Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 225

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.

Inci­den­tal­ly, 225 is a very cool num­ber.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Meet the Min­nie Church (Ted Olsen, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Cast Mem­ber Church is tru­ly a church for Dis­ney Cast Mem­bers. It’s not a church to attend on vaca­tion. It’s not a church for Dis­ney fans in Cen­tral Flori­da. It’s a church for a cer­tain kind of employ­ee from one com­pa­ny…. Walt Dis­ney World has almost 70,000 employees—a pop­u­la­tion about the size of Can­ton, Ohio. It’s the largest sin­gle-site employ­er in the coun­try. At 40 square miles, it’s about as big as Mia­mi or San Fran­cis­co.” I did not think I would find this arti­cle inter­est­ing, but it’s thor­ough and explores some unex­pect­ed angles. 
  2. “This Should Be a Wake-up Call to the Whole World”: Inside the Hong Kong Protests (Jor­dan Rit­ter Conn, The Ringer): “The street goes qui­et. The pro­test­ers crouch and face the police togeth­er, remain­ing still. They open their umbrel­las and hold them aloft. Sec­onds lat­er, the explo­sions begin.”
  3. Did Emma Sulkow­icz Get Red­pilled? At the very least, she’s found a new social set. (Sylvie McNa­ma­ra, The Cut): “Sulkow­icz is telling me about the “polit­i­cal jour­ney” she’s late­ly been on, a lis­ten­ing tour of ide­o­log­i­cal posi­tions that she’s always con­sid­ered too right-wing to engage: cen­trists, con­ser­v­a­tives, lib­er­tar­i­ans, and what­ev­er Jor­dan Peter­son is — var­i­ous and sundry souls that Jeze­bel­has can­celed, whose names chill din­ner con­ver­sa­tion across pro­gres­sive New York. Sulkow­icz hasn’t been red­pilled; she’s still a fem­i­nist and an advo­cate for sur­vivors of sex­u­al assault. What’s changed is her pos­ture.“ This arti­cle was fun to read and full of sur­pris­es.
  4. Have 1 in 5 Amer­i­cans Been in a Con­sen­su­al Non-Monog­a­mous Rela­tion­ship? (Charles Fain Lehman, Insti­tute For Fam­i­ly Stud­ies): “In pro­mot­ing the show, the net­work tweet­ed out the eye-catch­ing claim that ‘1 in 5 Amer­i­cans have been involved in a con­sen­su­al­ly non-monog­a­mous rela­tion­ship at some point in their life.’ CBS is far from the only out­let to push the ‘one in five’ claim: it’s appeared in Rolling Stone, Quartz (as cit­ed by NPR), Time, Men’s Health, and Psy­chol­o­gy Today, among oth­ers. Where does that num­ber come from?”
  5. The Glob­al Protest Wave, Explained (Max Fish­er and Aman­da Taub, New York Times): “Only 20 years ago, 70 per­cent of protests demand­ing sys­temic polit­i­cal change got it — a fig­ure that had been grow­ing steadi­ly since the 1950s. In the mid-2000s, that trend sud­den­ly reversed. World­wide, pro­test­ers’ suc­cess rate has since plum­met­ed to only 30 per­cent, accord­ing to a study by Eri­ca Chenoweth, a Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty polit­i­cal sci­en­tist who called the decline ‘stag­ger­ing.’”
  6. And if you haven’t heard Kanye West is now pro­fess­ing Christ and peo­ple have opin­ions.
    1. Kanye West Air­pool Karaoke (The Late Late Show with James Cor­den, YouTube): first some thoughts from the man him­self, 20 min­utes. Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
    2. ‘Jesus Is King’ and Kanye West is a tax col­lec­tor (Esau McCaul­ley, Wash­ing­ton Post): “As an African Amer­i­can Chris­t­ian try­ing to make sense of West’s deci­sions, I have repeat­ed­ly reflect­ed on the sto­ries of Jesus eat­ing with tax col­lec­tors that upset many of his con­tem­po­raries.” The author is a pro­fes­sor at Wheaton. Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus.
    3. Yeezus Fol­lows Jesus (Nic Rowan, First Things): “I’m good with it. After all, per­fect­ly nice peo­ple don’t become saints. God tends to pre­fer work­ing with jack­ass­es.”
    4. Kanye West’s Con­ver­sion Could Be a Cul­tur­al Wreck­ing Ball (Andrew Walk­er, Nation­al Review): “The Apos­tle Paul warns in the New Tes­ta­ment about vest­ing too much hope and con­fi­dence in new con­verts, fear­ing they would be puffed up with pride (some­thing, let’s be hon­est, Kanye has no prob­lem exud­ing). We need to let Kanye be a Chris­t­ian Kanye with­out mak­ing him into a Chris­t­ian celebri­ty.”
  7. 11 Places Where Per­se­cut­ed Chris­tians Need Our Prayers (Megan Fowler, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Over 245 mil­lion Chris­tians live in the 50 coun­tries ranked on the World Watch List as worst for Chris­tians. Between Novem­ber 2017 and Octo­ber 2018, 4,136 Chris­tians were killed for their faith in these coun­tries, over 1,266 church­es or Chris­t­ian build­ings were attacked, and 2,625 believ­ers were detained, arrest­ed, sen­tenced, or impris­oned — many of them with­out a tri­al.”

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 Spir­i­tu­al Shape of Polit­i­cal Ideas (Joseph Bot­tum, The Week­ly Stan­dard): many mod­ern polit­i­cal ideas are derived from Chris­t­ian the­o­log­i­cal con­cepts. (first shared in vol­ume 1)

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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