Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 402

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 402, which is the unusu­al HTTP sta­tus code for “pay­ment required.” I don’t believe I’ve ever encoun­tered that sta­tus code in the wild.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Mar­tin Luther King, Chris­t­ian Rad­i­cal (Jonathan Eig, Wall Street Jour­nal): “King’s Chris­tian­i­ty presents a chal­lenge to lib­er­als, who are often uncom­fort­able with reli­gion in the pub­lic square, as well as to con­ser­v­a­tives, who are more like­ly to embrace reli­gion in pol­i­tics but don’t align them­selves with the impli­ca­tions of many of King’s core beliefs.”
    • Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
  2. Why Amer­i­cans Feel More Pain (Nicholas Kristof, New York Times): “Anoth­er big fac­tor in pain dif­fer­ences is class. One study found that poor Amer­i­cans are more than three times as like­ly to report pain as wealthy Amer­i­cans. Anoth­er found that just 2 per­cent of those with grad­u­ate degrees report severe pain, while almost 10 per­cent of high school dropouts do. ‘Basi­cal­ly, if you’ve got a B.A., you’re vac­ci­nat­ed against all of this crap,’ said Deaton, the econ­o­mist. Deaton, Case and Stone found that each suc­ces­sive gen­er­a­tion among less-edu­cat­ed Amer­i­cans has report­ed more pain at any giv­en age.”
    • Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent. It’s longer than you might expect, but quite inter­est­ing.
  3. The Dead­ly Things We Do Not See (Anony­mous, World Beyond War): “This was war, in any case. In war peo­ple die. But, as my friends empha­size to me, the peo­ple of Mar­i­upol would have liked not to die. They would have liked to avoid the ordeal alto­geth­er.”
    • Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent. Very sober­ing.
  4. Reg­is­tered Sex Offend­er Con­tin­ued to Min­is­ter to Chi Alpha Stu­dents (Kate Shell­nutt, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Over the past 30 years, well over a hun­dred men involved in Texas chap­ters of the cam­pus min­istry Chi Alpha have seen Daniel Savala naked. At Savala’s house in Hous­ton, he invit­ed them to strip down and talk about spir­i­tu­al issues in his sauna. He offered his bed to overnight guests while sleep­ing in the buff. And at least 13 men report­ed that Savala molest­ed or raped them while they sought his spir­i­tu­al advice as col­lege stu­dents, accord­ing to a new online forum col­lect­ing vic­tims’ sto­ries.”
  5. The Rise of Right-Wing Wokeism (Kevin deY­oung, The Gospel Coali­tion): “The appeal of some­thing like Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism is that it presents a mus­cu­lar alter­na­tive to sur­ren­der and defeat. Few con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians have any­thing like a sophis­ti­cat­ed polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy. But they know gay so-called mar­riage is wrong and drag queen sto­ry hour is bad. So if the two choic­es in polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy are (1) sup­port­ing gay ‘mar­riage’ because that’s what plu­ral­ism demands and defend­ing drag queen sto­ry hour as a bless­ing of lib­er­ty or (2) Chris­t­ian Nation­al­ism, mil­lions of Chris­tians in this coun­try are going to choose the lat­ter. I imag­ine the same basic equa­tion explains the new­found inter­est in Catholic inte­gral­ism as well.”
  6. It’s my respon­si­bil­i­ty as a crone (Abby Far­son Pratt, Sub­stack): “Near­ly 13 years mar­ried, I feel like it’s my respon­si­bil­i­ty, as a crone, to tutor the youth and encour­age them to stop wait­ing around and get mar­ried already. Please, just do it. What are you wait­ing for? To move in togeth­er? To get your ‘career estab­lished,’ what­ev­er the hell that means? To see if you’re real­ly a ‘good fit’? To get ‘more finan­cial­ly sta­ble’? That’s all blus­ter. We had about $300 to our names when we got mar­ried. We most­ly ate rice and beans for years, sub­sist­ing on my tiny salary, while Guion wrote poems all day, and we were incan­des­cent­ly hap­py. I’m so thank­ful we didn’t wait 10 years, till we were in our ear­ly 30s, set in our ways and com­fort­able with our wealth. Mar­riage would have been a lot hard­er then.”
  7. Why Jour­nal­ists Have More Free­dom Than Pro­fes­sors (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “First, the media is, by def­i­n­i­tion, an out­ward-fac­ing, audi­ence-dri­ven enter­prise, depen­dent on some kind of mass mar­ket for its via­bil­i­ty.… it still cre­ates mar­ket-based checks on cer­tain inter­nal mech­a­nisms of ide­o­log­i­cal enforce­ment. To take a tele­vi­sion exam­ple, it’s not just up to inter­nal opin­ion at Net­flix or HBO whether to air a Dave Chap­pelle spe­cial or keep run­ning Bill Maher’s show; the mass audi­ence gets a pret­ty impor­tant vote as well.”
    • I find his argu­ment com­pelling. Unlocked.
    • This seems to me to be some­what relat­ed (describ­ing how insti­tu­tion­al cul­tures shape behav­ior): Assim­i­lat­ing Women into Male Insti­tu­tions (Arnold Kling, Sub­stack): “When women became accept­ed into lead­ing uni­ver­si­ties, in the pro­fes­sions, and into man­age­r­i­al and exec­u­tive posi­tions in the work place, both men and women held some harm­ful cul­tur­al atti­tudes. Many of us have come to under­stand how men need to change. The need for women to change is less well appre­ci­at­ed.”

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 Why Did So Many Doc­tors Become Nazis? (Ash­ley K. Fer­nades, Tablet Mag­a­zine): “It is wor­thy of empha­sis that although many pro­fes­sions (includ­ing law) were ‘tak­en in’ by Nazi phi­los­o­phy, doc­tors and nurs­es had a pecu­liar­ly strong attrac­tion to it. Robert N. Proc­tor (1988) notes that physi­cians joined the Nazi par­ty in droves (near­ly 50% by 1945), much high­er than any oth­er pro­fes­sion. Physi­cians were sev­en times more like­ly to join the SS than oth­er employed Ger­man males.” The author is a physi­cian and a bioethi­cist at The Ohio State Uni­ver­si­ty. From vol­ume 281.

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.

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