Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 76

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

1. Some thoughts about slav­ery and the Bible — Does The Bible Sup­port Slav­ery? (a lec­ture giv­en by the war­den of Tyn­dale House at Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty, the link is to the video with notes) and Does God Con­done Slav­ery In The Bible? (Part One — Old Tes­ta­ment) and also Part Two — New Tes­ta­ment (longer pieces from Glenn Miller at Chris­t­ian Think­tank). All three are quite help­ful.
2. Struc­tur­al Racism (John Piper, Desir­ing God): “if your mind is Bible-sat­u­rat­ed, you would con­sid­er it absolute­ly aston­ish­ing if struc­tur­al racism were not per­va­sive wher­ev­er sin is per­va­sive. In oth­er words, Bible-shaped peo­ple should expect to see struc­tur­al racism almost every­where in a fall­en world.”
3. How Methodists Invent­ed Your Kid’s Grape Juice Sug­ar High (Luke Har­ring­ton, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): why many church­es use grape juice for com­mu­nion.
4. More post-elec­tion thoughts:
   1. Why Can’t I Mourn? (Kyle James Howard, per­son­al blog): “For many, it appears that it is unac­cept­able for me to grieve racism and abor­tion equal­ly. That for many, a Chris­t­ian only has the capac­i­ty to grieve one or the oth­er but not both.”
   2. No, the Major­i­ty of Amer­i­can Evan­gel­i­cals Did Not Vote for Trump (Joe Carter, Gospel Coali­tion): you may recall that I sug­gest­ed some­thing sim­i­lar in last week’s email — here’s a wide-rang­ing expla­na­tion. There is no doubt more to be said on this.
   3. You Are Still Cry­ing Wolf (Scott Alexan­der, Slat­eStar­Codex): “I real­ize that all of this is going to make me sound like a crazy per­son and put me com­plete­ly at odds with every respectable thinker in the media, but luck­i­ly, being a crazy per­son at odds with every respectable thinker in the media has been a pret­ty good tick­et to pre­dic­tive accu­ra­cy late­ly, so whatever.” This is a long and detailed argu­ment that Trump is not racist (or at least not more racist than lots of peo­ple). I was sur­prised at how well it held my inter­est. See also Ross Douthat’s insight­ful twit­ter cri­tique of the arti­cle. For a con­trary point of view (sort of — it’s less about Trump and more about what Trump sig­ni­fies), see Racism Prob­a­bly Is Get­ting Worse. (I Hope I’m Wrong.) (Tyler Cowen, Bloomberg View). If you read one, read all three.
   4. Stunned By Trump, The New York Times Finds Time For Some Soul-Search­ing (Michael Cieply, Dead­spin): “By and large, tal­ent­ed reporters scram­bled to match sto­ries with what inter­nal­ly was often called ‘the narrative.’ We were occa­sion­al­ly asked to map a nar­ra­tive for our var­i­ous beats a year in advance, square the plan with edi­tors, then gen­er­ate sto­ries that fit the pre-des­ig­nat­ed line.” This piece is impor­tant and depress­ing.
   5. The coali­tion for diver­si­ty whose diver­si­ty did diver­si­ty just win? (Tyler Cowen, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): do not let the con­fus­ing title put you off. Cowen argues that the Repub­li­cans are in some sens­es sig­nif­i­cant­ly more diverse than the Democ­rats.
   6. #Nev­erTrump And Pres­i­dent Trump (Jake Meador, Mere Ortho­doxy): “The church’s great­est the­olo­gians have long said that a prop­er­ly Chris­t­ian com­mon­wealth will be con­cerned not with the greater good—the most good for the most people—or with the pri­vate good of Chris­tians alone, but with the com­mon good.”
   7. How cov­er­ing the Red­skins name debate pre­pared me for Don­ald Trump’s win (Dan Stein­berg, Washing­ton Post): “They told me that media Twit­ter wasn’t the real world, that it cre­at­ed a pho­ny idea of con­sen­sus for a stance that wasn’t actu­al­ly ascen­dant. And they argued that a polit­i­cal­ly cor­rect onslaught from big-city elites would only strength­en their convictions.”
   8. Don­ald Trump can absolute­ly ban Mus­lims from enter­ing the US, with­out Con­gress (Zack Beauchamp, Vox): “I [asked] sev­er­al experts on US immi­gra­tion law. Their answer was unan­i­mous: Trump would be able to imple­ment his ban. In fact, he would be able to do it easily.” I didn’t know the pres­i­dent had this pow­er. Sur­pris­ing giv­en our sys­tem of checks and bal­ances.
   9. The Cul­ture That Cre­at­ed Don­ald Trump Was Lib­er­al Not Con­ser­v­a­tive (Jim Lewis, The Inter­cept): “Liberals were sure the dev­il would come slouch­ing out of Alaba­ma or Texas, beat­ing a bible and shout­ing about sodomy and sin. They didn’t expect him to be a busi­ness­man who lives on Fifth Avenue and 57th Street.” This is some­thing I saw allud­ed to in the pri­maries but haven’t seen men­tioned in a while. 

Things Glen Found Amusing

• Half Of Con­gre­ga­tion Dies Of Star­va­tion As Ser­mon Goes 15 Min­utes Over Time (Baby­lon Bee): but actu­al­ly, though.
• Bacon In Heav­en (Pearls Before Swine)
• Local Pastor’s True Char­ac­ter Unmasked by Mario Kart Tour­na­ment (Baby­lon Bee): I think Mario Kart is a pret­ty good test of the fruit of the Spir­it — espe­cial­ly those blue shells.
• TV Prob­lems (xkcd): this is a doc­u­men­tary of my life
• The ide­al NSA Can­di­date (Jim Ben­ton, New York­er)
• Reformed Church Unin­ten­tion­al­ly Pulls Off Per­fect Man­nequin Chal­lenge (Baby­lon Bee)

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.