Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 174

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. Your Real Bio­log­i­cal Clock Is You’re Going to Die (Tom Scoc­ca, Hmm Dai­ly): “If you intend to have chil­dren, but you don’t intend to have them just yet, you are not bank­ing extra years as a per­son who is still too young to have chil­dren. You are sub­tract­ing years from the time you will share the world with your chil­dren.” Straight talk young peo­ple need to hear. Make the choic­es you want, but be sure you under­stand their con­se­quences. Read it and then think about it.
  2. Half of Pas­tors Approve of Trump’s Job Per­for­mance (Aaron Earls, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Despite 52 per­cent of Protes­tant pas­tors iden­ti­fy­ing as a Repub­li­can and only 18 per­cent call­ing them­selves a Demo­c­rat in a Life­Way Research sur­vey pri­or to the Novem­ber 2016 elec­tion, only 32 per­cent said they planned to vote for Trump. A full 40 per­cent said they were unde­cid­ed, with 19 per­cent plan­ning to vote for Hillary Clin­ton…. [Now after the elec­tion] there is no lack of data on Pres­i­dent Trump, but many were still hes­i­tant to give an opin­ion.” From an alum­nus who was quite dis­turbed by these num­bers.
    • Relat­ed: Why Evan­gel­i­cals Vot­ed Trump: Debunk­ing the 81% (Ed Stet­zer & Andrew McDon­ald, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “The data tells us that most Amer­i­can evan­gel­i­cals are not look­ing to their pas­tors for polit­i­cal guid­ance, and most pas­tors are not will­ing to touch the sub­ject lest they get burned. Only 4 in 10 respon­dents told us they want­ed advice from their pas­tor on polit­i­cal issues. And only 4 in 10 told us their pas­tor uses Scrip­ture to address polit­i­cal top­ics at least once a month or more. Put anoth­er way, many evan­gel­i­cals are like­ly turn­ing to culture—and often the most out­raged voices—rather than the church for polit­i­cal dis­ci­ple­ship.”
  3. I sup­port affir­ma­tive action. But Har­vard real­ly is hurt­ing Asian Amer­i­cans. (Michael Li, Vox): “As the Har­vard case per­co­lat­ed through the courts this sum­mer, I spoke to a num­ber of Asian-Amer­i­can adults, includ­ing some who are on the fac­ul­ties of elite uni­ver­si­ties. These con­ver­sa­tions took place in hushed tones — one per­son lit­er­al­ly looked over his shoul­der to make sure no one could hear. Invari­ably, peo­ple thought affir­ma­tive action was essen­tial. Just as invari­ably, peo­ple thought maybe, just maybe, Har­vard and oth­er elite schools are long over­due for a hard look in the mir­ror.” The author is senior coun­sel at NYU’s Bren­nan Cen­ter for Jus­tice.
  4. A Reac­tionary Renam­ing: Stan­ford and Eng­lish Lan­guage Pol­i­tics (Hol­lis Rob­bins, LA Review of Books): “Span­ish sol­diers preyed on Native women and Ser­ra endeav­ored — but reg­u­lar­ly failed — to pro­tect them. But on the Atlantic coast, what found­ing Amer­i­can fig­ure isn’t equal­ly impli­cat­ed in the destruc­tion of native cul­ture even if most lived and wrote long after native pop­u­la­tions on the Atlantic coast were dec­i­mat­ed, destroyed, and dri­ven west?” An inter­est­ing cri­tique of Stanford’s deci­sion to move away from Serra’s name. The author is a human­i­ties schol­ar at Sono­ma State Uni­ver­si­ty.
  5. Jim Jones & Har­vey Milk: The Secret His­to­ry (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “Milk and Jones were friends and allies.” If you know about either of these men and how they are gen­er­al­ly per­ceived, pre­pare to be sur­prised.
  6. More on Kavanaugh because more has been writ­ten (and I’ve run across some good stuff I missed pre­vi­ous­ly)
    • Does Any­one Still Take Both Sex­u­al Assault and Due Process Seri­ous­ly? (Emi­ly Yoffe, The Atlantic): “Sex­u­al vio­lence is a seri­ous nation­al prob­lem. But in the wake of the Kavanaugh hear­ing, it has joined the list of explo­sive­ly par­ti­san issues. Republicans—adopting the rhetor­i­cal style of the president—dismiss accusers. Democ­rats mock the idea that fair­ness and due process are nec­es­sary for the accused. These atti­tudes will be detri­men­tal to the coun­try and are per­ilous for each par­ty.”
