Category: Links

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 438

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.

This is volume 438, which is 666 in base 8. 👀

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Don’t Forget About Nigerian Christians (Samuel Sey, personal blog): “Over the last 15 years, More than 50,000 Nigerian Christians have been killed for their faith, 18,000 churches have been destroyed, and millions more have been displaced. In 2023, around 5,000 Christians were killed worldwide because of their faith—90% of them were Nigerians.  Nigeria is the deadliest country for Christians. Every Christian in northern (and some central states) Nigeria is probably grieving the loss of a spouse or a child (or both) from persecution.”
  2. As Kids, They Thought They Were Trans. They No Longer Do. (Pamela Paul, New York Times): “Studies show that around eight in 10 cases of childhood gender dysphoria resolve themselves by puberty and 30 percent of people on hormone therapy discontinue its use within four years, though the effects, including infertility, are often irreversible.… Trans activists often cite low regret rates for gender transition, along with low figures for detransition. But those studies, which often rely on self-reported cases to gender clinics, likely understate the actual numbers. None of the seven detransitioners I interviewed, for instance, even considered reporting back to the gender clinics that prescribed them medication they now consider to have been a mistake. Nor did they know any other detransitioners who had done so.”
    • Unlocked. The main point is horrifying and one I’ve shared many times in this channel before. A secondary point which is quite interesting is how intent the author is on making this the fault of her political opponents. Her audience needs to know that her tribe is still trustworthy despite massive mistakes on this issue. Partisanship poisons the things it touches.
  3. Birth rates are falling in the Nordics. Are family-friendly policies no longer enough? (Henry Mance, Financial Times): “…childlessness is also rising among those who are in a relationship. Many couples are waiting too long. ‘People call me a lot in Finland. [They say] ‘I’m 42, my partner has had three miscarriages and she says she will not continue. And I understand I will never be a father. I’m the only child of my parents, and there’s nobody left, and help me.’ Rotkirch is wary of an emphasis on fertility treatments. Women’s fertility drops in their late thirties and forties: society has to adapt. ‘If you do everything that typical ministers of finance tell you to do, you are 45 — you have a house and a doctorate and it’s too late. The idealised life course is really at odds with female reproductive biology.’”
  4. Some Israel/Hamas articles:
    • The UN’s Terrorism Teachers (Hillel C. Neuer, The Free Press): “UN Secretary General António Guterres said he was ‘horrified’ to discover that UNRWA [United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East] employees participated in the invasion and massacre of October 7.… UNRWA employees have held Israeli hostages captive in their homes, using UNRWA facilities to move them from place to place.… It was only after Israel’s government provided evidence that 12 of the agency’s employees were actually involved in the October 7 massacre that UNRWA and the Biden administration took some action.”
      • Wowsers.
    • How Palestine Hijacked the U.S. Civil Rights Movement (Gil Troy, Tablet Magazine): “The differences between the Palestinian national movement and the American civil rights movement are obvious and fundamental. Palestinians have played no role in American history or the history of slavery. Palestinians played no role in the civil rights struggle. The Palestinian-Israeli clash, which is occurring a world away from America, is national not racial. Most Israelis are dark-skinned, while some Palestinians are light-skinned. Nonviolence fueled the civil rights struggle, while the Palestinian movement keeps perfecting new forms of political violence and terror-porn, from hijacking to suicide bombing.”
  5. The Meaningless Incoherence Of “LGBTQ+” (Andrew Sullivan, Substack): “The trouble is that words have meanings, and the term ‘LGBTQ+’ — like the term ‘Hispanic’ or ‘Latino’ — is not like NATO. It doesn’t refer to a single, identifiable group, experience, or community. It refers to multiple ones. And each is distinct, discrete and often very different. When you examine its component parts, you realize that the Ls and Gs and Bs and Ts, let alone the Is and the +s, differ dramatically in basic things like psychology, lifestyle, income, geography, education, and politics.… We’re constantly told, of course, that all gays and lesbians have collectively co-opted and destigmatized the q‑word. But polling shows that only 3 — 4 percent of the entire LGBTQ+ world call themselves ‘queer’. So the MSM routinely uses a word for the entire ‘LGBTQ+’ world that 96 percent of this community rejects. It’s up there with ‘Latinx’ as an accurate descriptor.”
    • Sullivan is one of the most influential gay public intellectuals. There are a lot of things he and I disagree about, but I nearly always find his perspectives illuminating.
  6. Two articles about a weirdly intense controversy about Alistair Begg:
    • Throw-Away Culture is the Spirit of the Sexual Revolution, Too. (Samuel D. James, Substack): “A person who interprets their sexual desires to be some sort of immovable identity that must be verified and actualized is in a very lamentable state. But what about the person who interprets their quick temper, their suspicion of other Christians, and their desire to build a platform atop the ruins of others’, as likewise an immovable identity— ‘I just know what time it is’? Theirs is hardly better. The Christian life doesn’t work like that.”
    • Alistair Begg Meets the Politically Correct (Russell Moore, Christianity Today): “Might Begg be drawing the line in the wrong place—too much in the direction of showing grace? Sure. Might I be drawing it in the wrong place—too much in the direction of maintaining truth? Again, yes. He risks confusing people. I risk hurting people. That’s why I think we both attempt to sort these out with fear and trembling and a willingness to be corrected.”
  7. Religious people coped better with Covid-19 pandemic, research suggests (Fred Lewsey, Cambridge Research News): “Where mental health declined, it was around 60% worse on average for the non-religious compared to people of faith with typical levels of ‘religiosity’. Interestingly, the positive effects of religion were not found in areas with strictest lockdowns, suggesting access to places of worship might be even more important in a US context. The study also found significant uptake of online religious services, and a 40% lower association between Covid-19 and mental health for those who used them.”
    • How horrible the pandemic must have been for those without faith. I hated it and I’m a minister!

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

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 437

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.

This is the 437th compilation, and I was pleased to discover that 437 is the product of 19 and 23, two of my favorite prime numbers.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. A new global gender divide is emerging (John Burn-Murdoch, Financial Times): “Gen Z is two generations, not one. In countries on every continent, an ideological gap has opened up between young men and women. Tens of millions of people who occupy the same cities, workplaces, classrooms and even homes no longer see eye-to-eye. In the US, Gallup data shows that after decades where the sexes were each spread roughly equally across liberal and conservative world views, women aged 18 to 30 are now 30 percentage points more liberal than their male contemporaries.”
  2. Two compelling personal stories
    • The 2016 Election Sent Me Searching for Answers (Carrie Sheffield, Christianity Today): “People laugh when I admit this, but my conversion to Christianity resulted from two powerful forces: science and Donald Trump. But before that journey began, I needed distance from extreme religious trauma. I grew up within an offshoot Mormon cult, living with seven biological siblings in various motor homes, tents, houses, and sheds. Besides time spent in homeschooling, I attended 17 different public schools. When I took my ACT test, we lived in a shed with no running water in the Ozarks.”
      • A remarkable testimony. Recommended.
    • ‘I should be in prison or dead’: Cameron Black on his journey from cult to campus (Lauren Boles, Stanford Daily): “Born into a cult led by his father, who proclaimed himself to be God, Black’s early life in Sedona, Ariz. was anything but ordinary. This familial cult consisted of nine people and operated under unconventional religious and sexual practices, deeply entangled in manipulation and abuse, Black said. ‘Don’t try to make sense of it because it doesn’t make sense,” he said as he explained the cult’s philosophy. “It’s like my father combined the Bible, sci-fi books and ‘The Matrix’ into one big ball of crazy.’ ”
      • Not Christian but fascinating.
  3. Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Church Attendance and Voting for Trump (Ryan Burge, Substack): “…look at Trump’s two elections. Now, Cultural Evangelicals rise in importance. Three percent of all Trump voters were never attending evangelicals and another eight percent were seldom attenders. In both 2016 and 2020, 11% of the Trump coalition were Cultural Evangelicals. It was just 6% in 2008, representing a near doubling [from McCain’s campaign]. Also note that 31% of all McCain voters were weekly attending evangelicals. For Romney, this dropped to 28%. In 2016, it went even lower to 25% of all Trump voters. However, this figure rebounded in 2020 to 29% of all Trump voters being weekly attending evangelicals.”
  4. Visiting the Most Important Company in the World (Nicholas Kristof, New York Times): “…Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, or T.S.M.C., is the only corporation I can think of in history that could cause a global depression if it were forced to halt production.”
    • What a stunning sentence.
  5. Is Gender Too Troubled? (Abigail Favale, Church Life Journal): “Gender is not part of a person, contra the Gender Unicorn, but rather encompasses the whole person. Thus, gender includes one’s sexed biological structure, as well as the psychological, spiritual, and historically-situated dimensions of human personhood. What is arguably lost in the dichotomy of sex and gender is the wholeness, the completeness of the human person.… because gender cannot be separated from sex, in ordinary speech we can use these terms as synonyms. Yes: I am suggesting that we intentionally and enthusiastically violate the taboo against conflating sex with gender, as a strategy of reintegration.”
    • The author is a professor of women’s studies at Notre Dame. If the excerpt is not clear, the author is advocating that Christians deliberately use gender and sex interchangeably as a way of resisting some of the nonsense in our culture.
  6. What We Might Mean by “Liberal Bias” (Freddie deBoer, Substack): “There’s no notion within Confessore’s piece that left critics of DEI exist. I imagine he and the paper would cite space constraints. But even accepting that explanation, the omission is convenient for the NYT’s fundamental financial model: it leaves the piece depicting a simplistic and purely binary contrast of values, where there are on one side the valiant Associate Vice Presidents of Student Experience and on the other the wicked racism-perpetuating Republicans.”
    • A critique of NYT bias from someone on the socialist left.
    • Somewhat related: What Did Top Israeli War Officials Really Say About Gaza? (Yair Rosenberg, The Atlantic): “In this perilous wartime environment, it is essential to know who is saying what, and whether they have the authority to act on it. But while far too many right-wing members of Israel’s Parliament have expressed borderline or straightforwardly genocidal sentiments during the Gaza conflict, such statements attributed to the three people making Israel’s actual military decisions, the voting members of its war cabinet—Gallant, Netanyahu, and the former opposition lawmaker Benny Gantz—repeatedly turn out to be mistaken or misrepresented.”
  7. Follow the Money to the After Party (Megan Basham, First Things): “…during its germination phase, the project hit a roadblock. Evangelical donors had little interest in funding an explicitly political Bible study. Thus, to get The After Party off the ground, the trio (all frequent critics of evangelicals who voted for Donald Trump) turned to ‘predominantly progressive’ ‘unbelievers.’ In fact, they turned to secular left-wing foundations.… To offer a politics curriculum backed by the secular left as the church’s solution to idolatrous co-optation by the right is like suggesting that a man who became obese eating cake and ice cream will lose weight by gorging on pizza and potato chips. As a friend told me, ‘If you want the church to be less political, start by focusing less on politics yourself.’?”
    • Recommended to me by a student. Stories like this make me sad. I’m reminded of 3 John 1:7–8, “For they have gone out for the sake of the name, accepting nothing from the Gentiles. Therefore we ought to support people like these, that we may be fellow workers for the truth.” (ESV)
    • To be clear, I don’t think that ministries should always reject funding from non-Christian sources any more than Nehemiah should have refused supplies from the empire for rebuilding Jerusalem, I just think we should always do it with our eyes open and with transparency about it. It’s risky.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

  • A Real Superpower (Pearls Before Swine)
  • Despite Negative Reviews, ‘Trump Vs. Biden’ Renewed For Second Season (Babylon Bee)
  • You just met a beautiful girl at church (Matthew Pierce, Substack): “Fellas, it’s not easy to be a Christian woman! Every time they choose what to wear, they have to navigate between fashion trends, purity culture, comfort, and peer pressure! Validate her feelings with gentle words of affirmation, such as ‘I can’t see even a little bit of your bosoms, which is good, because I bet they’re super nice,’ and then make, like, a motion of a rocket launching into outer space and do the sound effects with your mouth, to show how your respect for her is going super high right now.”
    • This substack is hit or miss, but this installation is a solid hit.

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 436

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.

