Month: January 2019

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 187

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. Emo­tions Make Ter­ri­ble Gods (Greg Morse, Desir­ing God): “We live in an emo­ji world where self-expres­sion and ‘being the true you’ hold high­est pri­or­i­ty — no one can tell us how to feel…. In all, the assump­tion stands: you are your emo­tions — for bet­ter or worse. To repress them is to repress your­self.”
  2. ‘I Was a TSA Agent, and You Fed Me’ (Kate Shell­nut, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “But church­es, as they join in prayer for a leg­isla­tive solu­tion, have also stepped up to sup­port com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers affect­ed by the bud­get­ing stale­mate. Here are 10 places where Chris­tians are reach­ing out to love their fur­loughed and unpaid neigh­bors…” This is an inspir­ing list. I am struck by both the geo­graph­ic and the denom­i­na­tion­al diver­si­ty. The extent to which church­es bless their com­mu­ni­ties is dif­fi­cult to over­state.
  3. Is Big Tech Merg­ing With Big Broth­er? Kin­da Looks Like It (David Samuels, Wired): “A nation­al or glob­al sur­veil­lance net­work that uses benef­i­cent algo­rithms to reshape human thoughts and actions in ways that elites believe to be just or ben­e­fi­cial to all mankind is hard­ly the road to a new Eden. It’s the road to a prison camp.”
  4. Death on demand: has euthana­sia gone too far? (Christo­pher de Bel­laigue, Guardian): “Alto­geth­er, well over a quar­ter of all deaths in 2017 in the Nether­lands were induced.… sui­cide leaves scars on friends and fam­i­ly that may nev­er heal. But sui­cide is an indi­vid­ual act, self-moti­vat­ed and self-admin­is­tered, and its force field is con­tained. Euthana­sia, by con­trast, is the prod­uct of soci­ety. When it goes wrong, it goes wrong for every­one.” In case you’re read­ing quick­ly, read that first sen­tence again. Over 25%!
  5. The Gay Church (Andrew Sul­li­van, New York Mag­a­zine): “A church that, since 2005, bans priests with ‘deep-seat­ed homo­sex­u­al ten­den­cies’ and offi­cial­ly teach­es that gay men are ‘objec­tive­ly dis­or­dered’ and inher­ent­ly dis­posed toward ‘intrin­sic moral evil’ is actu­al­ly com­posed, in ways very few oth­er insti­tu­tions are, of gay men.” I find his lack of engage­ment with Scrip­ture and focus on church his­to­ry strik­ing and very Catholic.
  6. A lot of arti­cles about the dust­up at the March for Life. I find polar­iz­ing sit­u­a­tions like this fas­ci­nat­ing and fre­quent­ly reveal­ing.
    • The Media Botched the Cov­ing­ton Catholic Sto­ry (Caitlin Flana­gan, The Atlantic): “Among oth­er things, jour­nal­is­tic ethics held that if you didn’t have the report­ing to sup­port a sto­ry, and if that sto­ry had the poten­tial to hurt its sub­jects, and if those sub­jects were pri­vate cit­i­zens, and if they were more­over minors, you didn’t run the sto­ry. You kept report­ing it; you let your­self get scooped; and you accept­ed that speed is not the high­est val­ue. Oth­er­wise, you were the trash press.” This piece is bru­tal. If you only read one of the arti­cles in this sec­tion, make it this one.
    • For an exam­ple of a harsh­er per­spec­tive: Why do the Cov­ing­ton Catholic kids get the ben­e­fit of the doubt? (Lau­ra Turn­er, Reli­gion News Ser­vice): “There’s no virtue in rush­ing to get in a hot take! But nei­ther is there in ignor­ing clear evi­dence of racism and cru­el­ty. As new accounts and new videos of the inci­dent emerged, more stayed the same than changed: Sandmann’s sim­per­ing expres­sion remained, as did his immov­able oppo­si­tion to Phillips. (In his ‘Today’ show inter­view, Sand­mann says he now wish­es he ‘could’ve walked away and avoid­ed the whole thing.’ The use of ‘could’ve’ is doing a lot of work there — he always could have cho­sen to walk away. He chose not to.)”
