Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 38

On Fri­days I share articles/resources I have found help­ful recent­ly in think­ing about broad­er cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

1. From The The­ol­o­gy Side:
   • Was Jesus Nei­ther a Demo­c­rat Nor a Repub­li­can? (Michael Kruger, blog): Kruger argues that this is a mis­lead­ing and triv­ial­ly true state­ment.
   • The Mega Church­es of Lagos (Andrew Esiebo, The Guardian): this is a col­lec­tion of pic­tures. The third pic­ture is mind-blow­ing.
   • Tran­script: Rev. Paul Scalia’s Eulo­gy for His Father Jus­tice Antonin Scalia (Paul Scalia, USA Today): it’s rare to find a funer­al ser­mon for a famous per­son that is this the­o­log­i­cal­ly rich. Being Protes­tant there are bits I would quib­ble with, but wow.
   • What Con­ser­v­a­tive Gay Chris­tians Want (Dan Hitchens, The Spec­ta­tor): a per­spec­tive rarely heard in main­stream media: “When Shaw writes in praise of the ‘real ele­ments of beau­ty’ in gay rela­tion­ships, or laments how the C of E’s ‘hypocrisy’ has ‘hurt a lot of peo­ple’, he sounds like a lib­er­al Angli­can. At oth­er times, he sounds like any­thing but. Sex is ‘not a small issue that we can afford to dis­agree on’, he says; ‘marriage between a man and a woman, union in dif­fer­ence, sex with­in that’ is one of the most impor­tant ‘pictures of God’s love for us’. The Bible starts with a mar­riage in Eden and ends with a mar­riage between Christ and the Church. ‘It’s not just a cou­ple of vers­es in Leviti­cus that we need to change,’ Shaw argues: recon­struct­ing mar­riage would mean ‘ripping out the heart of almost every part of scripture’.”
   • Three Lies Every Cam­pus Min­is­ter Must Silence (Paul  Worces­ter, Cam­pus Min­istry Today): this arti­cle has an amaz­ing close. Even if you skim the arti­cle, devour the tes­ti­mo­ny at the end. You nev­er know the impact you have.
   • An Economist’s Ratio­nal Road to Chris­tian­i­ty (Eric Falken­stein, per­son­al blog): one man’s jour­ney to con­ver­sion. It’s a bit long. The author’s Ph.D. is from North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty, he works in indus­try, and has pub­lished two well-received books. My favorite line is “in the words of a famous short green deist, ‘Do, or do not, there is no try.’”
2. From The Polit­i­cal Side
   • The Delib­er­a­tor (M. Antho­ny Mills, First Things): A pro­file of a junior sen­a­tor from Nebras­ka who thinks the Sen­ate is becom­ing too effi­cient. I don’t think I’ve heard this per­spec­tive before.
   • A good expla­na­tion of non­vi­o­lent protest (red­dit): has an inter­est­ing exam­ple of how to end a zero-tol­er­ance pol­i­cy at a high school.
   • In Bat­tle of Gay Rights Vs Indi­vid­ual Con­science In Mis­souri, Here’s A Sur­pris­ing Win­ner (Bob­by Ross, GetRe­li­gion): a click-baity title, but a sol­id piece that explains the actu­al point of con­flict bet­ter than most I have seen.
3. God Loved Alexan­der Hamil­ton (Susan Lim, Chris­tian­i­ty Today) — his­to­ry nerds pay atten­tion — there’s some good stuff here.
4. Ran­dom Research
   • Moral Sym­bols: A Neck­lace of Gar­lic Against Uneth­i­cal Requests (Desai & Koucha­ki, Acad­e­my of Man­age­ment Jour­nal). I’m not con­vinced, but I am intrigued.
   • When Inputs are Out­puts: The Case of Grad­u­ate Stu­dent Instruc­tors (Bet­tinger, Long, and Tay­lor, Eco­nom­ics of Edu­ca­tion Review): “Undergraduates are more like­ly to major in a sub­ject if their first course in the sub­ject was taught by a grad­u­ate stu­dent .… Grad­u­ate stu­dents who teach more fre­quent­ly grad­u­ate ear­li­er and are more like­ly to sub­se­quent­ly be employed by a col­lege or university.”

Why Do You Send This Email?

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. I pray this email gives you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar.

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 (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it).

Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it.

Past edi­tion­s are archived at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links (you can also sign up to receive them via email at that site)