Tag: hollywood

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 396

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.

396 is appar­ent­ly the num­ber of 3x3 slid­ing puz­zle posi­tions that require exact­ly 11 moves to solve start­ing with a hole in the cen­ter. I have not ver­i­fied that claim.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The Glob­al Trans­for­ma­tion of Chris­tian­i­ty Is Here (Tish Har­ri­son War­ren, The New York Times): “Mul­ti­ple schol­ars point to West­ern Europe as an exam­ple of what’s to come in the Unit­ed States. Today, the three largest Protes­tant church­es in Paris are Afro-Caribbean evan­gel­i­cal megachurch­es of a charis­mat­ic or Pen­te­costal bent. A study last year exam­ined Chi­nese church­es in Britain that were expe­ri­enc­ing expo­nen­tial growth, some­times dou­bling or tripling in size in a few years. Last April, the Ital­ian Chi­nese The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary opened in Rome to train Man­darin- and Can­tonese-speak­ing pas­tors. Some of the largest megachurch­es in metro Lon­don are led by Africans, includ­ing Kingsway Inter­na­tion­al Chris­t­ian Cen­ter, which is led by a Niger­ian, Matthew Ashimolowo, and is most like­ly the largest church in Europe.”
    • I have unlocked this one.
  2. The school shoot­ing in Nashville was the defin­ing news event of the week. This sto­ry is a tragedy fea­tur­ing three hot-but­ton top­ics: trans issues, Chris­t­ian per­se­cu­tion, and guns. A lot more is going to come out about this and peo­ple on the left and the right are going to lose their minds try­ing to spin it. If you see some­thing that thought­ful­ly explores one or more of these ele­ments let me know. Here are some reflec­tions on it that I have found inter­est­ing so far.
    • Pres­by­ter­ian School Mourns 6 Dead in Nashville Shoot­ing (Daniel Sil­li­man and Kate Shell­nutt, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “At Wood­mont Bap­tist, not long after they heard the sirens whir by, pas­tors and staff read reports of a shoot­ing at Covenant. When they saw on Twit­ter that their church was named as the reuni­fi­ca­tion site, they didn’t ques­tion it—they just put on their nametags, met police in the park­ing lot, and pre­pared to open their doors to bus­es of sur­viv­ing chil­dren and par­ents des­per­ate to see their kids safe and sound, senior pas­tor Nathan Park­er told CT. The chil­dren gath­ered in the fel­low­ship hall, where the stu­dent min­is­ter hand­ed out col­or­ing sheets and began pro­cess­ing the shoot­ing with them.”
    • Heav­i­ly Armed Assailant Kills Six at Chris­t­ian School (Emi­ly Cochrane, Ben Shpigel, Michael Lev­en­son and Jesus Jiménez, New York Times): “Chief Drake said that the assailant was ‘at one point a stu­dent’ at the school.… There was con­fu­sion about the gen­der iden­ti­ty of the assailant in the imme­di­ate after­math of the attack. Chief Drake said the shoot­er iden­ti­fied as trans­gen­der. Offi­cials used “she” and “her” to refer to the shoot­er, but, accord­ing to a social media post and a LinkedIn pro­file, the shoot­er appeared to iden­ti­fy as male in recent months.… Chief Drake said it was too ear­ly to dis­cuss a pos­si­ble motive for the shoot­ing, though he con­firmed that the attack was tar­get­ed.”
    • Heed­ing the Nashville shooter’s own voice: Do jour­nal­ists want the ‘man­i­festo’ released? (Ter­ry Mat­ting­ly, GetRe­li­gion): “Under nor­mal cir­cum­stances, jour­nal­ists would be doing every­thing that they can to answer the ‘why’ ques­tion in this case, includ­ing call­ing for the release of Hale’s man­i­festo text and oth­er mate­ri­als linked to the attack. But these are not nor­mal cir­cum­stances.… Unless I have missed some­thing, the AP cov­er­age — the news mate­r­i­al that will appear in most local news­pa­pers — have made zero ref­er­ences to the shooter’s own social-media mate­ri­als. Under nor­mal cir­cum­stances, these online sources are one of the first places that reporters raised in the Inter­net era go for insights into this kind of sto­ry.”
