Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 190

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. Inside the Secret Face­book War For Mor­mon Hearts and Minds (Kevin Poul­son, The Dai­ly Beast): “We may be resigned to face­less cor­po­ra­tions buy­ing their way into our thoughts, but are we ready for a world where our neigh­bors and in-laws can do the same?” Genius and super-inter­est­ing.
  2. The scan­dal of sex­u­al abuse in South­ern Bap­tist church­es:
    • Part One: Abuse of Faith (Robert Dow­nen, Lise Olsen, and John Tedesco, Hous­ton Chron­i­cle): “In all, since 1998, rough­ly 380 South­ern Bap­tist church lead­ers and vol­un­teers have faced alle­ga­tions of sex­u­al mis­con­duct, the news­pa­pers found. That includes those who were con­vict­ed, cred­i­bly accused and suc­cess­ful­ly sued, and those who con­fessed or resigned. More of them worked in Texas than in any oth­er state. They left behind more than 700 vic­tims, many of them shunned by their church­es, left to them­selves to rebuild their lives. Some were urged to for­give their abusers or to get abor­tions. About 220 offend­ers have been con­vict­ed or took plea deals, and dozens of cas­es are pend­ing.”
    • Part Two: Offend, then repeat (Robert Dow­nen, Lise Olsen, and John Tedesco, Hous­ton Chron­i­cle): ”No reli­gion is immune to sex­u­al mis­con­duct in its ranks. But unlike the Roman Catholic Church, which is wrestling with its own sex-abuse scan­dal, Bap­tists don’t answer to a pope or bish­op. Local church auton­o­my is a bedrock foun­da­tion of Bap­tist faith. There’s no dio­cese that assigns priests to a parish. Instead, each church is respon­si­ble for ordain­ing and hir­ing its own min­is­ters.”
    • Part Three: Prey­ing On Teens (Robert Dow­nen, Lise Olsen, and John Tedesco, Hous­ton Chron­i­cle): “More than 100 South­ern Bap­tists described as for­mer youth pas­tors or youth min­is­ters are now in prison, are reg­is­tered as sex offend­ers or have been charged with sex crimes, the news­pa­pers found. Their most com­mon tar­gets were teenage girls and boys, though small­er chil­dren also were molest­ed, some­times in pas­tors’ stud­ies and Sun­day school rooms.”
    • South­ern Bap­tists and the Scan­dal of Church Sex­u­al Abuse (Rus­sell Moore, per­son­al blog): “Jesus does not cov­er up sin with­in the tem­ple of his pres­ence. He brings every­thing hid­den to light. We should too. When we down­play or cov­er over what has hap­pened in the name of Jesus to those he loves we are not “pro­tect­ing” Jesus’ rep­u­ta­tion. We are instead fight­ing Jesus him­self. No church should be frus­trat­ed by the Hous­ton Chronicle’s report­ing, but should thank God for it. The Judg­ment Seat of Christ will be far less ret­i­cent than a news­pa­per series to uncov­er what should nev­er have been hid­den.” — he also wrote an op-ed for the New York Times a few days after this: South­ern Bap­tists Face Their #MeToo Moment (Rus­sell Moore, New York Times).
    • The Real­i­ty of Sex­u­al Abuse Hits Home: What Hap­pened? What Do We Do Now? (Al Mohler, per­son­al blog): “South­ern Bap­tists, by instinct, have prac­ticed a form of moral­ism that views sex­u­al mis­be­hav­ior as an iso­lat­ed event—deal with it and move on. This sim­plis­tic moral­ism reduces sex­u­al abuse and gloss­es over the sever­i­ty of the crime. Sex­u­al abuse is not an iso­lat­ed act of mis­be­hav­ior; it leaves in its wake scarred vic­tims as well as mali­cious vic­tim­iz­ers. Abuse of this nature snow­balls.” This arti­cle has some insight­ful com­men­tary on the unique chal­lenges fac­ing the South­ern Bap­tists because of their struc­ture.
