Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 104 — Special Edition

Wel­come to issue 104: this is my two-year anniver­sary of these (kind of — I’ve tak­en a few weeks off along the way). In case you’re read­ing for the first time, every Fri­day I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues.

In hon­or of the two year mile­stone, I’m doing a spe­cial edi­tion: instead of link­ing to spe­cif­ic arti­cles that caught my atten­tion recent­ly, this week I want to high­light thinkers I con­sis­tent­ly find help­ful. I don’t always agree with them, but I find their writ­ing stim­u­lat­ing.

Authors Glen Regularly Finds Interesting

1. Rus­sell Moore, pres­i­dent of the Ethics and Reli­gious Lib­er­ty Com­mis­sion of the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion.  When you don’t know what I think about some­thing, see if Rus­sell Moore has writ­ten about it. Odds are we’re on the same page. Here are a few things I’ve linked to from him before:
   • Lit­tle Sis­ters, Big Case (The Hill, March 2016)
   • Is Pro-Life Rhetoric Dead­ly? (per­son­al blog, Decem­ber 2015)
   • Evan­gel­i­cals Won’t Cave (First Things, Octo­ber 2015)
   • There’s a well-done (although slight­ly snarky) pro­file of him in the New York­er (Novem­ber 2016)

    

2. Tyler Cowen — an econ­o­mist at George Mason Uni­ver­si­ty. Cowen is a lib­er­tar­i­an and an athe­ist and I fre­quent­ly dis­agree with him. But I love read­ing his blog. Here are some posts I’ve high­light­ed before:
   • The Cul­ture of Guns, The Cul­ture of Alco­hol (blog, April 2013)
   • What are the core dif­fer­ences between Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats? (blog, March 2016)
   • Why Brex­it hap­pened and what it means (blog, June 2016)

    

3. Doug Wil­son — a pas­tor in Moscow, ID. This guy is super-con­tro­ver­sial and I love read­ing him. Even when I dis­agree with him I usu­al­ly learn some­thing. Here are some things I’ve high­light­ed from him:
   • Amer­i­can Jesus (blog, Jan­u­ary 2016)
   • Six arti­cles about guns (blog, May 2016)
   • A Fight In The Lep­er Colony (blog, Octo­ber 2016)
   • There’s a 2009 pro­file of him: The Con­tro­ver­sal­ist (Chris­tian­i­ty Today)

    

4. Megan McAr­dle — a jour­nal­ist for Bloomberg View. I always find her views insight­ful. She’s more polit­i­cal­ly wonky and the­o­log­i­cal­ly con­fused than the oth­er entries on this list, but she’s got intrigu­ing opin­ions about almost every­thing. Things she’s writ­ten that I’ve fea­tured before:
   • Ver­i­ly I Say Unto You: Chris­tians Care About the Poor (May 2015)
   • What We Don’t Know About False Claims of Rape (June 2015)
   • Tal­ly­ing Right-Wing Ter­ror vs. Jihad (June 2015)

    

5. Mol­lie Hem­ing­way — an edi­tor at The Fed­er­al­ist who is increas­ing­ly doing tele­vi­sion spots. She’s a devout Luther­an and is end­less­ly enter­tain­ing to me. These caught my eye:
   • 4 Recent Exam­ples Show Why No One Trusts Media ‘Fact Checks’ (Feb­ru­ary 2017)
   • Ken­tucky Clerk Didn’t Fol­low Chris­tian­i­ty Before Con­vert­ing To It (Sep­tem­ber 2015)
   • Media Want To Make Sure You Nev­er Hear About ‘The Lit­tle Sis­ters Of The Poor’ (May 2016)
   • There’s a pro­file of her at the Inde­pen­dent Women’s Forum

    

6. Scott Alexan­der — this is the pseu­do­nym of a psy­chi­a­trist who blogs pro­lif­i­cal­ly at Slate Star Codex. He is an athe­ist with com­pli­cat­ed polit­i­cal views. Always fun to read. Here are a few things I’ve linked:
   • Some Groups of Peo­ple Who May Not 100% Deserve Our Eter­nal Scorn (Feb­ru­ary 2017)
   • Book Review: See­ing Like A State (March 2017)
   • Sil­i­con Val­ley: A Real­i­ty Check (May 2017)
   • He also wrote an inter­net nov­el called Unsong. It’s got a clever, explic­it­ly reli­gious set­up.

    

7. I’ve left out a lot of oth­er peo­ple such as Matthew Lee Ander­son, Jean­nie Suk Gersen, David French, Rod Dreher, Fred­die DeBoer, Ross Douthat, Conor Frieder­s­dorf, Justin Tay­lor, Kevin DeY­oung, Joe Carter and more. If you’re ever bored, search for their names and see if you find them as intrigu­ing as I do.

Things Glen Often Finds Amusing

• Baby­lon Bee — a Chris­t­ian satire site
• Would I Lie To You? A pan­el com­e­dy show on the BBC
• xkcd — a nerdy web­com­ic (some­times I need explain xkcd to get it)
• SMBC — a web­com­ic of spe­cial inter­est to aca­d­e­mics
• Basic Instruc­tions — a now defunct web­com­ic on rerun
• Dil­bert — a com­ic
• Pearls Before Swine — a com­ic

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.