Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 269

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. Some thoughts fol­low­ing the Bre­on­na Tay­lor ver­dict:
   • Cor­rect­ing the mis­in­for­ma­tion about Bre­on­na Tay­lor (Radley Balko, Wash­ing­ton Post): “We could pre­vent the next Bre­on­na Tay­lor. We could ban forced entry raids to serve drug war­rants. We could hold judges account­able for sign­ing war­rants that don’t pass con­sti­tu­tion­al muster. We could demand that police offi­cers wear body cam­eras dur­ing these raids to hold them account­able, and that they be ade­quate­ly pun­ished when they fail to acti­vate them. We could do a lot to make sure there are no more Bre­on­na Tay­lors. The ques­tion is whether we want to.”
   • From a month ago, but time­ly now: Supreme Court Prece­dent Killed Bre­on­na Tay­lor (David French, The Dis­patch): “Some­thing (or some things) have to give, and those ‘things’ are no-knock raids and qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty. Indi­vid­ual lib­er­ties should not be sac­ri­ficed on the altar of police drug raids, and vic­tims of civ­il rights abus­es should be enti­tled to receive com­pen­sa­tion for their loss­es, includ­ing their injuries and wounds.”
   • My 2 cents: Amer­i­ca’s jus­tice sys­tem would be great­ly improved if no-knock raids and qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty were either elim­i­nat­ed or great­ly con­strained. And if we get rid of civ­il asset for­fei­ture at the same time — wow.
2. Review: ‘Domin­ion: How the Chris­t­ian Rev­o­lu­tion Remade the World’ by Tom Hol­land (Tim Keller, Gospel Coali­tion): “…the shame-and-hon­or cul­tures of old, pagan Europe—of the Anglo-Sax­ons, the Franks, and the Germans—thought that the Chris­t­ian eth­ic of for­giv­ing one’s ene­mies and of hon­or­ing the poor and weak to be com­plete­ly unwork­able as a basis for soci­ety. These ideas would’ve nev­er occurred to any­one unless they held to a uni­verse with a sin­gle, per­son­al God who cre­at­ed all beings in his image, and with a Sav­ior who came and died in sac­ri­fi­cial love. The ideas only could’ve grown from such a worldview—they don’t make sense in a dif­fer­ent one. If, instead, we believe we’re here by acci­dent through a process of sur­vival of the fittest, then there can be no moral absolutes, and life must be, if any­thing, about pow­er and the mas­tery of oth­ers, not about love. That, declared Niet­zsche, is the only way to live once you are tru­ly will­ing to admit that the Chris­t­ian God does not exist.”
3. We Are All Algo­rithms Now (Andrew Sul­li­van, Sub­Stack): “In the past, we might have turned to more reli­able media for con­text and per­spec­tive. But the jour­nal­ists and reporters and edi­tors who are sup­posed to per­form this func­tion are human as well. And they are per­haps the ones most trapped in the social media hellscape…. The press could have been the anti­dote to the social media trap. Instead they chose to become the prof­itable push­er of the poi­son.“ This was writ­ten before news of RBG’s death and is even more time­ly now.
4. Con­cern­ing the Supreme Court:
   • Lead­ing Repub­li­can politi­cians have flip-flopped What Sen­ate Repub­li­cans have said about fill­ing a Supreme Court vacan­cy (one minute video, YouTube)
   • Lead­ing Demo­c­ra­t­ic politi­cians have flip-flopped What lead­ing Democ­rats have said about fill­ing a Supreme Court vacan­cy (two minute video, Twit­ter) 
   • A thought from the left: Down With Judi­cial Suprema­cy! (Jamelle Bouie, New York Times): “The Supreme Court has the pow­er to inter­pret the Con­sti­tu­tion and estab­lish its mean­ing for fed­er­al, state and local gov­ern­ment alike. But this pow­er wasn’t enu­mer­at­ed in the Con­sti­tu­tion and isn’t inher­ent in the court as an insti­tu­tion. Instead, the court’s pow­er to inter­pret and bind oth­ers to that inter­pre­ta­tion was con­struct­ed over time by polit­i­cal and legal actors through­out the sys­tem, from pres­i­dents and law­mak­ers to the judges and jus­tices them­selves.”
   • A thought from the right: How the G.O.P. Might Get to Yes on Replac­ing Ruth Bad­er Gins­burg (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “Since I became opposed to abor­tion, some­time in my lat­er teens, I have nev­er regard­ed the Supreme Court with warmth, admi­ra­tion or patri­ot­ic trust. What my lib­er­al friends felt after Bush v. Gore or after Brett Kavanaugh’s con­fir­ma­tion or in imag­in­ing some future rul­ing by Amy Coney Bar­rett, I have felt for my entire adult life.”
5. On faith and pol­i­tics:
   • How Faith Shapes My Pol­i­tics (David Brooks, New York Times): “In a soci­ety that is grow­ing rad­i­cal­ly more sec­u­lar every day, I’d say we have more to fear from polit­i­cal dog­ma­tism than reli­gious dog­ma­tism.” 
   • Relat­ed: This just in! Evan­gel­i­cals are actu­al­ly Amer­i­ca’s least politi­cized group of church­es (Richard Ostling, GetRe­li­gion): “…the emerg­ing sce­nario appears to indi­cate a rel­a­tive­ly small and unrep­re­sen­ta­tive band of evan­gel­i­cal par­ti­sans at the nation­al lev­el has — aid­ed by mas­sive amounts of news cov­er­age — dis­tort­ed the pub­lic image of grass-roots white evan­gel­i­cal­ism.”