    • At a loss for words (Joshua Katz, The New Cri­te­ri­on): “I am sor­ry, there­fore, that TheNew York Times, in its above-the-fold front-page sto­ry yes­ter­day, names the shoot­er before the vic­tims.… Until we know more about the killer, it would be unwise to speak of her motives, though it is obvi­ous­ly note­wor­thy that a stan­dard data­base of mass shoot­ings in the Unit­ed States since 1966 does not record a sin­gle female shoot­er at a K–12 school. (Bizarrely, the main arti­cle in the Times ignores this fact, instead stat­ing that the shoot­ing was ‘unusu­al’ because Covenant is a pri­vate ele­men­tary school rather than a pub­lic high school.)”
      • Author sound famil­iar? Katz was a pro­fes­sor at Prince­ton and is now a fel­low at AEI and he’s been men­tioned in these week­ly roundups before.
    • In the Face of Tragedy, Peti­tion­ing God Is an Act of Faith (David French, New York Times): “It is a ter­ri­ble sign of our polar­ized times that the very con­cept of prayer in the midst of tragedy has itself become con­tentious. ‘Spare us your prayers,’ some will say. ‘We demand action.’ But what if peo­ple need prayer? What if griev­ing neigh­bors are des­per­ate for prayer?… For the faith­ful believ­er, prayer isn’t a sub­sti­tute for action, it’s a pre­req­ui­site for action. It grounds us before we move to serve oth­ers. It grounds us before we speak in the pub­lic square.”
      • I’ve unlocked the pay­wall on this one. Well worth your time.
    • Nashville’s Satan­ic Theo­phany (Rod Dreher, Sub­stack): “Lis­ten to me: this has been the strat­e­gy of LGBT advo­cates for more than twen­ty years now: con­vince the normies that if they don’t give the activists what they want, that they will have blood on their hands. At the turn of the cen­tu­ry, activists con­vinced schools that in order to com­bat bul­ly­ing — a wor­thy endeav­or — they had to teach gay ide­ol­o­gy. You might have thought, ‘Real­ly? Why isn’t it enough to teach that bul­ly­ing is wrong, and to pun­ish bul­lies?’ The ques­tion itself reveals the real moti­va­tion behind the cam­paign.”
      • Dreher recent­ly moved entire­ly to Sub­stack.
    • Not about the shoot­ing at all, but rel­e­vant to think­ing about issues sur­round­ing trans­gen­der ide­ol­o­gy. Under­stand­ing the Sex Bina­ry (Col­in Wright, City Jour­nal): “When biol­o­gists claim that ‘sex is bina­ry,’ they mean some­thing straight­for­ward: there are only two sex­es. This state­ment is true because an individual’s sex is defined by the type of gamete (sperm or ova) their pri­ma­ry repro­duc­tive organs (i.e., gonads) are orga­nized, through devel­op­ment, to pro­duce. Males have pri­ma­ry repro­duc­tive organs orga­nized around the pro­duc­tion of sperm; females, ova. Because there is no third gamete type, there are only two sex­es that a per­son can be. Sex is there­fore bina­ry.”
    • Also not about this shoot­ing but con­cern­ing guns in gen­er­al, the most infor­ma­tive thing I’ve seen is this debate between two pas­tors on guns that I shared back in vol­ume 48 (you have to click through to see it since it’s mul­ti­ple links). Many more relat­ed arti­cles I’ve shared through the years can be found at https://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/archives/tag/guns
  3. The age of aver­age (Alex Mur­rell, per­son­al blog): “The inte­ri­ors of our homes, cof­fee shops and restau­rants all look the same. The build­ings where we live and work all look the same. The cars we dri­ve, their colours and their logos all look the same. The way we look and the way we dress all looks the same. Our movies, books and video games all look the same. And the brands we buy, their adverts, iden­ti­ties and taglines all look the same. But it doesn’t end there. In the age of aver­age, homo­gene­ity can be found in an almost indef­i­nite num­ber of domains. The Insta­gram pic­tures we post, the tweets we read, the TV we watch, the app icons we click, the sky­lines we see, the web­sites we vis­it and the illus­tra­tions which adorn them all look the same. The list goes on, and on, and on.”
    • High­ly rec­om­mend­ed. The accom­pa­ny­ing pho­tos are strik­ing.
  4. How Chris­t­ian Is Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism? (Kele­fa San­neh, The New York­er): “If Amer­i­ca was once bet­ter than it is now, why did our Chris­t­ian fore­bears allow it to get worse? In answer­ing this ques­tion, Wolfe some­times sounds more like a crit­ic of the faith than a defend­er of it.… Wolfe thinks that there is some­thing ‘weird’ about the way in which the U.S. and oth­er West­ern nations reject eth­nic chauvinism—officially, anyway—in favor of an ‘ide­ol­o­gy of uni­ver­sal­i­ty.’ But this weird uni­ver­sal­i­ty is part of what sets Chris­tian­i­ty apart from most oth­er creeds.”
