Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 191

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. Why Hol­ly­wood megachurch­es like Hill­song hide their true teach­ings (Drew Goins, Wash­ing­ton Post): “Celebri­ty megachurch­es have every incen­tive to obscure where they stand on LGBTQ peo­ple. One of the con­tem­po­rary enter­tain­ment industry’s strongest claims to social rel­e­vance is stars’ par­tic­i­pa­tion in the fight for LGBT equal­i­ty.”
   • David French fired back: Will Woke Pro­gres­sives Allow Celebri­ties to Be Chris­t­ian? (David French, Nation­al Review): “Here is the dis­tinc­tion that makes no sense. An ortho­dox Chris­t­ian and (to take an exam­ple) a mar­ried sec­u­lar gay employ­ee work side by side. They dis­agree with each oth­er about mat­ters absolute­ly fun­da­men­tal to their lives and iden­ti­ties. The sec­u­lar gay employ­ee believes the Christian’s world­view is false. The Chris­t­ian employ­ee believes the sec­u­lar gay employee’s world­view is false. Why is it unique­ly intol­er­a­ble or even inju­ri­ous for the gay employ­ee to have to share the work­place (much less the indus­try) with the Chris­t­ian? Do they not have the same oblig­a­tions to set aside their dif­fer­ences and treat each oth­er with dig­ni­ty and respect?”
   • A Stan­ford illus­tra­tion: Stan­ford Live part­ners with alleged anti-LGBTQ pro­mot­er for Frost (Car­o­line Ghisolfi, Stan­ford Dai­ly)- “The report alleged that the Anschutz Foun­da­tion fund­ed sev­er­al con­ser­v­a­tive anti-LGBTQ orga­ni­za­tions between 2011 and 2013, includ­ing the Alliance Defend­ing Free­dom (ADF), a con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian activist group which has ‘repeat­ed­ly advo­cat­ed for the crim­i­nal­iza­tion of homo­sex­u­al­i­ty, both in the U.S. and inter­na­tion­al­ly.’ ” This is an unusu­al way to describe ADF, which is a promi­nent legal orga­ni­za­tion with an envi­able 9–0 record at the Supreme Court. David French, who wrote the arti­cle in the pre­vi­ous bul­let point, is for­mer senior coun­sel for ADF.
2. Regard­ing Jussie Smol­lett:
   • What The Jussie Smol­lett Sto­ry Reveals (John McWhort­er, The Atlantic(: “Smol­lett doesn’t need the mon­ey he would get from a court set­tle­ment, and he isn’t try­ing to deny some­one high­er office. So why in the world would he fake some­thing like that attack—if he did indeed fake it? The rea­son might be that he has come of age in an era when noth­ing he could have done or said would have made him look more inter­est­ing than being attacked on the basis of his col­or and sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion.” — the most insight­ful take I’ve seen
   • This is fas­ci­nat­ing: Fake Hate Crimes Data­base — the quan­ti­ty of these hoax­es strength­en’s McWhort­er’s point in the pre­vi­ous arti­cle
   • Politi­cians use Jussie Smol­lett, while a 1‑year-old boy shot in the head is set aside (John Cass, Chica­go Tri­bune):- “A few weeks ago, after Smol­lett began telling his tale — in which he’s the hero fight­ing oppres­sion and hatred — a 1‑year-old child was shot in the head.It looked like a street gang may have been tar­get­ing his moth­er. She’s been shot before. The child, Dejon Irv­ing, is on life support.I don’t think there were two dozen detec­tives assigned to Dejon Irving’s case. But he’s not a star to be used by politi­cians in pur­suit of pow­er. He’s not a symbol.Politicians don’t tweet his name. He’s just a lit­tle boy from Chica­go, shot in the head.” Ouch.
   • Peo­ple Fake Can­cer, Too (Fred­die deBoer, per­son­al blog): “I don’t with­hold sym­pa­thy until I ‘get all the facts’ and I don’t begin from a posi­tion of total neu­tral­i­ty. I begin from a posi­tion of sym­pa­thy and lis­ten­ing regard­less of the fact that some peo­ple fake can­cer.”
3. The Risk Of Pro­gres­sives Talk­ing Over Mar­gin­al­ized Com­mu­ni­ties (Jesse Sin­gal, per­son­al blog): “…if you’re a pro­gres­sive who is call­ing for the Wash­ing­ton foot­ball team to change its name, or for Ralph Northam to resign, because of the harm that foot­ball team name and that gov­er­nor did to mar­gin­al­ized peo­ple, it should feel very weird that the actu­al groups most affect­ed most­ly dis­agree with you, no? Or if it doesn’t feel weird, why doesn’t it feel weird?” — this is an impor­tant point I rarely see dis­cussed.
4. White suprema­cist Coast Guard offi­cer stock­piled firearms and hit list of Democ­rats for mass ter­ror attack (Haley Britzky, Task & Purpose):“A search of Has­son’s home revealed 15 firearms and over 1,000 rounds of ammo along with a hit list of tar­gets that includ­ed includ­ing promi­nent Demo­c­ra­t­ic politi­cians — includ­ing Sen­ate Minor­i­ty Leader Chuck Schumer, House Speak­er Nan­cy Pel­soi [sic], Demo­c­ra­t­ic new­com­er Rep. Alexan­dria Oca­sio-Cortez — and media per­son­al­i­ties like MSNBC’s Joe Scar­bor­ough and Chris Hayes.” 👀
5. Why Join A Fra­ter­ni­ty (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): rec­om­mend­ing this one for the update at the bot­tom of the post: “There is so much wrong­head­ed­ness in the way uni­ver­si­ties attempt to reg­u­late fra­ter­ni­ties, which has led to dire out­comes, and it is only going to get worse.”
6. Dear Gay Catholic Priests (Jen­nifer Fitz, Patheos): “I’ve been read­ing about your plight in the New York Times. So let’s go ahead and clear some­thing up right now: Most Catholics don’t give a rip who it is you’re not hav­ing sex with. We know that absti­nence is hard.”
7. Chris­tian­i­ty Today Appoints Tim­o­thy Dal­rym­ple as New Pres­i­dent and CEO (Mark Gal­li, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “He took his pas­sions for min­istry, learn­ing, and ath­let­ic achieve­ment with him to Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty. When his gym­nas­tics career end­ed in a bro­ken neck, he plunged into cam­pus min­istry and over­seas mis­sions trips. He became pres­i­dent of Stanford’s Cam­pus Cru­sade (Cru) chap­ter. It was also at Stan­ford where he met his wife, Joyce. Both helped to lead a Chris­t­ian uni­ty move­ment on cam­pus that brought togeth­er stu­dents from all the university’s Chris­t­ian fel­low­ships to wor­ship God with one anoth­er.” #nerd­na­tion

