Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 170

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions. If you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

1. So I was most­ly ignor­ing the Kavanaugh nom­i­na­tion, but this week things turned way up. Wow. Here are the arti­cles that have helped to shape my think­ing.
   • What Would a Seri­ous Inves­ti­ga­tion of Brett Kavanaugh Look Like? (Jean­nie Suk Ger­son, New York­er): “…Kavanaugh does not stand to lose some­thing that he already has. He is peti­tion­ing the pub­lic for the priv­i­lege of hold­ing one of the high­est pub­lic offices in the coun­try, and he should have to per­suade us that he didn’t do what he is accused of doing. ”
   • The Kavanaugh Deba­cle (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “I am glad that Ford will have a chance to speak her mind, and that Kavanaugh will have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to defend him­self. But I think this will only make things worse for all of us. If Kavanaugh gets a Sen­ate vote, and pre­vails, he will for­ev­er be taint­ed as a Supreme Court jus­tice. If he is forced to with­draw (that is, with­out fur­ther evi­dence against him emerg­ing), or is vot­ed down, he will become a mar­tyr to many, and will, as the Wall Street Jour­nal edi­to­r­i­al page said, legit­imize ‘weaponiz­ing every sex­u­al assault alle­ga­tion no mat­ter the evi­dence.’”
   • I Believe Her (Caitlin Flana­gan, The Atlantic): “I have been entire­ly agnos­tic about Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nom­i­na­tion. Repub­li­can pres­i­dents nom­i­nate con­ser­v­a­tive judges, and Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­dents nom­i­nate lib­er­al judges. This guy sound­ed like he was entire­ly qual­i­fied for the job. When Dianne Fein­stein made her announce­ment about the super-secret mys­tery let­ter by the anony­mous woman that she had sent to the FBI, I thought it was a Hail Mary pass aimed at scotch­ing the nom­i­na­tion, the kind of dis­taste­ful tac­tic that makes peo­ple hate pol­i­tics.”
   • In Eval­u­at­ing Cred­i­bil­i­ty, the Signs Point in Brett Kavanaugh’s Favor (Dan McLaugh­lin, Nation­al Review): “It’s always a good idea, in pol­i­tics, to eval­u­ate accu­sa­tions against your friends as if they were made against your ene­mies, and to eval­u­ate accu­sa­tions against your ene­mies as if they were made against your friends.” This is a very thor­ough argu­ment.
2. The Unlike­ly Endurance of Chris­t­ian Rock (Kele­fah San­neh, The New York­er): “On Billboard’s list of the twen­ty most pop­u­lar rock songs of 2017, ful­ly half of them were by bands whose mem­bers have espoused the Chris­t­ian faith.” A strik­ing claim, but you have to count Mor­mons as Chris­tians for the math to work. A fas­ci­nat­ing and well-researched arti­cle nonethe­less.
3. The Tiny Blond Bible Teacher Tak­ing on the Evan­gel­i­cal Polit­i­cal Machine (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “Where­as her crit­i­cisms of church lead­ers were once veiled, she now speaks her mind freely. She blogged ici­ly about meet­ing a promi­nent male the­olo­gian who looked her up and down and told her she was pret­ti­er than anoth­er famous female Bible teacher. She has cas­ti­gat­ed the evan­gel­i­cal move­ment for sell­ing its soul to buy polit­i­cal wins. “
   • Good arti­cle, but see also this analy­sis piece for con­text: Is Beth Moore real­ly tak­ing on the ‘evan­gel­i­cal polit­i­cal machine,’ what­ev­er that is? (Julia Duin, GetRe­li­gion): “As is often the case, the head­line is a over­ly alarmist and zooms past the actu­al facts report­ed in the arti­cle.… I’m uncon­vinced that Moore is tak­ing on any mono­lith­ic machine, much less some kind of evan­gel­i­cal Deep State appa­ra­tus.”
4. The Oth­er Polit­i­cal Cor­rect­ness (Isaac Stone Fish, The New Repub­lic): “There is an epi­dem­ic of self-cen­sor­ship at U.S. uni­ver­si­ties on the sub­ject of Chi­na, one that lim­its debate and fun­nels stu­dents and aca­d­e­mics away from top­ics like­ly to offend the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty.”
   • From some­one not wor­ried about offend­ing Chi­na: The People’s Repub­lic of Cru­el­ty (Bret Stephens, New York Times): “In the list of what ails Chi­na — slow­ing growth; cor­rupt offi­cial­dom; a declin­ing birth rate; a trade war with the U.S.; Xi Jinping’s cult of per­son­al­i­ty; the inher­ent dis­con­nect between a pol­i­tics of repres­sion and the spir­it of inno­va­tion — the regime’s war on the soul doesn’t usu­al­ly rank high. But it mat­ters most. It means the regime has made an ene­my of the one thing it can­not kill, cap­ture, erad­i­cate or cure. At some point it will either have to aban­don the strug­gle or destroy itself in the effort, much as the Sovi­et Union did.”
5. So a Chica­go priest who was once abused burns a rain­bow-cross flag: All heck breaks out (Ter­ry Mat­ting­ly, GetRe­li­gion): the title is click­baity, but the arti­cle deliv­ers. “Well, here is a hot-but­ton sto­ry if I’ve ever seen one.”
6. The Lib­er­al­ism of the Reli­gious Right (Emi­ly Ekins, New York Times): “Reli­gion appears to actu­al­ly be mod­er­at­ing con­ser­v­a­tive atti­tudes, par­tic­u­lar­ly on some of the most polar­iz­ing issues of our time: race, immi­gra­tion and iden­ti­ty. Church­go­ing Trump vot­ers have more favor­able feel­ings toward African-Amer­i­cans, His­pan­ics, Asians, Jews, Mus­lims and immi­grants com­pared with non­re­li­gious Trump vot­ers. This holds up even while account­ing for demo­graph­ic fac­tors like edu­ca­tion and race.“ Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus.
7. What Do We Owe Her Now? (Eliz­a­beth Bru­enig, Wash­ing­ton Post): “‘The exam­i­na­tion that I did was con­sis­tent with what [Wyatt] said,’ [Nurse] Schi­a­vo told me when I con­tact­ed her this May to dis­cuss her find­ing. ‘That girl was raped.’ As I read her exam notes aloud to her over the phone, Schi­a­vo began to fill in details on her own. She remem­bered Wyatt’s case all these years lat­er, right down to the fact that she was nev­er called to court to tes­ti­fy about it.” This is a depress­ing sto­ry, well-researched.
   • The fol­low-up is more encour­ag­ing: Amber Wyatt told her sto­ry of rape. This is how the world respond­ed. (Eliz­a­beth Bru­enig, Wash­ing­ton Post): “The day after her 29th birth­day, which was also the day after her sto­ry first appeared online, Amber Wyatt, now Wil­son, stood in the show­er in her San Mar­cos home and sobbed — hard, wrench­ing, wrung-out tears. They had been a long time in com­ing.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