    • An insight­ful arti­cle in the New York­er. The author is the son of a famous the­olo­gian.
  5. Hollywood’s Great Awak­en­ing (Olivia Rein­gold, The Free Press): “Made by Chris­t­ian pro­duc­tion house King­dom Sto­ry Com­pa­ny and backed by mega dis­trib­u­tor Lion­s­gate, [Jesus Rev­o­lu­tion] earned back its $15 mil­lion bud­get the week­end it opened, when crit­ics pre­dict­ed it would gross clos­er to $6 or $7 mil­lion. That’s a tri­umphant per­for­mance com­pared to the week­end debuts of recent block­busters, like 65, a sci-fi flick with a $91 mil­lion bud­get that made just $12.3 mil­lion, and M. Night Shyamalan’s thriller Knock at the Cab­in, which brought in $14.1 mil­lion. Since its release on Feb­ru­ary 24, Jesus Rev­o­lu­tion has grossed $49 mil­lion in tick­et sales—besting many of this year’s Oscar nom­i­nees com­bined at U.S. box offices.”
  6. Some AI-relat­ed per­spec­tives
    • Exis­ten­tial risk, AI, and the inevitable turn in human his­to­ry (Tyler Cowen, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “I am remind­ed of the advent of the print­ing press, after Guten­berg. Of course the press brought an immense amount of good, enabling the sci­en­tif­ic and indus­tri­al rev­o­lu­tions, among many oth­er ben­e­fits. But it also cre­at­ed writ­ings by Lenin, Hitler, and Mao’s Red Book. It is a moot point whether you can ‘blame’ those on the print­ing press, nonethe­less the press brought (in com­bi­na­tion with some oth­er inno­va­tions) a remark­able amount of true, mov­ing his­to­ry. How about the Wars of Reli­gion and the bloody 17th cen­tu­ry to boot? Still, if you were redo­ing world his­to­ry you would take the print­ing press in a heart­beat. Who needs pover­ty, squalor, and recur­rences of Ghenghis Khan-like fig­ures?”
    • Response to Tyler Cowen’s Exis­ten­tial risk, AI, and the inevitable turn in human his­to­ry (Zvi Mow­showitz, Sub­stack): “If you cre­ate some­thing with supe­ri­or intel­li­gence, that oper­ates at faster speed, that can make copies of itself, what hap­pens by default? That new source of intel­li­gence will rapid­ly gain con­trol of the future. It is very, very dif­fi­cult to pre­vent this from hap­pen­ing even under ide­al cir­cum­stances.”
      • A rebut­tal to the Cowen piece.
    • Cowen defends his views (Tyler Cowen, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): he is defend­ing his views against a Scott Alexan­der piece which I did­n’t find as inter­est­ing as the Mow­showitz piece I linked above. The rejoin­der is broad enough to be use­ful on its own.
    • It is inter­est­ing to think about AI risk as a Chris­t­ian who believes in demons which seem to be smarter than humans and who are described sev­er­al times in the Bible as run­ning sig­nif­i­cant parts of this world.
  7. Free Will Is Real (Stu­art T. Doyle, Skep­tic): “Here I will try to con­vince you that free will is real and not an illu­sion. I’ll argue that far from being exem­plars of ratio­nal­i­ty and skep­ti­cism, the main argu­ments against free will make unjus­ti­fi­able log­i­cal leaps and are naïve in the light of cut­ting-edge sci­en­tif­ic findings.Throughout the philo­soph­i­cal lit­er­a­ture, resolv­ing the ques­tion of whether or not we have free will has often revolved around two cri­te­ria for free will: (1) We must be the true sources of our own actions. (2) We must have the abil­i­ty to do oth­er­wise. I argue that humans meet both cri­te­ria through two con­cepts: scale and unde­cid­abil­i­ty.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have On What Athe­ists Say There Is (M. Antho­ny Mills, Soci­ety of Catholic Sci­en­tists): “Accord­ing to the athe­ist, the theist’s error is believ­ing in one too many things. Yet, for the the­ist, the dis­agree­ment is not about the exis­tence of one par­tic­u­lar thing, but ‘about every­thing,’ as Mac­In­tyre puts it.” The begin­ning and end are excel­lent. The mid­dle mud­dles unless you have very pre­cise philo­soph­i­cal inter­ests. The author has a Ph.D. in phi­los­o­phy. From vol­ume 275.

