Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 14

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, on Fri­days I’ve been shar­ing 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 athttp://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links

1. From the big-bang-faith depart­ment: May­im Bia­lik: Hol­ly­wood is not friend­ly to peo­ple of faith (Sasha Bogursky, Fox News): Bia­lik, a devout Jew, is an actress on the Big Bang The­o­ry and in real life holds a Ph.D. in neu­ro­science. This inter­view caused such com­ment that she post­ed a fol­low-up on her blog: Where Faith Meets Sci­ence.

2. From the his­tor­i­cal analy­sis depart­ment: Did Reli­gion Make The Civ­il War Worse? (Allen Guel­zo, The Atlantic): the author is a respect­ed pro­fes­sor with a sem­i­nary back­ground. I’m not sure what I think of his argu­ment, but I did find it inter­est­ing. The arti­cle made me think about Lincoln’s Sec­ond Inau­gur­al Address, which is always worth a re-read.

3. From the hap­py news depart­ment: Chris­t­ian Mis­sions and the Spread of Democ­ra­cy (Greg Scan­dlen, The Fed­er­al­ist): This is a sum­ma­ry of some rather won­der­ful research Robert Wood­ber­ry pub­lished in The Amer­i­can Polit­i­cal Sci­ence Review back in 2012: The Mis­sion­ary Roots of Lib­er­al Democ­ra­cy. If it looks famil­iar it’s because I allude to it from time to time in my ser­mons and con­ver­sa­tions.

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.