Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 516: God in history & confused physicists

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting

1. Why Did God Favor France? (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “[Joan of Arc’s] sto­ry is one of the most exten­sive­ly doc­u­ment­ed cas­es of a mirac­u­lous-seem­ing inter­ven­tion into sec­u­lar his­to­ry, cal­cu­lat­ed to baf­fle, fas­ci­nate and even charm like almost noth­ing else in West­ern his­to­ry. Every­thing in the sto­ry sounds like a pious leg­end con­fab­u­lat­ed cen­turies after the fact. A peas­ant girl with zero polit­i­cal or mil­i­tary expe­ri­ence shows up at a roy­al court, announces a divine mis­sion and makes a series of prophe­cies about what God wants for France that she con­sis­tent­ly ful­fills — a ful­fill­ment that requires not mere­ly some for­tu­nate hap­pen­stance, but her tak­ing com­mand of a medieval army and win­ning an imme­di­ate series of vic­to­ries over an intim­i­dat­ing adver­sary with Alexan­drine or Napoleon­ic skill.”
   • Worth a pon­der.
2. Physi­cists dis­agree wild­ly on what quan­tum mechan­ics says about real­i­ty, Nature sur­vey shows (Eliz­a­beth Gib­ney, Nature): “Nature asked researchers what they thought was the best inter­pre­ta­tion of quan­tum phe­nom­e­na and inter­ac­tions — that is, their favourite of the var­i­ous attempts sci­en­tists have made to relate the math­e­mat­ics of the the­o­ry to the real world. The largest chunk of respons­es, 36%, favoured the Copen­hagen inter­pre­ta­tion — a prac­ti­cal and often-taught approach. But the sur­vey also showed that sev­er­al, more rad­i­cal, view­points have a healthy fol­low­ing. Asked about their con­fi­dence in their answer, only 24% of respon­dents thought their favoured inter­pre­ta­tion was cor­rect; oth­ers con­sid­ered it mere­ly ade­quate or a use­ful tool in some cir­cum­stances. What’s more, some sci­en­tists who seemed to be in the same camp didn’t give the same answers to fol­low-up ques­tions, sug­gest­ing incon­sis­tent or dis­parate under­stand­ings of the inter­pre­ta­tion they chose.”
3. How a Chris­t­ian col­lege min­istry glo­ri­fied a sex offend­er and enabled him to keep abus­ing stu­dents (Mike Hix­en­baugh, NBC News): “The pas­tors who shep­herd­ed hun­dreds of high school and col­lege stu­dents to Savala’s home were part of Chi Alpha, a Chris­t­ian min­istry that evan­ge­lizes on uni­ver­si­ty cam­pus­es. Stu­dents seek out Chi Alpha to con­nect with God and each oth­er, through small Bible stud­ies and rol­lick­ing wor­ship ser­vices — and, for more than 30 years, through Savala. Gen­er­a­tions of Chi Alpha lead­ers hailed him as a spir­i­tu­al savant who could answer life’s deep­est mys­ter­ies.”
   • Heart­break­ing. I’ve post­ed about this scan­dal in Texas before (in oth­er words, this is the same scan­dal from a few years ago with addi­tion­al report­ing). Now that it is being cov­ered on NBC the high­er-qual­i­ty jour­nal­ism is uncov­er­ing even more trag­ic details.
4. Put Down the Sho­far (Brad East, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “You’re like­ly famil­iar with sho­fars blown in pub­lic, Seder meals for Passover, and cir­cum­ci­sion for baby boys. But as com­mon and well-intend­ed as these may be, I want to explain why I told my stu­dent that, yes, his house church was wrong—or at least, mis­guid­ed.”
   • A the­o­log­i­cal­ly rich arti­cle.
5. The Sim­ple Truth About the War in Gaza (Cole­man Hugh­es, The Free Press): “Amid these devel­op­ments, it may seem car­toon­ish, even obscene, to say that in the war between Israel and Hamas, Israel is the good guy. But it’s the truth. And it’s a truth that’s incred­i­bly easy to for­get amid the day-to-day cov­er­age of this ter­ri­ble war.… Israel’s goal is to live in peace with its neigh­bors. Through­out its 77-year his­to­ry, it has agreed to half a dozen peace deals with the Pales­tini­ans. It vol­un­tar­i­ly left Gaza in 2005. If it had any inter­est in wip­ing Gaza off the map, it could have done so any time in the last sev­er­al decades.”
6. How the Elite Changed Its Mind on Chris­tian­i­ty (Emma Camp, Rea­son): “As the decline in reli­gious atten­dance has slowed, the past few years have also seen a clear rise in the sta­tus of reli­gion. It’s becom­ing more and more social­ly accept­able to be reli­gious in elite intel­lec­tu­al spaces—something that could have a real impact on how reli­gion is per­ceived by every­one else.… Reli­gion became cool again among the edu­cat­ed elite once it gained an asso­ci­a­tion with good aes­thet­ics, high art, and sacred music—not Bush-era Repub­li­can soft theoc­ra­cy.  Today, one can belong to the ideas-mak­ing class—an aspir­ing pub­lic intel­lec­tu­al or artist—and still be reli­gious, so long as one steers clear of evan­gel­i­cal kitsch. Whether or not a real reli­gious revival is under­way in Amer­i­can pub­lic life, one thing is clear: The cool kids aren’t the smug, stri­dent athe­ists anymore—they’re the Chris­tians.”
   • Fas­ci­nat­ing, although it reminds me I need to write that essay I’ve been mulling over defend­ing low-church Protes­tantism as the best and most authen­tic expres­sion of Chris­tian­i­ty.
7. Influ­encer Mis­sion­ar­ies (Lau­ren Jack­son, New York Times): “Church­es are turn­ing to the inter­net to reach new audi­ences. Evan­gel­i­cal pas­tors are bring­ing their famous­ly high-pro­duc­tion ser­mons into ver­ti­cal video. The Church of Jesus Christ of Lat­ter-day Saints is pre­sent­ing a diverse, younger image to its 1.4 mil­lion Insta­gram fol­low­ers.”
   • A short arti­cle, not super-infor­ma­tive. Most­ly inter­est­ing because of the trend reach­ing the point that the Times is tak­ing note of it. Also because of some of the small vignettes: “Per­haps that explains the celebri­ty of Father Rafael Capo, 57, a body­build­ing priest in Mia­mi who fus­es fit­ness with faith for his 112,000 Insta­gram fol­low­ers. He often posts pho­tos of him­self lift­ing weights and con­se­crat­ing com­mu­nion.”

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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.