This is volume 436, which isn’t an especially interesting number. It is, apparently, nontotient, but even after reading about totients I remain uninterested.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. From Vexing Uncertainty to Intellectual Humility (Michael Dickson, Schizophrenia Bulletin):  “I am a 55-year-old husband, father, friend, and professional philosopher. In 1992, as a graduate student at Cambridge University, a porter found me amongst the cows in the meadows of King’s College, after being there for 2 or 3 days. I was in bad physical shape, having eaten nothing, and apparently getting water from the river. He asked what I was doing. I replied: ‘I’m solving a problem about stochastic calculus.’ This statement was true, but did not answer his question. He took me to the hospital, where I remained for some weeks. It wasn’t the first time that I was psychotic, but it was, maybe, the first time that anybody noticed, the first time that I was unable to hide it from others, and therefore from myself.”
    • The author is a professor of philosophy at the University of South Carolina. A remarkable (and fairly brief) article. 
  2. GovDocs to the Rescue! Debunking an Immigration Myth (Rosemary Meszaros and Katherine Pennavaria, Policy Commons): “No one’s family name was changed, altered, shortened, butchered, or ‘written down wrong’ at Ellis Island or any American port. That idea is an urban legend. Many names did get changed as immigrants settled into their new American lives, but those changes were made several years after arrival and were done by choice of someone in the family.”
  3. A Peaceful Solution on Taiwan Is Slipping Away (Michael Beckley, New York Times): “…Taiwan provokes China simply by being what it is: A prosperous and free society. Taiwan’s blooming national identity threatens China with the prospect of permanent territorial dismemberment; and Taiwan’s elections, rule of law and free press make a mockery of Beijing’s claim that Chinese culture is incompatible with democracy. America’s words can’t change any of that. Chinese law explicitly states that Beijing may use force if possibilities for peaceful unification are ‘completely exhausted.’ Because of politics in Taiwan and the United States, those possibilities are dwindling.”
    • The author is a political scientist at Tufts.
    • Related: Taiwan’s China-skeptic ruling-party candidate wins presidential election (Emily Feng, NPR): “For security reasons, Taiwan does not allow absentee voting, mandating that all voters cast their ballots in-person, on paper only. The physical ballots are then counted by hand at every polling station, a process that is completely open to the public.” The implication being that they are so worried about Chinese meddling that they engage in radical transparency. Wow.
  4. Xi Jinping Is Not Trying to Make Christianity More Chinese (Fenggang Yang, Christianity Today): “Throughout December, the authorities once again tried hard to contain and curb Christmas celebrations inside and outside churches, prohibited students and others from participating in Christmas activities, and detained some house church leaders to prevent them from organizing congregational gatherings. Yet most churches, both the officially sanctioned churches and unregistered house churches, held Christmas Eve and Christmas Day worship services. The online evangelistic galas by Beijing Zion Church and other house churches on Zoom and other platforms are of high artistic quality. Christians shared discreetly on social media that church leaders baptized a number of new believers despite the current ‘bitter winter’ for churches in China.”
    • I found this bit fascinating: “Many people in the West may not know that in the Chinese Communist political system, the party’s policy is superior to state laws and trumps the constitution. The Chinafication policy has led to the promulgation of a series of administrative regulations and measures, including the vastly expanded Regulations of Religious Affairs that took effect in 2018.”
    • The author is a professor of sociology at Purdue.
  5. You Need To Be Cringemaxxing (Mary Harrington, Substack): “There is no way in the world to make going to church cool, and the most cringe thing of all is trying. Here’s the thing though: data consistently show that the happiest people — those who feel that their lives are most filled with purpose and fulfilment — are not necessarily those with kids — it’s those who go to church. Those, in other words, who are not just to be indifferent to cool, but actively anti-cool. The first step to a happy and fulfilled life, it appears, is cringemaxxing.”
    • Some other vaguely-related life advice: Risk-Aversion Is Killing Romance (Freya India, Substack): “Sometimes it seems to me we’ve become so suspicious of each other’s intentions that we pathologise romance and commitment, and end up psychoanalysing to death behaviour that’s actually decent. Now we take everything that comes with real love—being affected by someone else’s emotions, putting your partner’s needs first, depending on them—and call it damage or anxious attachment or trauma. No! It’s called deep connection! And God, yes, wouldn’t it be much easier if it was a pathology, a disease, one we could diagnose and solve because it’s scary and it comes without guarantees. But it isn’t.”
  6. “How Do I Find the Main Point of a Psalm?” (John Piper, Desiring God): “So, the point is to look at the pieces very carefully, to fit them together in midsize units, to jot down the main points of the midsize units until you have them all on a half sheet of paper, and then to think and think, and pray and pray, and think and pray and think and pray, and to organize and draw lines, and to try to fit them all together until they fall into place and you see how these five, six, seven, eight, nine points of the midsize units are in a flow that make one big overarching point. You will be surprised, if you take up pencil and paper and do this, what you will see.”
    • Recommended by a student
  7. Death by a Thousand Paper Cuts (David Brooks, The New York Times): “…[sometimes I] find a problem so massive that I can’t believe I’ve ever written about anything else. This latter experience happened as I looked into the growing bureaucratization of American life. It’s not only that growing bureaucracies cost a lot of money; they also enervate American society. They redistribute power from workers to rule makers, and in so doing sap initiative, discretion, creativity and drive. Once you start poking around, the statistics are staggering.”
    • Related: No joke: Feds are banning humorous electronic messages on highways (AP News): “Among those that will be disappearing are messages such as ‘Use Yah Blinkah’ in Massachusetts; ‘Visiting in-laws? Slow down, get there late,’ from Ohio; ‘Don’t drive Star Spangled Hammered,’ from Pennsylvania; ‘Hocus pocus, drive with focus’ from New Jersey; and ‘Hands on the wheel, not your meal’ from Arizona.”
      • You think Stanford hates fun? Try the federal bureaucracy!

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

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 435

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.

This is volume 435, a triangular number.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The Ground of Our Assurance (D. A. Carson, YouTube): three and a half excellent minutes
  2. No, Not Everyone Needs Therapy (Freya India, Substack): “… there are people who now feel pressured to get professional help for normal negative emotions—teens and pre-teens convinced the reason they’re sad sometimes is because they’re broken and haven’t paid enough to be healed. Now not going to therapy is a red flag. Seeking support from friends and family is exploiting their ’emotional labour’. And men are shamed for preferring to chat to their mates about their problems than pay a stranger, like that one BetterHelp ad where a woman dismisses a guy she’s dating because he ‘doesn’t do therapy’. Think about that! How have we reached the point where we’re stigmatising people for not needing mental health support?”
  3. What If There Is No Such Thing as ‘Biblical’ Productivity? (Brady Bowman, Mere Orthodoxy): “…the ‘productivity mindset’ seems to me, at least in some ways, deeply incongruent with the Bible’s vision of reality. To say it more simply, to adopt an outlook dominated by speed and efficiency and productivity is to adopt a perspective that is alien to the writers of Scripture.…”
  4. New technology interprets archaeological findings from Biblical times (Tel Aviv University, Phys.org): “Applying their method to findings from ancient Gath (Tell es-Safi in central Israel), the researchers validated the Biblical account, ‘About this time Hazael King of Aram went up and attacked Gath and captured it. Then he turned to attack Jerusalem’ (2 Kings 12, 18). They explain that, unlike previous methods, the new technique can determine whether a certain item (such as a mud brick) underwent a firing event even at relatively low temperatures, from 200°C and up.”
  5. US Intelligence Shows Flawed China Missiles Led Xi to Purge Army (Peter Martin and Jennifer Jacobs, Bloomberg): “The corruption inside China’s Rocket Force and throughout the nation’s defense industrial base is so extensive that US officials now believe Xi is less likely to contemplate major military action in the coming years than would otherwise have been the case, according to the people, who asked not to be named discussing intelligence.”
    • This may be the most important bit of geopolitical news you read this year.
  6. The Misguided War on the SAT (David Leonhardt, New York Times): “With the Supreme Court’s restriction of affirmative action last year, emotions around college admissions are running high. The debate over standardized testing has become caught up in deeper questions about inequality in America and what purpose, ultimately, the nation’s universities should serve. But the data suggests that testing critics have drawn the wrong battle lines. If test scores are used as one factor among others — and if colleges give applicants credit for having overcome adversity — the SAT and ACT can help create diverse classes of highly talented students. Restoring the tests might also help address a different frustration that many Americans have with the admissions process at elite universities: that it has become too opaque and unconnected to merit.”
    • Not the main point of the essay, but worth commenting that politics poisons whatever it polarizes.
  7. The Peculiar Story of C. S. Lewis and Janie King Moore (Bethel McGrew, First Things): “Lewis’s letters from this period are marked by an understated deep relief. He wrote to a frequent correspondent that he was only just beginning to appreciate ‘how bad it was’ in hindsight. And yet, though we miss the works he might have written under different circumstances, we might also wonder whether the books we have would have been the same, had duty not compelled him to die to self every day for the sake of one fragile, impossible old woman. In the end, his own words rang as true for himself as they did for everyone else: ‘Whether we like it or not God intends to give us what we need, not what we now think we want.’”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

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 434

On (most) Fridays I share articles/resources about broad cultural, societal and theological issues. I skipped last week due to the holidays.

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.

