Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 26

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

On this half-year mark, I give you the inter­est­ing things:

1. Reli­gious Lib­er­ty and Human Dig­ni­ty: Tale Of Two Dec­la­ra­tions (Har­vard Jour­nal of Law and Pub­lic Pol­i­cy, Kevin Has­son). This arti­cle from 2003 argues that reli­gious free­dom is the fun­da­men­tal free­dom. It starts slow as it lays a foun­da­tion, but picks up about halfway through.
2. While you’re on Thanks­giv­ing break, please reg­is­ter to vote if you have not already done so. I strong­ly sug­gest you reg­is­ter as a Per­ma­nent Vote-By-Mail Vot­er, which sim­ply means that you will receive a bal­lot in the mail before every elec­tion. It gives you plen­ty of time to research the can­di­dates and issues from the com­fort of your dorm room with your bal­lot in front of you. If you pre­fer to vote in anoth­er state then vis­it http://www.brennancenter.org/student-voting). If you’re a cit­i­zen of anoth­er coun­try, do what­ev­er you’re sup­posed to do there. 🙂
3. Some glob­al per­spec­tive:
   • Did The Media Ignore The Beirut Bomb­ings? Or Did Read­ers? (Vox, Max Fish­er). As far as I can tell, this is fac­tu­al­ly cor­rect. More inter­est­ing­ly, see The Empa­thy Gap: Why Have The Paris Attacks Got­ten More Atten­tion Than The Beirut Bomb­ings (The Atlantic, David Gra­ham): I think Gra­ham’s per­spec­tive is help­ful although it under­states the impor­tance of per­ceived nov­el­ty. Remem­ber how much cov­er­age the Boko Haram kid­nap­pings received? They were per­ceived as nov­el. A bomb­ing in Beirut is (inac­cu­rate­ly) per­ceived as nor­mal.
   • Why Are There Only 53 Chris­tians Among Amer­i­cans 2184 Syr­i­an Refugees? (Chris­tian­i­ty Today, Mor­gan Lee). This is a great analy­sis of the num­bers. Takes into account fac­tors I’ve not seen dis­cussed else­where. FYI, Con­doleeza Rice, a near­by Chris­t­ian with more than a lit­tle knowl­edge of nation­al secu­ri­ty issues, thinks the US should take in more refugees. Also, a tweet many of you will appre­ci­ate.
   • Church Atten­dance Plunges After Nepal Becomes A Sec­u­lar State (Chris­tian­i­ty Today, Mor­gan Lee): this one is fas­ci­nat­ing. India got angry that Nepal stopped being offi­cial­ly Hin­du, and so stopped export­ing fuel, and so Chris­tians can’t get to church. Wow.
   • Chi­na Accused Of Try­ing to ‘Co-Opt and Emas­cu­late’ Chris­tian­i­ty (The Guardian, Tom Phillips and Har­ri­et Sher­wood): top Chi­nese lead­ers are ner­vous at the explo­sive growth of Chris­tian­i­ty in the avowed­ly athe­ist nation.
4. More cam­pus activism links: Pres­i­dent Oba­ma weighs in (real­ly). See also A Cri­sis Our Uni­ver­si­ties Deserve (NY Times, Ross Douthat): this is a help­ful big-pic­ture overview of the col­lege scene. Also, Yale’s Activists Deserve Con­struc­tive Crit­i­cism (The Atlantic, Conor Frieder­s­dorf).
5. Are Non-Reli­gious Chil­dren Real­ly More Altru­is­tic? (Robert Wood­ber­ry) — this is prob­a­bly the last thing I will post on this. I almost didn’t, but WOW what a smack­down. Wood­ber­ry is the author of that arti­cle I keep shar­ing about Chris­tian­i­ty and democ­ra­cy.
6. Quick Links:
   • This Pearls Before Swine com­ic made me chuck­le
   • ISIS Has a Help Desk (NBC News): Of course it does. Tech­nol­o­gy doesn’t get eas­i­er to use just because you’re evil.
   • The Space Doctor’s Big Idea. (New York­er, Ran­dall Munroe). The author of xkcd explains both spe­cial and gen­er­al rel­a­tiv­i­ty using only the 1000 most com­mon words in the Eng­lish lan­guage.
   • The web­com­ic Sat­ur­day Morn­ing Break­fast Cere­al has fun with the sim­u­la­tion argu­ment.

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.