Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 267

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues.

We have some new mem­bers on our mail­ing list — wel­come! I’d like to direct you to the dis­claimers at the end of this email — they real­ly do mat­ter and I real­ly do mean them.

I wel­come your sug­ges­tions. If you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way!

Things Glen Found Interesting

1. Uncon­scious Learn­ing Under­lies Belief in God – Stronger Beliefs in Peo­ple Who Can Uncon­scious­ly Pre­dict Com­plex Pat­terns (Sci Tech Dai­ly): “Indi­vid­u­als who can uncon­scious­ly pre­dict com­plex pat­terns, an abil­i­ty called implic­it pat­tern learn­ing, are like­ly to hold stronger beliefs that there is a god who cre­ates pat­terns of events in the uni­verse, accord­ing to neu­ro­sci­en­tists at George­town Uni­ver­si­ty.” Shock­er: peo­ple who see real­i­ty clear­ly are more like­ly to per­ceive God’s hand at work in real­i­ty. 
2. Redeem­ing Con­dos, Pres­by­te­ri­ans Buy NYC Build­ing for $30 Mil­lion (Kathryn Wat­son, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “In a study of 22 US cites—including Grand Rapids, Detroit, Min­neapo­lis, San Fran­cis­co, and Seattle—Hartson and Williams looked at mail­ing list data to iden­ti­fy address­es that were labeled as church­es in 2003 but not in 2018. They iden­ti­fied approx­i­mate­ly 200 church build­ings that had been flipped for com­mer­cial or res­i­den­tial use. In the same cities, in the same 15 years, they found about 2,000 com­mer­cial spaces that had been turned into hous­es of wor­ship. While there are many sacred spaces becom­ing sec­u­lar, it seems more are con­vert­ing the oth­er way.” 👀 — I did not know this and am very encour­aged by it. 
3. On pol­i­tics:
   • No Longer Human (George Yancey, Patheos): “In one way it real­ly does not mat­ter if Trump or Biden wins the pres­i­den­cy. Either way you will have a sub­stan­tial per­cent­age of indi­vid­u­als who will feel dis­placed. They will be tempt­ed to cre­ate an us ver­sus them men­tal­i­ty in which they can envi­sion the elec­tion vic­tors as ene­mies of the state who must be defeat­ed at all costs. ” The author is a soci­ol­o­gist at Bay­lor. 
   • Relat­ed — two arti­cles high­light­ing how the right is afraid of the left in Amer­i­ca:
     1. Ide­ol­o­gy Binds And Blinds (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “As I see it, the ‘major threat of the far left’ to us on the right — the major threat, not the only threat — is that in pow­er, they will go ped­al to the medal on a soft total­i­tar­i­an ‘social jus­tice’ regime that would pun­ish dis­senters by cost­ing them their liveli­hoods, and ruin­ing their church­es and oth­er insti­tu­tions.”
     2. On Not Accept­ing Stolen Elec­tions (Dou­glas Wil­son, per­son­al blog): “Don’t take your eye off the ball. Who is going to be riot­ing in late Novem­ber after the elec­tion? Well, who’s riot­ing now? This is not a trick ques­tion.”
   • And it’s not just one-sided. Here are two arti­cles high­light­ing how the left is afraid of the right in Amer­i­ca:
     1. The Left Secret­ly Preps for MAGA Vio­lence After Elec­tion Day (Sam Stein, The Dai­ly Beast): “‘I don’t know what the strat­e­gy is when armed right-wing mili­tia dudes show up in polling places,’ the same source said. ‘This [Kyle] Rit­ten­house guy is being lion­ized on the right, right now. If it is being unleashed that you can shoot peo­ple and be a hero, I don’t know what prepa­ra­tion we can pos­si­bly do for that.’”
     2. We Don’t Know How to Warn You Any Hard­er. Amer­i­ca is Dying. (umair haque, Medi­um): “There is a cru­cial les­son there. Amer­i­ca already has an ISIS, a Tal­iban, an SS wait­ing to be born.A group of young men will­ing to do vio­lence at the drop of a hat, because they’ve been brain­washed into hat­ing. The dem­a­gogue has blamed hat­ed minori­ties and advo­cates of democ­ra­cy and peace for those young men’s stunt­ed life chances, and they believe him. That’s exact­ly what an ISIS is, what a Tal­iban is, what an SS is. The only thing left to do by an author­i­tar­i­an is to for­mal­ize it.”
4. Demo­c­ra­t­ic Change Still Works (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): “…look at the moun­tain of evi­dence that change through the civic process is not only pos­si­ble, but a recur­ring real­i­ty, and that it began long before Floyd’s death.” I believe much of our cur­rent cul­tur­al con­flict can be under­stood in terms of the Toc­queville Para­dox, which I have also heard referred to as “The Para­dox of Ris­ing Expec­ta­tions.”
5. On racism:
   • Prince­ton’s Pres­i­dent Is Wrong. The Uni­ver­si­ty Is Not Sys­tem­i­cal­ly Racist (Sergiu Klain­er­man, Newsweek): “Unable to iden­ti­fy spe­cif­ic cas­es of racism, these war­riors for social injus­tice are advanc­ing their agen­da by claim­ing instead that all Amer­i­can insti­tu­tions, includ­ing Prince­ton, are struc­tural­ly and sys­tem­i­cal­ly racist (‘SSR’). That is to say, that they are racist even as they man­i­fest­ly do every­thing imag­in­able to pro­mote under-rep­re­sent­ed groups. Prince­ton, for exam­ple, has had for years an extra­or­di­nar­i­ly large num­ber of admin­is­tra­tors (by some counts, over 65) ded­i­cat­ed to pro­mot­ing diver­si­ty and inclu­sion.” The author is a pro­fes­sor of math­e­mat­ics at Prince­ton.
   • Scholas­tics con­tra racism (Ed Fes­er, per­son­al blog): “The fal­si­ty and evil of racism, and thus of those insti­tu­tions, clear­ly fol­lows from stan­dard Scholas­tic [the­o­log­i­cal] think­ing about human nature and nat­ur­al law.”
   • Book Review: How to be an Anti-Racist by Ibram X. Ken­di(Bill Mel­one, Mere Ortho­doxy): “But recent crit­i­cism of social jus­tice advo­ca­cy and the Black Lives Mat­ter move­ment has failed to crit­i­cize the best of antiracist think­ing, and is much the less­er for it. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly true when that crit­i­cism does not engage seri­ous­ly with the work of Ibram X. Ken­di.”
   • No, racism isn’t a ‘cre­ation of white peo­ple’ (David Abu­lafia, The Spec­ta­tor): “It is there­fore a sad and hor­ri­ble truth that every con­ti­nent has expe­ri­enced racist per­se­cu­tions before as well as after the age of the Euro­pean empires. Quite pos­si­bly the first Homo Sapi­ens played a big role in the dis­ap­pear­ance of the Nean­derthals.” The author is a his­to­ry pro­fes­sor at Cam­bridge.
6. Chris­t­ian musi­cian Sean Feucht held defi­ant Seat­tle wor­ship protest after con­cert was banned (Julia Duin, Reli­gion News Ser­vice): “Sean Feucht, 37, the ral­ly orga­niz­er, laughed about the con­flict with city offi­cials while wel­com­ing the crowd of 800 to 900 peo­ple. ‘Wel­come to Seattle’s largest wor­ship protest,’ he said at the begin­ning of a two-hour set. ‘Turn to each oth­er and say, “Wel­come to the protest.” In this city, that makes it a legal gath­er­ing.’”
7. Chris­tians, Gun Rights, and the Amer­i­can Social Com­pact (David French, The Dis­patch): “The dis­tinc­tive Chris­t­ian pres­ence has to include mod­el­ing the respon­si­ble, vir­tu­ous exer­cise of the rights its polit­i­cal move­ments seek to secure. It has to include using its voice and pow­er to advo­cate for that respon­si­bil­i­ty and to oppose reck­less­ness. Sim­ply put, the repub­lic was not designed to thrive if those who are reli­gious are not also moral.” 

