Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 409

Read it for the amus­ing bits at the end.

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 409, a prime num­ber.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Reli­gion Has Become a Lux­u­ry Good (Ryan Burge, Sub­stack): “More edu­cat­ed peo­ple are more like­ly to claim a reli­gious affil­i­a­tion on sur­veys. It’s true in every sin­gle wave of the Coop­er­a­tive Elec­tion Study. It’s also the case in the Nation­scape sur­vey, which is 477K respon­dents. They even have 4,000 peo­ple with doc­tor­al degrees in their sam­ple. The most like­ly to be non-reli­gious? Those who didn’t fin­ish high school. As edu­ca­tion increas­es, so does reli­gious affil­i­a­tion. The group with the high­est lev­el of reli­gious affil­i­a­tion are those with a master’s degree.” Empha­sis in orig­i­nal.
  2. When the Ser­mon Fiz­zles Instead of Siz­zles (Tim Chal­lies, per­son­al blog): “But who’s to say that, in the mind of God, the pow­er of the preach­ing is entire­ly in the hands of the preach­er? Who’s to say that the pastor’s task is to pre­pare the ser­mon while the congregation’s task is mere­ly to pre­pare their own hearts to hear it? What if preach­ing is pow­er­less not because of the pastor’s lack of prepa­ra­tion but because of the church’s lack of prayer? What if poor preach­ing is not the con­se­quence of any fail­ure on the pastor’s part but on the congregation’s?”
  3. Why I’m Not a Lib­er­al Catholic (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “But I just don’t see how you can look at the mod­ern world, writ large, and its most devel­oped precincts espe­cial­ly — the world of sex edu­ca­tion via ubiq­ui­tous pornog­ra­phy, fal­ter­ing mar­riage rates, col­laps­ing birthrates, the alien­ation of the sex­es from one anoth­er, the ris­ing exis­ten­tial angst attend­ing all these trends and the creep of euthana­sia as a ‘mer­ci­ful’ solu­tion — and say that clear­ly what the church needs to do at this his­tor­i­cal moment is water down or just talk less about its teach­ings on sex and mar­riage and fam­i­ly, rather than find a way to reassert them or offer them anew.”
    • The whole thing is specif­i­cal­ly about the Roman Catholic Church, but is rel­e­vant to Protes­tant Chris­tian­i­ty as well.
    • While we’re on the sub­ject The 5 Minute Case for Protes­tantism (Gavin Ortlund, YouTube): five min­utes
  4. Is There An Illu­sion Of Moral Decline? (Scott Alexan­der, Astral Codex Ten): “…I’ve been read­ing the bias­es and heuris­tics lit­er­a­ture for fif­teen years now, and devel­oped the fol­low­ing heuris­tic: if a researcher finds that ordi­nary peo­ple are biased about how many marsh­mal­lows to take in a rigged exper­i­ment, this is prob­a­bly an inter­est­ing and pro­duc­tive line of research. But if a researcher finds that ordi­nary peo­ple are biased about their most foun­da­tion­al real-life beliefs, prob­a­bly those ordi­nary peo­ple are being com­plete­ly sen­si­ble, and it’s the researcher who’s try­ing to shoe­horn their rea­son­ing into some mode it was nev­er intend­ed to address.”
  5. ‘Exhaust­ed’ pas­tors suf­fer­ing decline in over­all health, respect, friend­ship: study (Jon Brown, Fox News): “Pas­tors who report­ed that their men­tal and emo­tion­al health was below aver­age spiked from 3% in 2015 to 10% in 2022, and those who said they were in excel­lent men­tal and emo­tion­al health cratered from 39% in 2015 to 11% last year.”
    • This cor­re­sponds with what I am hear­ing anec­do­tal­ly. Which is bizarre to me, because min­istry is awe­some and reward­ing
  6. Sau­di Ara­bia Wants Tourists. It Didn’t Expect Chris­tians. (Vivian Nereim, Yahoo News): “No one in the con­ser­v­a­tive Islam­ic king­dom had planned for the Chris­tians. Yet Chris­tians of many stripes — includ­ing Bap­tists, Men­non­ites and oth­ers who call them­selves ‘chil­dren of God’ — were among the first peo­ple to use the new Sau­di tourist visas. Since then, they have grown steadi­ly in num­bers, drawn by word of mouth and viral YouTube videos argu­ing that Sau­di Ara­bia, not Egypt, is the site of Mount Sinai, the peak where Jew­ish and Chris­t­ian Scrip­tures describe God reveal­ing the Ten Com­mand­ments.”
