Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 12

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. From the too-close-to-home depart­ment: The Cod­dling of The Amer­i­can Mind (Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, The Atlantic): the the­sis of this essay is that a “cam­pus cul­ture devot­ed to polic­ing speech and pun­ish­ing speak­ers is like­ly to engen­der pat­terns of thought that are sur­pris­ing­ly sim­i­lar to those long iden­ti­fied by cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­a­pists as caus­es of depres­sion and anx­i­ety.” This is a long piece but is worth read­ing even if you sus­pect it will infu­ri­ate you. There is some insight­ful com­men­tary on Red­dit argu­ing that it’s not stu­dents who have changed but admin­is­tra­tors.
2. From the race-and-reli­gion depart­ment: A Year After Fer­gu­son, Have White Chris­tians Learned Any­thing? (Rus­sell Moore, Wash­ing­ton Post)
3. From the con­tem­po­rary events depart­ment:
   • I Don’t Know If I’m Pro-Choice After Planned Par­ent­hood Videos (Ruben Navar­rette Jr, Dai­ly Beast).
   • I Watched All Twelve Hours Of The Unedit­ed Planned Par­ent­hood Videos. Here’s What I Learned (Sarah Kliff, Vox).
   • Mugged By Ultra­sound (David Dalei­den and Jon A. Shields, The Week­ly Stan­dard): this piece is old but inter­est­ing as it is co-writ­ten by the guy behind the under­cov­er Planned Par­ent­hood videos which gave rise to the above arti­cles.
4. From the ISIS depart­ment:
   • ISIS Enshrines a The­ol­o­gy of Rape (Ruk­mi­ni Cal­li­machi, NY Times): this is a very dis­turb­ing arti­cle. The GetRe­li­gion com­men­tary on this piece is worth read­ing: ISIS The­ol­o­gy of Rape — Strong New York Times Sto­ry Retreats From Quran Details (Ter­ry Mat­ting­ly).
   • Is This The End of Chris­tian­i­ty in the Mid­dle East? (Eliza Gris­wold, NY Times): this is a long, infor­ma­tive, and depress­ing sto­ry. Here as well the GetRe­li­gion com­men­tary adds use­ful per­spec­tive — From The Good Old Days To The Hell­ish ISIS Days For Chris­tians In The Mid­dle East? Real­ly?
5. From the eat-your-wheaties depart­ment: Want ‘Sus­tained Hap­pi­ness’? Get Reli­gion, Study Sug­gests (Sarah Pul­liam Bai­ley, Wash­ing­ton Post): if you have the desire, check out the orig­i­nal study in the Amer­i­can Jour­nal of Epi­demi­ol­o­gy.

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.