Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 1

[this was an email I sent to the stu­dents in Chi Alpha @ Stan­ford]

In the time of King David, the Bible says that the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). That’s a wor­thy goal — to under­stand our times and know how to live wise­ly in them. We need to learn how our faith inter­acts with the world.

To that end, I’m going to try some­thing: for the next few weeks I’ll send out three to five articles/resources I have found help­ful in think­ing about nation­al, glob­al and the­o­log­i­cal issues (be sure to see the dis­claimer at the bot­tom). My hope is these read­ings nudge you into con­tin­u­ing the tra­di­tion of Issachar. If these emails are well-received then they may become an ongo­ing thing.

So here’s the first batch:

1. The Spir­i­tu­al Shape of Polit­i­cal Ideas (Joseph Bot­tum, The Week­ly Stan­dard): many mod­ern polit­i­cal ideas are derived from Chris­t­ian the­o­log­i­cal con­cepts.

2. What ISIS Real­ly Wants (Graeme Wood, The Atlantic): the key to under­stand­ing ISIS is under­stand­ing their faith, par­tic­u­lar­ly their escha­tol­ogy. A take­away for Chris­tians — your escha­tol­ogy mat­ters (so get it right).

3. Evan­gel­i­cal Protes­tants Are The Biggest Win­ners When­ev­er Peo­ple Change Faiths (Leah Libresco, FiveThir­tyEight): this is the most inter­est­ing take I’ve seen on the Pew Forum study that filled the news recent­ly. If cur­rent trends con­tin­ue until they reach an equi­lib­ri­um point, then evan­gel­i­cal­ism will become the largest reli­gious iden­ti­ty in Amer­i­ca (fol­lowed by either the reli­gious­ly unaf­fil­i­at­ed or the Mor­mons depend­ing on whether fer­til­i­ty is fac­tored in).

4. God’s For­ev­er Fam­i­ly: The Jesus Peo­ple Move­ment in Amer­i­ca (Lar­ry Eskridge, Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty Press): a schol­ar­ly his­to­ry of an oft-over­looked Great Awak­en­ing — the Jesus Peo­ple revival among the hip­pies. It is full of delight­ful anec­dotes, includ­ing this charmer: one cou­ple “began to talk to their friends about Jesus and even went so far as to name their dog ‘Repent’ so they could stand in the city’s parks and shout the canine’s name and their mes­sage at the top of their lungs.”  (p 148). The book is avail­able online through Stan­ford’s library sys­tem — the link will take you right there.

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read stuff (and may there­fore share stuff) from all over the ide­o­log­i­cal map. I read wide­ly in part because I aspire to pass an ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and more gen­er­al­ly because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand.” I encour­age you to adopt a sim­i­lar per­spec­tive.

Also, for the first few install­ments I’ll prob­a­bly reach far­ther back than nor­mal for some arti­cles that stand out in my mem­o­ry. As time goes on I imag­ine the links will become more and more recent.