Tim is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, where he works on economic competition, cronyism, civil society, localism, and religion in America. He is concurrently the commentary editor at the Washington Examiner.
“The American dream is dead.”
This is the prevailing belief in many parts of the country. When your town has been gutted by opiod addiction, joblessness, and an aging population a pessimistic outlook makes sense. What makes less sense is why some areas have been ravaged so much more than others.
It’s an important question to ask. The unequal distribution of decline has played an enormous role in creating the gaping divisions impacting our worldviews, politics, economy, and now, even our health. Rather than speculate about something so critical, American Enterprise Institute resident fellow, Washington Examiner senior columnist, and author, Tim Carney, went right to the source for his latest book, Alienated America: Why Some Places Thrive While Others Collapse.
What he found was surprising.
The defining characteristic between people and places that thrived and those that didn’t wasn’t wealth, education, or a host of other more tangible factors, but community—particularly, church-centered community. Listen [link to talk] as Carney explains the profound role that strong institutions of community, including churches, can have in our civic life and very identities. This has big implications for how we live our life as Christians, how we engage with our church, and how we love our neighbors, even when we’re forced to be apart.
Tim was our first try at virtual Bring Your Own Brunch in our new world of social distancing and locked into Zoom.
The recording starts part way into Nan’s introduction, reflecting on peoples’ lived experience of community or lack thereof.
You can see this experience, too, but because of a glitch in the recording you’ll need to download it. Sorry. We’re learning as we go.
