Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 114

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

First, let me say this has been a heart­break­ing week. The racism on dis­play in Char­lottesville was wicked, and if unre­pent­ed of will lead its prac­ti­tion­ers to hell. Most of this week’s links are relat­ed:

  1. Char­lottesville: Race and Ter­ror (VICE News, Youtube link). This video is worth watch­ing, but be warned that this is dis­turb­ing footage. The first two min­utes are com­pelling.
  2. White suprema­cy angers Jesus, but does it anger his church? (Rus­sell Moore, Wash­ing­ton Post): “One of the many remark­able things about the pic­ture we get of Jesus in the Gospels is how rel­a­tive­ly calm he is. When his dis­ci­ples are pan­ick­ing in a life-threat­en­ing storm, Jesus is asleep. When vil­lages reject the mes­sage, the apos­tles are angered but Jesus is not. Threat­ened with arrest and even exe­cu­tion, Jesus meets his accusers with tran­quil­i­ty. The Scrip­tures show us two things that make Jesus vis­i­bly angry: reli­gious hypocrisy and racial suprema­cist ide­ol­o­gy.”
  3. After Char­lottesville, black pas­tors are con­fronting how polit­i­cal to get (Jeff Stein, Vox): “The blood­shed has rein­vig­o­rat­ed those pas­tors’ calls for their fel­low cler­gy to preach about polit­i­cal issues, rather than just salvation.”
  4. ‘Jews will not replace us’: Why white suprema­cists go after Jews (Yair Rosen­berg, Wash­ing­ton Post): “When white suprema­cists are vicious­ly attack­ing Jews as non­white impos­tors, then any anti-racists wor­thy of the name must be there to defend them. They can­not impose their own def­i­n­i­tions of white­ness on Jews and side­step their plight.”
  5. Is Amer­i­ca Head­ed for a New Kind of Civ­il War? (Robin Wright, New York­er): “Mines con­clud­ed that the Unit­ed States faces a six­ty-per cent chance of civ­il war over the next ten to fif­teen years. Oth­er expert­s’ pre­dic­tions ranged from five per cent to nine­ty-five per cent. The sober­ing con­sen­sus was thir­ty-five per cent. And that was five months before Charlottesville.” In response, read Our House Divid­ed (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “…our divi­sions induce a par­tic­u­lar anx­i­ety because each of our two main fac­tions reigns supreme in one par­tic­u­lar are­na. Con­ser­vatism is (some­how) polit­i­cal­ly dom­i­nant, with con­trol of the leg­isla­tive and exec­u­tive branch­es and a remark­able pow­er in the states. Mean­while lib­er­al­ism dom­i­nates the cul­tur­al com­mand­ing heights as nev­er before, with not only acad­e­mia and the media but also late-night tele­vi­sion and sports­writ­ing and even young-adult fic­tion more mono­lith­i­cal­ly and — to con­ser­v­a­tives — oppres­sive­ly pro­gres­sive. So both sides have rea­sons to feel threat­ened, dis­em­pow­ered and sur­round­ed; both can feel as though they exist under a kind of ene­my rule.”
  6. Polit­i­cal Par­a­sites (Pete Spili­akos, First Things): “[Trump] is obdu­rate. He saw that his polit­i­cal ene­mies were call­ing for a con­dem­na­tion and, in his defi­ance and arro­gance, had to show them that they weren’t going to write his scripts.”
  7. The Rise of the Vio­lent Left (Peter Beinart, The Atlantic): “If you believe the pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States is lead­ing a racist, fas­cist move­ment that threat­ens the rights, if not the lives, of vul­ner­a­ble minori­ties, how far are you will­ing to go to stop it?”
  8. Unmask­ing the left­ist Antifa move­ment: Activists seek peace through vio­lence (Sara Gan­im and Chris Welch, CNN): “Antifa mem­bers also some­times launch attacks against peo­ple who aren’t phys­i­cal­ly attack­ing them. The move­ment, Crow said, sees alt-right hate speech as vio­lent, and for that, its activists have opt­ed to meet vio­lence with violence.”
  9. Extreme Protest Tac­tics Reduce Pop­u­lar Sup­port for Social Move­ments (Fein­berg, Willer, and Kovach­eff, SSRN work­ing paper): One of the authors, Robb Willer, is a pro­fes­sor of soci­ol­o­gy at Stan­ford. “The activist’s dilem­ma – where­in tac­tics that raise aware­ness also tend to reduce pop­u­lar sup­port – high­lights a key chal­lenge faced by social move­ments strug­gling to affect pro­gres­sive change.”
  10. Trump Is More In Touch Than You Think (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “The news media have been seri­ous­ly dis­tort­ing pub­lic reac­tion to Trump’s han­dling of Char­lottesville. Whether this is a mat­ter of only see­ing what they want to see, or a mat­ter of the talk­ing heads being con­cen­trat­ed among coastal elites of both par­ties, is a mat­ter of conjecture.”
  11. Fac­ing Our Lega­cy of Lynch­ing (D. L. May­field, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “More than 4,000 African Amer­i­cans were lynched between 1877 and the rise of the civ­il rights move­ment in the ear­ly 1950s. Lynch­ing was a bru­tal pub­lic tac­tic for main­tain­ing white suprema­cy, fre­quent­ly used with the tac­it bless­ing of gov­ern­ment author­i­ties. It was a part of my her­itage I had nev­er been taught…” Note that this piece is inde­pen­dent of the events in Char­lottesville.

Things Glen Found Entertaining

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have This Is What Makes Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats So Dif­fer­ent (Vox, Ezra Klein): I was skep­ti­cal of this piece based on the title, but it’s insight­ful. (first shared in vol­ume 32)

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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