Tag: Mormonism

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 244

The­o­log­i­cal per­spec­tives on the pan­dem­ic, some inter­est­ing news tid­bits, the state of Stan­ford ath­let­ic fan­dom, and a good reminder that Mor­monism is not a Chris­t­ian denom­i­na­tion.

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. Chris­t­ian Coro­n­avirus Per­spec­tives
    • Chris­tian­i­ty Offers No Answers About the Coro­n­avirus (N.T. Wright, Time): “Sup­pos­ing real human wis­dom doesn’t mean being able to string togeth­er some dodgy spec­u­la­tions and say, ‘So that’s all right then?’ What if, after all, there are moments such as T. S. Eliot rec­og­nized in the ear­ly 1940s, when the only advice is to wait with­out hope, because we’d be hop­ing for the wrong thing? Ratio­nal­ists (includ­ing Chris­t­ian ratio­nal­ists) want expla­na­tions; Roman­tics (includ­ing Chris­t­ian roman­tics) want to be giv­en a sigh of relief. But per­haps what we need more than either is to recov­er the bib­li­cal tra­di­tion of lament.”
      • Please remem­ber that authors do not usu­al­ly pick the head­lines for their arti­cles. In this case espe­cial­ly the lev­el of mis­match between the title and the arti­cle is strik­ing.
    • Sur­prised by Hope­less­ness: A Response to NT Wright (Andy Davis, The Gospel Coali­tion): “Despite what T. S. Eliot says, Chris­tians know exact­ly what to hope for. We’ve been clear­ly instruct­ed by God’s prophet­ic Word, and there­fore, we should be radi­ant with hope—an unshak­able con­vic­tion that the future is inde­scrib­ably bright. The world is ‘with­out hope and with­out God’ (Eph. 2:14); so when Chris­tians radi­ate hope, the world notices and is moved to ask us to give a rea­son for the hope with­in us (1 Pet. 3:15).”
    • Like the Mer­chants of Baby­lon (Dou­glas Wil­son, per­son­al blog): “The Bible tells us that God’s deal­ings with mankind are often mys­te­ri­ous, and so we should nev­er rush to glib expla­na­tions. But His works are not absolute­ly inscrutable. When Jesus rebuked the peo­ple for mis­read­ing the col­lapse of the tow­er of Siloam, and for the inci­dent where Pilate killed the men of Galilee (Luke 13:1–5), He rebuked them, not for read­ing mean­ing into the sto­ry, but for hav­ing read the wrong mean­ing into the sto­ry.”
    • How An Evil Virus Points to the Crush­ing Weight of the Fall (David French, The Dis­patch): “Last night, my wife and I were walk­ing through our neigh­bor­hood and saw a pas­tor friend in his back­yard. We stopped him and had a love­ly con­ver­sa­tion while main­tain­ing prop­er social dis­tanc­ing from the side­walk. As we shared our own bur­dens and stress­es, he made an impor­tant obser­va­tion – this moment demon­strates so clear­ly our need for a sav­ior. By that, he meant far, far more than the idea that we need some of that ‘old-time reli­gion’ before we meet our mak­er. No, he meant that a bro­ken world eager­ly awaits the redemp­tion declared in Rev­e­la­tions 21, when the Lord declares, ‘Behold, I make all things new.’”
    • The Book of Com­mon Prayer: Prayers for Plagues and Times of Great Sick­ness (Richard Beck, per­son­al blog): “Have pity upon us mis­er­able sin­ners, who now are vis­it­ed with great sick­ness and mor­tal­i­ty; that like as thou didst then accept of an atone­ment, and didst com­mand the destroy­ing Angel to cease from pun­ish­ing, so it may now please thee to with­draw from us this plague and griev­ous sick­ness; through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
    • The Apoc­a­lypse as an ‘Unveil­ing’: What Reli­gion Teach­es Us About the End Times (Eliz­a­beth Dias, New York Times): “For peo­ple of many faiths, and even none at all, it can feel late­ly like the end of the world is near. Not only is there a plague, but hun­dreds of bil­lions of locusts are swarm­ing East Africa. Wild­fires have rav­aged Aus­tralia, killing an untold num­ber of ani­mals. A recent earth­quake in Utah even shook the Salt Lake Tem­ple to the top of its icon­ic spire, caus­ing the gold­en trum­pet to fall from the angel Moroni’s right hand.”
  2. Gen­er­al Coro­n­avirus Com­men­tary
    • Tips from some­one with 50 years of social dis­tanc­ing expe­ri­ence (Rae Ellen Bichell, Min­neso­ta Pub­lic Radio): “Keep track of some­thing…. In the era of COVID-19, he sug­gests track­ing what you can — or can’t — find at the gro­cery store. Or, bet­ter yet, par­tic­i­pat­ing in some cit­i­zen sci­ence, like a project called CoCo­RaHS that tracks rain­fall across the coun­try.”
    • It’s Time to Face Facts, Amer­i­ca: Masks Work (Fer­ris Jabr, Wired): “The col­lec­tive evi­dence makes a strong case for uni­ver­sal mask wear­ing dur­ing a pan­dem­ic. Masks are not a sub­sti­tute for oth­er inter­ven­tions; they must always be used in com­bi­na­tion with social dis­tanc­ing and hand hygiene.” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent. 
