Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 270

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.

Things I’m look­ing for good arti­cles about: the Armenian/Aberbaijani con­flict, what is hap­pen­ing in Hong Kong, and Trump’s COVID diagono­sis. If you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

1. Amer­i­cans Increas­ing­ly Believe Vio­lence is Jus­ti­fied if the Oth­er Side Wins (Lar­ry Dia­mond, Lee Drut­man, Tod Lind­berg, Nathan P. Kalmoe and Lil­liana Mason, Politi­co): “At the pres­i­den­tial debate this week, the Repub­li­can can­di­date voiced his con­cern about polit­i­cal violence—left-wing polit­i­cal vio­lence. And the Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­date like­wise voiced con­cern about polit­i­cal violence—right-wing polit­i­cal vio­lence. They were both right.” The authors are all aca­d­e­mics.
   • Relat­ed: The Truth About Today’s Anar­chists (Farah Stock­man, New York Times): “Mr. Quinn dis­cov­ered a thorny truth about the may­hem that unfold­ed in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man in Min­neapo­lis. It wasn’t may­hem at all. While talk­ing heads on tele­vi­sion rou­tine­ly described it as a spon­ta­neous erup­tion of anger at racial injus­tice, it was strate­gi­cal­ly planned, facil­i­tat­ed and adver­tised on social media by anar­chists who believed that their actions advanced the cause of racial jus­tice.” 👀 👀 👀. The author is on the NYT edi­to­r­i­al board, so take these claims seri­ous­ly.
2. Justin Giboney’s Both/AND Pol­i­tics (Sarah Zyl­stra, The Gospel Coali­tion): “In 2015, Giboney, Bara­ka, and Angel Mal­don­a­do start­ed the AND Cam­paign, which aims to con­nect con­vic­tion and com­pas­sion. The orga­ni­za­tion sets out a plat­form you won’t find at either polit­i­cal convention—anti-abortion, pro-social safe­ty nets, pro-fam­i­ly, pro-crim­i­nal jus­tice reform. The point isn’t to endorse leg­is­la­tion or can­di­dates or judi­cial decisions—AND doesn’t do that—but to ‘bring Chris­tians of both par­ties togeth­er on those issues.’ The AND Cam­paign leans left, but has increas­ing­ly become a space for Chris­tians dis­sat­is­fied with both polit­i­cal par­ties.”
   • I have been fol­low­ing this move­ment with inter­est for some time and this is a good intro­duc­tion.
   • Relat­ed: Evan­gel­i­cal Biden Vot­ers Strad­dle Par­ti­san Divides(Kate Shell­nutt, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “The Pew Research Cen­ter recent­ly found few Amer­i­cans, Repub­li­cans or Democ­rats, have many close friends who sup­port a dif­fer­ent pres­i­den­tial can­di­date in the 2020 race. In reli­gious break­outs pro­vid­ed to Chris­tian­i­ty Today, evan­gel­i­cal Biden sup­port­ers emerged as the excep­tion. Just under half say their close friends dis­agree with them over the upcom­ing elec­tion.”
   • Relat­ed: Evan­gel­i­cal Vote Once Again Split on Eth­nic Lines (Aaron Earls, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Pres­i­dent Trump’s advan­tage among evan­gel­i­cals, how­ev­er, comes pri­mar­i­ly from white evan­gel­i­cals, among whom he leads Biden 73 per­cent to 18 per­cent. African Amer­i­cans with evan­gel­i­cal beliefs over­whelm­ing­ly plan to vote for Biden (69% to 19%). Among Amer­i­can evan­gel­i­cals of oth­er eth­nic­i­ties, how­ev­er, Trump has a 58 per­cent to 32 per­cent lead.”
3. What is Pen­te­costal­ism? (Doug Clay, Assem­blies of God): “The mod­ern Pen­te­costal move­ment took its name from the moment of the Church’s birth on the Day of Pen­te­cost, as record­ed in Acts 2. Pen­te­costals and charis­mat­ics believe that the gifts of the Spir­it as described in the Bible are active today as the Holy Spir­it empow­ers Christ’s fol­low­ers. Researchers esti­mate this move­ment to now include 669 mil­lion peo­ple — or one in four Chris­tians glob­al­ly — mak­ing it the fastest-grow­ing move­ment in the his­to­ry of Chris­tian­i­ty.”
   • The author is the Gen­er­al Super­in­ten­dent (top leader) in the Amer­i­can branch of the Assem­blies of God, the denom­i­na­tion with which I am ordained. We had lunch once in a cafe­te­ria. Nice guy.
4. For Con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian Women, Amy Coney Barrett’s Suc­cess Is Per­son­al (Ruth Gra­ham, New York Times): “Judge Bar­rett, for them, is a new kind of icon — one they have not seen before in Amer­i­can cul­tur­al and polit­i­cal life: a woman who is both unabashed­ly ambi­tious and deeply reli­gious, who has excelled at the heights of a demand­ing pro­fes­sion even as she speaks open­ly about pri­or­i­tiz­ing her con­ser­v­a­tive Catholic faith and fam­i­ly. Judge Bar­rett has sev­en chil­dren, includ­ing two chil­dren adopt­ed from Haiti and a young son with Down syn­drome.”
