There's a great deal of wisdom encapsulated by the idiom, "be careful what you wish for." The inevitability of unforeseen -- or perhaps just conveniently ignored -- consequences routinely popping up to bite humanity's collective posterior seems obvious.
Which brings me to the 2016 American presidential campaign. The connection? How about the human revolution we call globalization. Obviously, there is a religion angle here.
Sure, globalization gave American consumers cheaper foreign-made goods. But how was it not obvious to all that in return for T-shirts from Bangladesh we were sentencing American manufacturing to economic collapse? The ensuing loss of middle class jobs took quite a bite out of the American backside.
Love it or hate it, there's little doubt that globalization has reconfigured notions about the relationship between us and them. What was once foreign is now domestic. Their problems are now ours to an unprecedented degree.
GetReligion readers know that globalization has shaken up the American religious landscape. (Notice all the new mosques? That some American Episcopalians are now Anglicans loyal to African bishops?)
And politics? Immigrants and refugees, international trade pacts, overseas military entanglements and the limits of U.S. power, what constitutes authentic American culture and religion in a period of demographic transformation -- these issues loom large in the presidential campaign.
Perhaps the clearest illustration of globalization's influence on the candidates are the separated-at-birth outsider campaigns of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders.