Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 93

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

1. 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.”
2. 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.”
3. 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. 
4. 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. 
5. 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.”
6. 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. 
7. 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.