Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 473

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 473, the largest known num­ber whose square (223729) uses dif­fer­ent dig­its than when it is raised to the 4th pow­er (50054665441).

Things Glen Found Interesting

1. The Evan­ge­lis­tic Shift (Jake Meador, Mere Ortho­doxy): “So what accounts for this shift and how should Chris­tians respond? The answer to the first ques­tion might be sur­pris­ing­ly sim­ple: The shift dates back to the grow­ing aware­ness, accep­tance, and pro­mo­tion of trans­gen­der sex­u­al iden­ti­ties in main­stream Amer­i­can cul­ture. This shift, dat­ing to the mid 2010s and prob­a­bly peak­ing in the ear­ly 2020s, did two things that fun­da­men­tal­ly changed the evan­ge­lis­tic land­scape for Chris­tians in Amer­i­ca.”
2. Will­ful igno­rance of the male sui­cide cri­sis (Richard V. Reeves, Sub­stack): “It’s essen­tial­ly impos­si­ble to come away from this [New York­er] essay with­out a strong sense that the teen sui­cide cri­sis is, in fact, a teen girl sui­cide cri­sis. That is absolute­ly false. In fact, for every five teenagers dying from sui­cide, four are like­ly to be boys.”
3. Is Evan­gel­i­cal­ism Real­ly Protes­tant? (Aaron Renn, Sub­stack): “Every time I read a book that describes the reli­gious his­to­ry of Amer­i­ca that talks about the nature of Protes­tantism in the coun­try, it strikes me that the Protes­tantism of the Amer­i­can past is alien to today’s evan­gel­i­cal­ism. They are dif­fer­ent enough to raise the ques­tion as to whether or not Amer­i­can evan­gel­i­cal­ism is actu­al­ly Protes­tant in impor­tant ways.… All is not well for Amer­i­can Chris­tian­i­ty to say the least. It’s easy to point at trends in the world to explain this, but giv­en the man­i­fest and wide­ly pub­li­cized prob­lems with­in evan­gel­i­cal­ism, I would sub­mit that at least as much time should go into intro­spec­tion and inter­nal reform.”
4. Yes, Third-Trimester Abor­tions Are Hap­pen­ing in Amer­i­ca (Emma Camp, The Atlantic): “…Col­orado, which is home to clin­ics that per­form third-trimester abor­tions, record­ed 137 third-trimester abor­tions in 2023. That’s only one state—eight oth­er states, plus Wash­ing­ton, D.C., have no restric­tions on third-trimester abor­tions. Just a few min­utes from my office build­ing in D.C., a clin­ic offers abor­tions up to near­ly 32 weeks. In near­by Bethes­da, Mary­land, a clin­ic per­forms abor­tions up to 35 weeks’ ges­ta­tion.… Amer­i­cans are broad­ly uncom­fort­able with third-trimester abor­tions. A 2023 Gallup poll found that although more than two-thirds of Amer­i­cans believe abor­tion should be legal in the first trimester, just 22 per­cent think it should be legal in the third. And a 2021 Asso­ci­at­ed Press poll found that just 8 per­cent of respon­dents believe that third-trimester abor­tions should be legal in all cas­es.”
5. A Defense of Lega­cy Admis­sions, the Sur­pris­ing Engine of Mer­i­toc­ra­cy (Ted­dy Ganea, Stan­ford Review): “The pur­pose of col­lege admis­sions isn’t to cre­ate a new elite from scratch. It’s to meld mer­i­to­ri­ous non-elites with the exist­ing elite, to incor­po­rate fresh tal­ent and ideas into the high­est ech­e­lons of pow­er. It should be a win-win-win: estab­lished elites ben­e­fit from new mer­it, new mer­it ben­e­fits from elite con­nec­tions and resources, and soci­ety ben­e­fits from a more mer­i­to­crat­ic elite. Lega­cy admis­sions is a pre­req­ui­site for this mis­sion state­ment, because you can’t meld togeth­er two groups if one of them is miss­ing.… Crit­ics of lega­cy admis­sions ignore the key real­i­ty of human his­to­ry: that the exist­ing elite is almost always deeply entrenched, and break­ing into it requires more than just indi­vid­ual tal­ent — it requires access. And this is where lega­cy admis­sions play their most cru­cial role: by enabling mer­i­to­ri­ous non-elites to mix with the exist­ing elite, they open up the real oppor­tu­ni­ty for upward mobil­i­ty.”
