Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 46

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. The Dan­ger Of A Sin­gle Sto­ry (David Brooks, NY Times): “sto­ries have become iden­ti­ty mark­ers. This is a phe­nom­e­non bor­rowed from cam­pus polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness. In order to express your sol­i­dar­i­ty with the vir­tu­ous team, you have to embrace the social­ly approved sto­ry. If you dif­fer from the offi­cial sto­ry.… it is a sign that you have false alle­giances. You must embrace the approved sto­ry to show you are not com­plic­it in a sys­tem of oppres­sion.”
2. How To Fix Pol­i­tics (David Brooks, NY Times): “Peo­ple put pol­i­tics at the cen­ter of their psy­cho­log­i­cal, emo­tion­al and even spir­i­tu­al life. This is ask­ing too much of pol­i­tics. Once pol­i­tics becomes your eth­nic and moral iden­ti­ty, it becomes impos­si­ble to com­pro­mise, because com­pro­mise becomes dis­hon­or.”
3. Ohio State Turns The Con­cept of ‘Safe Space’ Against Stu­dent Pro­test­ers (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): “speech codes imple­ment­ed in the late 1980s and ear­ly 90s with the inten­tion of pro­tect­ing black stu­dents were ulti­mate­ly used to charge and pun­ish more black stu­dents than white stu­dents. Inso­far as cam­pus con­cepts like safe spaces, microag­gres­sions, and claims of trau­ma over minor alter­ca­tions spread from activist cul­ture to cam­pus cul­ture, the pow­er­ful will inevitably make use of them.” See his fol­low-up The Tools Of Cam­pus Activists Are Being Turned Against Them.
4. Fired For Preach­ing: Geor­gia Dumps Doc­tor Over Church Ser­mons (Todd Starnes, Fox News): “First, they silenced the sheep – and now they are try­ing to silence the shep­herds.”
5. More From Michael McConnell On The Sup­ple­men­tary Brief­ing In ‘Zubik vs Bur­well’ (Eugene Volokh, Wash­ing­ton Post): the title is a lit­tle snore induc­ing, but the con­tent is quite stim­u­lat­ing. It’s a Stan­ford law professor’s thoughts on the nuns suing the gov­ern­ment.
6. Brazil’s Evan­gel­i­cals Flex Polit­i­cal Pow­er In Impeach­ment Dra­ma (Cather­ine Osborne, NPR): I rec­om­mend lis­ten­ing to the audio rather than mere­ly read­ing the tran­script.
7. Har­ri­et Tub­man: The “Moses” Of Her Peo­ple (Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “If a slave want­ed to quit in the midst of a res­cue, Tub­man would hold a revolver to his head and ask him to recon­sid­er.” Note that this arti­cle is not a response to Tub­man appear­ing on the $20 bill, this is from an old series called 131 Chris­tians Every­one Should Know (FYI — the relat­ed arti­cles are quite inter­est­ing). For some­thing more recent, check out the GetRe­li­gion post Hon­or­ing Har­ri­et Tub­man, a Methodist, Repub­li­can, Evan­gel­i­cal Woman For the Ages.
8. The Absurd Pri­ma­cy of the Car in Amer­i­can Life (Edward Humes, The Atlantic): “If U.S. roads were a war zone, they would be the most dan­ger­ous bat­tle­field the Amer­i­can mil­i­tary has ever encoun­tered.”
9. Trust Us: Politi­cians Keep Most Of Their Promis­es (Tim­o­thy Hill, FiveThir­tyEight): Inter­est­ing arti­cle, although I note that “most” is a very key word. A friend who keeps â…” of the promis­es they make to you keeps most of their promis­es — but would you call that friend trust­wor­thy?
10. Amus­ing:
    • “What Has God Ever Done For Me?” Asks Man Breath­ing Air (The Baby­lon Bee).
    • Man Cap­i­tal­izes On Death Of Prince To Clar­i­fy He Wasn’t Prince Of Peace (Baby­lon Bee): this is actu­al­ly won­der­ful. For some­thing more sub­stan­tive, check out the GetRe­li­gion piece The Artist Named Prince: Was He Ulti­mate­ly A Rebel For, Or Against, The Sex­u­al Rev­o­lu­tion?
    • Dove Awards Announce Real­is­tic New Cat­e­gories (Baby­lon Bee): painful­ly true

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.