Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 283

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. WHAT HAPPENED

   • Mad­ness on Capi­tol Hill (Andrew McCormick, The Nation): “For all the vio­lence in the air, the mood was less coup and more col­lege foot­ball tail­gate. Pop songs blared from speak­ers. Some­where, snare drums went rat-a-tat-tat. And the chants were so loud they rum­bled in your chest.” This is the most vivid arti­cle I have come upon so far.

   • ‘Is This Real­ly Hap­pen­ing?’: The Siege of Con­gress, Seen From the Inside (var­i­ous, Politi­co): “One mem­ber at one point, a Demo­c­rat, Steve Cohen, yelled over towards the Repub­li­can side of the room and said, ‘Call Trump and tell him to call this off.’ And then a lit­tle bit lat­er on, a law­mak­er sit­ting on the Repub­li­can side shot back and said some­thing along the lines of, ‘I bet you lib­er­als are glad now you didn’t defund the police.’”This is amaz­ing. And read­ing this I have a much more pos­i­tive view of the front­line police response than I had gleaned from pre­vi­ous report­ing. The issue was high­er in the com­mand struc­ture.

   • Let me tell you about my expe­ri­ence at yes­ter­day’s Trump Ral­ly. (Not The Bee): “Again, pic­tures nev­er do a crowd jus­tice, but I went to a Big 10 col­lege foot­ball school, I know what tens of thou­sands of peo­ple looks like, and this was that at least.”

   •  ‘What else could I do?’ NJ Rep. Kim helps clean up Capi­tol (Mike Catal­i­ni, AP News): “‘When you see some­thing you love that’s bro­ken you want to fix it. I love the Capi­tol. I‘m hon­ored to be there,’ he said. ‘This build­ing is extra­or­di­nary and the rotun­da in par­tic­u­lar is just awe-inspir­ing. How many count­less gen­er­a­tions have been inspired in that room? It real­ly broke my heart and I just felt com­pelled to do some­thing. … What else could I do?’” A pro­file of the man behind a pho­to you’ve no doubt seen.

2. WHAT HAPPENED IN CONTEXT

   • America’s His­to­ry of Polit­i­cal Vio­lence (Darel E. Paul, First Things): “Ear­ly reac­tions to the incur­sion tend­ed toward the cat­a­stroph­ic, and more than one jour­nal­ist spoke of a ‘coup,’ the death of the Repub­lic, and ‘civ­il war.’ By evening calmer heads and cool­er emo­tions began to emerge as the riot­ers were arrest­ed and dis­persed, reveal­ing less a Bol­she­vik storm­ing of the Win­ter Palace than a LARP­ing event by QAnon para­noids.” The author is a pro­fes­sor of polit­i­cal sci­ence at Williams Col­lege.

   •  The Five Crises of the Amer­i­can Regime (Michael Lind, Tablet Mag­a­zine): “In the past eight months, two Capi­tol Hills have fall­en. Two shock­ing events sym­bol­ize the abdi­ca­tion of author­i­ty by America’s rul­ing class, an abdi­ca­tion that has led to what can be described, not with­out exag­ger­a­tion, as the slow-motion dis­in­te­gra­tion of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca in its present form.… What is the mean­ing of these dystopi­an scenes? Many Democ­rats claim that Repub­li­cans are destroy­ing the repub­lic. Many Repub­li­cans claim the reverse. They are both cor­rect.” The author is a pro­fes­sor in the UT Austin school of pub­lic affairs. This is the most com­pre­hen­sive (and to my mind, large­ly cor­rect) analy­sis I’ve come across.

   • Vio­lence in the Capi­tol, Dan­gers in the After­math (Glenn Green­wald, Sub­stack): “One need not dis­miss the lam­en­ta­ble actions of yes­ter­day to simul­ta­ne­ous­ly reject efforts to apply terms that are plain­ly inap­plic­a­ble: attempt­ed coup, insur­rec­tion, sedi­tion.… That the only per­son shot was a pro­test­er killed by an armed agent of the state by itself makes clear how irre­spon­si­ble these terms are.” 

3. THEOLOGICAL/RELIGIOUS COMMENTARY

   • Chris­t­ian Lead­ers Pray for Peace and Safe­ty Amid Capi­tol Mob (Kate Shell­nutt, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Pas­tor Rick War­ren called the attack ‘domes­tic ter­ror­ism,’ while South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion (SBC) Ethics & Reli­gious Lib­er­ty Com­mis­sion pres­i­dent Rus­sell Moore con­demned their actions as ‘immoral, unjust, dan­ger­ous, and inex­cus­able’ and called on the pres­i­dent to direct his sup­port­ers to ‘stop this dan­ger­ous and anti-con­sti­tu­tion­al anar­chy.’ ”There’s a wide roundup of voic­es here.

