ham-fisted and impulsively imposed to even countries that are staunch allies of the United States. Those countries play by the rules and don't engage in IP theft and utilize coerced labor from religious/ethnic minorities. Before the pandemic, I travelled to quite a few economically developing countries. And I found that many of these countries established close ties with China, and Chinese made goods and companies are well established there. Many of these countries also benefit from aid from China for infrastructure and other forms of economic help(the Belt and Road initiative). As a result of that, these countries show deafening silence when it comes to exposing the nefarious activities of the PRC government. Especially concerning is the reaction of silence or even denial from many Muslim majority Arab/Turkic countries about China's persecution of Uyghurs, who mostly ID with Islam. It makes me wonder why the US is not doing more to engage in free trade agreements with these countries. We need them to allied with us and the rest of the free world, in order to push back against the PRC government. These countries benefit economically from trade, and if they can't find the US to be a reliable trading partner, they'll look to China and other countries that present a threat to the free world. In short, Trump's trade policies were a failure. Hopefully the Biden administration can rebuild and further expand our economic and political alliances with many of these countries that are nascently being roped in with China.
As for the decline in church membership, that is concerning and sad. From my experience, the #1 reason why people stop attending and/or identifying with a church is hypocrisy. Granted, none of us are perfect, and we will all make mistakes. But we should be striving to be better, and be the very best we can be(Matthew 5:48). It wasn't voting for Trump in itself that I had a problem with(I do understand the realities of the D-R voting dichotomy, even if I didn't vote for him), but more so with Christians who rationalized, minimized, excused, celebrated, and even emulated former President Trump's indefensibly grotesque behavior and character. To those outside of the perspective of Christianity, how can they come to know the the love of our Savior and His grace, when those who bear his name as Christians don't comport themselves and show the love to others that He would want us to have for them? And David, you nailed it perfectly when you said that Christ commissioned us to win souls, and not elections. So I say a big AMEN to that. I hope that we as Christians would think more carefully before too closely trying to align the precepts of the Gospel of Christ with right leaning partisan politics. As a conservative, I'm naturally going to prefer Republicans to Democrats on most policy matters, and believe conservatism is the best governing philosophy for our country. But the Savior and His Gospel is higher than(Isaiah 55:8-9), and transcends partisan political differences that us imperfect human beings have.
Great column David. It was well articulated and on point.