Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 231

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

A Christ­mas reminder: Chi Alpha is a donor-fund­ed min­istry. This week­ly roundup of links is one small part of what we do to equip stu­dents to live for Christ in a con­fused cul­ture. If you’d like to make a spe­cial year-end gift to help us reach future lead­ers, vis­it https://glenandpaula.com/giving. Every pen­ny counts — thanks!

On to the things Glen found inter­est­ing:

1. Trump Should Be Removed from Office (Mark Gal­li, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Whether Mr. Trump should be removed from office by the Sen­ate or by pop­u­lar vote next election—that is a mat­ter of pru­den­tial judg­ment. That he should be removed, we believe, is not a mat­ter of par­ti­san loy­al­ties but loy­al­ty to the Cre­ator of the Ten Com­mand­ments.”
   • Emma Green nabbed an inter­view with Gal­li about the edi­to­r­i­al: How Trump Lost an Evan­gel­i­cal Stal­wart (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “So I am a great believ­er in the prov­i­dence of God, and that he will, in his grace, mer­cy, and mys­te­ri­ous judg­ment, help us through this peri­od. It’s not my respon­si­bil­i­ty to heal the breach among evan­gel­i­cals. It’s not my respon­si­bil­i­ty to bring peace to the world. My respon­si­bil­i­ty, giv­en the posi­tion I have, what­ev­er it might be, is to speak the truth. If it makes a dif­fer­ence, I am thank­ful to God. And if it doesn’t make a dif­fer­ence, that’s kind of up to him.”
   • When the CT Edi­tor’s Feel­ings Trump Facts (Jim Gar­low, Charis­ma News): “Numer­ous high-vis­i­bil­i­ty evan­gel­i­cals have had oppor­tu­ni­ty to be with the pres­i­dent, to coun­sel him and to pray with him. Some have spo­ken truth to lead­er­ship. Wise­ly, they do not dis­cuss the con­tent of those meet­ings pub­licly. Nor should they. They are con­sid­er­ably more aware of the ‘heart’ of the pres­i­dent than is Mr. Gal­li. If he knew what they know about Mr. Trump, Gal­li would not have writ­ten such an arti­cle.”
   • I sus­pect Charisma’s op-ed is clos­er to the per­spec­tive of most evan­gel­i­cal Trump sup­port­ers than Chris­tian­i­ty Today’s is. For con­text, Chris­tian­i­ty Today post­ed sim­i­lar op-eds dur­ing each of the two pre­vi­ous impeach­ments.
   • Speak­ing of the pre­vi­ous impeach­ments, did you real­ize that from Nixon until now â…“ of U.S. pres­i­dents have been impeached? Props to Ross Douthat for notic­ing that. 
2. A Sci­ence-Based Case for End­ing the Porn Epi­dem­ic (Pas­cal-Emmanuel Gob­ry, Amer­i­can Great­ness): “Since it seems some­how rel­e­vant, let me state at the out­set that I am French. Every fiber of my Latin, Catholic body recoils at puri­tanism of any sort, espe­cial­ly the bizarre, Anglo-Puri­tan kind so preva­lent in Amer­i­ca. I believe eroti­cism is one of God’s great­est gifts to humankind, prud­ish­ness a bizarre aber­ra­tion, and not so long ago, hyper­bol­ic warn­ings about the per­ils of pornog­ra­phy, whether from my Evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian or pro­gres­sive fem­i­nist friends, had me rolling my eyes…. The evi­dence is in: porn is as addic­tive as smok­ing, or more, except that what smok­ing does to your lungs, porn does to your brain.”
   • Relat­ed: Let’s Fix the Pornog­ra­phy Prob­lem (Jim Banks, First Things): “The preva­lence of pornog­ra­phy in our soci­ety has con­se­quences, espe­cial­ly for our chil­dren. It’s time to start talk­ing about it, and it’s time for the gov­ern­ment to get involved.” The author is a Repub­li­can mem­ber of con­gress.
