On Fridays I share articles/resources about broad cultural, societal and theological issues. Be sure to see the explanation and disclaimers at the bottom. I welcome your suggestions. If you read something fascinating please pass it my way.
Things Glen Found Interesting
- Yes, You Can Please Your Heavenly Father (Kevin DeYoung, Gospel Coalition): “Over and over, more than a dozen times in the New Testament, we [are clearly taught that our actions can please God]. We ought to be generous. We ought to be godly. We ought to love and live a certain way because it pleases God.”
- Breaking Faith (Peter Beinart, The Atlantic): “As Americans have left organized religion, they haven’t stopped viewing politics as a struggle between ‘us’ and ‘them.’ Many have come to define us and them in even more primal and irreconcilable ways.”
- Sorry, But The Irish Were Always ‘White’ (And So Were Italians, Jews, and So On): (David Bernstein, Washington Post): The author makes intuitive and compelling arguments. He is a law professor at George Mason University.
- The Experience of Discrimination in Contemporary America: Results from a Nationally Representative Sample of Adults (SocArXiv): note that this has not yet undergone peer review and that the dataset has some limitations. Having said that, I don’t think I’ve ever seen such research about how frequently people feel discriminated against. Table 2 on page 11 is where the most interesting information can be found. Difficult to summarize but provocative.
- Related: White Evangelicals Believe They Face More Discrimination Than Muslims (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “White evangelicals perceive discrimination in America in vastly different terms than all other religious groups, including their minority peers.”
- The recent nationwide threats against the Jewish community seem to have been perpetrated largely by a 19 year-old dual-citizenship American-Israeli Jew (Yonah Jeremy Bob, Jerusalem Post) with a small subset stemming from a reporter stalking an ex-girlfriend (Eric Levenson and AnneClaire Stapleton, CNN). A useful reminder that our assumptions are often wrong.
- The Fake Kidnapping Scandal That Almost Destroyed A Megachurch Pioneer (Luke Harrington, Christ and Pop Culture): “…it turns out the culture wars weren’t invented last week. The U.S.’s religious and cultural landscape of the 1920s was rocked by no shortage of its own conflict, with factions of evangelicals, fundamentalists, mainline Christians, and secularists all vying for power, and McPherson had managed to make enemies of most of them.”
Things Glen Found Amusing
- We Aren’t As Sophisticated As We Think
- PCUSA Reaffirms Inclusive Stance Toward Everyone With Exact Same Beliefs As PCUSA (Babylon Bee): this is in response to Princeton Seminary deciding not to honor Tim Keller after having publicly planned to.
- Playing Devil’s Advocate (Dilbert)
- Some Iron Fist Humor (Texts From Superheroes)
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.