Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 118

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. Eat, pray, live: the Lagos megachurch­es build­ing their very own cities (Ruth Mclean, The Guardian): “Redemp­tion Camp has 5,000 hous­es, roads, rub­bish col­lec­tion, police, super­mar­kets, banks, a fun fair, a post office – even a 25 megawatt pow­er plant. In Nige­ria, the line between church and city is rapid­ly van­ish­ing.”
  2. An Open Let­ter to Ta-Nehisi Coates (Jason D. Hill, Com­men­tary Mag­a­zine): a gay black man strong­ly believes in the Amer­i­can dream and takes issue with Coates’ dis­par­age­ment of it. “I expect­ed no spe­cial treat­ment because, as an Amer­i­can, I was already part of an excep­tion­al process. My ideas, I had decid­ed on the flight over, would one day be taught in col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties. I will tell you present­ly the extent to which that willed deci­sion became real­i­ty, and why it was pos­si­ble only in the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca.” (inci­den­tal­ly, I fea­tured an essay by Coates back in issue 80)
  3. The Ques­tion of Race in Cam­pus Sex­u­al-Assault Cas­es (Emi­ly Yoffe, The Atlantic): “Kagle believes that men of color—and espe­cial­ly for­eign men of col­or, stu­dents from Africa and Asia—were unique­ly defense­less when charged with sex­u­al assault, typ­i­cal­ly lack­ing finan­cial resources, a net­work of sup­port, and an under­stand­ing of their rights.” I linked Yof­fe’s two pre­vi­ous arti­cles in last week’s edi­tion. They should be read in con­junc­tion with Cam­pus Rape, A Sur­vivor’s Sto­ry (Bret Stephens, NY Times).
  4. They Serve Gay Clients All The Time. So Why Won’t They Cater A Same-Sex Wed­ding? (Josh Shep­herd, The Fed­er­al­ist): “Phillips choked up with emo­tion as he con­tin­ued: ‘You can’t serve God and mon­ey. I didn’t open this so I could make a lot of mon­ey. I opened it up so it would be a way that I could cre­ate my art, do the bak­ing that I love and serve the God that I love in ways that would hope­ful­ly hon­or Him.’” See also Icing on the Cake: Jus­tice Dept. Backs Chris­t­ian Bak­er Bound for Supreme Court (Kate Shell­nut, Chris­tian­i­ty Today). The lat­ter is tremen­dous news, and pre­sum­ably due to the influ­ence of Mike Pence.
  5. How Many Church­es Does Amer­i­ca Have? More Than Expect­ed (Rebec­ca Ran­dall, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Accord­ing to a recent paper pub­lished by soci­ol­o­gist Simon Brauer in the Jour­nal for the Sci­en­tif­ic Study of Reli­gion, the num­ber of reli­gious con­gre­ga­tions in the Unit­ed States has increased by almost 50,000 since 1998.” You can see the orig­i­nal research here — the researcher is a soci­ol­o­gist at Duke Uni­ver­si­ty. Inter­est­ing news. It’s almost like the gates of hell can­not pre­vail against the church. 
  6. Faith groups pro­vide the bulk of dis­as­ter recov­ery, in coor­di­na­tion with FEMA (Paul Singer, USA Today):  “ ‘About 80% of all recov­ery hap­pens because of non-prof­its, and the major­i­ty of them are faith-based,’ said Greg For­rester, CEO of the nation­al VOAD. The mon­ey is ‘all raised by the indi­vid­u­als who go and serve, raised through cor­po­rate con­nec­tions, raised through church con­nec­tions,’ and amounts to bil­lions of dol­lars worth of dis­as­ter recov­ery assis­tance, he said.”
  7. The Human Fetus Pref­er­en­tial­ly Engages with Face-like Visu­al Stim­uli (Cur­rent Biol­o­gy, Reid et al): appar­ent­ly about a month and a half before birth babies can per­ceive faces through the uter­ine wall. You can read a pop­u­lar sum­ma­ry of the research at Seek­er: Human Fetus­es Can See and React to Faces From Inside the Womb. I found this research both amaz­ing and depress­ing. I won­der how many babies were excit­ed to be mak­ing a new friend up until they were abort­ed.
  8. Har­vard Calls Chelsea Man­ning Invite A ‘Mis­take,’ Rescinds Fel­low­ship Offer — Here’s What’s Going On (Ben­jamin Gog­gin, Digg). For a good expla­na­tion of rea­sons so many were opposed to this appoint­ment, read When Trans­gen­der Trumps Treach­ery (James Kirchick, NY Times). Kirchick is gay, which makes his piece all the more inter­est­ing to read.

Things Glen Found Amusing

  • Mag­ic 8 Ball (red­dit)
  • Too Dumb To Under­stand (Dil­bert)
  • A Frog Prince — Penn and Teller (Youtube)
  • Study: Col­lege Stu­dents Spend Far More Time Play­ing Than Study­ing (Megan Oprea, The Fed­er­al­ist): “The sad truth is that uni­ver­si­ties have begun to exist for the sake of their own exis­tence, rather than the edu­ca­tion of their under­grads. Mean­while, stu­dents are tak­ing their stud­ies less and less seri­ous­ly as they real­ize that they need only go through the motions to grad­u­ate and get on the job mar­ket, which is their ulti­mate goal. No won­der they’re spend­ing their time on every­thing except their stud­ies.” Dis­claimer: yes, I know the num­bers are dif­fer­ent at Stan­ford. I also know you spend more time on non-aca­d­e­m­ic activ­i­ties than you think. #just­sayin

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Mak­ing Sense of the Num­bers of Gen­e­sis [pdf link] (Car­ol Hill, Per­spec­tives on Sci­ence and the Chris­t­ian Faith): “Joseph and Joshua were each record­ed as dying at age 110—a num­ber con­sid­ered ‘per­fect’ by the Egyp­tians. In ancient Egypt­ian doc­trine, the phrase ‘he died aged 110’ was actu­al­ly an epi­taph com­mem­o­rat­ing a life that had been lived self­less­ly and had result­ed in out­stand­ing social and moral ben­e­fit for oth­ers. And so for both Joseph and Joshua, who came out of the Egypt­ian cul­ture, quot­ing this age was actu­al­ly a trib­ute to their char­ac­ter. But, to be described as ‘dying at age 110’ bore no nec­es­sary rela­tion­ship to the actu­al time of an individual’s life span.” You will not agree with every­thing in this arti­cle, but it is full of fas­ci­nat­ing insights. (first shared in vol­ume 51)

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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