   • Like A Fire Shut Up In My Bones (Paul Shult, Luther­ans For Racial Jus­tice): “My thoughts I share with you are shaped by my call­ing as a pas­tor. I am not a polit­i­cal sci­ence major, a lawyer, a pub­lic pol­i­cy expert, or a busi­ness own­er. I don’t want to argue pol­i­tics, which is very dif­fi­cult because so much in our nation and in Chris­tian­i­ty has become politi­cized. So, here are my thoughts around just a few things I think are impor­tant to con­sid­er — per­haps they can be help­ful to some.” The author pas­tors a church near cam­pus that sev­er­al of our stu­dents have attend­ed (one of them brought this arti­cle to my atten­tion).

   • The Gospel in a Democ­ra­cy Under Assault (Rus­sell Moore, Gospel Coali­tion): “Coun­tries can fall. I hope this one doesn’t. But, either way, let’s not fall with it.”

   • Ille­git­i­mate Times (Dou­glas Wil­son, per­son­al blog): “So it is look­ing as though one way or anoth­er we are going to have to learn how to live under a gov­ern­ment we believe to be at bot­tom ille­git­i­mate. And that looks to be the case no mat­ter what hap­pens today, actu­al­ly, which hap­pens to be Jan­u­ary 6, the day when Con­gress rat­i­fies the votes of the Elec­toral Col­lege. If Biden is con­firmed, which seems like­ly, a very large num­ber of Amer­i­cans will believe he got there by fraud­u­lent means. And if Trump is confirmed—by some sort of extra­or­di­nary long shot—that irreg­u­lar process, what­ev­er it was, will be con­sid­ered by a very large num­ber of Amer­i­cans to have been fraud­u­lent in a very dif­fer­ent way. And even though a larg­er num­ber of Chris­tians will be in the first group, our num­bers in both groups will not be insignif­i­cant.” Please note, this is from before the events in ques­tion! I share it because it con­tains some very unusu­al insights.