    • The Coro­n­avirus and the Con­ser­v­a­tive Mind (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “…the sup­posed con­ser­v­a­tive mind is more attuned to exter­nal threat and inter­nal con­t­a­m­i­na­tion, more inclined to sup­port author­i­ty and hier­ar­chy, and fear sub­ver­sion and dis­sent. And so the polit­i­cal respons­es to the pan­dem­ic have put these psy­cho­log­i­cal the­o­ries to a very inter­est­ing test.” This is an angle that nev­er would have occurred to me but which is obvi­ous­ly worth explor­ing. 
    • Coro­n­avirus maps and charts show COVID-19 symp­toms, spread, death rate (Busi­ness Insid­er): “These 22 charts and graph­ics lay out what you need to know as the out­break con­tin­ues to progress.” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
  3. This is only mar­gin­al­ly about the coro­n­avirus: An inside look at the hos­pi­tal going up in Cen­tral Park (Tony Carnes, A Jour­ney Through NYC Reli­gions): “The heart of Cen­tral Park is Bethes­da Foun­tain, which was built to com­mem­o­rate the heal­ing pow­er of Jesus at the Pool of Bethes­da in Israel. Fred­er­ic Law Olm­st­ed, the park’s design­er, hoped that the park would pro­vide spir­i­tu­al refresh­ment to urban mass­es from their tra­vails. Now, a Chris­t­ian min­istry is real­iz­ing the sym­bol­ism in the 21st Cen­tu­ry by erect­ing a crit­i­cal care hos­pi­tal at the park’s 97th Street Trans­verse and Fifth Avenue…. Samaritan’s Purse med­ical per­son­nel use the twen­ty sec­onds while they wash their hands to pray for each of their patients by name. It is fit­ting that they do that at their present loca­tion.”
    • What a heart­warm­ing sto­ry. Who could be opposed?
    • Oh, wait. De Bla­sio “Very Con­cerned” About Anti-Gay Evan­gel­i­cal Group Run­ning Cen­tral Park Coro­n­avirus Hos­pi­tal (Jake Offen­hartz, The Gothamist): “May­or Bill de Bla­sio said the city will keep a close eye on the Chris­t­ian fun­da­men­tal­ist group oper­at­ing a field hos­pi­tal in Cen­tral Park, amid grow­ing fears that some New York­ers could face dis­crim­i­na­tion and sub­stan­dard care from the reli­gious orga­ni­za­tion.”
    • And New York­ers Are Right to Be Skep­ti­cal of Evan­gel­i­cal-Run Coro­n­avirus Ward in Cen­tral Park (Jonathan Mer­rit, The Dai­ly Beast): “The vast major­i­ty of New York­ers are not Chris­t­ian, and if they find them­selves wheez­ing for air due to COVID-19, they don’t want to be pros­e­ly­tized while receiv­ing treat­ment. They too have rea­son to be skep­ti­cal of the organization’s makeshift hos­pi­tal.” 
    • Some amus­ing com­ments I saw in response, “I think they’re actu­al­ly afraid that the vol­un­teers will give away Chick-Fil‑A sand­wich­es” and “If the may­or had been as con­cerned about the coro­n­avirus as he is about the Chris­tians then New York would look very dif­fer­ent today.” Ouch.
  4. Dona­tions: From Bribery to Benev­o­lence (Jas­mine Ker­ber, Stan­ford Dai­ly): “A spec­trum exists between bribery and benev­o­lence, and dona­tions fall in var­i­ous places along that con­tin­u­um. Oper­a­tion Var­si­ty Blues high­light­ed the most cor­rupt ‘dona­tions’; for­mer Stan­ford sail­ing coach John Van­de­mo­er plead­ed guilty to accept­ing a bribe, not an altru­is­tic con­tri­bu­tion to ath­let­ics.” Jas­mine is a stu­dent in Chi Alpha.
    • I shared an arti­cle that dis­cussed phil­an­thropy from a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive back in vol­ume 213.
  5. At least the seats are red: Why is Stan­ford Sta­di­um often emp­ty? (Stan­ford Dai­ly): “As nation­al Heis­man vot­ers did not vote for Chris­t­ian McCaf­frey ’18 because they could not both­er to watch his games, Stan­ford stu­dents would not bike over to Stan­ford Sta­di­um for [his] games. ‘I will nev­er for­get this,’ McCaf­frey told The Ath­let­ic. ‘My sopho­more year against UCLA, I had a heck of a game. I biked back to my dorm, I’m kind of on a high horse. I walk in, and six or sev­en peo­ple asked where I was! I think I had some­thing like 243 yards rush­ing, four touch­downs. And they didn’t know where I was!’”
  6. 3 Types of Skep­tics (C. Michael Pat­ton, Cre­do House): “1. Those who need answers…. 2. Those who don’t like the answers…. 3. Those who need heal­ing.”
  7. Are Mor­mons Chris­tians?: A Review of “The Saints of Zion: An Intro­duc­tion to Mor­mon The­ol­o­gy” (Tim Miller, Detroit Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary): “He makes clear that Mor­mons are not Chris­tians, but does so by point­ing out that this has been the claim of the Mor­mon church itself through­out his­to­ry (despite recent attempts to argue dif­fer­ent­ly).”