   • Amy Coney Bar­rett: A New Fem­i­nist Icon (Eri­ka Bachiochi, Politi­co): “Bar­rett embod­ies a new kind of fem­i­nism, a fem­i­nism that builds upon the praise­wor­thy antidis­crim­i­na­tion work of Gins­burg but then goes fur­ther. It insists not just on the equal rights of men and women, but also on their com­mon respon­si­bil­i­ties, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the realm of fam­i­ly life. In this new fem­i­nism, sex­u­al equal­i­ty is found not in imi­tat­ing men’s capac­i­ty to walk away from an unex­pect­ed preg­nan­cy through abor­tion, but rather in ask­ing men to meet women at a high stan­dard of mutu­al respon­si­bil­i­ty, reci­procity and care.”
   • Amy Coney Bar­rett Deserves to Be on the Supreme Court (Noah Feld­man, Bloomberg): “I got to know Bar­rett more than 20 years ago when we clerked at the Supreme Court dur­ing the 1998–99 term. Of the thir­ty-some clerks that year, all of whom had grad­u­at­ed at the top of their law school class­es and done pres­ti­gious appel­late clerk­ships before com­ing to work at the court, Bar­rett stood out. Mea­sured sub­jec­tive­ly and unsci­en­tif­i­cal­ly by pure legal acu­men, she was one of the two strongest lawyers. The oth­er was Jen­ny Mar­tinez, now dean of the Stan­ford Law School.” The author is a pro­fes­sor at Har­vard Law.
   • The Peo­ple of Praise, Charis­mat­ic Catholics, and Fringe Reli­gious Groups (Ed Stet­zer, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “For peo­ple on the out­side, the charis­mat­ic and Pen­te­costal move­ments may seem odd. But glob­al­ly, some 600 mil­lion peo­ple are affil­i­at­ed with the charis­mat­ic and Pen­te­costal move­ment world­wide. This is not ‘remark­ably out of the main­stream’ as one com­men­ta­tor indi­cat­ed. There are 80 mil­lion Angli­cans in the world, com­pared to 600 mil­lion Pen­te­costal / charis­mat­ic / third wave Chris­tians (and, yes, that includes many Angli­cans).”
   • Amy Coney Bar­rett and the New Fem­i­nism of Inter­de­pen­dence (Ser­e­na Sig­illi­to, Newsweek): “It’s time for a new kind of fem­i­nism to emerge—and for GOP law­mak­ers to demon­strate that their com­mit­ment to fam­i­ly val­ues is more than just lip ser­vice. That will require two sig­nif­i­cant shifts. The first is a philo­soph­i­cal one, defin­ing a new fem­i­nism of inter­de­pen­dence rather than rad­i­cal auton­o­my. The sec­ond is a polit­i­cal one, pur­su­ing a pro-fam­i­ly eco­nom­ic agen­da.”
5. New Research Shows Reli­gious Lib­er­ty Dri­ves Human Flour­ish­ing – And Why This Mat­ters Now More Than Ever (Chris­tos Makridis, Real Clear Reli­gion): “…reli­gious lib­er­ty is an inte­gral pre­req­ui­site for demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­er­nance, aid­ing the process for civic engage­ment and women’s empow­er­ment and reduc­ing the poten­tial for pub­lic and polit­i­cal cor­rup­tion.” Chris­tos is an alum­nus of our min­istry. 
6. The Woke and the Un-Woke (Matthew Schmitz, Tablet Mag­a­zine): “In the 1950s, the soci­ol­o­gist Will Her­berg famous­ly described Amer­i­ca as divid­ed into three reli­gious camps: Protes­tant, Catholic, and Jew. These divi­sions were a mat­ter of belong­ing rather than belief. Even an unbe­liev­er would count as belong­ing to one of the three cat­e­gories on the basis of his back­ground and milieu. If a sim­i­lar study were con­duct­ed today, the pic­ture would be rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent… Woke, Trad, and None.”
   • Is the Cul­ture War Lost? (Sarah Haider, Let­ter): “Near­ly all our edu­ca­tion­al, media, and non-prof­it insti­tu­tions (includ­ing major grant-mak­ing orga­ni­za­tions) are advanc­ing in one direc­tion. Mean­while, the hearts and minds of the glob­al elite are almost uni­form­ly sup­port­ive of this new sec­u­lar faith.” The author
7. Rod Dreher Is Not Pes­simistic Enough (Per­ry L. Glanz­er, The Gospel Coali­tion): “We will increas­ing­ly be tempt­ed to deny bits of Chris­t­ian the­ol­o­gy and ethics to keep our lev­el of com­fort. God save us and help us stand against that spread­ing evil.”
   • This is a review of Rod Dreher’s book Live Not By Lies (which was, inci­den­tal­ly, the num­ber one sell­er on Ama­zon when it was released). Dreher is one of the colum­nists who is often found in these emails. 