This is volume 434, a number which is a palindrome. It is also the sum of consecutive primes: 434 = 61 + 67 + 71 + 73 + 79 + 83

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Our Godless era is dead (Paul Kingsnorth, UnHerd): “I grew up believing in things which I now look on very differently. To put career before family. To accumulate wealth as a marker of status. To treat sex as recreation. To reflexively mock authority and tradition. To put individual desire before community responsibility. To treat the world as so much dead matter to be interrogated by the scientific process. To assume our ancestors were thicker than us. I did all of this, or tried to, for years. Most of us did, I suppose. Perhaps above all, and perhaps at the root of all, there was one teaching that permeated everything. It was to treat religion as something both primitive and obsolete. Simply a bunch of fairy stories invented by the ignorant. Simply a mechanism of social control. Nothing to do with us, here, now, in our very modern, sexually liberated, choose-your-own-adventure world.”
  2. Part of a Christian’s Job is to Point Out that Modern Life Stinks (Samue D. James, Substack): “Part of the evangelical witness right now should be to point out that modern life stinks. Its technology makes us lonely. Its sexuality makes us empty. Its psychotherapy makes us self-obsessed. Many people are on the brink of oblivion, held back in some cases only by medication or political identity. We struggle to articulate why we should continue to live. Evangelicals should jump in here.”
    • The end is straight fire.
  3. Universities Are Not on the Level (Josh Barro, Substack): “I personally have also developed a more negative view of colleges and universities over the last decade, and my reason is simple: I increasingly find these institutions to be dishonest. A lot of the research coming out of them does not aim at truth, whether because it is politicized or for more venal reasons. The social justice messaging they wrap themselves in is often insincere. Their public accountings of the reasons for their internal actions are often implausible. They lie about the role that race plays in their admissions and hiring practices. And sometimes, especially at the graduate level, they confer degrees whose value they know will not justify the time and money that students invest to get them. The most recent debacle at Harvard, in which large swathes of academia seem to have conveniently forgotten what the term ‘plagiarism’ means so they don’t have to admit that Claudine Gay engaged in it, is only the latest example of the lying that is endemic on campus.”
    • Related: Harvard Couldn’t Save Both Claudine Gay and Itself (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “The Ivy League believes in its progressive doctrines, but not as much as it believes in its own indispensability, its permanent role as an incubator of privilege and influence.”
    • Also related: The Claudine Gay Affair (Frederick M. Hess, American Enterprise Institute): “Higher ed doesn’t have many friends on the right. In my experience, elite college leaders aren’t all that bothered by this (some seem perversely proud of it). Well, when publicly-supported, highly visible institutions choose to take sides in political and cultural fights, there are consequences. With the right having lost faith in higher ed and becoming increasingly comfortable pushing back on the college cartel, campus leaders had better strap in for a bumpy ride.”
      • Brief and interesting, especially the personal connection to Claudine Gay.
  4. My Bible Reading Feels Flat — What Can I Do? (John Piper, Desiring God): “Is there something you can do to move from ears attending to words and minds grasping for knowledge to hearts experiencing pleasantness of what is within? Is there anything you can do? [The writer of Proverbs 22 says] yes, and the words he uses go like this: ‘Apply your heart to what your ear has heard and the knowledge that’s forming in your mind.’”
    • Recommended by a student
  5. Did Islamic beliefs trigger the use of rape in Hamas attacks? If ‘yes,’ reporters should say so (Julia Duin, GetReligion): “Well, what happened to these Israeli women was off the charts and it’s about time reporters called it out for what it was. The attackers believed that their violence was sanctioned by religion, just as much as it was driven by revenge. Hindu human-rights activists have no illusions about these realities. I chanced upon a political Hindu site that compares the Hamas brutalities against Jewish women with Muslim invasions of India and the mass rapes of Hindu women as recently as 1971.… [it blames] the whole rape-and-sex-slavery emphasis of invading Islamic hordes on Islam allowing each man four wives and limitless slaves and concubines. The latter really aren’t in vogue in the 21st century but ISIS had a huge sex slave system going among captive Yazidi women in Iraq and Syria roughly from 2014–2017.”
    • This is a disturbing read. Also, this is not an indictment of Islam as a whole, but it is certainly an indictment of some Muslim theologies.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

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 433

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.

This is volume 433, a prime number.

A reminder as the year draws to a close: this weekly roundup of links is an overflow of the donor-funded ministry I do with Chi Alpha at Stanford University. If you’re so inclined, consider an end-of-year donation.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Some Christmas content:
    • Losing Our Grip on Christmas (Mike Glenn, Substack): “In America, Christianity isn’t attacked as much as it is usurped. When Christians say, ‘We’d like to celebrate Christmas,’ the world says, ‘That’s a great idea. Would you like for us to stay open late so you can buy everyone you love a gift?’ Suddenly, there’s no time to worship. There’s no time to pray. We’re too busy shopping.”
    • A Harmony of the Birth of Jesus: Matthew and Luke (Justin Taylor, The Gospel Coalition): “Here is a simple chronology to show how the events of Matthew 1–2 and Luke 1–2 fit together and what each of the gospel authors emphasize. Matthew tells things more through the eyes of Joseph and Luke (who perhaps interviewed Mary) tells the events largely through her eyes.”
    • Bethlehem Cancels Christmas, But Local Pastors Still Expect a Holy Night (Sophia Lee, Christianity Today): “The words people once associated with Christmas were Santa, tree, gifts, carols—all ‘romanticized’ traditions from the West, Isaac said. Today, he thinks of words from the Christmas story of the Bible: Caesar, census, massacre, and refugee in Egypt—relevant to Palestinians who have to register to travel outside the West Bank and who seek safety in Egypt.”
    • There’s No Christmas Lunch Like a Korean American Church Lunch (Eric Kim, New York Times): “…59 percent of Korean Americans identify as Christian. But that number used to be even higher. For decades, church lunches have been pivotal spaces for Korean immigrants as they established themselves in the United States, and these meals continue to flourish as hubs of community bonding for many who are the first generation to arrive here. More than just a meal, they are a key opportunity for conversation, gossip and fellowship.”
      • I liked a lot about this article, but I found it very New-York-Timesy to say that most Korean-Americans are Christian and then to tell stories about how those who have left the church nonetheless remember it and its food fondly.
  2. The Problem With Everything Being Pornified (Freya India, Substack): “…I find it so frustrating to see some progressives downplay the dangers of all this. Those that dismiss anyone concerned about the pornification of everything as a stuffy conservative. And somehow can’t see how the continual loosening of sexual norms might actually empower predatory men, and put pressure on vulnerable girls? That seems delusional to me. Let’s just say I have little patience for those on the left who loudly celebrate women sexualising themselves online, selling it as fun, feminist and risk-free, but are then horrified to hear about 12 year-olds doing the same thing. C’mon. No wonder they want to. But I also find it frustrating to see some on the right approach this with what seems like a complete lack of compassion. I don’t think it helps to relentlessly ridicule and blame young women for sexualising themselves online. I don’t think it’s fair either. We can’t give girls Instagram at 12 and then be surprised when as young women they base their self-worth on the approval of strangers.”
  3. Artificial intelligence can find your location in photos, worrying privacy experts (Geoff Brumfiel, NPR): “The project, known as Predicting Image Geolocations (or PIGEON, for short) was designed by three Stanford graduate students in order to identify locations on Google Street View.… [ACLU’s] Stanley worries that companies might soon use AI to track where you’ve traveled, or that governments might check your photos to see if you’ve visited a country on a watchlist. Stalking and abuse are also obvious threats, he says. In the past, Stanley says, people have been able to remove GPS location tagging from photos they post online. That may not work anymore.”
  4. In Gaza, Israelis Display Tunnel Wide Enough to Handle Cars (Ronen Bergman, New York Times): “Two military officials interviewed after the tour say that recently gathered intelligence indicated that Israel has grossly underestimated the size of the underground network. The system, which the army previously estimated was about 60 miles long, is now believed to be closer to 250 miles long, they said.”
  5. William Wilberforce: Abolitionist, Reformer, Evangelical (Richard Turnbull, Religion & Liberty Online): “What unites these disparate individuals? Perhaps three things. First, a passion for a true and lively faith that transforms the heart. Secondly, a holistic view of God’s love for the world that saw no contradiction between personal faith and a transformed society. Thirdly, a tenacity that drove these individuals never to give up, never to give up for Christ.”
    • A solid summary of a consequential Christian’s impact. The author is the former principal of Wycliffe Hall, Oxford.
  6. A Tik-Tok-ing Timebomb: How TikTok’s Global Platform Anomalies Align with the Chinese Communist Party’s Geostrategic Objectives (National Contagion Research Institute): “We then expanded our research into topics relevant to the Chinese Government’s geopolitical interests: 1) Ukraine-Russia War; 2) Kashmir Independence; 3) Israel-Hamas War. The conclusions of our research are clear: Whether content is promoted or muted on TikTok appears to depend on whether it is aligned or opposed to the interests of the Chinese Government. As the summary data graph below illustrates, the percentages of TikTok posts out of Instagram posts are consistently range-bound for general political and pop-culture topics, but completely out-of-bounds for topics sensitive to the Chinese Government.”
    • The link is to a 18 page PDF. The research was conducted in conjunction with Rutgers University. I, for one, am shocked. Who could have predicted such a thing from a country otherwise devoted to free speech and free markets?
  7. Why Antisemitism Sprouted So Quickly on Campus (Jonathan Haidt, Substack): “Common enemy identity politics is arguably the worst way of thinking one could possibly teach to young people in a multi-ethnic democracy such as the United States. It is, of course, the ideological drive behind most genocides. On a more mundane level, it can in theory be used to create group cohesion on teams and in organizations, and yet the current academic version of it plunges organizations into eternal conflict and dysfunction. As long as this way of thinking is taught anywhere on campus, identity-based hatred will find fertile ground.”
    • Haidt is a social psychologist at NYU.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