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 142

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. A Qui­et Exo­dus: Why Black Wor­shipers Are Leav­ing White Evan­gel­i­cal Church­es (Camp­bell Robert­son, NY Times): “As the head­lines of the out­side world turned to police shoot­ings and protest, lit­tle changed inside major­i­ty-white church­es. Black con­gre­gants said that beyond the occa­sion­al vague prayer for heal­ing a divid­ed coun­try, or a dona­tion dri­ve for law enforce­ment, they heard noth­ing.” The dynam­ic described is real and one I have per­son­al­ly wit­nessed.  All in all a pret­ty good arti­cle although it has a few glar­ing blind spots, most­ly because it focus­es almost exclu­sive­ly on those who chose to leave and does­n’t tell the sto­ry of those who chose to stay.
  2. And while we’re talk­ing about race: “I Hope We Have No Crack­ers Here”: EBF Staff Sanc­tion Racial Slur (Anna Mitchell & Philip Clark, Stan­ford Review): “You would think that res­i­dents of a sup­pos­ed­ly pro­gres­sive and racial­ly con­scious house would jump to remove a racial epi­thet from house prop­er­ty.”
  3. This is also rel­e­vant to the first arti­cle: In Don­ald Trump, Evan­gel­i­cals Have Found Their Pres­i­dent (David Brody, New York Times): “In fact, evan­gel­i­cals take the long view on Mr. Trump; they afford him grace when he doesn’t deserve it. Few dis­pute that Mr. Trump may need a lit­tle more grace than oth­ers. But evan­gel­i­cals tru­ly do believe that all peo­ple are flawed, and yet Christ offers them grace. Shouldn’t they do the same for the pres­i­dent?”
  4. This Is How To Pay Col­lege Ath­letes (Patrick Hru­by, Dead­spin): “Because here’s the thing: nobody asks how’s it going to work when it comes to, say, pay­ing den­tists. Or invest­ment bankers. Or pro­gram­mers. Or pro­fes­sors. Or for that mat­ter col­lege coach­es, ath­let­ic direc­tors, and school pres­i­dents. There are no mas­ter com­pen­sa­tion plans for those and hun­dreds of oth­er lines of work because there’s no need for a plan. The very notion of com­ing up with a com­pli­cat­ed, cen­tral­ized set of rules dic­tat­ing how much plumbers can earn and under what cir­cum­stances they can earn it would be un-Amer­i­can…” 
  5. Was the apos­tle Paul mar­ried? Yes, he was. Here’s how we know. (Den­ny Burk, Per­son­al Blog):  “It may be that Paul’s words have impli­ca­tions for all who are unmar­ried, but I think Paul’s ref­er­ence to the unmar­ried refers to wid­ow­ers specif­i­cal­ly. There are a num­ber of rea­sons for this. Not the least of which is the fact that the Greek word for ‘wid­ow­er’ was rarely used in ancient Greek and was nev­er used in the Koine peri­od…. Paul uses the term ‘unmar­ried’ two oth­er times in this chap­ter to refer to those who were pre­vi­ous­ly mar­ried.” The author is a pro­fes­sor of Bib­li­cal stud­ies.
  6. Leav­ing Blokesworld: Why You Can’t Have Your Porn and #MeToo (Mea­gan Tyler, Aus­tralian Broad­cast­ing Com­pa­ny: Reli­gion and Ethics): “In one of the few attempts to link #MeToo and porn cul­ture, two Dutch filmmakers asked men to try and dif­fer­en­ti­ate between wom­en’s accounts of sex­u­al assault and scripts from porn films. The com­par­i­son high­lights the dif­fi­cult­ly in dis­cern­ing any dif­fer­ence…. So, for all the men who have been ask­ing what they can do in light of #MeToo, here’s a place start: stop link­ing your sex­u­al arousal to wom­en’s sex­u­al sub­or­di­na­tion. Stop watch­ing porn.”
  7. The Cen­ter Left Is On Life Sup­port (Michael Bren­dan Dougher­ty, Nation­al Review): “As lib­er­als backed away from the hard pol­i­tics of mate­r­i­al redis­tri­b­u­tion, they found them­selves try­ing to redis­trib­ute the hon­orif­ic resources of soci­ety. Instead of dra­mat­i­cal­ly expand­ing day care, you could talk about sin­gle moth­ers as heroes.” The author is on the right and is diag­nos­ing a prob­lem he sees across the aisle. His com­ments about redis­trib­ut­ing hon­orifics are insight­ful and remind me of Tyler Cowen’s obser­va­tion that pol­i­tics is often more about rais­ing or low­er­ing some group’s social sta­tus than actu­al­ly solv­ing press­ing prob­lems. 
  8. What’s an Inclu­sion Rid­er? Let the Pro­fes­sor Who Helped Invent the Con­cept Explain (Rebec­ca Kee­gan, Van­i­ty Fair): “Smith said that an inclu­sion rid­er is a pro­vi­sion added to actors’ con­tracts to ensure that cast­ing on pro­duc­tions is more rep­re­sen­ta­tive. ‘It stip­u­lates that in small and sup­port­ing roles, char­ac­ters should reflect the world we live in,’ she said. That includes 50 per­cent gen­der par­i­ty, 40 per­cent inclu­sion for peo­ple of col­or, 5 per­cent L.G.B.T.Q., and 20 per­cent dis­abled.” This is a clever maneu­ver. Unsur­pris­ing­ly, there does not seem to be a pro­vi­sion for high­light­ing evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians accord­ing to our pro­por­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion in soci­ety. What if in every sit­com there was a Ned Flan­ders char­ac­ter?