3. The New Tes­ta­ment Doesn’t Say What Most Peo­ple Think It Does About Heav­en (N.T. Wright, Time): “The book of Rev­e­la­tion ends, not with souls going up to heav­en, but with the New Jerusalem com­ing down to earth, so that ‘the dwelling of God is with humans.’ The whole cre­ation, declares St. Paul, will be set free from its slav­ery to cor­rup­tion, to enjoy God’s intend­ed free­dom.”
4. Los­ing Faith in the Human­i­ties (Simon Dur­ing, Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion): “Faith has been lost across two dif­fer­ent zones: first, reli­gion; then, high cul­ture…. Cul­tur­al sec­u­lar­iza­tion resem­bles ear­li­er reli­gious sec­u­lar­iza­tion. What hap­pened to Chris­t­ian rev­e­la­tion and the Bible is now hap­pen­ing to the idea of West­ern civ­i­liza­tion and ‘the best that has been thought and said,’ in Arnold’s famous phrase.”
5. This Cul­tur­al Moment (pod­cast): I’ve been lis­ten­ing to this pod­cast about fol­low­ing Jesus in the post-Chris­t­ian world upon the rec­om­men­da­tion of some alum­ni and a stu­dent. It’s quite good. Def­i­nite­ly start with episode 1.
6. What Would Jesus Do About Inequal­i­ty? (Mol­ly Worthen, New York Times): “In today’s evan­gel­i­cal­ism, this is where the the­o­log­i­cal action is: the faith and work move­ment, the inter­sec­tion of Chris­tian­i­ty with the demands of the work­place and the broad­er econ­o­my — in a soci­ety that is one of the world’s wealth­i­est, yet per­sis­tent­ly inhu­mane.”
7. The Dig­i­tal Pul­pit: A Nation­wide Analy­sis of Online Ser­mons (Pew Research): “For instance, ser­mons from evan­gel­i­cal church­es were three times more like­ly than those from oth­er tra­di­tions to include the phrase ‘eter­nal hell’ (or vari­a­tions such as ‘eter­ni­ty in hell’). How­ev­er, a con­gre­gant who attend­ed every ser­vice at a giv­en evan­gel­i­cal church in the dataset had a rough­ly one-in-ten chance of hear­ing one of those terms at least once dur­ing the study peri­od. By com­par­i­son, that same con­gre­gant had a 99% chance of hear­ing the word ‘love.’”
   • Relat­ed with some good inter­views: How long is the ser­mon? Study ranks Chris­t­ian church­es (David Crary, AP News): “Accord­ing to Pew, the medi­an length of the ser­mons was 37 min­utes. Catholic ser­mons were the short­est, at a medi­an of just 14 min­utes, com­pared with 25 min­utes for ser­mons in main­line Protes­tant con­gre­ga­tions and 39 min­utes in evan­gel­i­cal Protes­tant con­gre­ga­tions. His­tor­i­cal­ly black Protes­tant church­es had by far the longest ser­mons, at a medi­an of 54 min­utes. Pew said ser­mons at the black church­es last­ed longer than main­line Protes­tant ser­mons even though, on aver­age, they had rough­ly the same num­ber of words.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

• Dual Axis Illu­sion (YouTube): at first it seemed dumb, then it blew my mind. One minute.
• Mid­dle East Lead­ers Work­ing On Peace Plan For Amer­i­ca (Baby­lon Bee)
• How To Gain Insight From Cur­rent Trends (Basic Instruc­tions): I include this most­ly because of the post­script, which I repro­duce here: “Men don’t know what women want and that makes men unhap­py. Women know exact­ly what men want and that makes women unhap­py. I give you the human con­di­tion.”

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Inside Grad­u­ate Admis­sions (Inside High­er Ed, Scott Jaschick): if you plan to apply to grad school, read this. There is one reveal­ing anec­dote about how an admis­sions com­mit­tee treat­ed an appli­ca­tion from a Chris­t­ian col­lege stu­dent. My take­away: the pro­fes­sors tried to be fair but found it hard to do, and their stat­ed con­cerns were most­ly about the qual­i­ty of the insti­tu­tion rather than the faith of the appli­cant. Trou­bling nonethe­less. (first shared in vol­ume 32).

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.