Things Glen Found Interesting — Election Edition (vol 75)

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

Things Glen Found Interesting — Election Edition

Before I say any­thing else, I feel the need to say I did­n’t have an agen­da when select­ing these arti­cles oth­er than try­ing to under­stand what hap­pened and what it means. I’m not try­ing to make a case for or against any­one — I just want some insight.

The Elec­tion: What Hap­pened?

1. Few pre­dict­ed Trump had a good shot of win­ning. But polit­i­cal sci­ence mod­els did. (Andrew Prokop, Vox). Social sci­en­tists — believe in your dis­ci­pline! 
2. How Half Of Amer­i­ca Lost It’s F**king Mind (David Wong, Cracked): If you can’t under­stand how peo­ple vot­ed for Trump, read this. Apolo­gies for the lan­guage, but I seri­ous­ly think this piece should be con­sid­ered for a Pulitzer. 
3. The smug style in Amer­i­can lib­er­al­ism (Emmitt Rensin, Vox): “If the smug style can be reduced to a sin­gle sen­tence, it’s, Why are they vot­ing against their own self-inter­est? But no par­ty these past decades has effec­tive­ly rep­re­sent­ed the inter­ests of these dis­pos­sessed. Only one has made a point of open­ly dis­dain­ing them too.” This is an old­er piece which turned out to have strong pre­dic­tive val­ue. Shared by a stu­dent. There is one fac­tu­al error I feel oblig­ed to point out: Kim Davis won. She got what she want­ed. It’s reveal­ing that even some­one sym­pa­thet­ic like Rensin doesn’t seem to real­ize that. 
4. Fur­ther Thoughts: How Social Jus­tice Ide­ol­o­gy Fuels Racism and Sex­ism (Alas­tair Roberts, blog): “the over­reach of pro­gres­sive lib­er­als, who are chron­i­cal­ly out of touch with social and nat­ur­al real­i­ty, has played a promi­nent part in pro­vok­ing the rise of a move­ment that is resis­tant to shame and guilt, as these had for­mer­ly been weaponized to con­trol them.”
5. What This Means, How This Hap­pened, What To Do Now (Nathan Robin­son, Cur­rent Affairs): “Pro­gres­sives need to under­stand how peo­ple who are dif­fer­ent from them think. No more writ­ing them off as racist and deplorable. Even if they are, what good does that do? You need to under­stand racists not so you can sym­pa­thize with them, but so you can fig­ure out what shapes people’s beliefs, and help them reach dif­fer­ent beliefs.”
6. The Age Of Accept­able Lies (Mike Cosper, Gospel Coali­tion): “In oth­er words, we don’t want Trump to be a misog­y­nist, since it under­mines our abil­i­ty to vote for him. So his words find new inter­pre­ta­tions. Or we don’t want Hillary to have a record of dis­re­gard for both the rule of law and poli­cies that pro­tect nation­al secu­ri­ty. So we don’t believe her email scan­dal means any­thing. Or we don’t want the Bible to say hard things about sex­u­al­i­ty. So we don’t believe it does.” This arti­cle is about some­thing broad­er than but ger­mane to the elec­tion. Read this one even if you skip most arti­cles in this sec­tion.

Thoughts From Peo­ple Who Vot­ed For Trump
I have over­heard sev­er­al peo­ple ask­ing how any­one could have vot­ed for Trump. Here are a few first-per­son accounts.

1. Bethel Church’s Bill John­son: Why I Vot­ed For Don­ald Trump (Bill John­son, Gospel Her­ald) 
2. Don­ald Trump Key To Isa­iah 45 Prophe­cy? (Lance Wall­nau, Charis­ma News): I’ve heard more than one per­son ref­er­ence this idea.
3. After much prayer and soul-search­ing, I have reluc­tant­ly decid­ed to vote for the Trump-Pence tick­et. Here’s why. (Joel Rosen­berg, per­son­al blog)
4. I Am  (Cassie Hewlett, per­son­al blog). The title is not a reli­gious ref­er­ence. A stu­dent shared this one with me.

Impli­ca­tions / Con­se­quences Of The Elec­tion

1. What Trump Might Mean For The Econ­o­my (Chris­tos Makridis, Fast Com­pa­ny): yes, that’s our Chris­tos. Proud of the way you put your schol­ar­ship out there for the pub­lic, man. Keep it up!
2. Two Con­cerns for the Reli­gious Right Under Pres­i­dent Trump (Col­in Hansen, Gospel Coali­tion): “First, many evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers had lost touch with the rest of the move­ment. And sec­ond, the rest of the move­ment had lost touch with the con­cerns with their minor­i­ty broth­ers and sis­ters.” If you only read one thing in this sec­tion, read this.
3. 4 Prob­lems Asso­ci­at­ed With White Evan­gel­i­cal Sup­port Of Don­ald Trump (Thabiti Anyab­wile, Gospel Coali­tion): one sig­nif­i­cant caveat about both this and the pre­vi­ous arti­cle — I expect that the 80% sta­tis­tic will dwin­dle under more care­ful inves­ti­ga­tion. Con­sis­tent­ly in the polls before the elec­tion there was a marked dif­fer­ence between peo­ple who self-iden­ti­fied as evan­gel­i­cal and those who actu­al­ly attend­ed evan­gel­i­cal church­es. The 80% num­ber is about the for­mer. We don’t yet have data on the lat­ter.
4. A rash of racist attacks have bro­ken out in the US after Don­ald Trump’s vic­to­ry (Heather Tim­mons, Quartz): very dis­tress­ing. Seri­ous ques­tion: how many racist attacks are there on a dai­ly basis in Amer­i­ca? I’m won­der­ing what the com­par­a­tive uptick is.
5. Why some fear this election’s last­ing dam­age to Amer­i­can Chris­tian­i­ty (Sarah Pul­liam Bai­ley, Washing­ton Post): “When reports emerge about whom evan­gel­i­cals vot­ed for, they usu­al­ly mean ‘white evan­gel­i­cals,’ gloss­ing over a grow­ing racial divi­sion with­in Chris­tian­i­ty.”
6. Trump Won. Here’s How 20 Evan­gel­i­cal Lead­ers Feel. (Chris­tian­i­ty Today): this is well worth read­ing and not that long.
7. Don’t Expect The Supreme Court To Change Much (Cass Sun­stein, Bloomberg View): Sun­stein is a Har­vard Law pro­fes­sor.
8. The Elec­tion Is Over. Let’s Get Polit­i­cal (Jonathan Lee­man, Gospel Coali­tion): “Every week, our con­gre­ga­tions gath­er as embassies of heav­en. Every week, our pas­tors make a polit­i­cal speech, and we go out as ambas­sadors with a polit­i­cal mes­sage. ‘The King offers par­don for every rebel who would repent!’”

Oth­er News That Caught My Eye

1. China’s plan to orga­nize its soci­ety relies on ‘big data’ to rate every­one (Simon Deny­er, Wash­ing­ton Post): this is the most ter­ri­fy­ing thing I’ve read all week. I men­tioned this to a Chi­nese cit­i­zen and she said she’d only heard about it from Amer­i­cans and was skep­ti­cal it would hap­pen as described.
2. Vat­i­can Blind­ed to Real­i­ty in Venezuela (Fran­cis Rooney, Real Clear Reli­gion): “As the cri­sis spi­rals out of con­trol, Venezuela is in dan­ger of becom­ing this hemisphere’s Syr­ia.”

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.

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.