Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 132

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.

There will prob­a­bly be no email next Fri­day — I’m going to be vis­it­ing fam­i­ly and won’t do much read­ing on the inter­net.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Not-So-White Evan­gel­i­cal­ism: How Con­ser­v­a­tive Denom­i­na­tions Actu­al­ly Fare Bet­ter on Diver­si­ty (Rebec­ca Ran­dall, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “In the Unit­ed States today, 1 in 3 self-iden­ti­fied evan­gel­i­cals is non­white, accord­ing to a Sep­tem­ber study from PRRI. This ris­es to 4 in 10 evan­gel­i­cals when mea­sured by the­o­log­i­cal belief, accord­ing to a Decem­ber study from Life­Way Research. Of those that are white, 1 in 3 attends a mul­tira­cial church, report­ed anoth­er study, pub­lished in June in the Review of Reli­gious Research. Researchers Joseph Yi and Christo­pher Graz­i­ul dug into the more than 3,000 respons­es to the 2006 Faith Mat­ters Sur­vey, and found that more than a quar­ter of white evan­gel­i­cals report­ed hav­ing a close His­pan­ic friend. Even more—about 2 out of 5—said they have a close friend that is African Amer­i­can… In oth­er words, evan­gel­i­cals are now more like­ly than main­line Protes­tants to attend mul­tira­cial con­gre­ga­tions and to report African Amer­i­can and His­pan­ic friends.”
  2. The Zeal­ous Faith Of Sec­u­lar­ism (Mary Eber­stadt, First Things): “Pagani­za­tion as we now know it is dri­ven by a new his­tor­i­cal phe­nom­e­non: the devel­op­ment of a rival faith—a rival, sec­u­lar­ist faith which sees Chris­tian­i­ty as a com­peti­tor to be van­quished, rather than as an alter­na­tive set of beliefs to be tol­er­at­ed in an open soci­ety. How do we know this? We know it in part because today’s sec­u­lar­ist faith behaves in ways that only a faith can.”
  3. Is Trump a Bless­ing or Curse for Reli­gious Con­ser­v­a­tives? (Ross Douthat, David French, John Zmi­rak): “A year in, Trump has deliv­ered on many of his spe­cif­ic promis­es, par­tic­u­lar­ly where judi­cial appoint­ments are con­cerned. At the same time, there’s a great deal of angst with­in reli­gious cir­cles about what his per­son­al moral defects and his administration’s deep unpop­u­lar­i­ty mean for Chris­t­ian cul­tur­al wit­ness, and (among evan­gel­i­cals, espe­cial­ly) whether the Trump era is set­ting up a kind of gen­er­a­tional schism that will con­tribute to insti­tu­tion­al Christianity’s cri­sis going for­ward.”
    • Inci­den­tal­ly, I find many peo­ple are unaware of (or unwill­ing to admit) how much Trump has accom­plished. See The Show So Far by Tyler Cowen (Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion), Pres­i­dent Trump’s 2017 Report Card (A First Draft) by Scott Adams, and  A War Trump Won (Ross Douthat, New York Times). Love him or loathe him (appar­ent­ly the only two options), admit that he’s been busy.
    • Relat­ed: Can Evan­gel­i­cal­ism Sur­vive Don­ald Trump and Roy Moore? (Tim Keller, The New York­er): “Some time ago, the word ‘lib­er­al’ was large­ly aban­doned by Democ­rats in favor of the word ‘pro­gres­sive.’ In some ways, the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty is more lib­er­al now than when the old­er label was set aside, evi­dence that it is quite pos­si­ble to change the name but keep the sub­stance. The same thing may be hap­pen­ing to evan­gel­i­cal­ism. The move­ment may aban­don, or at least demote, the promi­nence of the name, yet be more com­mit­ted to its the­ol­o­gy and his­toric impuls­es than ever.” Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus.
  4. Sil­i­con Val­ley Is Turn­ing Into Its Own Worst Fear (Ted Chi­ang, Buz­zfeed): “Bil­lion­aires like Bill Gates and Elon Musk assume that a super­in­tel­li­gent AI will stop at noth­ing to achieve its goals because that’s the atti­tude they adopt­ed.” This essay is built on a clever insight that it press­es too far.
  5. What Putin Real­ly Wants (Julia Ioffe, The Atlantic): “[Inter­fer­ing with the US elec­tion] is a stun­ning esca­la­tion of hos­til­i­ties for a trou­bled coun­try whose elites still have only a ten­u­ous grasp of Amer­i­can pol­i­tics. And it is clas­si­cal­ly Putin, and clas­si­cal­ly Russ­ian: using dar­ing aggres­sion to mask weak­ness, to avenge deep resent­ments, and, at all costs, to sur­vive.” This is a long arti­cle.
  6. Why We Shouldn’t Let the #MeToo Move­ment Change His­to­ry (David Green­berg, Politi­co): “Today we remem­ber lit­tle more from that era than the taunt that greet­ed pres­i­den­tial can­di­date Grover Cleve­land in 1884—‘Ma, Ma, Where’s my Pa?’—when he copped to father­ing a child with an unwed woman. (He weath­ered the sto­ry, prompt­ing the riposte from his sup­port­ers, ‘Gone to the White House, ha, ha, ha.’ Two years lat­er, at age 49, he mar­ried a 21-year-old, Frances Fol­som, in the White House.)” The author is a pro­fes­sor at Rut­gers. This one comes rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent and has a dif­fer­ent focus than you prob­a­bly assume from the title and the excerpt.
  7. Glow­ing Auras and ‘Black Mon­ey’: The Pentagon’s Mys­te­ri­ous U.F.O. Pro­gram (Helene Coop­er, Ralph Blu­men­thal and Leslie Kean, New York Times):  “The pro­gram col­lect­ed video and audio record­ings of report­ed U.F.O. inci­dents, includ­ing footage from a Navy F/A‑18 Super Hor­net show­ing an air­craft sur­round­ed by some kind of glow­ing aura trav­el­ing at high speed and rotat­ing as it moves. The Navy pilots can be heard try­ing to under­stand what they are see­ing. ‘There’s a whole fleet of them,’ one exclaims. Defense offi­cials declined to release the loca­tion and date of the inci­dent.”

Things Glen Found Amusing

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have The Spir­i­tu­al Shape of Polit­i­cal Ideas (Joseph Bot­tum, The Week­ly Stan­dard): many mod­ern polit­i­cal ideas are derived from Chris­t­ian the­o­log­i­cal con­cepts. (first shared in vol­ume 1)

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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