• Celebri­ty Pas­tor Fan­ta­sy Draft (John Crist, YouTube)
• Super­man Wants To Learn Mar­tial Arts (Texts From Super­heroes)
• How To Be Suc­cess­ful (Pearls Before Swine)

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have On Polit­i­cal Cor­rect­ness (William Dere­siewicz, The Amer­i­can Schol­ar): a long and thought­ful arti­cle. “Selec­tive pri­vate col­leges have become reli­gious schools. The reli­gion in ques­tion is not Method­ism or Catholi­cism but an extreme ver­sion of the belief sys­tem of the lib­er­al elite: the lib­er­al pro­fes­sion­al, man­age­r­i­al, and cre­ative class­es, which pro­vide a large major­i­ty of stu­dents enrolled at such places and an even larg­er major­i­ty of fac­ul­ty and admin­is­tra­tors who work at them. To attend those insti­tu­tions is to be social­ized, and not infre­quent­ly, indoc­tri­nat­ed into that reli­gion…. I say this, by the way, as an athe­ist, a demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ist, a native north­east­ern­er, a per­son who believes that col­leges should not have sports teams in the first place—and in case it isn’t obvi­ous by now, a card-car­ry­ing mem­ber of the lib­er­al elite.” (first shared in vol­ume 92)

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). And to the extent you can dis­cern my opin­ions, please under­stand that they are my own and not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of Chi Alpha or any oth­er orga­ni­za­tion I may be per­ceived to rep­re­sent.

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 this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.