    • The Cov­ing­ton Scis­sor (Ross Douthat, NY Times): “To under­stand what makes this inci­dent so bril­liant in its divi­sive­ness, you need to see the tapes­try in full, how each con­stituent ele­ment (abor­tion, race, MAGA, white boys, Catholi­cism, Native Amer­i­can rit­u­al) auto­mat­i­cal­ly con­firms pri­ors on both sides of our divide. And you also need to see how the video itself, far from being a means to achiev­ing con­sen­sus, is an amaz­ing accel­er­ant of con­tro­ver­sy…” Douthat’s op-ed is inspired by the short sto­ry Sort By Con­tro­ver­sial (Scott Alexan­der, Slate Star Codex). It’s an easy read and I rec­om­mend it.
    • Anoth­er per­spec­tive less sym­pa­thet­ic to the boys: The real pol­i­tics behind the Cov­ing­ton Catholic con­tro­ver­sy, explained (Zack Beauchamp, Vox): “The argu­ment here is not that it’s wrong to care about the Cov­ing­ton stu­dents per se. Rather, it’s a kind of dis­gust at the hypocrisy on dis­play: Con­ser­v­a­tives and the main­stream media don’t, in the left-lib­er­al view, ever dis­play the same lev­els of con­cern for minor­i­ty kids accused of actu­al crimes. All the sym­pa­thy being extend­ed to these kids, all the ben­e­fit of the doubt, reflects the abil­i­ty of the priv­i­leged to com­mand a lev­el of sym­pa­thy that the less priv­i­leged lack.”
    • Cov­ing­ton isn’t about facts, but about iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics. Nick Sand­mann com­mit­ted ‘face­crime’ (Tuck­er Carl­son, Fox News): “People’s views evolve over time. Polit­i­cal divi­sions can heal and often do. But fights over iden­ti­ty do not; they are dif­fer­ent. Iden­ti­ty does not change. It can’t be mod­er­at­ed or con­trolled. It’s inher­ent. We’re born that way. When we go to war over who we are, it’s a per­ma­nent bat­tle. It is a dis­as­ter that lasts for gen­er­a­tions. Iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics will destroy this coun­try faster than a for­eign inva­sion.”
    • The Abyss of Hate Ver­sus Hate (Andrew Sul­li­van, NY Mag­a­zine): “To put it blunt­ly: They were 16-year-olds sub­ject­ed to ver­bal racist assault by grown men; and then the kids were accused of being big­ots. It just beg­gars belief that the same lib­er­als who fret about ‘micro-aggres­sions’ for 20-some­things were able to see 16-year-olds absorb­ing the worst racist garbage from reli­gious big­ots … and then express the desire to punch the kids in the face…. this is what will inevitably hap­pen once you’ve rede­fined racism or sex­ism to mean prej­u­dice plus pow­er. ”
  7. US mis­sion­ary who engaged with reclu­sive Brazil­ian tribe could be charged with geno­cide (Phoebe Loomes, NZ Her­ald): “Camp­bell has claimed that he made the expe­di­tion to the remote region at the request of the Jama­ma­di peo­ple, who he is in con­tact with, as they want­ed to learn to use GPS nav­i­ga­tors. Dur­ing this expe­di­tion he encoun­tered the iso­lat­ed Hi-Mer­imã tribe. For this, Brazil­ian offi­cials say Camp­bell could be charged with a slew of offences, includ­ing geno­cide.“
    • Geno­cide seems much too strong a term for a sit­u­a­tion in which no one is known to have died or even so much as sneezed. Maybe the word trans­lat­ed as geno­cide is broad­er in Por­tuguese?
    • Help­ful con­text: Brazil Inves­ti­gates If US Mis­sion­ary Encroached on Iso­lat­ed Ama­zon Tribe (Kate Shell­nut, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Ribeiro shared con­cerns about indige­nous peo­ple receiv­ing assis­tance from groups appoint­ed by the gov­ern­ment, since they rarely stay in a com­mu­ni­ty long enough to build rela­tion­ships and learn the lan­guage. Mean­while, she says field mis­sion­ar­ies often bring high lev­els of tech­ni­cal training—from anthro­pol­o­gy to nursing—while com­mit­ting to serve for an extend­ed amount of time.”

