Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 218

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. “We May Have To Shoot Down This Air­craft” (Gar­rett Graff, Politi­co): “We can’t see the air­craft. We don’t know where it is because we don’t have any radars point­ing into the U.S. Any­thing in the Unit­ed States was con­sid­ered friend­ly by def­i­n­i­tion.” A grip­ping account of the Flight 93 sto­ry.
  2. Active Learn­ing Works But Stu­dents Don’t Like It (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “A care­ful­ly done study that held stu­dents and teach­ers con­stant shows that stu­dents learn more in active learn­ing class­es but they dis­like this style of class and think they learn less. It’s no big surprise–active learn­ing is hard and makes the stu­dents feel stu­pid. It’s much eas­i­er to sit back and be enter­tained by a great lec­tur­er who makes every­thing seem sim­ple.”
  3. How Evan­gel­i­cals Invent­ed Lib­er­als’ Favorite Legal Doc­trine (Matthew Lee Ander­son, The Fed­er­al­ist): “…with­in the many ironies of his­to­ry, the social and polit­i­cal instru­ments a per­fec­tion­ist move­ment deploys may be eas­i­ly co-opt­ed for ends and pur­pos­es nev­er imag­ined in their devel­op­ment. That is, if late-twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry evan­gel­i­cal activists sowed the wind, today’s activists have reaped the whirl­wind.” I love arti­cles that present a top­ic I think I know some­thing about and pro­ceed to show me some­thing I had nev­er known before.
  4. A Famous Argu­ment Against Free Will Has Been Debunked (Bahar Gholipour, The Atlantic): “It would be quite an achieve­ment for a brain sig­nal 100 times small­er than major brain waves to solve the prob­lem of free will. But the sto­ry of the Bere­itschaftspo­ten­tial has one more twist: It might be some­thing else entire­ly.”
  5. Vik­tor Orban Among The Chris­tians (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “Orban is what Trump’s biggest fans wish he was (but isn’t), and what Trump’s ene­mies think him to be (but isn’t). If Don­ald Trump had the smarts and skills of Vik­tor Orban, the polit­i­cal sit­u­a­tion in the US would be much, much dif­fer­ent — for bet­ter or for worse, depend­ing on your point of view.” I don’t have much inter­est in Hun­gar­i­an pol­i­tics, but this fas­ci­nat­ed me. 
  6. When the Cul­ture War Comes for the Kids (George Pack­er, The Atlantic): “I asked myself if I was mov­ing to the wrong side of a great moral cause because its tone was too loud, because it shook loose what I didn’t want to give up. It took me a long time to see that the new pro­gres­sivism didn’t just car­ry my own pol­i­tics fur­ther than I liked. It was actu­al­ly hos­tile to prin­ci­ples with­out which I don’t believe democ­ra­cy can sur­vive.” This arti­cle came high­ly rec­om­mend­ed, but it only got inter­est­ing to me about halfway through — and then wow.
  7. Con­ser­v­a­tives Clash on the Goal of Gov­ern­ment (Jonathan Lee­man, Prov­i­dence): “There is no neu­tral­i­ty. The pub­lic square is a bat­tle­ground of gods. Our cul­ture wars are wars of reli­gion. For the time being, lib­er­al­ism keeps us from pick­ing up six­teenth-cen­tu­ry swords for those wars, which is no small achieve­ment. But don’t assume it won’t con­trol us with the sub­tler tools of a twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry legal total­i­tar­i­an­ism.” Insight­ful reflec­tions on how Chris­tians should form their polit­i­cal posi­tions.

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 Elisha and the She‐bears (Peter J Williams, Twit­ter): an insight­ful Twit­ter thread about a dis­turb­ing OT sto­ry. The author is the War­den of Tyn­dale House at Cam­bridge. First shared in vol­ume 179.

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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