   • What are your Expec­ta­tions of Jesus’ Local Church? (Adam Sin­nett, church web­site): “Over the last six months the elders of DCC have received numer­ous ques­tions, rec­om­men­da­tions, and crit­i­cisms in rela­tion to what we should be doing as a church in regards to: our pan­dem­ic response, the rela­tion­ship between church and state, tim­ing and con­tent of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, grow­ing unem­ploy­ment, the home­less­ness cri­sis, polit­i­cal par­ti­san­ship, sys­temic injus­tice, police bru­tal­i­ty, social protests, and more.”
   • Fol­low-up: Who Does What in the Life of the Church? (Adam Sin­net, church web­site): “If we think of the church pri­mar­i­ly as ‘the lead­ers’ we’ll place the bur­den of respon­si­bil­i­ty for the life of the church on the pas­tors. If we think of the church pri­mar­i­ly as ‘the peo­ple’, we’ll place the bur­den of respon­si­bil­i­ty on the indi­vid­u­als. If we think of the church pri­mar­i­ly as an ‘insti­tu­tion’, we’ll place the bur­den of respon­si­bil­i­ty on the orga­ni­za­tion, its struc­tures, and process­es. Who then is respon­si­ble for ful­fill­ing God’s pur­pose for his church? Is it the lead­ers, or the peo­ple, or the insti­tu­tion? Put sim­ply, every­one is respon­si­ble, though in dif­fer­ent ways.”
   • Mark Dev­er’s Capi­tol Hill Bap­tist Sues to Not For­sake the Assem­bly (Kate Shell­nut, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “…the DC congregation’s legal fight is unique­ly tied to its the­o­log­i­cal beliefs around how a church should gath­er. Dev­er has long resist­ed mul­ti-site, mul­ti-ser­vice mod­els of church, though they are very pop­u­lar among fel­low South­ern Bap­tists. The DC Bap­tist church does not stream ser­vices online, and hasn’t made an excep­tion to that rule dur­ing the pan­dem­ic.”
   • Capi­tol Hill Bap­tist, a large evan­gel­i­cal church, sues DC May­or Muriel Bows­er over coro­n­avirus restric­tions (Michelle Boorstein, Wash­ing­ton Post): “The vote Sun­day at a mem­bers meet­ing to pur­sue lit­i­ga­tion was 402 in favor, 35 against, mem­bers said, though church lead­ers would not con­firm spe­cif­ic num­bers.”
6. Two ran­dom arti­cles touch­ing on race:
   • This Is How Biden Should Approach the Lati­no Vote (Ian Haney López and Tory Gav­i­to, New York Times): “Pro­gres­sives com­mon­ly cat­e­go­rize Lati­nos as peo­ple of col­or, no doubt part­ly because pro­gres­sive Lati­nos see the group that way and encour­age oth­ers to do so as well. Cer­tain­ly, we both once took that per­spec­tive for grant­ed. Yet in our sur­vey, only one in four His­pan­ics saw the group as peo­ple of col­or.”
     • I am unin­ter­est­ed in the par­ti­san angle of this op-ed, but the sta­tis­tic I excerpt­ed stood out to me. I won­der what per­cent­age of Stan­ford stu­dents would have pre­dict­ed it? I sus­pect the over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of Stan­ford stu­dents would have bet on the oppo­site.
   • The Pre­tense That Prince­ton Is Racist (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): “I object to the entire witch hunt of an inves­ti­ga­tion, which Repub­li­cans would rec­og­nize as a fla­grant abuse of fed­er­al pow­er were it aimed at Lib­er­ty Uni­ver­si­ty. No rea­son­able per­son could con­clude that an oner­ous probe of Prince­ton for anti-Black racism is the best use, or even a good use, of scarce resources to safe­guard civ­il rights. The deci­sion to grap­ple with racism should not trig­ger a fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tion, whether or not that grap­pling is total­ly hon­est.”
7. Tea Time: The Chris­t­ian Mis­sion to Pre­serve Cul­ture (Lyman Stone, The Plough): “As strange as it may seem for a white Amer­i­can mis­sion­ary to be teach­ing an eight-year-old Chi­nese girl from the tea cap­i­tal of the world how to pour tea, such I under­stood to be my Chris­t­ian duty.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

• The Rich­est Avenger (Text From Super­heroes)
• The Mag­ic Word (Pearls Before Swine)
• Frog and Toad Ten­ta­tive­ly Go Out­side After Months In Self-Quar­an­tine (McSweeney’s): this is beau­ti­ful.
• Nation Sur­prised To Learn All Politi­cians Are Hyp­ocrites (Baby­lon Bee)
• The 2020 Ig Nobel Prizewin­ners

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Jesus, Mary, and Joe Jonas (Jonathan Parks-Ramage, Medi­um): “How, in famous­ly lib­er­al Hol­ly­wood and among sta­tis­ti­cal­ly pro­gres­sive mil­len­ni­als, had good old-fashioned evan­ge­lism [sic] gained pop­u­lar­i­ty? In this con­text, a church like Real­i­ty L.A. seemed like some­thing that could nev­er work. But that evening, as I reflect­ed on the trou­bled actress and the psy­chic bru­tal­i­ties inflict­ed by the enter­tain­ment indus­try, it occurred to me that I had under­es­ti­mat­ed Hollywood’s biggest prod­uct: lost souls.” First shared in vol­ume 192

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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.