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 432

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.

This is volume 432, a number pleasant to look at because of the smoothly decreasing digits. Also, 432 = 4 · 33 · 22, which is kinda cool.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Why Two Parents Are the Ultimate Privilege (Bari Weiss, Substack): “Two parents combined have more resources than one. Two parents in a home bring in the earnings—or at least the earnings capacity—of two adults. And so, in a very straightforward way, we see that kids growing up in single-mother homes are five times more likely to live in poverty than kids growing up in married parent homes. (Kids in single-father homes are three times as likely to live in poverty.) Some of that reflects the fact that people with lower levels of education or income are more likely to become single parents. But even if you compare across moms of the same education group, you see that kids who grow up in a household with two parents have household incomes that are about twice as high. That means that those parents are paying for things like a nicer house in a safe neighborhood with good school districts. But they also spend more time with their kids. We see that kids who grow up with married parents have more parental time invested in them: reading to your kid, talking to your kid, driving your kids to activities. If there are two parents in the household, there’s just more time capacity.”
    • The interviewee, Melissa Kearney, is an economist at the University of Maryland.
    • This part near the end also caught my attention: “You write that you would speak to your fellow scholars about your plans for writing this book, and they would say things along the lines of, ‘I tend to agree about all of this, but are you sure you want to be out there saying this publicly?’ How many areas of research, inquiry, and basic curiosity about the most important things in our lives and culture are third rail now? If it’s taboo to write a book saying two parents in a house are better materially than one, what else is off-limits, and what can we do to combat that?”
  2. Some links related to academia, congressional testimony, and speech in general:
    • You Could Not Pay Me Enough to Be a College Administrator (Dan Drezner, Substack): “Why are these horrible, no-win positions? Because the primary job of any college dean or university president is to deal with the most spoiled, entitled, pig-headed interest groups imaginable. First, there are the students…”
    • Freedom of speech for university staff? (Tyler Cowen, Marginal Revolution): “Freedom of speech for university staff is a harder question than for students or faculty. Students will move on, and a lot of faculty hate each other anyway, and don’t have to work together very much. Plus the protection of tenure was (supposedly?) designed to support freedom of speech and opinion, even ‘perceived to be offensive’ opinions. As for students, we want them to be experimenting with different opinions in their youth, even if some of those opinions are bad or stupid. Staff in these regards are different.”
    • What the University Presidents Got Right and Wrong About Antisemitic Speech (David French, New York Times): “I’m a former litigator who spent much of my legal career battling censorship on college campuses, and the thing that struck me about the presidents’ answers wasn’t their legal insufficiency but rather their stunning hypocrisy. And it’s that hypocrisy, not the presidents’ understanding of the law, that has created a campus crisis.”
    • Penn’s Leadership Resigns Amid Controversies Over Antisemitism (Stephanie Saul and Alan Blinder, New York Times): “The president of the University of Pennsylvania, M. Elizabeth Magill, resigned on Saturday, four days after her testimony at a congressional hearing in which she seemed to evade the question of whether students who called for the genocide of Jews should be disciplined.… Ms. Magill, a former Stanford Law School dean and University of Virginia provost, had come to the university as part of a wave of women to lead Ivy League colleges.”
  3. Some reflections on the war between Israel and Hamas:
    • Who’s a ‘Colonizer’? How an Old Word Became a New Weapon (Roger Cohen, New York Times): “The clash over purported Israeli colonialism is part of something larger, a profound movement in people’s minds. The Palestinian national struggle has become the cause of the justice-seeking dispossessed throughout the world. At the same time, the quest of the Jews to find refuge in a national homeland as the only answer to being the perennial outcast has become a battle to demonstrate that, far from being colonialist, Israel is a diverse nation largely formed by a gathering-in of the persecuted.”
      • Covers a lot of ground, broadly helpful.
    • What Justice Requires in Gaza (Jack Omer-Jackaman, Persuasion): “How much injustice can a war contain before it is no longer a just war? History is certainly replete with wars we consider just on the whole, but which were littered with gross violations of human rights and decency. What was true on October 7th is true today: Hamas is a mass-raping, civilian-slaughtering, baby-kidnapping evil, whose defeat should be supported by all friends of Israel and all friends of Palestine. But I cannot be silent when my own reason and my own heart conclude that Gazan civilians are not being sufficiently protected. In the failure of Israeli strikes to distinguish between civilian and terrorist, and in the hampering of humanitarian aid efforts, too much of this war is being fought unjustly.”
  4. In 2024, the Tension Between Macroculture and Microculture Will Turn into War (Ted Gioia, Substack): “The clash has reached some kind of brutal tipping point. I believe it’s about to turn into war. The fact that 2024 is an election year will escalate the conflict. Just wait and see. But even right now you can feel the ground shaking.… [alternative platforms are outperforming Hollywood.] This seems impossible. A single individual living in Greenville, North Carolina defeats enormous global businesses with tens of thousands of employees and decades of experience—and does it repeatedly every month. But that’s exactly what’s happening.”
    • Fascinating stats in here.
    • Related (at least to me): When the New York Times lost its way (James Bennet, The Economist): “This is a bit of a paradox. The new newsroom ideology seems idealistic, yet it has grown from cynical roots in academia: from the idea that there is no such thing as objective truth; that there is only narrative, and that therefore whoever controls the narrative – whoever gets to tell the version of the story that the public hears – has the whip hand. What matters, in other words, is not truth and ideas in themselves, but the power to determine both in the public mind. By contrast, the old newsroom ideology seems cynical on its surface. It used to bug me that my editors at the Times assumed every word out of the mouth of any person in power was a lie. And the pursuit of objectivity can seem reptilian, even nihilistic, in its abjuration of a fixed position in moral contests. But the basis of that old newsroom approach was idealistic: the notion that power ultimately lies in truth and ideas, and that the citizens of a pluralistic democracy, not leaders of any sort, must be trusted to judge both.”
    • This one is very long but I found it compelling.
  5. Conservatives are suing law firms over diversity efforts. It’s working. (Julian Mark and Taylor Telford, Washington Post): “Kenji Yoshino, a law professor and director of the Meltzer Center for Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging at New York University, said targeting law firms is effective because it can serve as a warning to other industries. ‘If you sue a law firm, then the law firm gets up to speed very, very quickly on what is permissible and what’s impermissible,’ Yoshino said, noting that many law firms advise Fortune 500 companies, government agencies and nonprofits. ‘It’s a way of getting the message out about people needing to flip over their policies in a wide variety of domains — not just fellowships, but hiring, recruiting retreats and the like.’”
    • Interesting. I don’t remember having seen this strategy (sue law firms to bring about broader cultural change) used by either the left or the right before. Is it an innovation or am I just not remembering something in history?
  6. How 1 in 4 Countries Restrict Religious Conversion (Jayson Casper, Christianity Today): “The USCIRF report grouped the laws into four categories. First, anti-proselytizing laws restrict witnessing of one’s faith in 29 nations, including in Indonesia, Israel, and Russia. In Morocco, for example, it is illegal to cause a Muslim to question his or her religion. The second category of interfaith marriage is restricted in 25 nations, including in Jordan, the Philippines, and Singapore. In Qatar, for example, if a wife converts to Islam but the husband does not, a judge may annul their marriage. Identification document laws—the third category—in 7 nations restrict the right of an individual to formally convert to another religion, including in Iraq, Malaysia, and Turkey. Myanmar, for example, requires converts to submit an application and be subject to questioning about the genuineness of the conversion. And finally, apostasy laws in 7 nations make conversion illegal, including in Brunei, Mauritania, and Saudi Arabia. In Yemen, for example, the punishment is death.”
  7. A Korean Sect Targeted New Zealand Christians. Did Churches Respond Effectively? (Willliam Chong, Christianity Today): “Shincheonji instructors eventually convinced their recruits that God permits lying if it is done for ‘God’s will.’ Before Josh’s sessions commenced in January 2019, his mentor warned him to keep them a secret, pointing to Abraham’s silence before heading out to sacrifice Isaac in Genesis 22. Josh concocted a story about teaching private guitar lessons three mornings a week, a lie he told his parents, his girlfriend, and Student Life colleagues. When church leaders and a campus staff worker confronted Josh with evidence that he was attending Shincheonji classes, his Shincheonji instructors gave him step-by-step instructions on how to deny his involvement. They even gave Josh pre-written letters expressing ‘inexplicable hurt and confusion’ about his family and friends’ accusations and claiming that he was no longer involved in Shincheonji activities. Josh sent the letter to the church yet continued his classes, and in May 2019 he ‘passed over’ into the group.”
    • Related: Escaping High-Control Religious Groups (William Chong, Christianity Today): “[If a friend is in a cult,] try to maintain the relationship and communication at all costs. Making direct statements like ‘You’re in a cult!’ or ‘You’re deceived!’ are not helpful. Cult members have often been warned that ‘a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household’ (Matt. 10:36), so to confront their group will be to fulfill prophecies given to them by their leaders and further prove the group to be correct. It’s important not to drive them further into the group. Ask yourself what need the group is fulfilling in your loved one’s life.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