4. APOLOGETICALLY INTERESTING
   
   • Why Reli­gious Cou­ples Thrive in a Pan­dem­ic (Liz HoChing & Spencer James, Real Clear Reli­gion): “It is no sur­prise there­fore that home-wor­ship­ping cou­ples were sig­nif­i­cant­ly more like­ly to be high­ly sat­is­fied with their sex­u­al rela­tion­ship, com­pared with cou­ples in a shared sec­u­lar rela­tion­ship. Women in shared home-wor­ship­ping rela­tion­ships were found to be twice as like­ly to be sex­u­al­ly sat­is­fied from the inter­na­tion­al data, and three-times as like­ly to be sex­u­al­ly sat­is­fied from data gath­ered in the Unit­ed States. These are num­bers that can­not be ignored.”
     • There are many inter­est­ing quotes I could have cho­sen. I pick this one because it is some­thing I com­mon­ly see come up in research and yet so con­trary to the pre­vail­ing nar­ra­tive in our cul­ture. And also because most of you are yet to pick your spouse — this is a reminder to pick some­one who shares your vibrant faith in the Lord.
   • Stand­ing By: The Spa­tial Orga­ni­za­tion of Coer­cive Insti­tu­tions in Chi­na (Adam Y. Liu and Charles Chang, Social Sci­ence Research): “We find that police sta­tions are more like­ly to be locat­ed with­in walk­ing dis­tance of for­eign reli­gious sites (church­es) than oth­er sites (tem­ples), even after con­trol­ling for the esti­mat­ed pop­u­la­tion with­in 1km of each site and a set of key site attrib­ut­es.” The authors are schol­ars at the Nation­al Uni­ver­si­ty of Sin­ga­pore and at Yale, respec­tive­ly.
   • Inter­est­ing tid­bits from the arti­cle itself (the above is from the abstract):
     • “…among all major reli­gions in Chi­na, Chris­tian­i­ty has since the late 19th cen­tu­ry been per­sis­tent­ly viewed by the Chi­nese state—the incum­bent athe­is­tic par­ty state in particular—as the most threat­en­ing to social order and state pow­er.”
     • “…one of the most con­sis­tent and sur­pris­ing social sci­en­tif­ic find­ings is the extent of the involve­ment of reli­gious groups in large scale social and polit­i­cal move­ments.”
     • “Schol­ars find that the par­tic­i­pa­to­ry and civic atti­tudes embed­ded in Chris­tian­i­ty make its believ­ers more like­ly to engage in col­lec­tive con­tention.”
     • “In a sharp con­trast, the par­ty state sees oth­er reli­gions, such as Bud­dhism, as not only non-threat­en­ing, but also con­ducive to strength­en­ing its grip on pow­er. In some instances, local offi­cials have even sup­port­ed the con­struc­tion of non-West­ern reli­gious sites as an explic­it way to counter the grow­ing influ­ence of Chris­tian­i­ty in their juris­dic­tions.”
   • Let me be clear: I lack the exper­tise to eval­u­ate their find­ings. What I find fas­ci­nat­ing is the mat­ter-of-fact way these schol­ars refer to a con­sen­sus in their field about Chris­tian­i­ty. It is inter­est­ing to read this in con­junc­tion with the news about this week.
5. UNRELATED THINGS
   • Rev. William Bar­ber on Greed, Pover­ty and Evan­gel­i­cal Pol­i­tics (David March­ese, New York Times): “Very few reli­gious lead­ers are able to inspire polit­i­cal action on the part of large num­bers of peo­ple who don’t share their church, their denom­i­na­tion or their faith. Yet the Rev. Dr. William Bar­ber, senior pas­tor of Green­leaf Chris­t­ian Church in Golds­boro, N.C., has done just that.” This is an inter­est­ing (and at times per­plex­ing) inter­view.
   • some prob­lems don’t have solu­tions, or the demand game (Fred­die DeBoer, per­son­al blog): “Here’s the real­i­ty with pornog­ra­phy: it may very well be very bad, and there is prob­a­bly noth­ing that we can do about it. Tech­nol­o­gy changed the world and made some­thing for which their is huge demand effort­less­ly easy to trans­mit and receive. And that’s that; that’s the sto­ry of pornog­ra­phy. Some prob­lems don’t have solu­tions.” The author, an athe­ist social­ist, inad­ver­tent­ly comes close to agree­ing with Jesus that “the poor you will have with you always.”
   • Inside RZIM, Staff Push Lead­ers to Take Respon­si­bil­i­ty for Scan­dal (Daniel Sil­li­man, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “At an online all-staff meet­ing in mid-Octo­ber, how­ev­er, RZIM speak­er Sam All­ber­ry, who offi­ci­at­ed at Zacharias’s grave­side ser­vice, asked why ‘min­istry team­mates’ had been includ­ed in the offi­cial denial. They had not been con­sult­ed before lead­er­ship craft­ed the unsigned state­ment deny­ing the claims. ‘Why are you putting words in my mouth?’ said All­ber­ry, accord­ing to peo­ple who attend­ed the meet­ing. ‘Frankly, I believe these women and find their alle­ga­tions to be cred­i­ble.’”
     • This makes me very sad. Also, there’s a per­son­al cau­tion in here. One of the details is that Zacharias lied about small­er things. If you ever see me lying or exag­ger­at­ing (except for obvi­ous humor), please call me on it. I’d rather be embar­rassed social­ly in the moment than lay the foun­da­tion for ruin lat­er.
