Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 102

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. Tran­script of New Orleans May­or Landrieu’s address on Con­fed­er­ate mon­u­ments (Derek Cos­son, The Pulse): “To lit­er­al­ly put the con­fed­er­a­cy on a pedestal in our most promi­nent places of hon­or is an inac­cu­rate recita­tion of our full past, it is an affront to our present, and it is a bad pre­scrip­tion for our future.”
2. Rod Dreher’s A Mon­u­men­tal His­to­ry offers a gen­er­al agree­ment with Lan­drieu’s speech along with a thought­ful defense of Robert E. Lee. “I am only some­what trou­bled by the Lee monument’s removal. That’s not because of any sym­pa­thy for the Con­fed­er­a­cy — it deserved to lose, and the suf­fer­ing of the South in and after the war was, I believe, God’s judg­ment on it for the sin of slav­ery…. [nonethe­less] Lee was a far more com­plex man than many peo­ple today seem to real­ize.” (Dreher is also a Louisiana res­i­dent)
3. Col­lege Fresh­men Are Less Reli­gious Than Ever (Allen Downey, Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can): “Most of this growth [of ‘no reli­gious pref­er­ence’] comes at the expense of Catholi­cism, which dropped from 32 per­cent to 23 per­cent, and main­stream Protes­tant denom­i­na­tions includ­ing Bap­tists (from 17 per­cent to 7 per­cent), and Methodists (from 9 per­cent to 3 per­cent). At the same time the num­ber of stu­dents choos­ing ‘Oth­er Chris­t­ian’ increased from 5 per­cent to 13 per­cent.”
4. UK Mus­lims Report­ed Abe­di (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “What else would you have had these Mus­lims do? Sounds like they did exact­ly what they were sup­posed to do… [On the oth­er hand] what more would you have author­i­ties do? If he had not act­ed out… what do you do?” Things are com­plex. And yes, this is the same Rod Dreher as in the sec­ond entry on this list. He’s pro­lif­ic. 
5. Sex­u­al regret in US and Nor­way: Effects of cul­ture and indi­vid­ual dif­fer­ences in reli­gios­i­ty and mat­ing strat­e­gy (Ben­dix­en, Asao, Wyck­off, Buss and Ken­nair, Per­son­al­i­ty and Indi­vid­ual Dif­fer­ences):  From the abstract: “Men were sig­nif­i­cant­ly less like­ly to regret hav­ing had casu­al sex than women and were sig­nif­i­cant­ly more like­ly to regret pass­ing up casu­al sex­u­al oppor­tu­ni­ties than women… Final­ly, North Amer­i­cans and Nor­we­gians did not dif­fer sig­nif­i­cant­ly in over­all amount of sex­u­al regret nor in pat­terns of sex dif­fer­ences in sex­u­al regret.” I’m always fas­ci­nat­ed by gen­der dif­fer­ences that tran­scend cul­tures. 

Things Glen Found Amusing

• Bible Col­lege Fresh­man Pro­vides Pas­tor With 90 Pages Of Help­ful Notes After Ser­mon (Baby­lon Bee): I’m not say­ing you could sub­sti­tute a Stan­ford stu­dent into this sto­ry with­out chang­ing it, but let the read­er under­stand.
• Stan­ford Psy­chol­o­gy Depart­ment Encour­ages Stu­dents To Respond To All Ques­tions Using Week Num­bers (Stan­ford Flip­side): “I just respond, ‘Oh, it’s week 7,’ and every­one seems to under­stand exact­ly what I mean. It’s utter­ly bril­liant. It has saved my social life.’”
• Chris­tians Beg God To Not Let Male Rompers Catch On Among Wor­ship Lead­ers (Baby­lon Bee)
• Col­lege Stu­dent Tithes Ramen (Baby­lon Bee)
• Reformed Roast­ers (an actu­al thing, from what I can tell): “The Lim­it­ed Atone­ment Roast is total­ly suf­fi­cient to appeal to every­one’s tastes… it just does­n’t.”

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.