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 This Is What Makes Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats So Dif­fer­ent (Vox, Ezra Klein): the title made me skep­ti­cal, but there are some good insights in this arti­cle (first shared in vol­ume 32 back in 2016).

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.

If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 186

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. Amer­i­ca in one tweet:“We are liv­ing in an era of woke cap­i­tal­ism in which com­pa­nies pre­tend to care about social jus­tice to sell prod­ucts to peo­ple who pre­tend to hate cap­i­tal­ism.” (Clay Rout­ledge, Twit­ter)
  2. Engi­neers of the Soul: Ide­ol­o­gy in Xi Jin­ping’s Chi­na (John Gar­naut, Sinocism): “In clas­si­cal Chi­nese state­craft there are two tools for gain­ing and main­tain­ing con­trol over “the moun­tains and the rivers”: The first is wu (weapons, vio­lence — æ­¦) and the sec­ond is wen (lan­guage, cul­ture — æ–‡). Chi­nese lead­ers have always believed that pow­er derives from con­trol­ling both the phys­i­cal bat­tle­field and the cul­tur­al domain. You can’t sus­tain phys­i­cal pow­er with­out dis­cur­sive pow­er. Wu and wen go hand-in-hand.”
  3. A Strange Argu­ment for the Com­mon­place (Cato Unbound, Agnes Callard): “We should not equal­ize the rich and poor, but rather endeav­or to make the poor of tomor­row wealth­i­er than the rich of today.” I’m includ­ing this link most­ly because of that quote. Also because it has some com­men­tary on Peter Singer which dove­tails with a con­ver­sa­tion I had ear­li­er this week.
  4. Most Teenagers Drop Out of Church as Young Adults (Aaron Earls, Life­way Research ): “Almost half (47 per­cent) of those who dropped out and attend­ed col­lege say mov­ing to col­lege played a role in their no longer attend­ing church for at least a year…. Among all those who dropped out, 29 per­cent say they planned on tak­ing a break from church once they grad­u­at­ed high school. Sev­en in 10 (71 per­cent) say their leav­ing wasn’t an inten­tion­al deci­sion.”
    • The title is a bit mis­lead­ing. Yes, a major­i­ty of young adults who pre­vi­ous­ly attend­ed church do stop attend­ing church for at least one year between the ages of 18–22, but if you look at their under­ly­ing research about 70% even­tu­al­ly start attend­ing again. Also, it doesn’t seem to ask whether any of these peo­ple were involved in an activ­i­ty that they might not char­ac­ter­ize as church (like Chi Alpha or Inter­var­si­ty). I know some of my Chi Alpha stu­dents are not cur­rent­ly wor­ship­ing with a Sun­day morn­ing con­gre­ga­tion, but it would be wrong to infer that their faith has been put on pause.