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

• Nation’s Lib­er­als Dev­as­tat­ed After Learn­ing Hate Crime Did­n’t Actu­al­ly Hap­pen (Baby­lon Bee)
• 4 Hour Long Polit­i­cal Lec­ture To Be Dis­guised As An Awards Show (Baby­lon Bee)
• Moron or Saint? (Pearls Before Swine)
• Men­tal­ist Lior Suchard Bends Har­ry Con­ick Jr. & Alice Eve’s Minds (The Late Late Show, YouTube)
• Don’t Blink! Shin Lim Per­forms Epic Mag­ic With Melis­sa Fumero (Amer­i­ca’s Got Tal­ent, YouTube)
• Men­tal­ist Lior Suchard Bends Time for Amer­i­ca Fer­rara & Jere­my Piv­en (The Late Late Show, YouTube)

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Every Place Has Detrac­tors. Con­sid­er Where They’re Com­ing From. (Megan McAr­dle, Bloomberg View): “There is grave dan­ger in judg­ing a neigh­bor­hood, or a cul­ture, by the accounts of those who chose to leave it. Those peo­ple are least like­ly to appre­ci­ate the good things about where they came from, and the most like­ly to dwell on its less attrac­tive qual­i­ties.” Bear this in mind when lis­ten­ing to con­ver­sion tes­ti­monies (both sec­u­lar and reli­gious). (first shared in vol­ume 62)

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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