Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 11

In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world.

To that end, 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. Past emails are archived at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links

1. I am at a con­fer­ence in Flori­da with spot­ty inter­net ser­vice, so there will be few­er items than nor­mal this week (large­ly items from pre­vi­ous weeks I’ve been hold­ing in reserve). Here are three quick insights from the con­fer­ence that have stood out to me:
   • Poor lead­ers seek atten­tion, great lead­ers pay atten­tion,
   • You need both the pow­er of God and the pres­ence of God in your life. The pow­er of God appears in a moment, but the pres­ence of God is some­thing we con­stant­ly pur­sue. We freak out when we are in an area with no cell phone cov­er­age. We should be at least that des­per­ate for the pres­ence of God.
   • Don’t hunt for green­er grass — it’s prob­a­bly just a sep­tic leak any­way.
2. From the east­ern affairs depart­ment:
   • Chi­na Is Tear­ing Down Cross­es (Bren­don Hong, Dai­ly Beast): this comes from the rec­om­men­da­tion of a stu­dent. An arti­cle that goes into more detail about the response of the church is Chi­na Sees Red: Chris­t­ian Protest Puts Hun­dreds Of Cross­es Back In Pub­lic (Sarah Zyl­stra, Chris­tian­i­ty Today).
   • Bud­dhist and Chris­t­ian Inter­pre­ta­tions of the Hong Kong Protests (Mariske Wes­t­en­dorp, Anthro­pol­o­gy News): the umbrel­la protests last year had heavy Chris­t­ian over­tones (as not­ed by NPR — A Sur­pris­ing Tie That Binds Hong Kong Protest Lead­ers — Faith and Chris­tian­i­ty Today — Hong Kong Chris­tians Lead Protests For Democ­ra­cy among oth­ers).
   • North Korea And Chris­tian­i­ty — Uneasy Bed­fel­lows (Stephen Evans, BBC ): the title of this arti­cle is weird and the sit­u­a­tion is worse than he describes, but it is nice to see a news agency like the BBC com­ment­ing on the prob­lem.
3. From the every-tribe-tongue-and-nation depart­ment:
   • Yes, Racism Is Root­ed In Eco­nom­ic Inequal­i­ty (Seth Ack­er­man, Jacobin): A Marx­ist analy­sis of Amer­i­can race rela­tions.
   • Implic­it Bias, Fear Of Hood­ies, and the Hypocrisy of the Polit­i­cal Com­men­tari­at (Jere­my Pierce, per­son­al blog): Jere­my is a Chris­t­ian who is also a philoso­pher of the meta­physics of race.
   • Rage and Ruin: On the Black Pan­thers (Steve Wasser­man, The Nation): this is an account of the Black Pan­thers which is both sym­pa­thet­ic and crit­i­cal. It is more bal­anced than White­wash­ing The Black Pan­thers: (Michael Moyni­han, The Dai­ly Beast) which is respond­ing to a pro-Pan­thers doc­u­men­tary. The lat­ter arti­cle is worth read­ing, but you should know it is is pret­ty hor­ri­fy­ing.

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.