Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 54

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues, with a pref­er­ence for con­tent from aca­d­e­mics and influ­en­tial voic­es. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

A QUOTE I COULDN’T GET OUT OF MY HEAD

“I expect to die in bed, my suc­ces­sor will die in prison and his suc­ces­sor will die a mar­tyr in the pub­lic square. His suc­ces­sor will pick up the shards of a ruined soci­ety and slow­ly help rebuild civ­i­liza­tion, as the church has done so often in human his­to­ry.” — Car­di­nal Fran­cis George (1937–2015)

Includ­ing a quote may or may not become a recur­ring thing. Feed­back wel­comed.

LINKS WHICH CAUGHT MY INTEREST

1. Some help­ful arti­cles about pro­cess­ing the mass shoot­ing at a gay club in Orlan­do:
   • After Orlan­do Can We Still Weep Togeth­er? (Rus­sell Moore, blog)
   • Orlan­do — Grief In A Time Of Cul­ture War (David Ould, Gospel Coali­tion)
   • Tears For Orlan­do (Vince Vitale, RZIM)
   • 5 Ways Chris­tians Can Respond To The Orlan­do Shoot­ing (Joe Carter, Gospel Coali­tion)
   • A brief com­men­tary on how con­found­ing the sit­u­a­tion is (red­dit): I am not sure all these claims are con­firmed. Still — wow.
   • Ander­son Cooper’s Orlan­do Rant­i­ng Is Bad For Amer­i­ca (Mol­lie Hem­ing­way, The Fed­er­al­ist): one of the most sur­re­al things for me is that many peo­ple are blam­ing Chris­tian­i­ty for the actions of a Mus­lim shoot­er. This is def­i­nite­ly not the most impor­tant angle to the sto­ry, but it is worth con­sid­er­ing.
2. A His­to­ry of the Sec­ond Amend­ment in Two Paint­ings (Ezra Klein, Wonkblog): In the wake of Orlan­do, a lot of peo­ple are talk­ing about guns. This brief arti­cle from a few years ago is still one of the most insight­ful things I’ve read about firearms in Amer­i­ca. The Yale pro­fes­sor inter­viewed, Dr. Amar, also wrote a length­i­er arti­cle about this for Slate.
   • A hand­ful of facts which tak­en togeth­er make both sides uncom­fort­able: FBI homi­cide data by weapon,  vio­lence against gay peo­ple is com­mon, guns deter vio­lence against gay peo­ple, some gun con­trol laws do seem to reduce gun deaths, civil­ians with guns some­times stop mass shoot­ings, and the lead­ing caus­es of gun deaths are sui­cide fol­lowed by homi­cide with police shoot­ings and acci­den­tal shoot­ings com­ing in way behind (shock­ing­ly far behind if you extrap­o­late from what you see on the news).
   • Two come­di­ans take oppo­site views. Both are vul­gar, hilar­i­ous, and infor­ma­tive — Bill Burr buys a shot­gun and Jim Jef­fries on why Amer­i­cans are nuts.
   • See also the the­o­log­i­cal debate about guns I fea­tured in vol­ume 48.
3. Why there is a “gay ban” on blood dona­tions (red­dit): also some­thing peo­ple are talk­ing about since Orlan­do. This is a very sim­ple expla­na­tion. The com­ments are infor­ma­tive. I find it par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing that describ­ing the sit­u­a­tion accu­rate­ly prac­ti­cal­ly forces a focus on behav­ior and not ori­en­ta­tion. The fact-dri­ven expla­na­tion winds up fram­ing things sim­i­lar­ly to the way evan­gel­i­cals talk when dis­cussing LGBT issues.
4. Epic Cor­rec­tion of the Decade (Steven Hay­ward, Pow­er­line): the authors of a wide­ly-report­ed study about per­son­al­i­ty types and polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tions acci­den­tal­ly cod­ed their data back­wards. Their real results are the lit­er­al oppo­site of what you remem­ber see­ing in the news. Regard­less of your polit­i­cal propen­si­ties, this is kin­da hilar­i­ous. More at Retrac­tion­Watch.
5. Study: schools that give away con­doms see more teen births, not few­er (Sarah Kliff, Vox): “A new research paper sug­gests that [giv­ing away con­doms] may have back­fired. It finds that access to con­doms in school led to a 10 per­cent increase in teen births.”
6. The Sphinx Was Dis­ap­point­ed In Them (G.K. Chester­ton): “Now the mis­take of crit­ics is not that they crit­i­cise the world; it is that they nev­er crit­i­cise them­selves. They com­pare the alien with the ide­al; but they do not at the same time com­pare them­selves with the ide­al; rather they iden­ti­fy them­selves with the ide­al.” Chester­ton was one of the most impor­tant Chris­t­ian intel­lec­tu­als of the 20th cen­tu­ry. This almost became the quote of the week.
7. Amus­ing:
   • Nation’s Rad­i­cal­ized Chris­tians Pray­ing For Orlan­do (Baby­lon Bee)
   • Final exam dream (SMBC): in hon­or of all our grad­u­ates

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.