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 Book Review: See­ing Like A State (Scott Alexan­der, Slate Star Codex): “Peas­ants didn’t like per­ma­nent sur­names. Their own sys­tem was quite rea­son­able for them: John the bak­er was John Bak­er, John the black­smith was John Smith, John who lived under the hill was John Under­hill, John who was real­ly short was John Short. The same per­son might be John Smith and John Under­hill in dif­fer­ent con­texts, where his sta­tus as a black­smith or place of ori­gin was more impor­tant. But the gov­ern­ment insist­ed on giv­ing every­one a sin­gle per­ma­nent name, unique for the vil­lage, and track­ing who was in the same fam­i­ly as whom. Resis­tance was intense.” This is long and amaz­ing. (first shared in vol­ume 95)

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 190

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. Inside the Secret Face­book War For Mor­mon Hearts and Minds (Kevin Poul­son, The Dai­ly Beast): “We may be resigned to face­less cor­po­ra­tions buy­ing their way into our thoughts, but are we ready for a world where our neigh­bors and in-laws can do the same?” Genius and super-inter­est­ing.
  2. The scan­dal of sex­u­al abuse in South­ern Bap­tist church­es:
    • Part One: Abuse of Faith (Robert Dow­nen, Lise Olsen, and John Tedesco, Hous­ton Chron­i­cle): “In all, since 1998, rough­ly 380 South­ern Bap­tist church lead­ers and vol­un­teers have faced alle­ga­tions of sex­u­al mis­con­duct, the news­pa­pers found. That includes those who were con­vict­ed, cred­i­bly accused and suc­cess­ful­ly sued, and those who con­fessed or resigned. More of them worked in Texas than in any oth­er state. They left behind more than 700 vic­tims, many of them shunned by their church­es, left to them­selves to rebuild their lives. Some were urged to for­give their abusers or to get abor­tions. About 220 offend­ers have been con­vict­ed or took plea deals, and dozens of cas­es are pend­ing.”
    • Part Two: Offend, then repeat (Robert Dow­nen, Lise Olsen, and John Tedesco, Hous­ton Chron­i­cle): ”No reli­gion is immune to sex­u­al mis­con­duct in its ranks. But unlike the Roman Catholic Church, which is wrestling with its own sex-abuse scan­dal, Bap­tists don’t answer to a pope or bish­op. Local church auton­o­my is a bedrock foun­da­tion of Bap­tist faith. There’s no dio­cese that assigns priests to a parish. Instead, each church is respon­si­ble for ordain­ing and hir­ing its own min­is­ters.”
    • Part Three: Prey­ing On Teens (Robert Dow­nen, Lise Olsen, and John Tedesco, Hous­ton Chron­i­cle): “More than 100 South­ern Bap­tists described as for­mer youth pas­tors or youth min­is­ters are now in prison, are reg­is­tered as sex offend­ers or have been charged with sex crimes, the news­pa­pers found. Their most com­mon tar­gets were teenage girls and boys, though small­er chil­dren also were molest­ed, some­times in pas­tors’ stud­ies and Sun­day school rooms.”
    • South­ern Bap­tists and the Scan­dal of Church Sex­u­al Abuse (Rus­sell Moore, per­son­al blog): “Jesus does not cov­er up sin with­in the tem­ple of his pres­ence. He brings every­thing hid­den to light. We should too. When we down­play or cov­er over what has hap­pened in the name of Jesus to those he loves we are not “pro­tect­ing” Jesus’ rep­u­ta­tion. We are instead fight­ing Jesus him­self. No church should be frus­trat­ed by the Hous­ton Chronicle’s report­ing, but should thank God for it. The Judg­ment Seat of Christ will be far less ret­i­cent than a news­pa­per series to uncov­er what should nev­er have been hid­den.” — he also wrote an op-ed for the New York Times a few days after this: South­ern Bap­tists Face Their #MeToo Moment (Rus­sell Moore, New York Times).
