Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 16

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 at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links

1. From the rec­om­mend­ed-by-a-stu­dent depart­ment: How To Stay Chris­t­ian On Cam­pus (David Math­is, Desir­ing God): I expect­ed some­thing very dif­fer­ent than what I got. Rec­om­mend­ed.
2. From the per­ilous times depart­ment:
   • The Refugee Cri­sis — 9 Ques­tions You Were Too Embar­rassed To Ask (Max Fis­ch­er and Aman­da Taub, Vox): this is a use­ful overview.
   • Why Chris­tian­i­ty Needs Its Own Yad Vashem (John Allen, Crux): reflec­tions on the glob­al per­se­cu­tion of Chris­tians (relat­ed to but not iden­ti­cal with the refugee cri­sis)
3. From the unex­pect­ed-insights-from his­to­ry-depart­ment: Morals Leg­is­la­tion, Revis­it­ed (Books and Cul­ture, David Skeel): Books and Cul­ture is an evan­gel­i­cal ver­sion of the NY Times Review of Books. This arti­cle is writ­ten by a law prof at Penn review­ing a Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty Press book about the evan­gel­i­cal ori­gins of the liv­ing con­sti­tu­tion approach to law.
4. From the every­body-is-quot­ing-it depart­ment: Microag­gres­sion and Moral Cul­tures (Camp­bell and Man­ning, Com­par­a­tive Soci­ol­o­gy): I have seen so many peo­ple pump­ing this aca­d­e­m­ic arti­cle I am astound­ed. Three to take a look at: Conor Frieder­s­dorf in the Atlantic, Megan McAr­dle in Bloomberg View, and Jonathan Haidt on his per­son­al blog. The orig­i­nal arti­cle is descrip­tive — the response pieces tend to be eval­u­a­tive.
5. From the prin­ci­ples-you-will-prob­a­bly-need-to-know-one-day depart­ment: When Does Your Reli­gion Legal­ly Excuse You From Doing Part of Your Job? (Wash­ing­ton Post. Eugene Volokh): this one came out right after my last email update. Volokh is a law prof at UCLA.

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.