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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 9, 2024

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The subset of American self-identified Christians who actually believe in Jesus Christ uncomplicatedly do believe that Christian charity extends to unfortunates all across the world. American charitable spending on 3rd world development is the highest in the world about 0.23% of GDP and most of that goes through Christian charities (WorldVision is the biggest, and is widely respected as effective in the development NGO world even if people don't like their links to American Christianity). This doesn't count spending on missionary work, some of which ends up being diverted into philanthropy as well.

The cognitive dissonance only affects the people who self-define as "Christian" for Red Tribe identity politics reasons without accepting Jesus Christ into their hearts as their lord and saviour. Regrettably, this is not a small group, and the churches that welcome them are therefore able to make a lot of noise.

Enjoy your updoot; this is not said enough. You know that 10% giving pledge Scott promoted? I know plenty of Christians who give 10% just to their church (and aside, as much as people like to call this "paying for services", it's really not, even when a lot of it does go to paying the pastor and maintenance -- the priest/pastor has a real role in serving the people who are not financing the operation, and most churches turn around and donate to both local poverty relief and international aid and/or missions), plus more to international charity. (Not to toot my horn but because it's the only numbers I know exactly, my wife and I give 10% of our gross to our local parish, plus about 1% to US charity and 2% to international charity, and we plan to increase the last one in the future.)