  5. Have Aliens Found Us? A Har­vard Astronomer on the Mys­te­ri­ous Inter­stel­lar Object ‘Oumua­mua (Isaac Chotin­er, New York­er): “Last year, I wrote a paper about cos­mol­o­gy where there was an unusu­al result, which showed that per­haps the gas in the uni­verse was much cold­er than we expect­ed. And so we pos­tu­lat­ed that maybe dark mat­ter has some prop­er­ty that makes the gas cool­er. And nobody cares, nobody is wor­ried about it, no one says it is not sci­ence. Every­one says that is mainstream—to con­sid­er dark mat­ter, a sub­stance we have nev­er seen. That’s com­plete­ly fine. It doesn’t both­er any­one. But when you men­tion the pos­si­bil­i­ty that there could be equip­ment out there that is com­ing from anoth­er civilization—which, to my mind, is much less spec­u­la­tive, because we have already sent things into space—then that is regard­ed as unsci­en­tif­ic.”
    • I am skep­ti­cal, but I find the con­ver­sa­tion fas­ci­nat­ing. Relat­ed: an arti­cle on the Fer­mi para­dox I shared back in vol­ume 159 and an arti­cle on gov­ern­ment inves­ti­ga­tion of UFO reports from vol­ume 132.
  6. The mar­vel of the human dad (Anna Machin, Aeon): “But cru­cial­ly, dad has not evolved to be the mir­ror to mum, a male moth­er, so to speak. Evo­lu­tion hates redun­dan­cy and will not select for roles that dupli­cate each oth­er if one type of indi­vid­ual can ful­fil the role alone. Rather, dad’s role has evolved to com­ple­ment mum’s.” Dr. Machin is a pro­fes­sor of evo­lu­tion­ary anthro­pol­o­gy at Oxford.
  7. The Virtue Sig­nalers Won’t Change the World (John McWhort­er, The Atlantic): “Just as the first and sec­ond waves of both fem­i­nism and antiracism trans­formed social struc­tures, third-wave antiracism may seem par­al­lel to third-wave fem­i­nism in mov­ing on to a dif­fer­ent form of abuse, psy­cho­log­i­cal rather than insti­tu­tion­al. But this focus on the psy­cho­log­i­cal has mor­phed, of late, from a prag­mat­ic mis­sion to change minds into a witch hunt dri­ven by the per­son­al ben­e­fits of virtue sig­nal­ing, obsessed with uncon­scious and sub­con­scious bias. As noble as this cul­ture of sham­ing gen­uine­ly seems to many, it’s a dead end.”
    • A use­ful, detailed fol­low-up: The Per­ils of a Psy­cho­log­i­cal Approach to Anti-racism (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): “If the phe­nom­e­non McWhort­er described is real, we should be able to find left­ists who intend to fight bias by call­ing out psy­cho­log­i­cal harms, only to fall into ‘hyper­sen­si­tiv­i­ty, over­sim­pli­fi­ca­tion, and even a degree of per­for­mance’ as par­tic­i­pants sig­nal virtue in ways that help no one.”