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 431

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.

This is volume 431, a prime number.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Is South Korea Disappearing? (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “[South Korea currently has] 0.7 births per woman. It’s worth unpacking what that means. A country that sustained a birthrate at that level would have, for every 200 people in one generation, 70 people in the next one, a depopulation exceeding what the Black Death delivered to Europe in the 14th century. Run the experiment through a second generational turnover, and your original 200-person population falls below 25. Run it again, and you’re nearing the kind of population crash caused by the fictional superflu in Stephen King’s ‘The Stand.’ ”
    • Unlocked. The declining birthrate is truly one of the world’s most important long-term stories. One of the reasons is that it will self-correct, but the way that it will self-correct will transform societies.
  2. Soft Occultism (Patricia Patnode, The American Mind): “The new, default spiritual identity for young people in the West is soft occultism, or casual witchery. This identity can easily accompany an existing religious affiliation, and often does since it is so obviously integrated in most aspects of modern Western culture.… Surveys and scientists have repeatedly found that people who have religious beliefs, especially those who attend a formal house of worship, tend to be happier than those who don’t. Despite this, soft occultists prefer to buy purifying green juices and participate in pseudo-religious gatherings. They go to Pilates class but not church, meditate on personal energy but don’t pray. Take vitamin supplements but not communion. Sit through therapy but not confession.”
  3. The Forgotten Dispute that Could Ignite a War in South America (Francisco Toro, Persuasion): “Yesterday, Venezuelans voted in a non-binding referendum to annex the Essequibo territory, a stretch of jungle that makes up around two-thirds of the landmass of Venezuela’s eastern neighbor, tiny Guyana. Desperate for a win amid a newly united opposition and a chronically sick economy, the leftist dictatorship of Nicolás Maduro dusted off a musty old dispute to fan the nationalist flames. As a matter of international law, Maduro has no leg to stand on. A military adventure into Essequibo is improbable—Venezuela’s military remains laser-focused on the one thing it does well, and that’s trafficking cocaine, not fighting wars. But dictatorships are inherently unpredictable, and the prospect of a military adventure is sending jitters around the region.”
    • Some helpful backstory.
  4. Santos’ Cameo Earnings Exceed His House Salary (John Johnson, Newser): “Santos’ House salary stood at $174,000, and Semafor reports he has ‘lined up more than that sum’ in just his first 48 hours on the Cameo platform.”
    • This story seems to summarize something important about the societal moment we are living in. I invite you to draw your own conclusions about what that important something is.
  5. What The Algorithm Does To Young Girls (Freya India, Persuasion): “…I believe we have some personal agency. But I also believe that a 12-year-old’s mind is no match for a giant corporation using the most advanced AI to manipulate her behavior. Gen Z were the guinea pigs in this uncontrolled global social experiment. We were the first to have our vulnerabilities and insecurities fed into a machine that magnified and refracted them back at us, all the time, before we had any sense of who we were. We didn’t just grow up with algorithms. They raised us. They rearranged our faces. Shaped our identities. Convinced us we were sick.”
  6. The University presidents (Tyler Cowen, Marginal Revolution): “Overall this was a dark day for American higher education. I want you to keep in mind that the incentives you saw on display rule so many other parts of the system, albeit usually invisibly. Don’t forget that. These university presidents have solved for what they think is the equilibrium, and it ain’t pretty.”
    • You can find the video of the Harvard, MIT, and Penn presidents’ Congressional testimony easily with a search if you haven’t seen it yet. Here is the specific snippet Cowen is commenting on.
    • Related: Stanford condemns calls for genocide of Jews (Caroline Chen, Stanford Daily): “Stanford ‘unequivocally’ condemned ‘calls for the genocide of Jews or any peoples’.… The statement opened with acknowledgment of ‘the context of national discourse,’ amid national controversy over a Wednesday congressional hearing where the presidents of Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Pennsylvania appeared to evade questions on disciplining students who called for the genocide of Jewish people.”
  7. The Problematic Inklings (G. Connor Salter, Mere Orthodoxy): “Of course, seeing someone as a saint makes it hard to believe the person had flaws. It’s not easy to admit that the Inklings—Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, and their friends who met weekly to share their writings—weren’t the perfect heroes revered in Christian homeschool guides. But eventually, we must recognize that everyone’s life is complicated.”
    • Surprising details I did not know, mostly about some of the less famous Inklings.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

