Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 390

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 vol­ume 390, which is the num­ber of unique ways to sum up to 32 (in oth­er words, 32 has 390 dis­tinct par­ti­tions).

Things Glen Found Interesting

1. Con­cern­ing Asbury:
   • Asbury Pro­fes­sor: We’re Wit­ness­ing a ‘Sur­pris­ing Work of God’ (Tom McCall, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “By Thurs­day evening, there was stand­ing room only. Stu­dents had begun to arrive from oth­er uni­ver­si­ties: the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ken­tucky, the Uni­ver­si­ty of the Cum­ber­lands, Pur­due Uni­ver­si­ty, Indi­ana Wes­leyan Uni­ver­si­ty, Ohio Chris­t­ian Uni­ver­si­ty, Tran­syl­va­nia Uni­ver­si­ty, Mid­way Uni­ver­si­ty, Lee Uni­ver­si­ty, George­town Col­lege, Mt. Ver­non Nazarene Uni­ver­si­ty, and many oth­ers.… In pre­vi­ous revivals, there has always been fruit that has blessed both the church and soci­ety. For instance, even sec­u­lar his­to­ri­ans acknowl­edge that the Sec­ond Great Awak­en­ing was piv­otal to bring­ing about the end of slav­ery in our coun­try. Like­wise, I look for­ward to see­ing what fruit God will bring from such a revival in our gen­er­a­tion.”
   • a quirky but pos­i­tive take on Asbury by Lyman Stone (Twit­ter)
   • Anoth­er inter­est­ing take by a PhD stu­dent at Asbury Sem­i­nary (Twit­ter)
   • A non­stop Ken­tucky prayer ‘revival’ is going viral on Tik­Tok, and peo­ple are trav­el­ing thou­sands of miles to take part (Jake Tray­lor, NBC News): “The set­up is sim­ple. No pro­jec­tor screens or high-tech inte­gra­tions, just wood­en sanc­tu­ary chairs filled with peo­ple, and an open altar call with an invi­ta­tion to prayer that still hasn’t end­ed. That equa­tion has been a pow­er­ful recipe on social media. On Tik­Tok and Insta­gram, videos hash­tagged ‘Asbury Revival’ are rack­ing up mil­lions of views. At the time this arti­cle was pub­lished, the hash­tag #asburyre­vival had 24.4 mil­lion views on Tik­Tok.”
   • The Revival at Asbury (Thomas Lyons, Sub­stack): “For what it’s worth, it’s my ini­tial eval­u­a­tion that this is the real deal. None of the hall­marks of man­u­fac­tured revival are present. And I’m not alone in this eval­u­a­tion. As Law­son Stone, an Old Tes­ta­ment Pro­fes­sor at Asbury The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary, recent­ly stat­ed on social media, ‘The old saints know.’ Arguably more sig­nif­i­cant for the eval­u­a­tion of the revival’s authen­tic­i­ty than the opin­ions of revival schol­ars are the tes­ti­monies of the pri­or gen­er­a­tions who were present at sim­i­lar moves of God with­in the com­mu­ni­ty.”
   • The author is a schol­ar whose dis­ser­ta­tion focused on revivals.
2. No Hookups, No ‘Talk­ing,’ and No Breakups: A Bet­ter Way to Date (Charles E. Stokes, Insti­tute for Fam­i­ly Stud­ies): “My wife and I have served as rela­tion­ship men­tors now for 10 years, and as a fam­i­ly schol­ar and pro­fes­sor, I’ve paid atten­tion to every nugget of wis­dom I could glean—not only from aca­d­e­mics but from many of my stu­dents. I have been able to craft a bet­ter approach to dat­ing that I believe improves the chances of suc­cess for sin­gles desir­ing a life­long monog­a­mous rela­tion­ship.”
   • The author is a soci­ol­o­gist at Sam­ford. I am delib­er­ate­ly not includ­ing his pro­posed solu­tion in the excerpt because it’s worth read­ing in full. If you read his sug­ges­tion out of con­text you’ll prob­a­bly form an opin­ion about it too quick­ly.
3. ‘Hon­or­ing’ Your Father and Moth­er Isn’t Always Bib­li­cal (Karen Wong, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “But does the Chi­nese under­stand­ing of fil­ial piety real­ly mean exact­ly the same as the bib­li­cal descrip­tion of hon­or­ing par­ents? And can an empha­sis on obey­ing the fifth com­mand­ment over­look or even ratio­nal­ize par­ent-child rela­tion­ships char­ac­ter­ized by con­tention, pain, dis­re­spect, and suf­fer­ing?”
   • Not pay­walled — I have unlocked it for you.
4. Why Amer­i­ca Needs Foot­ball. Even Its Bru­tal­i­ty. (Ethan Strauss, The Free Press): “Mod­ern life might be unful­fill­ing, but the fact remains you’re unlike­ly to die on a beach sep­a­rat­ed from your entrails. Still, the old imper­a­tives remain. We have war with­in us, whether or not there’s one to wage. And the NFL gives Amer­i­cans that war, as spec­ta­cle, week after week.”
   • Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus. I am still skep­ti­cal Amer­i­can foot­ball can sur­vive moms pulling their kids out of the sport and direct­ing them to safer ath­let­ic exploits.
5. Con­tra Kavanagh On Fideism (Scott Alexan­der, Astral Codex Ten): “In a free soci­ety, at one or anoth­er point in your life, you’ll actu­al­ly have to form your own opin­ion about some­thing. You’ll do bet­ter at that if you have some prac­tice form­ing opin­ions. When experts have strong opin­ions on some­thing, this is a good oppor­tu­ni­ty to prac­tice your opin­ion-form­ing skills, see whether you get the same result as the experts, and, if not, fig­ure out where you went wrong. This requires peo­ple to have some tol­er­ance for oth­ers doing this.”
   • Start­ed off quite unin­ter­est­ing and then quick­ly ramped up. The ques­tion under con­sid­er­a­tion: how to bal­ance defer­ring to experts with inves­ti­gat­ing things on your own.
   • A fol­low-up Try­ing Again On Fideism (Scott Alexan­der, Astral Codex Ten): “I come back to this exam­ple again and again, but only because it’s so bla­tant: the New York Times ran an arti­cle say­ing that only 36% of econ­o­mists sup­port­ed school vouch­ers, with a strong impli­ca­tion that the pro­fes­sion was major­i­ty against. If you checked their sources, you would find that actu­al­ly, it was 36% in favor, 19% against, 46% unsure or not respond­ing. If you are too quick to seek epis­temic clo­sure because ‘you have to trust the experts’, you will be easy prey to peo­ple mis­rep­re­sent­ing what they are say­ing.”
6. McCullough’s Mis­take, and Ours (Adri­an Gaty, Sub­stack): “As long as edu­ca­tion stays true to its past and cul­ti­vates faith and virtue, McCullough’s mis­take doesn’t mat­ter. But once edu­ca­tion becomes unmoored from its ori­gins, once it becomes open­ly hos­tile to reli­gion, we betray our own ori­gins – and con­demn our future – by con­tin­u­ing to ’empha­size’ school­ing. Our founders, pio­neers like the Rev­erend Cut­ler, spread the gospel of pub­lic edu­ca­tion not for its own sake but because such edu­ca­tion in turn spread the Gospel. To achieve that good gov­ern­ment and hap­pi­ness they envi­sioned, our task today is not to encour­age pub­lic edu­ca­tion as it cur­rent­ly exists – it is to remake it in His image.”
   • Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
   • This is a fol­low up to the also inter­est­ing This is… Sci­ence! (Adri­an Gaty, Sub­stack): “These are pro­found­ly anti-life, anti-human move­ments – yet they advance by manip­u­lat­ing our human­i­ty, our ten­der­ness, our hatred of sui­cide. Spoil­er alert: the doc­tors and ethi­cists mak­ing these claims about abor­tion and affir­ma­tion are 100% on board with doc­tor-assist­ed sui­cide (which killed over ten thou­sand Cana­di­ans last year). They don’t hate sui­cide, not in the least — but they know that you do. They are using your com­pas­sion to cre­ate a cul­ture of death.”
7. In Defense of J.K. Rowl­ing (Pamela Paul, New York Times): “Take it from one of her for­mer crit­ics. E.J. Roset­ta, a jour­nal­ist who once denounced Rowl­ing for her sup­posed trans­pho­bia, was com­mis­sioned last year to write an arti­cle called ’20 Trans­pho­bic J.K. Rowl­ing Quotes We’re Done With.’ After 12 weeks of report­ing and read­ing, Roset­ta wrote, ‘I’ve not found a sin­gle tru­ly trans­pho­bic mes­sage.’ On Twit­ter she declared, ‘You’re burn­ing the wrong witch.’ ”
   • The tide is turn­ing on Rowl­ing. She’s not where I am ide­o­log­i­cal­ly, but watch­ing her be tarred and feath­ered for say­ing com­mon sense things has been dis­may­ing.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

• Loy­al To The Com­pa­ny (Dil­bert)
• The Denom­i­na­tions Throw A Super Bowl Par­ty (Twit­ter)
• Direc­tions (SMBC)
• Wal­ly’s Employ­ee Award (Dil­bert)
• Man Just Does­n’t Under­stand Why God Who Is Infi­nite­ly Wis­er Than He Would Have Dif­fer­ent Opin­ion From Him Some­times (Baby­lon Bee)

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Does the Bible Pass the Bechdel Test? A Data-Dri­ven Look at Women in the Sto­ry of Scrip­ture (John Dyer, per­son­al blog): “So does the Bible pass the Bechdel test? This short answer is: yes, there are scenes where two named women have a con­ver­sa­tion not about a man. The longer answer is more com­plex, but also, I think, rich­er.” This is REALLY well done. From vol­ume 268.

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.