    • The Real­i­ty of Sex­u­al Abuse Hits Home: What Hap­pened? What Do We Do Now? (Al Mohler, per­son­al blog): “South­ern Bap­tists, by instinct, have prac­ticed a form of moral­ism that views sex­u­al mis­be­hav­ior as an iso­lat­ed event—deal with it and move on. This sim­plis­tic moral­ism reduces sex­u­al abuse and gloss­es over the sever­i­ty of the crime. Sex­u­al abuse is not an iso­lat­ed act of mis­be­hav­ior; it leaves in its wake scarred vic­tims as well as mali­cious vic­tim­iz­ers. Abuse of this nature snow­balls.” This arti­cle has some insight­ful com­men­tary on the unique chal­lenges fac­ing the South­ern Bap­tists because of their struc­ture.
    • Evan­gel­i­cal Apoc­a­lypse (Dale M. Coul­ter, First Things): “As one denom­i­na­tion­al leader point­ed out to me, min­is­ters brought up on charges and dis­missed from one denom­i­na­tion have sim­ply gone to anoth­er for cre­den­tials. It’s not just laity who take advan­tage of evan­gel­i­cal­is­m’s big tent to move around. These open net­works for min­is­te­r­i­al move­ment from one part of evan­gel­i­cal­ism to anoth­er allow sex­u­al abusers to escape judg­ment and start over. We don’t need a data­base of sex­u­al abusers for the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion, we need it for evan­gel­i­cal­ism as a whole.” I don’t know how fea­si­ble that spe­cif­ic sug­ges­tion is, but I do know Coul­ter is point­ing out a real and very hard-to-address prob­lem.
    • In a dif­fer­ent neck of the woods: Why Does the Catholic Church Keep Fail­ing on Sex­u­al Abuse? (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “O’Malley’s career, with all of its suc­cess­es and frus­tra­tions, illu­mi­nates why the sex-abuse cri­sis has once again sub­sumed the Catholic Church—and why this insti­tu­tion, one of the world’s great moral author­i­ties, has been inca­pable of solv­ing one of the most moral­ly straight­for­ward prob­lems of our time.”
  3. Bill Gates tweet­ed out a chart and sparked a huge debate about glob­al pover­ty (Dylan Matthews, Vox): “Hick­el argues that focus­ing on data show­ing declines in glob­al pover­ty does polit­i­cal work on behalf of glob­al cap­i­tal­ism, defend­ing an inher­ent­ly unjust glob­al sys­tem that has failed res­i­dents of rich and poor nations alike. Pinker agrees that the data sup­ports the idea that cap­i­tal­ism is work­ing for the world’s poor­est, and says that’s a deci­sive rebut­tal of Hickel’s nar­ra­tive of endur­ing per­se­cu­tion.”
  4. An African-Amer­i­can Woman Reflects on the Trans­gen­der Move­ment (Nurid­deen Knight, Pub­lic Dis­course): “Para­dox­i­cal­ly, the more our soci­ety tries to free itself from gen­der stereo­types, the more it becomes enslaved to them. By say­ing that peo­ple can be born in a body of the wrong gen­der, trans­gen­der activists are say­ing there is a set of feel­ings that are only allo­cat­ed to women and anoth­er set for men. There­fore, they believe, those who feel things that do not con­form to their sex’s accept­able set of feel­ings must out­ward­ly change their gen­der to match their mind.”
  5. Trevor Noah on Liam Neeson’s Racist Con­fes­sion (YouTube): much more thought­ful than any­thing else I have come across.
  6. A (Not So) Sec­u­lar Saint (James K.A. Smith, Los Ange­les Review of Books): “Mill’s lega­cy was effec­tive­ly ‘edit­ed’ by his philo­soph­i­cal and polit­i­cal dis­ci­ples, excis­ing any hint of reli­gious life. One would nev­er know from the canon in our phi­los­o­phy depart­ments, for exam­ple, that Mill wrote an appre­cia­tive essay on ‘The­ism.’”
    • I am pret­ty sure I shared a sim­i­lar link before, but I can’t find it search­ing my archives. Maybe I cut it at the last minute one week. Fas­ci­nat­ing regard­less.
  7. Sci­ence Is The Evan­gel­i­cal Tro­phy Wife (David Hed­dle, per­son­al blog): “In many evan­gel­i­cal cir­cles, sci­ence has become a tro­phy wife. Put her front and cen­ter, and show her beau­ty in, say, the form of Hub­ble neb­u­lae pho­tographs, with the req­ui­site Psalm 19:1 cap­tion, but do not ever let her speak, for she is like­ly to embar­rass you. Her the­o­log­i­cal util­i­ty is only in the pleas­ant optics, not in the sub­stance.” Beau­ti­ful title.

