Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 205

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. #MeToo Comes For Mar­tin Luther King (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “I wish none of this were true, and per­haps we will learn when the record­ings are even­tu­al­ly released that these claims are not true, but I very much doubt it. David Garrow’s rep­u­ta­tion as a civ­il rights move­ment his­to­ri­an is beyond reproach, and as a Demo­c­ra­t­ic Social­ist, Gar­row can­not be said to have polit­i­cal motives for try­ing to dis­cred­it King. “ This is very sad. I knew King was adul­ter­ous, but these alle­ga­tions go far beyond that.
  2. Christo­pher Hitchens and his Chris­t­ian friends (Jonathon Van Maren, The Bridge­head): “Christo­pher Hitchens is remem­bered by the god­less as a man who tru­ly hat­ed Chris­tians and want­ed to utter­ly destroy Chris­tian­i­ty. In pub­lic, in front of his admir­ers, he main­tained that posi­tion even as the grave yawned at him. But as was always the case with Christo­pher Hitchens, there was quite a bit more to the sto­ry.”
  3. These two sto­ries are very dif­fer­ent and yet very sim­i­lar.
    • Los­ing Reli­gion and Find­ing Ecsta­sy in Hous­ton (Jia Tolenti­no, The New York­er): “I won­der if I would have stayed reli­gious if I had grown up in a place oth­er than Hous­ton and a time oth­er than now. I won­der how dif­fer­ent I would be if I had been able to find the feel­ing of devot­ed self-destruc­tion only through God. Instead, I have con­fused reli­gion with drugs, drugs with music, music with reli­gion. I can’t tell whether my incli­na­tion toward ecsta­sy is a sign that I still believe in God, or if it was only because of that ecsta­t­ic ten­den­cy that I ever believed at all.”
      • Tolenti­no has a way with words and her arti­cle, though sad, is enter­tain­ing­ly writ­ten. Over at GetRe­li­gion, Dou­glas LeBlanc offers the obser­va­tion: “Tolentino’s child­hood expe­ri­ences appar­ent­ly left her think­ing that the main point of Chris­tian­i­ty is to live in an unbreak­able bub­ble of bliss. If that’s the case, Ecsta­sy makes per­fect sense as the most tempt­ing sub­sti­tute for God.”
    • Come­di­an Pete Holmes was a good Chris­t­ian guy. Then his wife left him, and things got weird. (Daniel Burke, CNN): “…I thought that the lines were to God were closed, but they aren’t. We were taught that God spoke direct­ly to his prophets and the authors of the New Tes­ta­ment, and then Paul, and then it was over. And then I took mush­rooms, and I was like, ‘It ain’t over!’”
  4. Can We Believe? (Andrew Kla­van, City Jour­nal): “In any case, sci­en­tists used to accuse reli­gious peo­ple of invent­ing a ‘God of the Gaps’—that is, using reli­gion to explain away what sci­ence had not yet uncov­ered. But mul­ti­vers­es and sim­u­la­tions seem very much like a Sci­ence of the Gaps, jer­ry-rigged noth­ings designed to cir­cum­vent the sim­plest expla­na­tion for the real­i­ty we know.”
    • This is the same Andrew Kla­van who spoke on cam­pus recent­ly. I was unable to attend his talk (being busy preach­ing at the same time), but every­one I know who went found it quite com­pelling despite the con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing it.
  5. See the World Like a Title IX Bureau­crat (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): “[The Prince­ton stu­dents’ pro­pos­als] illus­trate an under­ap­pre­ci­at­ed ten­sion in the approach of today’s stu­dent activists, who simul­ta­ne­ous­ly express out­rage at the bad behav­ior of admin­is­tra­tive bureau­cra­cies and fight to expand their size and pow­er… Prince­ton bureau­crats have been focused on cam­pus sex­u­al assault for a quar­ter cen­tu­ry now. And in the telling of the stu­dent activists, they’ve yet to meet even min­i­mal eth­i­cal and pro­ce­dur­al stan­dards. So why pour mil­lions more into the same hier­ar­chies, expand­ing the might, mea­sured in total staff, of their lead­ers?”
  6. Five Insights Chris­tian­i­ty Brings to Pol­i­tics (Michael Math­e­son Miller, Law & Lib­er­ty): “It is impor­tant to note that a Chris­t­ian vision of gov­ern­ment is not sim­ply a sec­u­lar vision of gov­ern­ment with reli­gion sprin­kled on top. Sec­u­lar­ism is not neu­tral. A Chris­t­ian vision of gov­ern­ment is ground­ed in key the­o­log­i­cal and philo­soph­i­cal ideas about the nature of God and real­i­ty, the impor­tance of jus­tice, the val­ue of free­dom, the role of the fam­i­ly, and a rich under­stand­ing of the human per­son as cre­at­ed in the image of God, made for flour­ish­ing, and called to an eter­nal des­tiny.” This arti­cle is a par­tic­u­lar­ly Catholic way of think­ing about this sub­ject (one of sev­er­al Catholic approach­es, I should add).
    • On a dif­fer­ent polit­i­cal note: The man who pre­dict­ed Trump’s vic­to­ry says Democ­rats may have to impeach him to have a chance in 2020 (Chris Cil­liz­za, CNN): “Licht­man, a pro­fes­sor at Amer­i­can Uni­ver­si­ty in Wash­ing­ton, DC, was the most promi­nent voice pre­dict­ing Don­ald Trump’s vic­to­ry in the run-up to the 2016 elec­tion. When Trump won, it marked the 9th(!) straight pres­i­den­tial elec­tion where Licht­man had cor­rect­ly pre­dict­ed the Elec­toral Col­lege win­ner. (That’s all the way back to 1984, for you math wiz­ards.)”
      • Caveat lec­tor. There are a lot of pun­dits, and at least one of them being right about the last 9 elec­tions by chance isn’t that improb­a­ble (unless I’m miss­ing some­thing there are only 512 dif­fer­ent out­comes if you are only con­sid­er­ing the two major par­ties). Inter­est­ing nonethe­less.
  7. Self-cen­sor­ship on Cam­pus Is Bad for Sci­ence (Lau­na Mar­jo­la, The Atlantic): “Sad­ly, stu­dents do not seem to real­ize that their good inten­tions may lead them to resist learn­ing sci­en­tif­ic facts, and can even harm their own goal of help­ing women and eth­nic minori­ties.” The author is a biol­o­gy pro­fes­sor at Williams Col­lege.

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 If I Were 22 Again (John Piper, Desir­ing God): “There have been about 18,340 days since I turned 22, and I think I have read my Bible on more of those days than I have eat­en. I have cer­tain­ly read my Bible on more of those days that I have watched tele­vi­sion or videos.… Read your Bible every day of your life. If you have time for break­fast, nev­er say that you don’t have time for God’s word.” This whole thing is real­ly good. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed. First shared in vol­ume 151.

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.

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