    • Evan­gel­i­cal Apoc­a­lypse (Dale M. Coul­ter, First Things): “As one denom­i­na­tion­al leader point­ed out to me, min­is­ters brought up on charges and dis­missed from one denom­i­na­tion have sim­ply gone to anoth­er for cre­den­tials. It’s not just laity who take advan­tage of evan­gel­i­cal­is­m’s big tent to move around. These open net­works for min­is­te­r­i­al move­ment from one part of evan­gel­i­cal­ism to anoth­er allow sex­u­al abusers to escape judg­ment and start over. We don’t need a data­base of sex­u­al abusers for the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion, we need it for evan­gel­i­cal­ism as a whole.” I don’t know how fea­si­ble that spe­cif­ic sug­ges­tion is, but I do know Coul­ter is point­ing out a real and very hard-to-address prob­lem.
    • In a dif­fer­ent neck of the woods: Why Does the Catholic Church Keep Fail­ing on Sex­u­al Abuse? (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “O’Malley’s career, with all of its suc­cess­es and frus­tra­tions, illu­mi­nates why the sex-abuse cri­sis has once again sub­sumed the Catholic Church—and why this insti­tu­tion, one of the world’s great moral author­i­ties, has been inca­pable of solv­ing one of the most moral­ly straight­for­ward prob­lems of our time.”
  3. Bill Gates tweet­ed out a chart and sparked a huge debate about glob­al pover­ty (Dylan Matthews, Vox): “Hick­el argues that focus­ing on data show­ing declines in glob­al pover­ty does polit­i­cal work on behalf of glob­al cap­i­tal­ism, defend­ing an inher­ent­ly unjust glob­al sys­tem that has failed res­i­dents of rich and poor nations alike. Pinker agrees that the data sup­ports the idea that cap­i­tal­ism is work­ing for the world’s poor­est, and says that’s a deci­sive rebut­tal of Hickel’s nar­ra­tive of endur­ing per­se­cu­tion.”
  4. An African-Amer­i­can Woman Reflects on the Trans­gen­der Move­ment (Nurid­deen Knight, Pub­lic Dis­course): “Para­dox­i­cal­ly, the more our soci­ety tries to free itself from gen­der stereo­types, the more it becomes enslaved to them. By say­ing that peo­ple can be born in a body of the wrong gen­der, trans­gen­der activists are say­ing there is a set of feel­ings that are only allo­cat­ed to women and anoth­er set for men. There­fore, they believe, those who feel things that do not con­form to their sex’s accept­able set of feel­ings must out­ward­ly change their gen­der to match their mind.”
  5. Trevor Noah on Liam Neeson’s Racist Con­fes­sion (YouTube): much more thought­ful than any­thing else I have come across.
  6. A (Not So) Sec­u­lar Saint (James K.A. Smith, Los Ange­les Review of Books): “Mill’s lega­cy was effec­tive­ly ‘edit­ed’ by his philo­soph­i­cal and polit­i­cal dis­ci­ples, excis­ing any hint of reli­gious life. One would nev­er know from the canon in our phi­los­o­phy depart­ments, for exam­ple, that Mill wrote an appre­cia­tive essay on ‘The­ism.’”
    • I am pret­ty sure I shared a sim­i­lar link before, but I can’t find it search­ing my archives. Maybe I cut it at the last minute one week. Fas­ci­nat­ing regard­less.
  7. Sci­ence Is The Evan­gel­i­cal Tro­phy Wife (David Hed­dle, per­son­al blog): “In many evan­gel­i­cal cir­cles, sci­ence has become a tro­phy wife. Put her front and cen­ter, and show her beau­ty in, say, the form of Hub­ble neb­u­lae pho­tographs, with the req­ui­site Psalm 19:1 cap­tion, but do not ever let her speak, for she is like­ly to embar­rass you. Her the­o­log­i­cal util­i­ty is only in the pleas­ant optics, not in the sub­stance.” Beau­ti­ful title.

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). 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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