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Mak­ing Sense of the Num­bers of Gen­e­sis [pdf link] (Car­ol Hill, Per­spec­tives on Sci­ence and the Chris­t­ian Faith): “Joseph and Joshua were each record­ed as dying at age 110—a num­ber con­sid­ered ‘per­fect’ by the Egyp­tians. In ancient Egypt­ian doc­trine, the phrase ‘he died aged 110’ was actu­al­ly an epi­taph com­mem­o­rat­ing a life that had been lived self­less­ly and had result­ed in out­stand­ing social and moral ben­e­fit for oth­ers. And so for both Joseph and Joshua, who came out of the Egypt­ian cul­ture, quot­ing this age was actu­al­ly a trib­ute to their char­ac­ter. But, to be described as ‘dying at age 110’ bore no nec­es­sary rela­tion­ship to the actu­al time of an individual’s life span.” You will not agree with every­thing in this arti­cle, but it is full of fas­ci­nat­ing insights. (first shared in vol­ume 51)

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 82

1 Chronicles 12:32 - they "understood the times"
1 Chron­i­cles 12:32 — they “under­stood the times”

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. The new year is upon us. Con­sid­er read­ing through the entire Bible in 2017 (doing so will take around 10 min­utes a day). Here’s a thor­ough and help­ful arti­cle from last year about read­ing the whole Bible. If you want an app to make it eas­i­er, take a look at readscripture.org 
  2. Vari­eties of Reli­gious Expe­ri­ence (Ross Douthat, NY Times): “One of my hob­bies is col­lect­ing what you might call non­con­ver­sion sto­ries — sto­ries about sec­u­lar mod­erns who have super­nat­ur­al-seem­ing expe­ri­ences with­out being pro­pelled into any spe­cif­ic reli­gious faith.”
  3. Mark Zucker­berg says he’s no longer an athe­ist, believes ‘reli­gion is very impor­tant’ (Julie Zauzmer, Wash­ing­ton Post): Some­what relat­ed to the above. Also, if you hap­pen to bump into him or his wife then please let them know they are wel­come at Chi Alpha. 🙂
  4. The Evan­gel­i­cal Scion Who Stopped Believ­ing (Mark Oppen­heimer, NY Times): “Athe­ists and agnos­tics have long tried to rebot­tle reli­gion: to get the com­mu­ni­ty and the good works with­out the super­nat­ur­al stuff. It has worked about as well as non­al­co­holic beer. As with O’Doul’s, con­verts are few, and rarely do they end up hav­ing a very good time.” Inter­est­ing arti­cle, although Oppen­heimer mis­reads some back­ground details (in par­tic­u­lar, I think he was unfair to Stet­zer’s com­ment).
  5. In Praise of Igno­rance (Simon Cullen, Quil­lette): “Those with the audac­i­ty to admit that they have noth­ing intel­li­gent to say about a dif­fi­cult top­ic should be praised for refus­ing to fur­ther erode our com­mon epis­temic stan­dards, not scorned for fail­ing to toe some par­ty line.”
