Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 59

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues, with a pref­er­ence for con­tent from aca­d­e­mics and influ­en­tial voic­es. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

A Pastoral Exhortation

Anoth­er sense­less shoot­ing. In Matthew 24:12, Jesus warns that “because of the increase of wicked­ness, the love of most will grow cold.” Wicked­ness caus­es love to grow cold by two means: allure and despair. The church tends to focus on those forms of wicked­ness which entice us as a temp­ta­tion, but there is also a wicked­ness that demor­al­izes. It leaves Chris­tians feel­ing drained and help­less. This wicked­ness, with which we are all too familiar, can make a Chris­tian’s love grow cold. Do not be deceived. Rec­og­nize this for the demon­ic work that it is and do not let it lead you astray. Cling to Christ. Let Him be your com­fort, your peace, and your wis­dom. “Do not be over­come by evil, but over­come evil with good” (Rom 12:21).

Things Glen Found Interesting

1. The Bat­tle For Reli­gious Lib­er­ty (George Wood, PE News): Dr. Wood is the leader of the Assem­blies of God, which spon­sors Chi Alpha. See also this GetRe­li­gion piece on reli­gious lib­er­ty — high­ly rec­om­mend­ed
2. Of inter­est to aca­d­e­mics
   • The Effects of List­ing Authors in Alpha­bet­i­cal Order: A Sur­vey of the Empir­i­cal Evi­dence (Matthias Weber, SSRN): “Over­all, there is con­vinc­ing evi­dence that alpha­bet­i­cal dis­crim­i­na­tion exists and that researchers react to it.”
   • Results-Free Review (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “A poten­tial­ly sim­ple and yet pow­er­ful way to mit­i­gate pub­li­ca­tion bias is for jour­nals to com­mit to pub­lish man­u­scripts with­out any knowl­edge of the actu­al findings.” See also the jour­nal arti­cle upon which the post is based.
   • A Rant on Peer Review (George Bor­jas, per­son­al blog): “Next time you hear about ‘professional con­sen­sus in peer-reviewed research,’ do as I do: Roll your eyes.” The author is a Har­vard econ­o­mist.
   • Unin­tend­ed Help For Male Pro­fes­sors (Scott Jaschik, Inside High­er Ed). See also Do Men Abuse Parental Leave? (Christo­pher Shea, Ideas Mar­ket).
3. Trump: Tri­bune of Poor White Peo­ple (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “And I’m always left think­ing: if this is the qual­i­ty of thought of a Har­vard Law grad­u­ate, then our soci­ety is tru­ly doomed.” This is an inter­view with the author of Hill­bil­ly Ele­gy and is much more wide-rang­ing and insight­ful than the title leads you to believe . Both the jour­nal­ist and the inter­vie­wee are Chris­tians.
4. In Defense of Third-Par­ty Vot­ing (Zac Crip­pen, per­son­al blog): rec­om­mend­ed, dif­fi­cult to excerpt
5. Amus­ing: This Is How We Work (Owl­turd Comix): apolo­gies for the pub­lish­er’s title.

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.

If you have a non-Stan­ford friend who might be inter­est­ed in these emails, they can sign up at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/subscribe, and if you want to view the archives they are at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.