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 Inside Grad­u­ate Admis­sions (Inside High­er Ed, Scott Jaschick): if you plan to apply to grad school, read this. There is one reveal­ing anec­dote about how an admis­sions com­mit­tee treat­ed an appli­ca­tion from a Chris­t­ian col­lege stu­dent. My take­away: the pro­fes­sors tried to be fair but found it hard to do, and their stat­ed con­cerns were most­ly about the qual­i­ty of the insti­tu­tion rather than the faith of the appli­cant. Trou­bling nonethe­less. (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). 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.

If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 185

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

In case you’re won­der­ing: I just don’t find sto­ries about the Rus­sia inves­ti­ga­tion or the gov­ern­ment shut­down inter­est­ing. I think they’re impor­tant, but few peo­ple are writ­ing things about them that catch my atten­tion. Rec­om­men­da­tions are wel­come.

Also, one of you men­tioned that you some­times can’t open the links. If you, being a broke col­lege stu­dent, ever can’t access an arti­cle because of a pay­wall, try putting http://outline.com/ in front of the link. I did it for the first arti­cle as an exam­ple. Hav­ing said that, please sup­port jour­nal­ism once you are able.

  1. Is Mar­i­jua­na as Safe as We Think? (Mal­colm Glad­well, The New York­er): “The authors assumed that alco­hol use among stu­dents would be a pre­dic­tor of vio­lent behav­ior, and that mar­i­jua­na use would pre­dict the oppo­site. In fact, those who used only mar­i­jua­na were three times more like­ly to be phys­i­cal­ly aggres­sive than abstain­ers were; those who used only alco­hol were 2.7 times more like­ly to be aggres­sive. Obser­va­tion­al stud­ies like these don’t estab­lish cau­sa­tion. But they invite the sort of research that could.”
    • This Reporter Took a Deep Look Into the Sci­ence of Smok­ing Pot. What He Found Is Scary. (Stephanie Mencimer, Moth­er Jones): “I smoked plen­ty of weed in high school and so did all my friends, and none of us jumped off a bal­cony or killed anyone—we could bare­ly get off the couch. But the mar­i­jua­na sold today is not what we smoked, which at 1 per­cent to 2 per­cent THC was the equiv­a­lent of smok­ing oregano. Today’s weed is insane­ly more potent, as are prod­ucts like “wax” and “shatter”—forms of butane hash oil designed to be vaped or dabbed that come pret­ty close to 100 per­cent THC. And these high-poten­cy prod­ucts usu­al­ly con­tain very lit­tle CBD oil, the ingre­di­ent in cannabis that’s sup­posed to account for many of its sup­posed health ben­e­fits.”
  2. Is Sun­screen the New Mar­garine? (Rowan Jacob­sen, Out­side): “Peo­ple of col­or rarely get melanoma. The rate is 26 per 100,000 in Cau­casians, 5 per 100,000 in His­pan­ics, and 1 per 100,000 in African Amer­i­cans. On the rare occa­sion when African Amer­i­cans do get melanoma, it’s par­tic­u­lar­ly lethal—but it’s most­ly a kind that occurs on the palms, soles, or under the nails and is not caused by sun expo­sure. At the same time, African Amer­i­cans suf­fer high rates of dia­betes, heart dis­ease, stroke, inter­nal can­cers, and oth­er dis­eases that seem to improve in the pres­ence of sun­light, of which they may well not be get­ting enough. Because of their genet­i­cal­ly high­er lev­els of melanin, they require more sun expo­sure to pro­duce com­pounds like vit­a­min D, and they are less able to store that vit­a­min for dark­er days. They have much to gain from the sun and lit­tle to fear.”
