Detroit

I don't normally read the Weekly Standard. In fact, I don't know if I've ever read it. However, one good friend sent me an article written recently describing the complex, paradoxical world that is (Metro) Detroit.

Precisely what caused all this mess is perhaps best left to historians. Locals' ideas for how it happened could keep one pinned to a barstool for weeks: auto companies failing or pushing out to the suburbs and beyond, white flight caused by the '67 riots and busing orders, the 20-year reign of Mayor Coleman Young who scared additional middle-class whites off with statements such as "The only way to handle discrimination is to reverse it," freeways destroying mass transit infrastructure, ineptitude, corruption, Japanese cars--take your pick.

What's clear, though, is that Detroit has failed, that it's broken and cracked. It is dying. But it's not yet dead. Although it has lost over half its population since 1950, 900,000 people still live there.


While, I have take issues with some under-girding assumptions of the writer (a lack of historical perspective regarding the legacy of slavery in our urban cities for example) I think this piece captures the need for hope, not cynicism to be the primary attitude of Christians--regardless of denominational leaning, color, and creed--toward the future of Detroit (or Boston, Atlanta, Dallas, Nashville, San Fran, etc.). After all, The Book of Jonah is part of sacred text some people confess to be "God breathed."