Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 60

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting

1. To quote from the begin­ning of both posts: “over the past 30 years law­mak­ers in Con­gress tend to vote in line with their party’s plat­form: 89 per­cent of the time for Repub­li­cans and 79 per­cent of the time for Democ­rats.” If you want to read the full par­ty plat­form state­ments they are linked in the arti­cles and weigh in at a tad over 50 pages each — these are much short­er sum­maries. They are pre­sent­ed in the order of their con­ven­tions. 
   • What You Should Know About the Repub­li­can Par­ty Plat­form (Joe Carter, Gospel Coali­tion)
   • What You Should Know About The Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty Plat­form (Joe Carter, Gospel Coali­tion)
2. Is Seg­re­ga­tion Scrip­tur­al? A Radio Address From Bob Jones On East­er Of 1960 (Justin Tay­lor, Evan­gel­i­cal His­to­ry): this is fas­ci­nat­ing to me as a preach­er. Notice that where Jones went off the rails was when he relied upon his inter­pre­ta­tion of a sin­gle verse as the foun­da­tion of his the­ol­o­gy. Beware of sin­gle-verse the­ol­o­gy! Also, who does­n’t talk about the res­ur­rec­tion on East­er? What was his Christ­mas ser­mon about?
3. The False Promise Of A ‘Con­ver­sa­tion’ About Race (John McWhort­er, Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion): “The Mar­t­ian anthro­pol­o­gist — or even a sharp 10-year-old — would be baf­fled by so many bril­liant people’s end­less­ly claim­ing in the very wake of the lat­est racial inci­dent, dis­cussed in the news cycle for weeks, that Amer­i­ca ‘doesn’t want to talk about race.’” The author is a pro­fes­sor at Colum­bia who earned his Ph.D. in lin­guis­tics at Stan­ford.
4. In The Cul­ture War Between Stu­dents and Pro­fes­sors, The Uni­ver­si­ty Is The Real Ene­my (Don­na Zucker­berg, Jezebel): “Heller is cor­rect on one cru­cial point that I don’t think read­ers have been tak­ing seri­ous­ly enough. Col­leges like Ober­lin do encour­age indi­vid­ual expres­sion while simul­ta­ne­ous­ly groom­ing all of their stu­dents to belong to a sin­gle socioe­co­nom­ic class—the intel­lec­tu­al and pro­fes­sion­al elite. In oth­er words, study­ing Antigone doesn’t just teach you about Greek dra­ma and female polit­i­cal resis­tance. It also turns you into the kind of per­son who has read Antigone.”
5. As A Poor Kid From The Rust Belt, Yale Law Brought Me Face-To-Face With Rad­i­cal Inequal­i­ty (J.D. Vance, Huff­in­g­ton Post): “Very few peo­ple at Yale Law School are like me. They may look like me, but for all of the Ivy League’s obses­sion with diver­si­ty, vir­tu­al­ly everyone—black, white, Jew­ish, Mus­lim, what­ev­er— comes from intact fam­i­lies who nev­er wor­ry about mon­ey.” I shared a link to an inter­view with J.D. Vance last week.

Amusing

• A com­ic news­pa­pers refused to run (Pearls Before Swine)
• What to order for your last meal (SMBC)

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.