  3. Leav­ing Reli­gion at Home: Engag­ing Reli­gious Thought and Action in Amer­i­can Soci­ety (Nathalie Kier­sznows­ki, Stan­ford Pol­i­tics): “People’s beliefs about the world will inevitably influ­ence their posi­tions on issues like moral­i­ty, pol­i­tics, dress, gen­der, sex and more. Sim­i­lar­ly, politi­cians will nat­u­ral­ly sup­port leg­is­la­tion in accor­dance with their val­ues, reli­gious or not. Many politi­cians, like Vice Pres­i­dent Mike Pence, have faced crit­i­cism for allow­ing reli­gion to shape their polit­i­cal deci­sions. It would be unwar­rant­ed, though, to expect Pence to act ‘un-Chris­t­ian’ or ‘non-reli­gious’ exclu­sive­ly at his place of work. The notion of hav­ing both a ‘sec­u­lar pub­lic self’ and a ‘reli­gious pri­vate self’ is impos­si­ble: any pri­vate val­ue sys­tem will influ­ence deci­sions through­out all areas of life.”
  4. The case for going to bed at 2:30 am (Kate Shell­nut, Vox): “My faith doused our cul­tur­al pref­er­ence for ear­ly birds with bib­li­cal back­ing, too, mak­ing me feel even guilti­er. With­in Amer­i­can evan­gel­i­cal­ism, many expect faith­ful Chris­tians to ded­i­cate the ‘first fruits’ of each day to ‘qui­et time’ with the Lord (prayers, devo­tion­al read­ing, Bible study). Researchers even found peo­ple to be more ‘spir­i­tu­al­ly aware’ ear­ly in the morn­ings. Faced with these expec­ta­tions, I real­ly did ques­tion whether my habits were sin­ful: Was I being self­ish by stay­ing up late? Was I putting pro­duc­tiv­i­ty over the nat­ur­al pat­terns of work and rest?”
  5. China’s Gulag for Mus­lims (Mustafa Aky­ol, New York Times): “…Russia’s gulags are long gone, as is the Com­mu­nist Par­ty of the Sovi­et Union that oper­at­ed them. But now anoth­er dic­ta­tor­ship, ruled by anoth­er Com­mu­nist Par­ty, is oper­at­ing a new chain of pris­ons that evoke mem­o­ry of the gulags — more mod­ern, more high-tech, but no less enslav­ing.”
    • Where Did the One Mil­lion Fig­ure for Deten­tions in Xinjiang’s Camps Come From? (Jes­si­ca Batke, Chi­naFile): “Two key stud­ies inde­pen­dent­ly arrived around the one mil­lion mark, by using lim­it­ed data sam­ples to esti­mate what per­cent­age of the eth­nic minor­i­ty Mus­lim pop­u­la­tion is detained. Both stud­ies arrive at a deten­tion rate of 10 per­cent —at least in some areas of Xinjiang—suggesting that just over one mil­lion of the region’s 11 mil­lion eth­nic Uighur pop­u­la­tion could be in the camps.”
  6. Con­querors of the Courts (David Mont­gomery, Wash­ing­ton Post): “The soci­ety itself lob­bies for no poli­cies; it nev­er signs ami­cus briefs or rep­re­sents clients in cas­es. No one at Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety head­quar­ters in Wash­ing­ton dic­tat­ed Barnett’s moves or told him how to advo­cate for what posi­tions. It’s just that at a few gath­er­ings made pos­si­ble by the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety that Bar­nett hap­pened to attend, synaps­es fired, a cor­ner of the hive mind engaged, and Bar­nett took it from there. Mul­ti­ply that chem­istry tens of thou­sands of times over the past 36 years and you have the Fed­er­al­ist Society’s true source of pow­er.”
  7. Elect­ed lead­ers who weaponize reli­gion are play­ing a dan­ger­ous game (Tul­si Gab­bard, The Hill): “While I absolute­ly believe in the sep­a­ra­tion of church and state as a neces­si­ty to the health of our nation, no Amer­i­can should be asked to renounce his or her faith or mem­ber­ship in a faith-based, ser­vice orga­ni­za­tion in order to hold pub­lic office.” Gab­bard is a Demo­c­ra­t­ic con­gress­woman rep­re­sent­ing Hawaii.

