Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 111

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. Meet the Megadonor Behind the LGBTQ Rights Move­ment (Andy Kroll, Rolling Stone): “More broad­ly, for Gill and his allies, nondis­crim­i­na­tion is the new front of the move­ment: a cam­paign that pits LGBTQ advo­cates against a reli­gious right that respond­ed to mar­riage equal­i­ty by redou­bling its efforts…. Gill refus­es to go on the defense. ‘We’re going into the hard­est states in the coun­try,’ he says. ‘We’re going to pun­ish the wicked.’.… ‘We have been fight­ing for [nondis­crim­i­na­tion] since the Six­ties,’ he says. ‘It’s the reli­gious right that decid­ed to make mar­riage an issue. They worked tire­less­ly on it for decades and they lost.’”
  2. Fusion GPS Illu­mi­nates the Brave New World of Man­u­fac­tured News For Hire (Lee Smith, Tablet Mag­a­zine) “There is no accu­rate account­ing of how many of the sto­ries you read in the news are the fruit of oppo­si­tion research, because no jour­nal­ist wants to admit how many of their top ‘sources’ are just infor­ma­tion packagers—which is why the blind­ing suc­cess of Fusion GPS is the least-cov­ered media sto­ry in Amer­i­ca right now.”
  3. The Death Of Read­ing Is Threat­en­ing The Soul (Philip Yancey, Wash­ing­ton Post): “I am read­ing many few­er books these days, and even few­er of the kinds of books that require hard work. The Inter­net and social media have trained my brain to read a para­graph or two, and then start look­ing around.”
  4. Ask Andrew W.K.: My Dad Is a Right-Wing Ass­hole (Andrew W.K., The Vil­lage Voice): apolo­gies for the title, this is a sur­pris­ing­ly good piece (pub­lished back in 2014).
  5. Char­lie Gard and the Experts (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “The rights of par­ents are essen­tial to a free society’s archi­tec­ture, and fathers and moth­ers are far more like­ly than any oth­er par­ty to have their child’s best inter­ests close to heart. To inter­vene on behalf of experts against the fam­i­ly is some­times nec­es­sary but always dan­ger­ous, fraught with total­i­tar­i­an temp­ta­tions to which the mod­ern West is not immune.” Char­lie Gard died after this col­umn was writ­ten, which makes the piece even more impor­tant.
  6. How Cool Works In Amer­i­ca Today (David Brooks, New York Times): argues that being woke is a cul­tur­al replace­ment for being cool. “The woke men­tal­i­ty became promi­nent in 2012 and 2013 with the Trayvon Mar­tin case and the rise of Black Lives Mat­ter. Embrace it or not, B.L.M. is the most com­plete social move­ment in Amer­i­ca today, as a com­mu­nal, intel­lec­tu­al, moral and polit­i­cal force.”
  7. Free Mar­kets and Uni­corns (Andrew Strain, First Things): “In the age of cor­po­ra­tions, a tru­ly free mar­ket is as myth­i­cal as a uni­corn.” This essay called forth the response piece Why is social­ism being pro­mot­ed by con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian out­lets? (Joe Carter, Acton Insti­tute): “by ana­lyz­ing his essay we can see a com­mon pat­tern that is emerg­ing, even in once con­ser­v­a­tive pub­li­ca­tions: writ­ers who don’t know the first thing about free mar­kets explain­ing why they are infe­ri­or to social­ist poli­cies.” Read­ing them togeth­er is illu­mi­nat­ing.

Things Glen Found Amusing/Entertaining

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Chris­t­ian Mis­sions and the Spread of Democ­ra­cy (Greg Scan­dlen, The Fed­er­al­ist): This is a sum­ma­ry of some rather won­der­ful research Robert Wood­ber­ry pub­lished in The Amer­i­can Polit­i­cal Sci­ence Review back in 2012: The Mis­sion­ary Roots of Lib­er­al Democ­ra­cy. If it looks famil­iar it’s because I allude to it from time to time in my ser­mons and con­ver­sa­tions. (first shared in vol­ume 14)

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.

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