AMERICAN ECONOMY

Tony Campolo

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Campolo is a bit of an irritant to his brothers on the religious right in the U.S. as he maintains it is possible to be a Bible believing Christian and still vote Democrat! He reached an all time low as far as his critics were concerned when he continued to minister to President Bill Clinton even after the Monica Lewinsky scandal, Campolo's rationale being that Clinton needed more than ever to hear about the grace of God in the 'sinful' situation he had gotten himself into. The remarks below seem eerily prophetic as they are taken from an interview which he gave several months before the present global economic meltdown!.

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A DESPAIRING REALITY

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'I don't know about America any longer. I see us going down the tubes. I'm an old guy. I'm old enough to remember the British Empire. The idea that the British Empire could ever collapse was beyond our comprehension. But the sun has set on the British Empire. I'm sure that in 1935 the idea that the British Empire could collapse was unthinkable, but it did.
'The US right now is waging a war in Iraq that is costing a billion dollars a week. You can't spend more money than you are taking in as a government without eventually going bankrupt. In addition, our balance of trade is terrible. You cannot buy stuff from other countries and not sell stuff to other countries without it affecting your economic system and the deficit spending, together with the imbalance of trade is going to bankrupt America in a relatively short period of time. That is a very despairing reality and there doesn't seem to be anything going on right now to make us expect anything different in the future.
'In the book of Revelation, when Babylon falls, all the other nations fall with it and I think the ramifications of the collapse of the American economy are going to be frightening. We have ignored the poor, we have ignored justice, we have ignored a lot of things we should have been paying attention to, and the prognosis is not good. I pray for my nation and God is great, God is good, and I am hopeful that He will bless America but I don't see it happening in the near future because the sheer arrogance of the American people right now. That arrogance is very dangerous. I think America is getting drunk on power and the church is saying nothing.'

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Tony Campolo