    • The media mis­han­dled Kavanaugh — and made Trump a win­ner (Michael Ger­son, Wash­ing­ton Post): “Some argue that all jour­nal­ism involves bias, either hid­den or revealed. But it is one thing to say that objec­tiv­i­ty and fair­ness are ulti­mate­ly unreach­able. It is anoth­er to cease grasp­ing for them. That would be a world of pure­ly pri­vate truths, in which the bold­est liars and dem­a­gogues would thrive.” Ger­son is an evan­gel­i­cal who was a speech­writer in the Bush admin­is­tra­tion.
    • Every­one Lost at the Ford-Kavanaugh Hear­ings (Andrew Sul­li­van, New York Mag­a­zine): “When pub­lic life means the ran­sack­ing of people’s pri­vate lives even when they were in high school, we are cir­cling a deeply illib­er­al drain. A civ­i­lized soci­ety observes a dis­tinc­tion between pub­lic and pri­vate, and this dis­tinc­tion is inte­gral to indi­vid­ual free­dom. Such a dis­tinc­tion was anath­e­ma in old-school monar­chies when the king could arbi­trar­i­ly arrest, jail, or exe­cute you at will, for pri­vate behav­ior or thoughts. These lines are also blurred in author­i­tar­i­an regimes, where the pow­er of the gov­ern­ment knows few lim­its in mon­i­tor­ing a person’s home or pri­vate affairs or cor­re­spon­dence or tax returns or texts. These bound­aries def­i­n­i­tion­al­ly can’t exist in theoc­ra­cies, where the state is inter­est­ed as much in pun­ish­ing and expos­ing sin, as in pre­vent­ing crime. The Iran­ian and Sau­di gov­ern­ments — like the ear­ly mod­ern monar­chies — seek not only to con­trol your body, but also to look into your soul. They know that every­one has a dark side, and this dark side can be exposed in order to destroy peo­ple. All you need is an accu­sa­tion.” This piece is a few weeks old but I missed it. Sul­li­van, if you don’t rec­og­nize the name, is the intel­lec­tu­al father of gay mar­riage. He’s an inter­est­ing chap — he self-iden­ti­fies as a con­ser­v­a­tive and yet sup­port­ed Barack Oba­ma, and he calls him­self a faith­ful Roman Catholic yet had a wed­ding cer­e­mo­ny with his male part­ner. He’s one of the most idio­syn­crat­ic intel­lec­tu­als out there.
    • Why Women Can (and Should) Sup­port Brett Kavanaugh (Anni­ka Nordquist, Stan­ford Dai­ly): “As a stu­dent at Stan­ford, where Dr. Blasey Ford stud­ied and taught, as a grad­u­ate of Holton-Arms, the high school she attend­ed at the time of the alleged assault, and, rar­er still, as a vocal female con­ser­v­a­tive on cam­pus, I too have been think­ing with about this episode and what it means for women, for men, and for our soci­ety as a whole.” This is our Anni­ka.
  7. The Audac­i­ty of Gen­der-Reveal Par­ties: Anoth­er Step Towards Cul­tur­al Insan­i­ty (Al Mohler, per­son­al blog): “Chris­tians think­ing about this moral con­fu­sion must first stop at the vocab­u­lary used in this article—particularly the word, ‘cis­gen­der.’ Using that term plays into the entire gen­der rev­o­lu­tion. The term indi­cates that some­one born a male is quite com­fort­able with being male. Even adopt­ing the vocab­u­lary, there­fore, becomes an enor­mous prob­lem because the vocab­u­lary assumes that you accept the ide­ol­o­gy of the trans­gen­der revolutionaries—that gen­der flu­id­i­ty exists and that the gen­der assigned at one’s birth may or may not be fac­tu­al.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

I feel as though the last few issues have had a drought of amus­ing things. I think this week makes up for it.

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have The Preach­er And Pol­i­tics: Sev­en Thoughts (Kevin DeY­oung, Gospel Coali­tion): “I have plen­ty of opin­ions and con­vic­tions. But that’s not what I want my min­istry to be about. That’s not to say I don’t com­ment on abor­tion or gay mar­riage or racism or oth­er issues about the which the Bible speaks clear­ly. And yet, I’m always mind­ful that I can’t sep­a­rate Blog­ger Kevin or Twit­ter Kevin or Pro­fes­sor Kevin from Pas­tor Kevin. As such, my com­ments reflect on my church, whether I intend them to or not. That means I keep more polit­i­cal con­vic­tions to myself than I oth­er­wise would. First shared in vol­ume 150.

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). And to the extent you can dis­cern my opin­ions, please under­stand that they are my own and not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of Chi Alpha or any oth­er orga­ni­za­tion I may be per­ceived to rep­re­sent.

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.

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