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). 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 4

In the time of King David, the Bible says that 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, I share 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.

  1. From the Charleston depart­ment:
    1. Why A Black Church? (Emma Green, The Atlantic): the last para­graph was like a punch in the gut.
    2. In this mov­ing Youtube clip, rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the fam­i­lies of the vic­tims for­give the shoot­er in court and call upon him to repent. It sounds as though sev­er­al of them were actu­al­ly there when the shoot­ing hap­pened and inter­act­ed with the shoot­er in the hour before­hand.
    3. The Charleston Shoot­ing is the Largest Mass Shoot­ing in a House of Wor­ship Since 1991 (Sarah Pul­liam Bai­ley, Wash­ing­ton Post): this is an infor­ma­tive overview of the his­to­ry of mass vio­lence at reli­gious orga­ni­za­tions in the US. I noticed one typo in the arti­cle — it refers to 176 deaths when I am pret­ty sure it should have referred to 176 vio­lent inci­dents lead­ing to 74 deaths in 2014.
    4. Black Amer­i­cans Are Killed at 12 Times the Rate of Peo­ple in Oth­er Devel­oped Coun­tries (Nate Sil­ver, FiveThir­tyEight): this is prob­a­bly the most depress­ing thing I read on a day of read­ing depress­ing things.
    5. The sto­ry of the lady who bust­ed the shoot­er is a more encour­ag­ing one. “It was God’s way of putting her in the right place at the right time, the Gas­to­nia woman said.”
  2. From the clar­i­ty is impor­tant depart­ment: Is Mor­monism Chris­t­ian? (Roger Olson, blog): Olson, a the­olo­gian, gives a very thor­ough and help­ful answer to the ques­tion. It’s real­ly long, so if you just want the sum­ma­ry jump to the last para­graph.
  3. From the mis­un­der­stood research depart­ment: The Real Les­son of the Stan­ford Prison Exper­i­ment (Maria Kon­niko­va, New York­er): inter­est­ing for sev­er­al rea­sons, among them the fact that we walk past the site of the exper­i­ments reg­u­lar­ly.
  4. From the sin is per­va­sive depart­ment: All Your Clothes Are Made With Exploit­ed Labor (Gillian B. White, The Atlantic): even the most con­sci­en­tious com­pa­nies are unable to keep their prod­ucts oppres­sion-free.

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.