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

• ‘Humans Are Basi­cal­ly Good,’ Says Man Who Has Nev­er Met A 3‑Year-Old (Baby­lon Bee)
• Lib­er­tar­i­an Par­ty Reminds Amer­i­cans They Can Actu­al­ly Choose Less­er Of Three Evils (Baby­lon Bee)
• An Oldie But A Good­ie (The Far Side)
• Cal­i­for­ni­ans Begin Paint­ing Lam­b’s Blood On Door­posts Just To Be On The Safe Side (Baby­lon Bee): a lot of y’all ain’t in Cal­i­for­nia now, so you might not appre­ci­ate just how apoc­a­lyp­tic things were two days ago. Check out this gallery.
• ‘Cof­fin con­fes­sor’ Bill Edgar paid to gate­crash Queens­land funer­als and speak up for the dead (Annie Gaffney and Sal­ly Raf­fer­ty, Aus­tralia Broad­cast­ing Cor­po­ra­tion): “Mr Edgar runs a busi­ness in which, for $10,000, he is engaged by peo­ple ‘knock­ing on death’s door’ to go to their funer­als or grave­sides and reveal the secrets they want their loved ones to know.”

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have The Philoso­pher Redefin­ing Equal­i­ty (Nathan Heller, New York­er): “When she was three, her moth­er asked, ‘Why do you allow your broth­er to talk for you?’—why didn’t she speak for her­self? ‘Until now, it sim­ply was not nec­es­sary,’ Eliz­a­beth said. It was the first full sen­tence that she had ever uttered.” I think that’s the best first sen­tence I’ve ever heard of. The arti­cle is a tad long, but rec­om­mend­ed. First shared in vol­ume 189.

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.