Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 142

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. A Qui­et Exo­dus: Why Black Wor­shipers Are Leav­ing White Evan­gel­i­cal Church­es (Camp­bell Robert­son, NY Times): “As the head­lines of the out­side world turned to police shoot­ings and protest, lit­tle changed inside major­i­ty-white church­es. Black con­gre­gants said that beyond the occa­sion­al vague prayer for heal­ing a divid­ed coun­try, or a dona­tion dri­ve for law enforce­ment, they heard noth­ing.” The dynam­ic described is real and one I have per­son­al­ly wit­nessed.  All in all a pret­ty good arti­cle although it has a few glar­ing blind spots, most­ly because it focus­es almost exclu­sive­ly on those who chose to leave and does­n’t tell the sto­ry of those who chose to stay.
  2. And while we’re talk­ing about race: “I Hope We Have No Crack­ers Here”: EBF Staff Sanc­tion Racial Slur (Anna Mitchell & Philip Clark, Stan­ford Review): “You would think that res­i­dents of a sup­pos­ed­ly pro­gres­sive and racial­ly con­scious house would jump to remove a racial epi­thet from house prop­er­ty.”
  3. This is also rel­e­vant to the first arti­cle: In Don­ald Trump, Evan­gel­i­cals Have Found Their Pres­i­dent (David Brody, New York Times): “In fact, evan­gel­i­cals take the long view on Mr. Trump; they afford him grace when he doesn’t deserve it. Few dis­pute that Mr. Trump may need a lit­tle more grace than oth­ers. But evan­gel­i­cals tru­ly do believe that all peo­ple are flawed, and yet Christ offers them grace. Shouldn’t they do the same for the pres­i­dent?”
  4. This Is How To Pay Col­lege Ath­letes (Patrick Hru­by, Dead­spin): “Because here’s the thing: nobody asks how’s it going to work when it comes to, say, pay­ing den­tists. Or invest­ment bankers. Or pro­gram­mers. Or pro­fes­sors. Or for that mat­ter col­lege coach­es, ath­let­ic direc­tors, and school pres­i­dents. There are no mas­ter com­pen­sa­tion plans for those and hun­dreds of oth­er lines of work because there’s no need for a plan. The very notion of com­ing up with a com­pli­cat­ed, cen­tral­ized set of rules dic­tat­ing how much plumbers can earn and under what cir­cum­stances they can earn it would be un-Amer­i­can…” 
  5. Was the apos­tle Paul mar­ried? Yes, he was. Here’s how we know. (Den­ny Burk, Per­son­al Blog):  “It may be that Paul’s words have impli­ca­tions for all who are unmar­ried, but I think Paul’s ref­er­ence to the unmar­ried refers to wid­ow­ers specif­i­cal­ly. There are a num­ber of rea­sons for this. Not the least of which is the fact that the Greek word for ‘wid­ow­er’ was rarely used in ancient Greek and was nev­er used in the Koine peri­od…. Paul uses the term ‘unmar­ried’ two oth­er times in this chap­ter to refer to those who were pre­vi­ous­ly mar­ried.” The author is a pro­fes­sor of Bib­li­cal stud­ies.
  6. Leav­ing Blokesworld: Why You Can’t Have Your Porn and #MeToo (Mea­gan Tyler, Aus­tralian Broad­cast­ing Com­pa­ny: Reli­gion and Ethics): “In one of the few attempts to link #MeToo and porn cul­ture, two Dutch filmmakers asked men to try and dif­fer­en­ti­ate between wom­en’s accounts of sex­u­al assault and scripts from porn films. The com­par­i­son high­lights the dif­fi­cult­ly in dis­cern­ing any dif­fer­ence…. So, for all the men who have been ask­ing what they can do in light of #MeToo, here’s a place start: stop link­ing your sex­u­al arousal to wom­en’s sex­u­al sub­or­di­na­tion. Stop watch­ing porn.”
  7. The Cen­ter Left Is On Life Sup­port (Michael Bren­dan Dougher­ty, Nation­al Review): “As lib­er­als backed away from the hard pol­i­tics of mate­r­i­al redis­tri­b­u­tion, they found them­selves try­ing to redis­trib­ute the hon­orif­ic resources of soci­ety. Instead of dra­mat­i­cal­ly expand­ing day care, you could talk about sin­gle moth­ers as heroes.” The author is on the right and is diag­nos­ing a prob­lem he sees across the aisle. His com­ments about redis­trib­ut­ing hon­orifics are insight­ful and remind me of Tyler Cowen’s obser­va­tion that pol­i­tics is often more about rais­ing or low­er­ing some group’s social sta­tus than actu­al­ly solv­ing press­ing prob­lems. 
  8. What’s an Inclu­sion Rid­er? Let the Pro­fes­sor Who Helped Invent the Con­cept Explain (Rebec­ca Kee­gan, Van­i­ty Fair): “Smith said that an inclu­sion rid­er is a pro­vi­sion added to actors’ con­tracts to ensure that cast­ing on pro­duc­tions is more rep­re­sen­ta­tive. ‘It stip­u­lates that in small and sup­port­ing roles, char­ac­ters should reflect the world we live in,’ she said. That includes 50 per­cent gen­der par­i­ty, 40 per­cent inclu­sion for peo­ple of col­or, 5 per­cent L.G.B.T.Q., and 20 per­cent dis­abled.” This is a clever maneu­ver. Unsur­pris­ing­ly, there does not seem to be a pro­vi­sion for high­light­ing evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians accord­ing to our pro­por­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion in soci­ety. What if in every sit­com there was a Ned Flan­ders char­ac­ter?

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

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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