   • The Awok­en­ing Will Not Bring an End to the Night­mare (Musa al-Ghar­bi, Inter­faith Youth Core) : “…the whites who seem most eager to con­demn ‘ide­o­log­i­cal racism’ (i.e. peo­ple say­ing, think­ing or feel­ing the ‘wrong’ things about minori­ties), and who are most osten­ta­tious in demon­strat­ing their own ‘wok­e­ness,’ also tend to be the peo­ple who ben­e­fit the most from what soci­ol­o­gists describe as ‘insti­tu­tion­al’ or ‘sys­temic’ racism. Con­se­quent­ly, the places in Amer­i­ca with the high­est con­cen­tra­tions of whites who are ‘with it’ also hap­pen to be the most unequal places in the coun­try.” The author is a soci­ol­o­gist at Colum­bia.
   • Mak­ing pol­i­cy for a low-trust world (Matthew Ygle­sias, sub­stack): “The cor­rect way to respond to a low-trust envi­ron­ment is not to dou­ble down on pro­ce­du­ral­ism, but to com­mit your­self to the ‘it does exact­ly what it says on the tin’ prin­ci­ple and imple­ment poli­cies that have the fol­low­ing char­ac­ter­is­tics: It’s easy for every­one, whether they agree with you or dis­agree with you, to under­stand what it is you say you are doing. It’s easy for every­one to see whether or not you are, in fact, doing what you said you would do. It’s easy for you and your team to meet the goal of doing the thing that you said you would do.”
   • Like Preach­er-Politi­cians Before Him, Sen­a­tor Raphael Warnock Will Keep His Pul­pit (Adelle Banks, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “ ‘It’s unusu­al for a pas­tor to get involved in some­thing as messy as pol­i­tics, but I see this as a con­tin­u­a­tion of a life of ser­vice: first as an agi­ta­tor, then an advo­cate, and hope­ful­ly next as a leg­is­la­tor’” Warnock said as he was clos­ing in on the top spot of a wide-open pri­ma­ry. ‘I say I’m step­ping up to my next call­ing to serve, not step­ping down from the pul­pit.’ ” I did not know this his­to­ry, and after read­ing it I am pleased to inform you that if I am elect­ed to the US Sen­ate I will con­tin­ue to min­is­ter with Chi Alpha at Stan­ford.
   • The Real Prob­lem with 4‑Letter Words (Karen Swal­low Pri­or, Gospel Coali­tion): “Curs­ing falls into dif­fer­ent cat­e­gories. Strict­ly speak­ing, pro­fan­i­ties are words that desacral­ize what is holy. Words mis­us­ing the names of God and his judg­ments are pro­fane; the worst of these are blasphemy.While pro­fan­i­ties are relat­ed to the divine, obscen­i­ties are relat­ed to the human. This cat­e­go­ry of words serves to coarsen bod­i­ly func­tions (whether sex­u­al or excre­to­ry).… Anoth­er cat­e­go­ry of curse words con­sists of those the cog­ni­tive sci­en­tist Steven Pinker calls ‘abu­sive.’ ”
   • California’s Donor-Dis­clo­sure Law Threat­ens Reli­gious Char­i­ties (John Bursch, Real Clear Reli­gion): “Not once has the attor­ney gen­er­al giv­en a con­vinc­ing rea­son for col­lect­ing donors’ names and address­es en masse. His office has effec­tive­ly reg­u­lat­ed char­i­ties for decades with­out that infor­ma­tion. In 10 years, the attor­ney gen­er­al only used donor lists in five out of 540 inves­ti­ga­tions. And even in those five, he could have obtained the same infor­ma­tion through tar­get­ed sub­poe­nas or audits, all with­out risk­ing the mas­sive dis­clo­sure of sen­si­tive infor­ma­tion from all reg­is­tered char­i­ties.”
   • The New Strain: How Bad Is It? (Bren­dan Foht and Ari Schul­man, The New Atlantis): “The steps that most need to be tak­en in response to the new strain are the same ones that should have been tak­en for the last year any­way, but that our gov­ern­ment has proved large­ly unable or unwill­ing to take. An effec­tive regime of test­ing, trac­ing, and iso­lat­ing, for exam­ple, has been need­ed through­out the pan­dem­ic, but nev­er real­ly imple­ment­ed.” One of the authors post­ed on Twit­ter: “In the course of work­ing on this piece, my con­cern about the new Covid strain went from about a 4 to an 8.5, with the remain­ing 1.5 com­posed most­ly of gen­er­al­ized skep­ti­cism and moti­vat­ed dis­be­lief.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

• How To Speak Your Mind (Basic Instruc­tions)
• Selec­tive Respect (Imgur)
• Hap­py Birth­day, by Beethoven? Bach? Mozart? (Nicole Pesce, YouTube): five min­utes
• Lan­guage (SMBC)

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have How Pornog­ra­phy Makes Us Less Human and Less Humane (Matthew Lee Ander­son, The Gospel Coali­tion): “Beneath pornog­ra­phy is the sup­po­si­tion that the mere fact of our desire for a woman makes us wor­thy of her. And so, not being bound by any kind of norm, desire must pro­ceed end­less­ly. It is no sur­prise that the indus­tri­al­ized, cheap-and-easy sex of pornog­ra­phy has answered and evoked an almost unre­strained sex­u­al greed, which allows us to be gods and god­dess­es with­in the safe­ty of our own fan­tasies. It is for deep and impor­tant rea­sons that the Ten Com­mand­ments use the eco­nom­ic lan­guage of ‘cov­et­ing’ to describe the bad­ness of errant sex­u­al desires.” First shared in vol­ume 216.

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.