  7. The recent Supreme Court deci­sions:
    • I don’t have any arti­cles about the Supreme Court deci­sion in favor of the web design­er who refus­es to design web­sites for gay mar­riages, sim­ply because I haven’t read any­thing very good about it. Most arti­cles seem to mis­un­der­stand both the case and the deci­sion entire­ly. It was a won­der­ful out­come and should be praised — the gov­ern­ment can­not com­pel you to say some­thing you do not believe or to cel­e­brate some­thing you do not approve. Sug­ges­tions for thought­ful arti­cles wel­come, even those with which you think I will dis­agree.
    • Affir­ma­tive Action Thoughts in an Inel­e­gant List For­mat (Fred­die deBoer, Sub­stack): “…we demand that our edu­ca­tion sys­tem be both a lad­der of suc­cess, a sort­ing sys­tem that cre­ates a hier­ar­chy of excel­lence, and a great equal­iz­er, a way to make soci­ety more equi­table. These are flat­ly con­tra­dic­to­ry pur­pos­es. They are direct­ly antag­o­nis­tic to each oth­er.”
    • Burn Down the Admis­sions Sys­tem (Yascha Mounk, Per­sua­sion): “When­ev­er I think of the role that per­son­al state­ments play in America’s land­scape of high­er edu­ca­tion, I remem­ber a class­mate of mine at Cam­bridge. He came from an aris­to­crat­ic fam­i­ly, grew up in Lon­don, and attend­ed Eton. He was, in oth­er words, about as priv­i­leged as you can be in the Unit­ed King­dom. But when it came time to apply for admis­sion to a pres­ti­gious schol­ar­ship that would send him to Har­vard, he wrote mov­ing­ly about how his pas­sion for pub­lic pol­i­cy was awak­ened when he grew up among the rav­ages of the trou­bles in North­ern Ire­land; at one point, he sug­gest­ed, his house was even bombed. (Those who knew him real­ized that this was one of his family’s ances­tral cas­tles, not his pri­ma­ry fam­i­ly home, a fact he obvi­ous­ly omit­ted from his appli­ca­tion.)  These kinds of absur­di­ties are not a bug of the strange Amer­i­can rev­er­ence for per­son­al state­ments; they are a fea­ture of it.”
    • I Teach at an Elite Col­lege. Here’s a Look Inside the Racial Gam­ing of Admis­sions (Tyler Austin Harp­er, New York Times): “Near­ly every col­lege admis­sions tutor­ing job I took over the next few years would come with a ver­sion of the same behest. The Chi­nese and Kore­an kids want­ed to know how to make their appli­ca­tion mate­ri­als seem less Chi­nese or Kore­an. The rich white kids want­ed to know ways to seem less rich and less white. The Black kids want­ed to make sure they came across as Black enough. Dit­to for the Lati­no and Mid­dle East­ern kids. Seem­ing­ly every­one I inter­act­ed with as a tutor — white or brown, rich or poor, stu­dent or par­ent — believed that get­ting into an elite col­lege required what I came to call racial gam­i­fi­ca­tion.”
      • The author is a pro­fes­sor of envi­ron­men­tal stud­ies at Bates Col­lege and is him­self black.
    • 10 Notes on the End of Affir­ma­tive Action (Cole­man Hugh­es, Sub­stack): “My per­son­al view is that diver­si­ty is like love. When it hap­pens nat­u­ral­ly, it’s the most beau­ti­ful thing in the world. But the moment it’s arranged, leg­is­lat­ed, or man­dat­ed, you’ve some­what missed the point.”

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 A youth pas­tor inter­viewed about the stock mar­ket on MSNBC (Twit­ter): I’ve men­tioned before that some Chris­tians are too ten­ta­tive when speak­ing about the gospel in high-pro­file media envi­ron­ments. Not this guy. He just throws down some Bible. He’s the youth pas­tor at Beach­point Church in Orange Coun­ty. From vol­ume 286

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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