Russell Moore seeks confrontation with China

But will Southern Baptist Elites oppose these tariffs on China like they opposed the last trade tariffs on the Chinese Communist Party?

President Donald Trump is standing up to China’s increasingly bellicose and dangerous policies. The world is suffering through economic hardship caused by COVID-19. The coronavirus pandemic has shuttered economic activity around the globe. It is a direct result of China’s lies. The Chinese Communist Party totalitarians hid the truth. Then in Machiavellian ways secretly bought up critical medical equipment—depriving the rest of the world of needed supplies.

China should pay a price for its reckless, self-serving policy.

And President Donald Trump is working to make that happen.

The Trump administration is ‘turbocharging’ an initiative to remove global industrial supply chains from China as it weighs new tariffs to punish Beijing for its handling of the coronavirus outbreak,” according to Reuters.

This is good news.

However, it raises an interesting question: Will Southern Baptist Elites oppose these tariffs? They certainly opposed the tariffs last summer when China was involved in a trade war against American business. Lifeway, the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention and other SBC Elites sided with China against America.

Last year, Lifeway revealed it spent 31 percent of its printing costs in China. Much of this no doubt is because China is now the largest Bible printer in the world.

And argued that placing tariffs on China would make it harder for Americans to buy Bibles.

Some even argued that tariffs on China make Americans poorer. According to SBC Elite Joe Carter, “The taxes he’s imposed on Americans in the form of tariffs are making America poorer—both materially and spiritually.”

So, SBC Elites hold the same view that rich Wall Street and London investors. Gen. Spalding summarized it best in his new book Stealth War:

America was blinded by profits. As noted earlier, power brokers in London and New York decided to use slave labor in China to sell cheap products to unemployed people. It’s snowballed from there, and China capitalized on a world driven by profits, greed, and the mantra of increasing shareholder value.”[1]

If SBC Elites want to talk about making America spiritually poor, what about the spiritual cost of China’s use of slave labor to manufacture cheap goods?

Seems there is a spiritual cost in that type of trade too.

American Evangelicals should be asking themselves: why is someone like Donald Trump on the right side of these issues and why are Southern Baptist Elites on China’s side?

Why is the church doing business with totalitarian Communist China?


[1] Gen. Robert Spalding, Stealth War, pp. 232-233.