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

• Broad­cast Sig­nal Acci­den­tal­ly Picks Up Two Old Men Yelling At Each Oth­er Instead Of Pres­i­den­tial Debate (Baby­lon Bee)
• We’re All Doomed (Weird Al, YouTube): five min­utes of pres­i­den­tial debate humor
• Stan­ford stu­dent cre­ates Tik­Tok clone called ‘Spy­ware’ (Stan­ford Dai­ly)
• If Juice had a meet­ing (YouTube): under one minute.
• The Left vs Right in 2020 (YouTube): four min­utes of near-per­fec­tion
• Why Are We Stu­pid­er? (Pearls Before Swine)
• Steel Wool (The Far Side)
• Pre­his­toric Plumbers (The Far Side)

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have If Lib­er­als Won’t Enforce Bor­ders, Fas­cists Will (David Frum, The Atlantic): “Dem­a­gogues don’t rise by talk­ing about irrel­e­vant issues. Dem­a­gogues rise by talk­ing about issues that mat­ter to peo­ple, and that more con­ven­tion­al lead­ers appear unwill­ing or unable to address: unem­ploy­ment in the 1930s, crime in the 1960s, mass immi­gra­tion now. Vot­ers get to decide what the country’s prob­lems are. Polit­i­cal elites have to devise solu­tions to those prob­lems. If dif­fi­cult issues go unad­dressed by respon­si­ble lead­ers, they will be exploit­ed by irre­spon­si­ble ones.” I high­light­ed a piece by Frum with a sim­i­lar theme back in issue 175. This is a very thought­ful arti­cle. First shared in vol­ume 194.

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.