Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 77

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

Things Glen Found Interesting

1. White Chris­t­ian Apoc­a­lypse? (Philip Jenk­ins, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): Jenk­ins is a well-known his­to­ri­an. “On one crit­i­cal issue, though, con­tem­po­rary debate and the­o­riz­ing real­ly is tres­pass­ing on my areas of exper­tise.” Jenk­ins unpacks some long-term trends and their impli­ca­tions for Amer­i­ca’s demo­graph­ic des­tiny.
2. The End of Iden­ti­ty Lib­er­al­ism (Mark Lil­la, NY Times): One of the more insight­ful things I’ve read late­ly. It’s inspired by the recent elec­tion, but is about some­thing much broad­er — some intrin­sic weak­ness­es of iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics. For a very strong reac­tion against it, read Mak­ing White Suprema­cy Respectable. Again. (Kather­ine Franke, LA Review of Books). Both authors are pro­fes­sors at Colum­bia, which will no doubt make for tense times in the fac­ul­ty lounge.
3. Yes, Trump will build his bor­der wall. Most of it is already built. (Peter Andreas, Wash­ing­ton Post): “It is impor­tant to remem­ber that Trump’s pre­de­ces­sors care­ful­ly avoid­ed call­ing any new bor­der bar­ri­ers a ‘wall.’” Wow. I did not real­ize how much of the south­ern bor­der is already bar­ri­cad­ed. It would be help­ful if reporters peri­od­i­cal­ly brought this fact up for con­text.
4. Try­ing To Think Through The Log­ic Of Abor­tion Rights (Justin Tay­lor, The Gospel Coali­tion): Tay­lor sum­ma­rizes the argu­ments of two phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sors. For me, med­i­tat­ing on Luke 1:39–45 has been impor­tant when think­ing about abor­tion. 
5. Every­one should have the right to assist­ed sui­cide — or no one should (Feli­cia Nimue Ack­er­man, Vox): “a soci­ety that ‘pathol­o­gizes’ sui­ci­dal feel­ings of indig­ni­ty and degra­da­tion in rape vic­tims while endors­ing them in the ter­mi­nal­ly ill is, I con­tend, engag­ing in a hor­ri­fy­ing, odi­ous form of big­otry.” The author is a phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor at Brown.

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.

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.