On Fridays — sometimes Saturdays when Friday is a holiday — 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
- ICE Goes After Church Leaders and Christians Fleeing Persecution (Andy Olsen, Christianity Today): “The pastor asks if he can go with them or even follow them. ‘They need me,’ he says. An agent says the pastor cannot go with them. Torosian tells the agents that the couple was persecuted in Iran and fled because of their faith. The agents don’t respond. ‘They came here for freedom, not like this,’ Torosian tells the agents. ‘I know you are doing your job, but shame on you. Shame on this government.’”
- Does CPS Investigate One Third of All Children in the US? (Maxwell Tabarrok, Substack): “Does CPS investigate one out of every three American children? The answer to this one is not available directly in the primary source reports and the underlying data is only available after an application for research use, so we’ll have to trust a group of researchers at the Washington University school of public health. They download and de-duplicate the master data files from 2003–2014 and confirm that 37% of American children are the subject of at least one screened-in referral to CPS from ages 0–18.”
- Have You Heard the Good News? (Clifford S. Asness and Michael R. Strain, The Free Press): “Yes, we have real problems. But widen the aperture, and you’ll see that there has never been a better time to be alive than the present day.… a relative standard will always find relative poverty. But using an absolute standard finds that income poverty is below 6 percent. On a consumption basis, well over 20 percent of households were in poverty in the 1960s, and 11 percent were in poverty in 1990. Today, the consumption poverty rate is around 1 percent.”
- When We Started To Lie (Matti Friedman, The Free Press): “People writing letters complaining about press errors and demanding corrections, then and now, miss the point: These aren’t errors. They’re the result of the press doing a different job correctly.”
- Duke Law Journal Sent a Secret Memo to Minority Applicants Telling Them They’d Get Extra Points for Writing About Their Race (Aaron Sibarium, Washington Free Beacon): “When the Supreme Court banned affirmative action in 2023, it said that colleges and universities could not use essays as a Trojan horse for racial preferences. The documents from Duke illustrate how a top law review has skirted that directive, creating a points-based system that foregrounds race and could put the law school in legal jeopardy.… The packet was overseen by journal editor in chief Gabriela Nagle Alverio, who received her B.A. in Gender and Sexuality Studies from Stanford University…”
- You Don’t Need the Same Politics to Surf Together (David Litt, The Free Press): “But over the years, Matt and I got to know each other better, and the better we got to know each other, the clearer it became that we had absolutely nothing in common. He was into Ultimate Fighting; I was into Ultimate Frisbee. He was covered in tattoos; I was covered in J.Crew. His definition of a workplace injury was death by violent electric shock; mine was carpal tunnel syndrome.”
- Where I Learned the Power of Looking at Everything (Rachel Kushner, New York Times): “Having arrived early for the ceremony, I lingered near Sather Gate, with its ornate patinated metalwork, and then headed toward Doe Library, where I used to not study and stared at people instead. Everything glowed with a kind of institutional grandeur. My superego scolded me further: ‘Look where you were! The best public university in the world, only to squander your luck!’ The beauty of the campus, which I had no memory of appreciating, seemed almost crushing in its majesty.”
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.