Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 322

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.

This is the 322nd install­ment, and today I learned that 322 is the 12th Lucas num­ber.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The State of Evan­gel­i­cal Lead­er­ship (Mark Gal­li, Sub­stack): “This ten­den­cy has only got­ten worse, as now the mark of a suc­cess­ful evan­gel­i­cal writer is to get pub­lished reg­u­lar­ly in the Times, Atlantic, and so forth. What’s inter­est­ing about such pieces is that (a) such writ­ers make a point that affirms the view of the sec­u­lar pub­li­ca­tion (on top­ics like envi­ron­men­tal care, racial injus­tice, sex­u­al abuse, etc.) and (b) they preach in such pieces that evan­gel­i­cals should take the same point of view. How­ev­er, their writ­ing doesn’t reach the mass­es of evan­gel­i­cals who take a con­trary view and don’t give a damn what The New York Times says. If these writ­ers are real­ly inter­est­ed in get­ting those evan­gel­i­cals to change their minds, the last place they should be is in the main­stream press. Bet­ter to try to get such a col­umn pub­lished in the most pop­u­lar Pen­te­costal out­let, Charis­ma. Ah, but that would do noth­ing to enhance the pres­tige of evan­gel­i­cals among the culture’s elite.”
    1. This is a SUPER inter­est­ing arti­cle that makes good points… but the author some­how avoid­ed look­ing in a mir­ror while writ­ing it. He was the edi­tor-in-chief of Chris­tian­i­ty Today!
    • Fol­low-up: Falling from Grace into Mer­cy— or Elite Evan­gel­i­cal­ism, Part 2 (Mark Gal­li, Sub­stack): “But one thing about retire­ment is the time one has to reflect on one’s career, and I see more clear­ly how much I was will­ing to go along to get along, and how much I was part of the sys­tem.… I don’t think there is much hope in reform­ing many things that course through the veins of elite evan­gel­i­cals.”
  2. Two of the most dis­tress­ing news items I’ve seen in some time.
  3. Hunt­ing the Satanists (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “…the world­view of QAnon and Yale’s diver­si­ty office are sur­pris­ing­ly sim­i­lar. Both see a world in which Satan, lit­er­al or metaphor­i­cal, is an active force in the world cor­rupt­ing indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions. Satan is pow­er­ful but hid­den. He only reveals his influ­ence when the cor­rupt­ed slip-up and by the incor­rect use of a word, phrase, or ges­ture reveal their true natures. Since Satan is pow­er­ful and hid­den the good peo­ple must con­stant­ly mon­i­tor every­one.” An astute­ly observed par­al­lel.
  4. It’s Time for a Bet­ter and Smarter Alliance Against Porn (David French, The Dis­patch): “One of the most fas­ci­nat­ing devel­op­ments of mod­ern times has been the way in which Amer­i­can ideas and Amer­i­can con­duct fre­quent­ly con­tra­dict each oth­er. The world of ideas most­ly (though not exclu­sive­ly) has moved left, quick­ly. Ideas move from pro­gres­sive fringe to main­stream with stun­ning speed.… But in the world of con­duct, some­thing else is hap­pen­ing. Social con­ser­v­a­tive lifestyles are mak­ing a come­back. Divorce rates are down. Teen preg­nan­cy is down. Abor­tion rates (abor­tions per 1,000 women) and ratios (abor­tions per 1,000 preg­nan­cies) are way down. Sin­gle par­ent­ing has sta­bi­lized, and the per­cent­age of chil­dren liv­ing with both par­ents is inch­ing up.”
  5. Please Don’t Give Up On Hav­ing Kids Because Of Cli­mate Change (Scott Alexan­der, Astral Codex Ten): “If you think priv­i­leged mod­ern Amer­i­cans shouldn’t have chil­dren now because of qual­i­ty-of-life issues [relat­ed to cli­mate change], you implic­it­ly believe that nobody in the Third World, or nobody before 1900, should ever have had chil­dren.”
  6. Two tid­bits from Chi­na:
    • Ter­ror & tourism: Xin­jiang eas­es its grip, but fear remains (Dake Kang, AP News): “Any­time I tried to chat with some­one, the min­ders would draw in close, strain­ing to hear every word. It’s hard to know why Chi­nese author­i­ties have shift­ed to sub­tler meth­ods of con­trol­ling the region. It may be that sear­ing crit­i­cism from the West, along with pun­ish­ing polit­i­cal and com­mer­cial sanc­tions, have pushed author­i­ties to light­en up. Or it may sim­ply be that Chi­na judges it has come far enough in its goal of sub­du­ing the Uyghurs and oth­er most­ly Mus­lim minori­ties to relax its grip.”
    • The Tri­umph and Ter­ror of Wang Hun­ing (N.S. Lyons, Pal­la­di­um Mag­a­zine): “Wang record­ed his obser­va­tions in a mem­oir that would become his most famous work: the 1991 book Amer­i­ca Against Amer­i­ca. In it, he mar­vels at home­less encamp­ments in the streets of Wash­ing­ton DC, out-of-con­trol drug crime in poor black neigh­bor­hoods in New York and San Fran­cis­co, and cor­po­ra­tions that seemed to have fused them­selves to and tak­en over respon­si­bil­i­ties of gov­ern­ment.… Amer­i­cans can, he says, per­ceive that they are faced with ‘intri­cate social and cul­tur­al prob­lems,’ they ‘tend to think of them as sci­en­tif­ic and tech­no­log­i­cal prob­lems’ to be solved sep­a­rate­ly. This gets them nowhere, he argues, because their prob­lems are in fact all inex­tri­ca­bly inter­linked and have the same root cause: a rad­i­cal, nihilis­tic indi­vid­u­al­ism at the heart of mod­ern Amer­i­can lib­er­al­ism.”
      • Sur­pris­ing­ly engross­ing. One of Chi­na’s key lead­ers has accu­rate­ly diag­nosed cer­tain chal­lenges their nation is fac­ing but his solu­tions are lack­ing (and evil). And he seems to have come to many of his con­vic­tions by vis­it­ing Amer­i­ca and wit­ness­ing our cul­tur­al fol­ly.
  7. Don’t Let Reli­gious Lib­er­ty Claims Mask Bad Faith Argu­ments (Daniel Ben­nett, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Reli­gious lib­er­ty is too impor­tant to let it get mis­used. It’s not a waiv­er to avoid all incon­ve­niences in life or, worse, a tool to make polit­i­cal state­ments. For reli­gious lib­er­ty to sur­vive polit­i­cal and legal scruti­ny in the future, we must safe­guard exemp­tions against abuse.” The author is a polit­i­cal sci­ence pro­fes­sor at John Brown Uni­ver­si­ty.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have When Chil­dren Say They’re Trans (Jesse Sin­gal, The Atlantic): “ …to deny the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a con­nec­tion between social influ­ences and gender-identity explo­ration among ado­les­cents would require ignor­ing a lot of what we know about the devel­op­ing teenage brain—which is more sus­cep­ti­ble to peer influ­ence, more impul­sive, and less adept at weigh­ing long-term out­comes and con­se­quences than ful­ly devel­oped adult brains—as well as indi­vid­ual sto­ries like Delta’s.” This is a long and bal­anced piece which has gar­nered out­rage in some online cir­cles. First shared in vol­ume 157.

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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.

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