Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 80

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. Rage and Heart­break: Required Reac­tions to Alep­po (Richard Stearns, ERLC): “Let your heart be bro­ken for the suf­fer­ing in the Mid­dle East and around the world. Pray it stays bro­ken as long as any moth­er any­where pleads for help and any child fears this night will be her last.” For some con­text, read 9 Things You Should Know About Alep­po and the Syr­i­an Cri­sis (Joe Carter, Gospel Coali­tion). And this is an inter­est­ing Mus­lim take on Alep­po (Omed Safi, Wash­ing­ton Post).
2. The Cri­sis of Chris­tians in Egypt (Gabriel Reynolds, First Things):  “It is telling, for exam­ple, that almost no such attacks have tak­en place in major­i­ty Shi’ite Iran against the Chris­t­ian minor­i­ty there. What, then, dis­tin­guish­es Egypt and Pak­istan from Iran?”
3. My Pres­i­dent Was Black (Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Atlantic): this is a long, beau­ti­ful­ly-writ­ten piece. The Atlantic is pub­lish­ing response pieces. The first one is intense: “My pres­i­dent was black and I still am.”
4. Why Hillary Clin­ton Bombed With White Evan­gel­i­cal Vot­ers (Ruth Gra­ham, Slate): “It was as if she was try­ing to alien­ate evan­gel­i­cals… and it worked.” This arti­cle nails a big part of the dynam­ic.
5. With Jesus’ Birth, Why Does The Bible List Two Dif­fer­ent Fam­i­ly Trees? (Richard Ostling, Patheos): “The gen­er­al con­sen­sus on the dif­fer­ences is that Matthew depict­ed Jesus’ legal descent from David, on the assump­tion Joseph adopt­ed him. If Mary had no broth­ers, by com­mon cus­tom Joseph would have been his father-in-law’s legal ‘son’ and heir through the mar­riage. Luke defined Jesus through Mary as a blood descen­dant of David.” (for some oth­er pos­si­ble expla­na­tions, see Mark Strauss at Zon­der­van Aca­d­e­m­ic)
6. The Defense of Lib­er­ty Can’t Do With­out Iden­ti­ty Pol­i­tics (Jacob Levy, Niska­nen Cen­ter): “Iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics… is about fight­ing for polit­i­cal jus­tice by draw­ing on the com­mit­ment that aris­es out of tar­get­ed injus­tice…. It lets us spot the major­i­ty group’s iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics rather than treat­ing it as the nor­mal back­ground state of affairs, and to rec­og­nize the oppres­sion and injus­tice that it gen­er­ates.” The author is a pro­fes­sor of polit­i­cal sci­ence at McGill.
7. The Right Shuts Down Free Speech, Too (Cather­ine Ramp­bell, Wash­ing­ton Post): it’s almost as though human nature is the same regard­less of what one thinks about the tax code. 
8. On the academic/research side of things:
   • Chris­t­ian Edu­ca­tion­al Attain­ment (Pew Research Cen­ter): “Chris­tians are one of the world’s most high­ly edu­cat­ed reli­gious groups: The vast major­i­ty of Chris­t­ian adults ages 25 and old­er (91%) have at least some for­mal school­ing, and one-in-five have post-sec­ondary degrees.” The Fed­er­al­ist has an illu­mi­nat­ing take on how this was por­trayed in the Amer­i­can media.
   • Shack­les and Dol­lars: His­to­ri­ans and Econ­o­mists Clash Over Slav­ery (Marc Par­ry, Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion): this is fas­ci­nat­ing. “Over the past sev­er­al years, a series of books has reshaped how his­to­ri­ans view the con­nec­tion between slav­ery and cap­i­tal­ism…. What the econ­o­mists are now assem­bling amounts to a bat­ter­ing ram aimed at the empir­i­cal foun­da­tions of these stud­ies…”
   • Edu­ca­tion or Indoc­tri­na­tion? The Accu­ra­cy of Intro­duc­to­ry Psy­chol­o­gy Text­books in Cov­er­ing Con­tro­ver­sial Top­ics and Urban Leg­ends About Psy­chol­o­gy (Fer­gu­son, Brown and Tor­res, Cur­rent Psy­chol­o­gy):  “we believe that these errors are con­sis­tent with an indoc­tri­na­tion, how­ev­er unin­ten­tion­al, into cer­tain beliefs or hypothe­ses that may be ‘dear’ to a socio-polit­i­cal­ly homo­ge­neous psy­cho­log­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty”

Things Glen Found Amusing

• Indul­gences  (Pearls Before Swine): the­o­log­i­cal warn­ing — this form of recur­sion does not actu­al­ly work 
• Local Man Relieved After Spir­i­tu­al Gift Test Comes Back Neg­a­tive For Giv­ing (Baby­lon Bee): “Accord­ing to sources, Shep­herd ripped open his results pack­et Thurs­day, and after ner­vous­ly perus­ing the cov­er let­ter, jumped for joy upon dis­cov­er­ing he had no desire or respon­si­bil­i­ty to be gen­er­ous what­so­ev­er.”
• Band Offers Admin­is­tra­tion $60,000 To Drop Accu­sa­tions (The Flip­side): bru­tal and well-deserved (if you don’t get the joke, check out two recent edi­tions of the Foun­tain Hop­per (dirty lan­guage ahead): about the $60,000 and about the band. In case you’re won­der­ing, I do think the band is being treat­ed unfair­ly (and I have not been a huge fan of the band’s cul­ture his­tor­i­cal­ly). 
• How To Get Vin­di­ca­tion (Basic Instruc­tions): if you are squea­mish, this one may not be for you. I found it hilar­i­ous. There is a video in the notes below the com­ic and I rec­om­mend it — if you are not squea­mish.

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.