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 the unfor­tu­nate­ly date-spe­cif­ic Read­ing The Whole Bible in 2016: A FAQ (Gospel Coali­tion, Justin Tay­lor): “There are about 775,000 words in the Bible. Divid­ed by 365, that’s 2,123 words a day. The aver­age per­son reads 200 to 250 words per minute. So 2,123 words/day divid­ed by 225 words/minute equals 9.4 min­utes a day.” This arti­cle is full of good advice for what could be the best com­mit­ment you make all year. Do it! (first shared in vol­ume 31 — use­ful for any year)

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.

If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 184

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. The Moral Hor­ror of America’s Pris­ons (Tyler Cowen, Bloomberg): “…if you think America’s cur­rent penal sys­tem is the very best we can do, that is about the most pes­simistic ver­dict on this coun­try I have ever heard. Has any­one ever sug­gest­ed that the Amer­i­can prison sys­tem is the world’s best? The can-do atti­tude is one of my favorite fea­tures of Amer­i­can life. We just need to apply it a lit­tle more broad­ly.”
  2. The Num­ber 1 Rea­son For The Decline In Church Atten­dance… (Thom Ranier, Facts & Trends): “Stat­ed sim­ply, the num­ber one rea­son for the decline in church atten­dance is that mem­bers attend with less fre­quen­cy than they did just a few years ago. Allow me to explain. If the fre­quen­cy of atten­dance changes, then atten­dance will respond accord­ing­ly. For exam­ple, if 200 mem­bers attend every week the aver­age atten­dance is, obvi­ous­ly, 200. But if one-half of those mem­bers miss only one out of four weeks, the atten­dance drops to 175. Did you catch that? No mem­bers left the church. Every­one is still rel­a­tive­ly active in the church. But atten­dance declined over 12 per­cent because half the mem­bers changed their atten­dance behav­ior slight­ly.”
  3. Bib­li­cal Archaeology’s Top 10 Dis­cov­er­ies of 2018 (Gor­don Govi­er, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “These dis­cov­er­ies, rel­a­tive­ly insignif­i­cant indi­vid­u­al­ly, join with many oth­er dis­cov­er­ies over the decades to give us a great deal of con­fi­dence in the his­tor­i­cal details con­tained in the Bible.” Note: these are pre­cise­ly the sort of mun­dane, ongo­ing dis­cov­er­ies we would expect from a book describ­ing real peo­ple doing real things in real places. I encour­age you to con­trast it with the texts of oth­er reli­gions.
  4. Facts Are Not Self-Inter­pret­ing (Twit­ter) — this is a short, sound­less video. Rec­om­mend­ed.
  5. Evan­gel­i­cal Mega-donors Are Rethink­ing Mon­ey in Pol­i­tics (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “‘What Chris­t­ian phil­an­thropists see now, maybe more than in past gen­er­a­tions, is the full land­scape of how they can deploy their [mon­ey] toward the entire­ty of what God cares about,’ said Josh Kwan, who was recent­ly appoint­ed the head of the Gathering—the organization’s first new leader in its three-decade run.”
  6. Two Roads for the New French Right (Mark Lil­la, New York Review of Books): “Con­ti­nen­tal con­ser­vatism going back to the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry has always rest­ed on an organ­ic con­cep­tion of soci­ety. It sees Europe as a sin­gle Chris­t­ian civ­i­liza­tion com­posed of dif­fer­ent nations with dis­tinct lan­guages and cus­toms. These nations are com­posed of fam­i­lies, which are organ­isms, too, with dif­fer­ing but com­ple­men­tary roles and duties for moth­ers, fathers, and chil­dren. On this view, the fun­da­men­tal task of soci­ety is to trans­mit knowl­edge, moral­i­ty, and cul­ture to future gen­er­a­tions, per­pet­u­at­ing the life of the civ­i­liza­tion­al organ­ism. It is not to serve an agglom­er­a­tion of autonomous indi­vid­u­als bear­ing rights.”
    • This arti­cle pro­voked let­ters to the edi­tor to which Lil­la respond­ed: How to Write About the Right: An Exchange. Lil­la ends his rebut­tal with this, “For those con­cerned about the antilib­er­al forces gain­ing strength in world pol­i­tics, the most impor­tant thing is to main­tain one’s sangfroid. Before we judge we must be sure of what exact­ly we are judg­ing. We need to take ideas seri­ous­ly, make dis­tinc­tions, and nev­er pre­sume that the present is just the past in dis­guise. Greil Mar­cus falls into that last trap, I’m afraid, by shift­ing from dis­cussing the affini­ties among coun­tries to imag­in­ing a Fas­cist Inter­na­tion­al with poles in the US and Rus­sia. What­ev­er we are fac­ing, it is not twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry fas­cism. Hell keeps on dis­gorg­ing new demons to beset us. And as sea­soned exor­cists know, each must be called by its prop­er name before it can be cast out.”
    • There is some­thing help­ful about read­ing about pol­i­tics in anoth­er cul­ture. If you are inclined to skip this because you’re not French, I encour­age you to at least skim it.

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  Chris­t­ian Mis­sions and the Spread of Democ­ra­cy (Greg Scan­dlen, The Fed­er­al­ist): This is a sum­ma­ry of some rather won­der­ful research Robert Wood­ber­ry pub­lished in The Amer­i­can Polit­i­cal Sci­ence Review back in 2012: The Mis­sion­ary Roots of Lib­er­al Democ­ra­cy. If it looks famil­iar it’s because I allude to it from time to time in my ser­mons and con­ver­sa­tions. (first shared in vol­ume 14)

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.

If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.