Not OK to be a bigot

From Christianity Today:

David Gushee of the New Evangelical Partnership for the Common Good said politicians who were using the mosque issue for political gain "deserve neither our sympathy nor our acquiescence, but only our condemnation." His words for Christians who opposed the mosque were just as pointed.

"For those mainly conservative Christians who are responding to this and other mosque projects with open expressions of anti-Muslim hatred, and open rejections of the principles of religious liberty from which Christians themselves daily benefit, shame on you! As a fellow Christian, I say that you bring dishonor to the name of Jesus Christ, you directly disobey his command that we love our neighbors, and you drive the watching world even further away from any interest in the Gospel message!" said Gushee.

China Becomes World's Second Largest Economy

China continues phenomenal growth, but as it becomes more developed, that will be harder to sustain. It is much easier to grow 10% when average income is $3,600 (China's) than when it is $46,000 (US's). Look at how the predictions of Japan's ascendancy fizzled. I do not believe there are the cultural pre-requisites in either Chinese or Japanese society for allowing their sustainable rise to the top. Good Q - what would those cultural characteristics be?

Tokyo said that Japan’s economy was valued at about $1.28 trillion in the second quarter, slightly below China’s $1.33 trillion. Japan’s economy grew 0.4 percent in the quarter, Tokyo said, substantially less than forecast. That weakness suggests that China’s economy will race past Japan’s for the full year.

Experts say unseating Japan — and in recent years passing Germany, France and Great Britain — underscores China’s growing clout and bolsters forecasts that China will pass the United States as the world’s biggest economy as early as 2030. America’s gross domestic product was about $14 trillion in 2009.

“This has enormous significance,” said Nicholas R. Lardy, an economist at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. “It reconfirms what’s been happening for the better part of a decade: China has been eclipsing Japan economically. For everyone in China’s region, they’re now the biggest trading partner rather than the U.S. or Japan.”

For Japan, whose economy has been stagnating for more than a decade, the figures reflect a decline in economic and political power. Japan has had the world’s second-largest economy for much of the last four decades, according to the World Bank. And during the 1980s, there was even talk about Japan’s economy some day overtaking that of the United States.

But while Japan’s economy is mature and its population quickly aging, China is in the throes of urbanization and is far from developed, analysts say, meaning it has a much lower standard of living, as well as a lot more room to grow. Just five years ago, China’s gross domestic product was about $2.3 trillion, about half of Japan’s.

This country has roughly the same land mass as the United States, but it is burdened with a fifth of the world’s population and insufficient resources.

Its per capita income is more on a par with those of impoverished nations like Algeria, El Salvador and Albania — which, along with China, are close to $3,600 — than that of the United States, where it is about $46,000.