Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 40

On Fri­days I share articles/resources I have found help­ful recent­ly in think­ing about broad­er cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

1. The KKK, White Pow­er, and Racism (Chi Alpha’s Dri­ving Diver­si­ty blog): “I woke up a lit­tle after mid­night unable to sleep. On Face­book, an African Amer­i­can stu­dent from one of our Chi Alpha groups mes­saged me ask­ing for my prayers and help. The KKK is hand­ing out fly­ers in his town (more fly­ers).“
2. An Evan­gel­i­cal Move­ment Takes On Cli­mate Change (Tik Root, Newsweek): “Appalled, Keys found­ed a non­prof­it called Jesus Peo­ple Against Pol­lu­tion in 1992, and for more than two decades that’s been her mis­sion. She calls it her ‘king­dom assign­ment’ from God.“
3. Defin­ing Evan­gel­i­cals In An Elec­tion Year (Ander­son and Stet­zer, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “The desire to sur­vey white evan­gel­i­cals to deter­mine their polit­i­cal inter­ests inad­ver­tent­ly ends up con­vey­ing two ideas that are not true: that ‘evan­gel­i­cal’ means ‘white’ and that evan­gel­i­cals are pri­mar­i­ly defined by their pol­i­tics…. Bro­ken out by eth­nic­i­ty, 29 per­cent of whites, 44 per­cent of African Amer­i­cans, 30 per­cent of His­pan­ics, and 17 per­cent of peo­ple from oth­er eth­nic­i­ties have evan­gel­i­cal beliefs.” Relat­ed: The Myth of the Evan­gel­i­cal Trump Vot­ers (Dar­ren Guer­ra, First Things): “the anti-Trump vote amongst all evan­gel­i­cals in the coun­try might reach 80–90% once non-Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry vot­ers are account­ed for.” 
4. This Is A Good Sto­ry About Grow­ing Up Evan­gel­i­cal (Lau­ra Turn­er, Jezebel): “It is rare to hear some­one in main­stream media acknowl­edge that they are glad to be or have been evan­gel­i­cal, even though about a quar­ter of Amer­i­cans are evan­gel­i­cal.” The author is John and Nan­cy Ortberg’s daugh­ter and is on staff with City Church in San Fran­cis­co.
5. Remem­ber­ing India’s Chris­t­ian Mar­tyrs Should Be a Church Pri­or­i­ty (Thomas Allen, Crux): “In August, 2008, hos­til­i­ty toward the Chris­t­ian “oth­er” explod­ed in Kand­hamal, leav­ing rough­ly 100 peo­ple dead, thou­sands injured, 300 church­es and 6,000 homes destroyed, and 50,000 peo­ple dis­placed, many of them forced to hide in near­by forests where more died of hunger and snakebites.”
6. The Oba­ma Doc­trine (Jef­frey Gold­berg, The Atlantic): This is real­ly long. Fas­ci­nat­ing, but for polit­i­cal junkies only.
   • In light of the above arti­cle, read Do Chris­tians Face Geno­cide From ISIS? US Has One Week Left To Decide (Sarah Zyl­stra, Chris­tian­i­ty Today) and try to make a pre­dic­tion.
   • David Brooks has an insight­ful piece prompt­ed by Gold­berg’s arti­cle: Dogs, Cats, and Lead­er­ship (NY Times).
7. As promised in the meet­ings, some sources to cor­rob­o­rate my claims about the ben­e­fi­cial impact of mis­sions: The Defend­er of the Good News, Ques­tion­ing Lamin San­neh (an inter­view at Chris­tian­i­ty Today), San­neh’s books Trans­lat­ing the Mes­sage: The Mis­sion­ary Impact On Cul­ture (BV2063 .S23 1989), Abo­li­tion­ists Abroad : Amer­i­can Blacks and the Mak­ing of Mod­ern West Africa (DT476.S26 1999) and Dis­ci­ples of All Nations: Pil­lars of World Chris­tian­i­ty (avail­able on reserve at the cir­cu­la­tion desk and also avail­able online), the works of Rod­ney Stark such as How The West Won (CB245 .S715 2014, also avail­able online), The Tri­umph of Chris­tian­i­ty (BR145.3 .S73 2011),  For The Glo­ry of God (BL221 .S747 2003) and, of course, the arti­cle I always allude to: The Mis­sion­ary Roots of Lib­er­al Democ­ra­cy (Wood­ber­ry, Amer­i­can Polit­i­cal Sci­ence Review)
8. Quick Links:
   • How a the shad­ow of a total eclipse looks from space (youtube): I assumed it would be big­ger.
   • A short, sim­ple cri­tique of mate­ri­al­ism.
   • Rock­et Engi­neers Are Spe­cial (SMBC)
   • A Heav­en­ly Plot Twist (SMBC): noth­ing in this is the­o­log­i­cal­ly accu­rate at all. Still fun­ny.

Why Do You Send This Email?

In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world. I pray this email gives you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar.

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it).

Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it.

Past emails are archived at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links (you can also sign up to receive them at that site)