Thursday Night Links

• Another response, however, is to import new congregants from more backwards societies that have not yet secularized. For this reason, a common refrain from religious figures is that without migrants no one would fill the pews. For example, Pope Leo XIV has praised migrants for revitalizing the Church with their “spiritual enthusiasm and vitality.” Catholic Archbishop Edward J. Weisenburger similarly advocates migration in order to “revitalize parishes.” This sentiment is not limited to the Catholic Church; Protestant figures make the same argument in the United States and Europe, and so do Mormon ones. By making this argument, these institutions damn themselves. Claims that migrants are required to revitalize churches are admissions that these churches are incapable of inspiring faith in Americans or Europeans, and that the United States and Europe truly are post-Christian rather than merely in an impious era. Moribund religious organizations don’t just resort to mortmain migration to supply parishioners, they also do so to acquire money. The funding model for many religious organizations has gone from tithes or donations or fees from congregants, which requires organic appeal, to farming government grants for providing services to asylum seekers. As usual with mortmain migration, this does not work in the long run. The children of immigrants are exposed to all the same national and global influences as their native peers, and abandon the faith themselves. Plus, the source countries are secularizing or converting to more vital faiths capable of proselytizing and retaining believers. Long-run survival of these churches and denominations requires successfully grappling with 21st century secularism. But it’s much easier to avoid innovation by putting the day of reckoning off for a decade through mass migration. [Aporia Magazine]
• What people think about Jesus Christ is far more important to me than what people think about Republicans or conservatives, and pandering to white nationalists reinforces the worst stereotypes about the Christian faith. The Bible doesn’t say that immigrants, minorities, or neoconservatives alone need forgiveness; the Bible says “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” The Bible doesn’t say that only Anglo-Americans can be saved by faith in Jesus Christ, but that “whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” Nationalist populism, with its emphasis on bigger government helping friends and harming enemies, is bad enough; nationalist populism whose fixation on racial identity politics drives people away from Jesus Christ’s admonition that “no man cometh unto the Father but by me” is much worse. [The UnPopulist] 
• You cannot invest money in most bond markets today and make a reasonable return (the risk-free return has been recast as return-free risk). In addition, we are at or are approaching that point in many real estate markets as well. In many capital cities today, you’re lucky to be able to get more than a 4% gross rental yield on residential real estate (25x sales). After costs (including property management) and tax, that’s somewhere in the order of 40x earnings. Stocks are currently one of the last bastions of reasonable returns. But there is no inevitability that that situation will persist. Opportunity does not exist just because it is needed or desired. If markets were to melt up to 50x, it would feel good for a while (if you were invested). However, your future stream of dividends would not have increased, so in truth you would be no wealthier, and furthermore, you would be confronted with the reality of poor reinvestment returns on dividends and corporate stock buybacks. In the long run, this would make you worse rather than better off, despite feeling wealthier in the short run. Conversely, if markets were to melt down and trade at cheap levels, it would feel painful for a while. But you would be better off long term. Bond investors understand reinvestment risk, but most stock investors do not seem too. [Lyall Taylor]
• Kushner, who is forty-five, has little regard for the craft of diplomacy. In his view, it is less important to know a region’s history or the details of the partisans’ negotiating positions than to simply hear the sides out and split the difference. Peace deals are like real-estate deals, he has said. Both involve hard bargaining and, at times, bluffing. The fact that so many diplomats before him have struggled is a testament not to the intransigence of international problems but to the mediocrity of his predecessors. [The New Yorker]
• Canada’s status as an effective American protectorate benefits both parties, but some of Canada’s elite aspire to independent great power status and see immigration as a path to it. The logic is that with a tenth of America’s population, Canada must accommodate its larger southern neighbor, but with a quarter or a third would have much more leverage to act against US interests. This is wrong because people are not interchangeable. Canada with the population, prosperity, and stability of Mexico can harm the USA but not oppose it. In any case, the aspiration alone is a hostile act against the United States and should be treated as such. [Aporia Magazine]