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 430

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. That’s especially true this week: I skipped last week because of Thanksgiving, and I still feel behind on my reading.

This is volume 430, a sphenic number. That means it is the product of three primes, namely 2 · 5 · 43.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Stanford neuroscientist Andrew Huberman recently mentioned that he believes in God. Here’s a 13 minute video of him explaining why (YouTube) or you can just watch this two minute excerpt which contains the essence of his point (Twitter).
    • For the record, I’ve never met Huberman and do not know what his specific religious beliefs are. I just find it interesting that a prominent public intellectual affiliated with Stanford is a believer.
  2. This Is Not the Way to Help Depressed Teenagers (Darbe Saxbe, New York Times): “[Programs designed to help young people instead] made their mental-health problems worse. Understanding why these efforts backfired can shed light on how society can — and can’t — help teenagers who are suffering from depression and anxiety.… Teenagers, who are still developing their identities, are especially prone to take psychological labels to heart. Instead of ‘I am nervous about X,’ a teenager might say, ‘I can’t do X because I have anxiety’ — a reframing that research shows undermines resilience by encouraging people to view everyday challenges as insurmountable.”
    • The author is a psychology prof at USC.
  3. Religion isn’t sexually repressive. Just read the data. (Stephen Cranney, Deseret News): “…contrary to widely held belief, religious people report better sex lives, and married religious couples have more frequent and better sex than others (non-married religious people, intuitively, have less sex). These results were supported by one study that found religious British people reported more satisfying sex lives. A separate BYU study, published by Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, found similar results for married couples in the U.S. while another found that highly religious people had higher sexual ‘passion’ than more moderately religious people (nonreligious people also reflected higher ‘passion’ levels).”
    • This sentence made me chuckle: “It may well be that the most sexually active campuses in the U.S. aren’t the famous party schools, but rather the more religiously conservative schools with more married students.”
    • The author is a sociologist and a demographer with appointments at Baylor’s Institute for the Study of Religion and at the Catholic University of America
  4. Solomon Friedman is on a mission to save Pornhub (Andrew Duffy, Ottowa Citzen): “Solomon Friedman is not someone readily defined: He’s a defence lawyer and an organ donor; a firearms advocate and an ordained rabbi; an investor, philanthropist, and pornography magnate. If the 37-year-old father of three is not the most interesting man in Ottawa, then the licensed pilot and part-time law professor is certainly one of the busiest.”
    • This is actually insane.
  5. Why I No Longer Support the Death Penalty (Matthew T. Martens, Crossway): “8,790 people have been sentenced to death in the United States since 1973. One hundred and eighty-four of those men and women were exonerated as of the end of 2022.11 They were innocent of the crimes of which they were convicted and sentenced to die. In other words, we know that at least 2 percent of people sentenced to death since 1973 were wrongly condemned. Even if we have identified all of those wrongly convicted and the error rate is ‘only’ 2 percent, that is an error rate higher than I am willing to tolerate.… I am unwilling to wager another man’s life. I would not wager my own under those conditions.”
    • The author has recently written a book about a Christian perspective on criminal justice. He is a defender of the death penalty as a concept yet opposed to it as practiced in America today.
  6. TikTok parent company used AI to optimize Linux kernel, boosting performance and efficiency (Matthew Connatser, Tom’s Hardware): “The general gist of the presentation: ByteDance used AI to make the Linux kernel (the core of the operating system) much more efficient and performant across all kinds of hardware.… AI optimizations were able to reduce memory usage by 30% — and that was using existing Linux tools, just more efficiently. Network latency was also improved by up to 12% with AI that has prior knowledge (which wouldn’t be hard to obtain on a computer used regularly).”
  7. On Culture War, Doug Wilson, and the Moscow Mood (Kevin DeYoung, personal blog): “My concerns are not so much with one or two conclusions that Christians may reach if Wilson becomes their intellectual mentor. My bigger concern is with the long-term spiritual effects of admiring and imitating the Moscow mood. For the mood that attracts people to Moscow is too often incompatible with Christian virtue, inconsiderate of other Christians, and ultimately inconsistent with the stated aims of Wilson’s Christendom project.”
    • Broadly correct, although I think DeYoung overstates his case a few times. Wilson does present the gospel more than DeYoung acknowledges and that is one of his appeals. Still, as I said, broadly correct.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

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 429

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.

This is volume 429, a sphenic number (i.e, a number with exactly three distinct prime factors).

