Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 444

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 444, which is just the same dig­it repeat­ed. I like that. Clean. Classy. Ele­gant.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Rant About Wor­ship Songs (Jere­my Pierce, First Things): “Here are some of the things I real­ly hate in a wor­ship song.”
    • This is bril­liant, from back in 2010.
  2. Top Only­Fans cre­ator mak­ing $300,000 a month turns to Christ, walks away from porn indus­try (John Knox, Not The Bee): “From what I can tell, Nala here isn’t going through a Lil’ Nas X ‘Chris­t­ian era’ where she’s aging out of porn and wants to rebrand her­self as a good girl again before piv­ot­ing to anoth­er grift. All I see is gen­uine joy, like the pros­ti­tute who wept and was for­giv­en at Jesus’ feet.”
    • Includes a video of her shar­ing her tes­ti­mo­ny. I love this part: “The dev­il can tru­ly give you things in this life. He has a bud­get, though. He can only go so far.… The dev­il has a bud­get, but God does not.”
  3. Lati­nos Are Flock­ing to Evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tian­i­ty (Marie Arana, The Free Press): “In fact, some researchers project that by 2030, half of the entire pop­u­la­tion of Amer­i­can Lati­nos will iden­ti­fy as Protes­tant evan­gel­i­cals. Com­pare that growth with white evan­gel­i­cal Protes­tants, whose num­bers have declined from 23 per­cent of the Amer­i­can pop­u­la­tion in 2006 to 14 per­cent in 2020. With the His­pan­ic population’s pro­ject­ed growth, in less than a decade, we may see forty mil­lion Latinos—a con­gre­ga­tion the size of California—heading to Amer­i­can evan­gel­i­cal church­es every Sun­day.”
  4. Is Rome a True Church? (Chris Castal­do, Mere Ortho­doxy): “Protes­tants tend to answer the ques­tion of Roman Catholicism’s sta­tus in one of two ways. Look­ing through the lens of the ear­ly creeds (i.e., Nicene and Apos­tles’), some under­stand it to be fun­da­men­tal­ly ortho­dox. The ratio­nale is sim­ple: because the creeds uphold the basic tenets of Chris­tian­i­ty, and Rome upholds those creeds, her apos­tolic­i­ty is affirmed. Roman Catholi­cism is thus regard­ed as ‘inside the pale.’ An alter­na­tive read­ing, one that prob­a­bly informed the Face­book com­ment, is to view the Roman Catholic Church through the lens of the six­teenth-cen­tu­ry Ref­or­ma­tion in which the Coun­cil of Trent anath­e­ma­tized (pro­nounced to be cursed) the doc­trine of jus­ti­fi­ca­tion by faith alone. Because such faith is rec­og­nized as the dri­ving cen­ter of the bib­li­cal gospel, and Rome force­ful­ly repu­di­ates the doc­trine, the Roman Church is there­fore con­sid­ered incom­pat­i­ble with bib­li­cal faith.  I rec­og­nize the log­ic in these posi­tions, but in my opin­ion, both are incom­plete.”
  5. Jour­nal­ism Has a Reli­gion Prob­lem (Andrew T. Walk­er, Nation­al Review): “Jour­nal­ism has a reli­gion prob­lem. More specif­i­cal­ly, jour­nal­ists are either unaware or unwill­ing to admit that their own views, pre­sum­ably untouched by ‘reli­gion,’ are nonethe­less pas­sion­ate­ly held con­vic­tions ground­ed, well, some­where. What do I mean by that? Well, jour­nal­ism that touch­es on reli­gion and pol­i­tics tends to see reli­gious view­points as car­ry­ing a spe­cial bur­den. It goes some­thing like this: ‘Tell me, Mr. Pious, why a diverse pop­u­la­tion should accept your views on moral­i­ty, con­sid­er­ing they come from reli­gion.’ ”
  6. Har­vard Tram­ples the Truth (Mar­tin Kulldorff,City Jour­nal): “…as I dis­cov­ered, truth can get you fired. This is my story—a sto­ry of a Har­vard bio­sta­tis­ti­cian and infec­tious-dis­ease epi­demi­ol­o­gist, cling­ing to the truth as the world lost its way dur­ing the Covid pan­dem­ic.… Two Har­vard col­leagues tried to arrange a debate between me and oppos­ing Har­vard fac­ul­ty, but just as with Stan­ford, there were no tak­ers. The invi­ta­tion to debate remains open. The pub­lic should not trust sci­en­tists, even Har­vard sci­en­tists, unwill­ing to debate their posi­tions with fel­low sci­en­tists.”
  7. How the Gaza Min­istry of Health Fakes Casu­al­ty Num­bers (Abra­ham Wyn­er, Tablet Mag­a­zine): “If Hamas’ num­bers are faked or fraud­u­lent in some way, there may be evi­dence in the num­bers them­selves that can demon­strate it. While there is not much data avail­able, there is a lit­tle, and it is enough: From Oct. 26 until Nov. 10, 2023, the Gaza Health Min­istry released dai­ly casu­al­ty fig­ures that include both a total num­ber and a spe­cif­ic num­ber of women and chil­dren.”
    • The author is a pro­fes­sor of sta­tis­tics at the Whar­ton School, and I find his analy­sis com­pelling.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

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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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