  6. Cam­pus Iden­ti­ty Pol­i­tics Is Doom­ing Lib­er­al Caus­es, a Pro­fes­sor Charges (Evan R. Gold­stein, Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion): an inter­view with Columbia’s Mark Lil­la — “iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics today isn’t about group belong­ing; it’s about per­son­al iden­ti­ty. From the ’70s into the ’90s, there was a shift in focus from group iden­ti­ty to the self as the inter­sec­tion of dif­fer­ent kinds of iden­ti­ties…. It’s extra­or­di­nary how much time and think­ing [stu­dents] devote to exact­ly what they are as the subto­tal of oth­er iden­ti­ties, rather than see­ing their time at the uni­ver­si­ty as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to leave those things behind, or over­come them, or become some­thing that’s actu­al­ly them­selves and autonomous in some way.” This is sort of a sequel to an arti­cle I shared back in vol­ume 77.
  7. Hous­es of Wor­ship Poised to Serve as Trump-Era Immi­grant Sanc­tu­ar­ies (Lau­rie Good­stein, NY TImes): “Church­es, schools and hos­pi­tals are con­sid­ered ‘sen­si­tive loca­tions,’ accord­ing to Immi­gra­tion and Cus­toms Enforce­ment. Immi­gra­tion offi­cers are sup­posed to avoid those loca­tions, unless they have advance approval from a super­vi­sor or face ‘exi­gent cir­cum­stances’ that require imme­di­ate action, said Jen­nifer Elzea, an agency spokes­woman.”
  8. Here’s Who Will Pray at Trump’s Inau­gu­ra­tion (Kate Shell­nut, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): it’s not obvi­ous from the arti­cle, but a sur­pris­ing num­ber of them are Pen­te­costal of one sort or anoth­er: Wayne Jack­son, Paula White, Sam­my Rodriguez.

Things Glen Found Amusing

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 14

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.

To that end, on Fri­days I’ve been shar­ing articles/resources I have found help­ful recent­ly in think­ing about broad­er cul­tur­al and soci­etal issues (be sure to see the dis­claimer at the bot­tom). May these give you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar. Past emails are archived athttp://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links

  1. From the big-bang-faith depart­ment: May­im Bia­lik: Hol­ly­wood is not friend­ly to peo­ple of faith (Sasha Bogursky, Fox News): Bia­lik, a devout Jew, is an actress on the Big Bang The­o­ry and in real life holds a Ph.D. in neu­ro­science. This inter­view caused such com­ment that she post­ed a fol­low-up on her blog: Where Faith Meets Sci­ence.

  2. From the his­tor­i­cal analy­sis depart­ment: Did Reli­gion Make The Civ­il War Worse? (Allen Guel­zo, The Atlantic): the author is a respect­ed pro­fes­sor with a sem­i­nary back­ground. I’m not sure what I think of his argu­ment, but I did find it inter­est­ing. The arti­cle made me think about Lincoln’s Sec­ond Inau­gur­al Address, which is always worth a re-read.

  3. From the hap­py news depart­ment: Chris­t­ian Mis­sions and the Spread of Democ­ra­cy (Greg Scan­dlen, The Fed­er­al­ist): This is a sum­ma­ry of some rather won­der­ful research Robert Wood­ber­ry pub­lished in The Amer­i­can Polit­i­cal Sci­ence Review back in 2012: The Mis­sion­ary Roots of Lib­er­al Democ­ra­cy. If it looks famil­iar it’s because I allude to it from time to time in my ser­mons and con­ver­sa­tions.

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.