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Classical liberals are increasingly religious (Tyler Cowen, Marginal Revolution): “Not too long ago, I was telling Ezra Klein that I had noticed a relatively new development in classical liberalism. If a meet an intellectual non-Leftist, increasingly they are Nietzschean, compared to days of yore. But if they are classical liberal instead, typically they are religious as well. That could be Catholic or Jewish or LDS or Eastern Orthodox, with some Protestant thrown into the mix, but Protestants coming in last. The person being religious is now a predictor of that same person having non-crazy political views. Classical liberalism thus, whether you like it or not, has become an essentially religious movement.”
    • Related: Why Tyler Cowen Doesn’t Meet Protestant Intellectuals (Aaron Renn, Substack): “You would think that after decades of bemoaning the ‘scandal of the evangelical mind,’ we would be heavily promoting the world class scientists and other intellectual figures we have. But that isn’t the case. I’m not a scientist but I’m not chopped liver either. I was a partner in a consulting firm, a senior fellow in a major think tank, and have written for and been cited in most of the major publications in the country (NYT, WSJ, Guardian, Atlantic, etc). But the institution that’s done the most to promote my work is the Catholic-centric First Things magazine. Undoubtedly the best career move I could make as a writer on culture, men’s issues, and public policy would be to convert to Catholicism. That would probably open doors to opportunities I will not otherwise get.”
      • Renn left out some important pieces of the puzzle. It also has to do with the way that decentralized church authority operates in the Protestant world and the lack of intersection between someone like me and someone like Andy Stanley. We just move in completely different circles. I’m not saying I’m the intellectual in this equation, by the way. I am saying I know a bunch. I have baptized people who are now professors at Stanford, but pick-your-favorite megachurch preacher has no idea that they exist. And that lack of intersection extends to groups like Veritas and the Trinity Forum which are doing the kind of work Renn describes, but independently of Saddleback Church or any other evangelical center of influence. Most influential preachers are niche celebrities who are also populist intellectuals, and that is a very different thing from an academic or institutional intellectual. There really isn’t any straightforward way to bring the two together. And I haven’t even talked about the role of Christian universities in this situation, their relationship to evangelical influencers, and their joint relationship to secular scholars. It would take a whole essay to bring all the pieces together, and I’m not sure it’s a good use of my time.
    • Related: She found meaning where she least expected it — her childhood faith (Rachel Martin, NPR): “Hurwitz: But I think what makes me nervous about the spiritual buffet is that what you’re saying is, ‘I’m going to take this thing from Buddhism that’s so me and this thing from Judaism that’s so me and this from Catholicism.’   Martin: One-hundred percent. That’s what I’m doing. Hurwitz: This is what so many of us do, and at the end of the day you’re reinforcing yourself. You’re kind of deifying yourself. Martin: Wow. Hurwitz: You’re saying, ‘What reinforces my preexisting beliefs?’ This is how we consume social media, right? But it’s not the purpose of these great spiritual traditions.”
    • Also related: Where Does Religion Come From? (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “Some sort of religious attitude is essentially demanded, in my view, by what we know about the universe and the human place within it, but every sincere searcher is likely to follow their own idiosyncratic path.”
      • A fascinating essay that wanders into weird places.
  2. How this Turing Award–winning researcher became a legendary academic advisor (Sheon Han, MIT Technology Review): “Former students describe Blum as unwaveringly positive, saying he had other ways besides criticism to steer them away from dead ends. ‘He is always smiling, but you can see he smiles wider when he likes something. And oh, we wanted that big smile,’ says Ronitt Rubinfeld, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT. Behind the general positivity, Rubinfeld says, is a fine taste for interesting ideas. Students could trust they were being guided in the right direction. Come up with a boring idea? Blum, who is known for his terrible memory, would have mostly forgotten it by your next meeting.”
    • I quite liked this one.
  3. There’s another Christian movement that’s changing our politics. It has nothing to do with whiteness or nationalism (John Blake, CNN): “The Social Gospel was a Christian movement that emerged in late 19th-century America as a response to the obscene levels of inequality in a rapidly industrializing country.… The Social Gospel turned religion into a weapon for economic and political reform. Its message: saving people from slums was just as important as saving them from hell. At its peak, the movement’s leaders supported campaigns for eight-hour workdays, the breaking up of corporate monopolies and the abolition of child labor. They spoke from pulpits, lectured across the country and wrote best-selling books.… The Social Gospel movement is making a comeback. Some may argue it never left.”
  4. You Are the Last Line of Defense (Bari Weiss, The Free Press): “I am here because I know that in the fight for the West, I know who my allies are. And my allies are not the people who, looking at facile, external markers of my identity, one might imagine them to be. My allies are people who believe that America is good. That the West is good. That human beings—not cultures—are created equal and that saying so is essential to knowing what we are fighting for. America and our values are worth fighting for—and that is the priority of the day.”
  5. UK infant baptized before being forced off life support, father says ‘the devil’ was in the courtroom (Timothy H.J. Nerozzi, Fox News): “Dean Gregory, Indi’s father, said before her death that he was inspired to baptize his daughter by Christian legal volunteers who fought to keep her alive. Dean said he became convinced of the existence of the devil by his family’s treatment in the courtroom. ‘I am not religious and I am not baptized. But when I was in court, it felt like I had been dragged to hell,’ Dean Gregory said in a Nov. 6 interview with New Daily Compass. ‘I thought, if hell exists then heaven must exist. It was like the devil was there. I thought if there’s a devil then God must exist.’ ”
    • Heartbreaking. Recommended by a student.
  6. Some Israel/Hamas perspectives:
    • There Should Be More Public Pressure on Hamas (David French, New York Times): “I’m not naïve. I don’t for a moment believe that defeating Hamas and removing it from power solves the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel cannot live up to its own democratic promise or its own liberal ideals if, for example, it indulges its own dangerous radicals. But I do know that placing more pressure on Israel than Hamas to end the conflict and save civilian lives is exactly backward. The international system depends on opposing the aggressor and punishing crimes. Protests that aim their demands more at Israel than Hamas impede justice, erode the international order and undermine the quest for a real and lasting peace.”
    • This War Did Not Start a Month Ago (Dalia Hatuqa, New York Times): “To many inside and outside this war, the brutality of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks was unthinkable, as have been the scale and ferocity of Israel’s reprisal. But Palestinians have been subject to a steady stream of unfathomable violence — as well as the creeping annexation of their land by Israel and Israeli settlers — for generations. If people are going to understand this latest conflict and see a path forward for everyone, we need to be more honest, nuanced and comprehensive about the recent decades of history in Gaza, Israel and the West Bank, particularly the impact of occupation and violence on the Palestinians.”
      • A fairly straightforward presentation of the Palestinian perspective.
    • The Struggle for Black Freedom Has Nothing to Do with Israel (Coleman Hughes, The Free Press): “There is yet another inconvenient fact for those who want to reduce the Israeli-Arab conflict to a competition between European settlers and people of color: the majority of Israeli Jews are not European. They are Mizrahi Jews—hailing from the Middle East and North Africa. What’s more, it is not the European Jews but the Mizrahi Jews—who are difficult to visually distinguish from Palestinians—that form most of the voting base of the right-wing parties that Israel’s critics consider to be the truly racist ones.”
    • Three articles from The Gospel Coalition about the various ways Christians think about the promises to Israel in the Old Testament. It’s worth sorting through your own perspective. These three essays are from well-respected Christian academics who present their positions concisely and well.
      • Why the Land Promises Belong to Ethnic Israel (Gerald McDermott, The Gospel Coalition): “First, if the land promise was ended with the coming of Jesus, then God is not trustworthy. For he promised to Abraham and his seed that the land would be theirs for an everlasting possession (Gen. 17:8). Second, if the land promise to Israel is broken, then so might be God’s promise to renew and restore the heavens and the earth. The land promise’s partial fulfillment—by bringing Jews from the four corners of the earth back to the land starting in the eighteenth century—is down payment on the promise of a new heaven and a new earth. Third, it is a deep theological reason why we should support Israel in this new war against the new Nazism.”
      • The Expected Universalization of the Old Testament Land Promises (G. K. Beale, The Gospel Coalition): “The land promises will be fulfilled in a physical form when all believers inherit the earth, but the inauguration of this fulfillment is mainly spiritual until the final consummation in a fully physical new heaven and earth. The physical way these land promises have begun fulfillment is that Christ himself introduced the new creation by his physical resurrection.… Therefore, none of the references to the promise of Israel’s land in the Old Testament appears to be related to the promises of ethnic Israel’s return to the promised land on this present earth.”
      • Israel’s Role in the Land Promise (Darrell Bock, The Gospel Coalition): “It’s often claimed the New Testament moves the land promise from being about Israel as a people in the land to being about God’s people in the world. That’s an oversimplification. The question is whether that universal expansion neuters the specific promise made to Israel of a people in a land.”
  7. The Imprudence of ‘Dump Them’ (Clare Coffey, Christianity Today): “As prudence has fallen out of favor as an aspiration, it’s hard not to see the hole it has left. On social media, we try to fill that hole with an endless proliferation of abstract rules to govern human decisions. We try to outsource the basis of individual judgment to overly simplistic moral equations, and more often than not, we find the math works out to ‘dump them.’ ”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

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.