Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 56

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.

Articles I Found Interesting

  1. Your Unchurched Friends Want to Know About Your Faith (Bob Smi­etana, Chris­tian­i­ty Today):  “Almost half [of unchurched Amer­i­cans] say they dis­cuss reli­gion freely if the top­ic comes up (47%). A third say they lis­ten with­out respond­ing (31%), while 11 per­cent change the sub­ject. Only about a third say some­one has explained the ben­e­fits of being a Chris­t­ian to them (35%).”
  2. Oberge­fell and the New Gnos­ti­cism (Sherif Gir­gis, First Things): “For decades, the Sex­u­al Rev­o­lu­tion was sup­posed to be about free­dom. Today, it is about coer­cion. Once, it sought to free our sex­u­al choic­es from restric­tive laws and unwant­ed con­se­quences. Now, it seeks to free our sex­u­al choic­es from oth­er peo­ple’s dis­ap­proval.” Sherif has spo­ken for Chi Alpha before.
  3. As a Psy­chi­a­trist I Diag­nose Men­tal Ill­ness. And, Some­times, Demon­ic Pos­ses­sion (Richard Gal­lagher, Wash­ing­ton Post): “Ques­tions about how a sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly trained physi­cian can believe ‘such out­dat­ed and unsci­en­tif­ic non­sense,’ as I’ve been asked, have a sim­ple answer. I hon­est­ly weigh the evi­dence.”
  4. Most Amer­i­can Chris­tians Believe They’re Vic­tims of Dis­crim­i­na­tion (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “Almost half of Amer­i­cans say dis­crim­i­na­tion against Chris­tians is as big of a prob­lem as dis­crim­i­na­tion against oth­er groups, includ­ing blacks and minori­ties.”
  5. Nine Prayers For The Not-Yet-Mar­ried (Mar­shall Segal, Desir­ing God): rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent, rel­e­vant to many of you.
  6. Man Seeks Euthana­sia To End His Sex­u­al­i­ty Strug­gle (Jonathan Blake, BBC): sanc­tion­ing euthana­sia is unwise and leads to unex­pect­ed out­comes. For a the­o­log­i­cal argu­ment see Is There No Moral Law? (Dou­glas Far­row, First Things).
  7. Russia’s Pro­posed Law: No Evan­ge­liz­ing Out­side of Church (Kate Shell­nut, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “To share their faith, cit­i­zens must secure a gov­ern­ment per­mit through a reg­is­tered reli­gious orga­ni­za­tion, and they can­not evan­ge­lize any­where besides church­es and oth­er reli­gious sites. The restric­tions even apply to activ­i­ty in pri­vate res­i­dences and online.”
  8. Some more on Brex­it:
    • Why Brex­it Hap­pened And What It Means (Tyler Cowen): “The actu­al prac­ti­cal prob­lems with immi­gra­tion are much greater here in Brus­sels, but the coun­try is much fur­ther from ‘doing any­thing about it,’ whether pru­dent­ly or not, and indeed to this day Bel­gium is not actu­al­ly a mature nation-state and it may splin­ter yet.  That Eng­land did some­thing is one reflec­tion of the fact that Eng­land is a bet­ter-run region than Bel­gium, even if you feel as I do that the vote was a big mis­take…. Most of all, I con­clude that the desire to pre­serve the Eng­lish nation [sic] as Eng­lish is stronger than I or indeed most oth­ers had thought.  There is a pos­i­tive side to that.  And if all along you thought there was no case for Leave, prob­a­bly it is you who is the provin­cial one.” Odd­ly, the [sic] is in the orig­i­nal.
    • A great piece from short­ly before the vote: Reflec­tions Of A Ref­er­en­dum Fence-Sit­ter (David Good­hart, Prospect Mag­a­zine)
    • An inter­est­ing piece on the the­ol­o­gy of Brex­it: For hard-line Protes­tants, leav­ing Europe is a mat­ter of escha­tol­ogy (“Eras­mus”, The Econ­o­mist)

Interesting Research Findings

  • Why Peo­ple With No Reli­gion Are Pro­ject­ed To Decline As A Share Of The World’s Pop­u­la­tion (Michael Lip­ka, Pew Research): “These pro­jec­tions, which take into account demo­graph­ic fac­tors such as fer­til­i­ty, age com­po­si­tion and life expectan­cy, fore­cast that peo­ple with no reli­gion will make up about 13% of the world’s pop­u­la­tion in 2050, down from rough­ly 16% as of 2010.”
  • The Data On Chil­dren In Same-Sex House­holds Get More Depress­ing (Mark Reg­nerus, Pub­lic Dis­course): “…dur­ing ado­les­cence the chil­dren of same-sex par­ents report­ed mar­gin­al­ly less depres­sion than the chil­dren of oppo­site-sex par­ents. But by the time the sur­vey was in its fourth wave—when the kids had become young adults between the ages of 24 and 32—their expe­ri­ences had reversed. Indeed, dra­mat­i­cal­ly so: over half of the young-adult chil­dren of same-sex par­ents report ongo­ing depres­sion, a surge of 33 per­cent­age points (from 18 to 51 per­cent of the total). Mean­while, depres­sion among the young-adult chil­dren of oppo­site-sex par­ents had declined from 22 per­cent of them down to just under 20 per­cent. A few oth­er find­ings are worth men­tion­ing as well. Obe­si­ty surged among both groups, but the dif­fer­ences became sig­nif­i­cant over time, with 31 per­cent obe­si­ty among young-adult chil­dren of oppo­site-sex par­ents, well below the 72 per­cent of those from same-sex house­holds.”
  • Church Atten­dance Linked With Reduced Sui­cide Risk, Espe­cial­ly For Catholics, Study Says (Melis­sa Healy, LA Times): “Com­pared with women who nev­er par­tic­i­pat­ed in reli­gious ser­vices, women who attend­ed any reli­gious ser­vice once a week or more were five times less like­ly to com­mit sui­cide between 1996 and 2010, says a study pub­lished Wednes­day by JAMA Psy­chi­a­try.” See the under­ly­ing study in JAMA Psy­chi­a­try.
  • Researchers Have Found That War Has A Remark­able and Mirac­u­lous Effect (Jeff Guo, Wonkblog): “the expe­ri­ence of wartime vio­lence some­how changes peo­ple for the bet­ter, mak­ing them more coop­er­a­tive and more trust­ing.”
  • Con­crete Prob­lems in AI Safe­ty (mul­ti­ple impres­sive authors, arXiv.org): CS peo­ple please read this, espe­cial­ly in con­junc­tion with AI Downs Fight­er Pilot.

A Quote To Ponder

“Being part of com­mu­ni­ty takes time and involves restric­tions. Mere­ly hav­ing an iden­ti­ty doesn’t. In our cul­tur­al empha­sis and life, we’ve gone from a com­mu­ni­ty focus to an iden­ti­ty focus.” David Brooks (source)

Something Amusing To End On

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.

If you have a non-Stan­ford friend who might be inter­est­ed in these emails, they can sign up at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/subscribe, and if you want to view the archives they are at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

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