Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 229

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. Should Lebanon’s Chris­tians Join Protests? Viral Ser­mons Argue Yes and No. (Jayson Casper, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “”For the past month, Lebanese evan­gel­i­cals have debat­ed Scrip­ture, shar­ing ser­mons online. One viral effort urges believ­ers to stay away from wide­spread demon­stra­tions in sub­mis­sion to author­i­ty. Anoth­er licens­es par­tic­i­pa­tion in the pop­u­lar push for jus­tice.”
    • I like this arti­cle because it helps us look at a con­tentious Bib­li­cal issue in a set­ting where most of us don’t have a strong bias one way or the oth­er. Decide whose argu­ments you find most com­pelling, and then think about how they apply in your own set­ting.
  2. Most peo­ple are bad at argu­ing. These 2 tech­niques will make you bet­ter. (Bri­an Resnick, Vox): “1) If the argu­ment you find con­vinc­ing doesn’t res­onate with some­one else, find out what does…. 2) Lis­ten. Your ide­o­log­i­cal oppo­nents want to feel like they’ve been heard.”
  3. See­ing Like A Finite State Machine (Hen­ry Far­rell, Crooked Tim­ber): “In short, there is a very plau­si­ble set of mech­a­nisms under which machine learn­ing and relat­ed tech­niques may turn out to be a dis­as­ter for author­i­tar­i­an­ism, rein­forc­ing its weak­ness­es rather than its strengths, by increas­ing its ten­den­cy to bad deci­sion mak­ing, and reduc­ing fur­ther the pos­si­bil­i­ty of neg­a­tive feed­back that could help cor­rect against errors.” The author is a polit­i­cal sci­ence pro­fes­sor at George Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty.
  4. LGBT Rights-Reli­gious Lib­er­ty Bill Pro­posed in Con­gress (Daniel Sil­li­man, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Con­gress­man Chris Stew­art doesn’t expect his bill to pass. But he is propos­ing the Fair­ness for All Act any­way. It’s a step of faith for Stew­art, a Repub­li­can who rep­re­sents Utah’s sec­ond dis­trict, and a mark­er on the bet that it’s pos­si­ble to find a com­pro­mise that pro­tects both reli­gious lib­er­ty and LGBT rights.”
  5. How the Trump Cabinet’s Bible Teacher Became a Shad­ow Diplo­mat (Mat­tathias Schwartz, New York Times): “Sev­en years ago, Drollinger pub­lished a short book called ‘Rebuild­ing Amer­i­ca: The Bib­li­cal Blue­print,’ which lays out his ambi­tion to ‘to reach all the cap­i­tals of the world for Christ.’ Drollinger, like many evan­gel­i­cals, refers to this God-giv­en glob­al remit as the Great Com­mis­sion, a phrase pop­u­lar­ized by the 19th-cen­tu­ry mis­sion­ary James Hud­son Tay­lor; Drollinger traces its man­date to Jesus’ charge, as relat­ed by Matthew, to ‘make dis­ci­ples of all the nations.’ A chart in ‘Rebuild­ing Amer­i­ca’ dia­grams the ‘influ­ence path’ of a pub­lic ser­vant as a base­ball dia­mond, run­ning through local gov­ern­ment (first base), state gov­ern­ment (sec­ond base) and nation­al gov­ern­ment (third base) and cul­mi­nat­ing in ‘inter­na­tion­al influ­ence’ (home plate).” I shared anoth­er arti­cle about Drollinger back in vol­ume 147.
  6. China’s Sov­er­eign­ty Trip­wire in Hong Kong (David P. Gold­man, First Things): “Chi­na is a poly­glot, mul­ti­eth­nic empire, not a nation-state. Infringe­ment of its con­trol over any part of its ter­ri­to­ry threat­ens the whole. For­eign inter­ven­tion and region­al divi­sions is the stuff of China’s his­tor­i­cal night­mares. Any loss of sov­er­eign­ty, in China’s expe­ri­ence, begins a slip­pery slope toward impe­r­i­al crack­up. For­eign inva­sion is still a liv­ing mem­o­ry in Chi­na, and Bei­jing reads the worst into Amer­i­can inter­ven­tion over Hong Kong.”
  7. The Sal­va­tion Army’s Actions Speak Loud­er Than Its The­ol­o­gy (Stephen L. Carter, Bloomberg): “Vol­un­teers are sig­nif­i­cant­ly more like­ly than non-vol­un­teers to be reli­gious; and the reli­gious are sig­nif­i­cant­ly more like­ly than the non-reli­gious to vol­un­teer. As reli­gion declines, so does vol­un­teer­ing. If we put the reli­gious vol­un­teers out of busi­ness, a lot of peo­ple will sud­den­ly be unhelped. We need all the vol­un­teers we can get. And we can­not rea­son­ably expect to replace them with paid labor. Accord­ing to the Urban Insti­tute, the 8.7 bil­lion hours vol­un­teered in the U.S. in 2016 were worth about $187.4 bil­lion.” The author is a law pro­fes­sor at Yale.

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 Chris­t­ian Mis­sions and the Spread of Democ­ra­cy (Greg Scan­dlen, The Fed­er­al­ist): This is a sum­ma­ry of some rather won­der­ful research Robert Wood­ber­ry pub­lished in The Amer­i­can Polit­i­cal Sci­ence Review back in 2012: The Mis­sion­ary Roots of Lib­er­al Democ­ra­cy. If it looks famil­iar it’s because I allude to it from time to time in my ser­mons and con­ver­sa­tions. (first shared in vol­ume 14)

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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