I've been reading some quite pessimistic posts in the aftermath of the Presidential election, especially on conservative Christian blogs. After a few of them, I penned this response:
It may be best to adopt the attitude of Winston Churchill: "I am an optimist. It seems to me not much use to be anything else."
I would be dismayed to see further disengagement by Christians from society. To cite only one means of doing so, in my area private Christian schools proliferate. They cost money, and people dislocate their finances to get their kids into them, even though the actual educations are in some way no better than public schools. These students, along with their heavily involved parents, could have a great leavening effect on the wider society if they weren't cloistered away on their own. Light, bushel, and all that... Secularists are as ignorant of the Christian blessings in public life as fish are ignorant of water, and even the most radical, spotty-bearded coffeehouse subversive would miss them if they were gone. In time, if we are not too thin-skinned, we may persuade them that this is so. Sure, the light of Christ seems to shine more brightly in Kenya and South Korea these days than in the tired old First World. But I don't believe that America has bestowed her final God-given gifts on humanity just quite yet.