   • Well-argued and provoca­tive. My favorite kind of arti­cle!
6. 55/45 is a real­ly close race (Nate Sil­ver, Sub­stack): “I’ve nev­er seen an elec­tion in which the fore­cast spent more time in the vicin­i­ty of 50/50, and I prob­a­bly nev­er will… on aver­age, since our fore­cast relaunch on July 30, Har­ris has won 49.4 per­cent of sim­u­la­tions, and Trump has won 50.2 per­cent. (These don’t quite add up to 100 because of the slim pos­si­bil­i­ty of a 269–269 Elec­toral Col­lege tie.) Peo­ple under­stand intu­itive­ly that a 50/50 or 49/51 fore­cast is a toss-up. If the fore­cast is 55/45 in some direc­tion instead, how­ev­er, con­fu­sion can abound — even though this isn’t any dif­fer­ent from 50/50 for most prac­ti­cal pur­pos­es. Some of the prob­lem is that peo­ple can con­fuse this fore­cast for a pre­dic­tion of vote share: if Har­ris were to win 55 per­cent of the vote and Trump 45 per­cent, that would be the biggest land­slide in an Amer­i­can elec­tion since Ronald Rea­gan in 1984. But that’s not what this fore­cast is say­ing. Rather, it’s that Har­ris will win the Elec­toral Col­lege about 11 times out of 20 and Trump will win it 9 times out of 20: still basi­cal­ly a toss-up, just with the coin weight­ed ever so slight­ly in Harris’s favor.”
7. Don’t Vote Like Your Life Depend­ed on It (Chris Stire­walt, The Dis­patch): “Politi­cians and media hype mer­chants tell us every cycle that this is the most impor­tant elec­tion in his­to­ry, but the truth is that in a nation with sta­ble sys­tem of elec­tions held in a free, fair man­ner and abun­dant con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­tec­tions for polit­i­cal minori­ties, the knowl­edge that no elec­tion is the final word helps us to live in rel­a­tive har­mo­ny.… It’s not the end of any­thing if the par­ty oppo­site your own wins an elec­tion, just the con­tin­u­a­tion of a 235-year long argu­ment that, Lord will­ing, will go on for anoth­er 235.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

• Doc­tor admits wear­ing dis­guise to poi­son mom’s part­ner with fake covid shot (Leo Sands, Wash­ing­ton Post): “A British doc­tor has been found guilty of attempt­ing to kill his mother’s long­time part­ner by dis­guis­ing him­self as a nurse and inject­ing his elder­ly vic­tim with a flesh-eat­ing tox­ic sub­stance while pre­tend­ing to admin­is­ter a rou­tine coro­n­avirus vac­ci­na­tion.”
  • I do not mean to sug­gest that attempt­ed mur­der is less seri­ous than the sorts of things includ­ed above — but I do mean to sug­gest this is a sto­ry you will read because it is wild more than because it has any­thing to do with your life.
• The ‘Goth’ Vol­ley­ball Play­er Was Actu­al­ly Ton­ing Things Down (Cal­lie Holter­mann, New York Times): “I was in a film study meet­ing with my whole team, and I was telling one of my team­mates that I was so con­fused why my Insta­gram was blow­ing up. And Alli­son [Voigt, her team’s head coach] turned to me and showed me Twit­ter, and was like, ‘You’re going viral. You have two mil­lion views right now.’ I was just in shock. I didn’t know what to do or what was going to hap­pen from this.”

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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.