TGFI, Volume 550: Christianity in space

You’ve heard of TGIF? This is TGFI: Things Glen Found Inter­est­ing

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues like­ly to be of inter­est to Chris­tians in col­lege. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions, so if you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

1. There’s No Sep­a­ra­tion of Church and Space (Bethel McGrew, Wall Street Jour­nal): “It has long been an incon­ve­nient fact for angry athe­ists that some of America’s most intre­pid space explor­ers are devout reli­gious believ­ers. Buzz Aldrin per­formed the first Holy Com­mu­nion on the Moon, though at the time he was told to keep the moment pri­vate. The activist Mada­lyn Mur­ray O’Hair had sued NASA a few months ear­li­er over Apol­lo 8’s Christ­mas Eve broad­cast of the Gen­e­sis cre­ation nar­ra­tive.… Athe­ist biol­o­gist P.Z. Mey­ers recent­ly suf­fered a flash­back to that moment as he con­tem­plat­ed the ter­ri­fy­ing prospect of an East­er mini-ser­mon from Artemis II pilot Vic­tor Glover. Watch­ing the Apol­lo 8 broad­cast as a child was ‘one of the nails in the cof­fin’ of his reli­gious upbring­ing. For an athe­ist, mix­ing space explo­ration and reli­gion bor­ders on sac­ri­lege.”
2. Things That Are Get­ting Bet­ter (Aaron Renn, Sub­stack): “We have man­aged to find a cure for about 90% of cys­tic fibro­sis cas­es, a con­di­tion that was pre­vi­ous­ly debil­i­tat­ing and fatal. We now have gene ther­a­py treat­ments that are enabling some chil­dren born deaf to hear. In a slew of oth­er areas from pre­ma­ture births to can­cer, we’ve made real progress even if long promised fun­da­men­tal break­throughs remain elu­sive. GLP‑1 treat­ments promise to basi­cal­ly cure obe­si­ty. Life expectan­cy, which was falling, has now risen back to an all-time high.”
3. Ranked: America’s Biggest Chris­t­ian Groups (Julie R. Peasley, Visu­al Cap­i­tal­ist): “The com­par­i­son high­lights a key divide in how these groups are struc­tured. Catholics lead by mem­ber­ship, while the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion leads by church count. Non-denom­i­na­tion­al church­es also rank near the top on both mea­sures, reflect­ing how the com­po­si­tion of Amer­i­can Chris­tian­i­ty has shift­ed over time.”
   • The Assem­blies of God ranks high­er and high­er (#7 on this chart). We’ve got one more easy rank to climb, but after that it gets chal­leng­ing.
4. The Pews Pre­pared the Way: Faith, Rev­o­lu­tion, and the Amer­i­can Creed (Cole Clay­bourn & Joshua Clay­bourn, Prov­i­dence): “Decades before Jef­fer­son draft­ed the Dec­la­ra­tion, min­is­ters from across the 13 colonies preached nat­ur­al rights and the equal stand­ing of all men before God. In 1638, in the new­ly formed Con­necti­cut Colony, a Puri­tan min­is­ter named Rev. Thomas Hook­er deliv­ered an auda­cious ser­mon for its time. He stood before the colony’s Gen­er­al Court and declared that ‘The foun­da­tion of author­i­ty is laid in the free con­sent of the peo­ple’ and that ‘The choice of pub­lic mag­is­trates belongs unto the peo­ple by God’s own allowance.’ In the 17th cen­tu­ry, a min­is­ter telling civ­il author­i­ties that the gov­ern­ment owed its exis­tence to the gov­erned, by God’s design, was sedi­tious. Hook­er ground­ed his argu­ment in scrip­ture and Puri­tan covenant the­ol­o­gy. Con­sent was God’s idea first.”
5. Becom­ing Co-ed: a Protes­tant Gift to Chi­na (Ningn­ing Ma, Se Yan, and Yil­ing Zhao, SSRN): “A grow­ing lit­er­a­ture, start­ing with Beck­er and Woess­mann (2009), estab­lish­es the link between Protes­tantism and human cap­i­tal invest­ment. Accord­ing to the prin­ci­ple of sola scrip­tura, the Bible is the ulti­mate author­i­ty in the Chris­t­ian faith, and read­ing Scrip­ture pro­vides indi­vid­ual access to God’s word. The Protes­tant empha­sis on per­son­al Bible read­ing led to the pro­mo­tion of lit­er­a­cy, and Protes­tantism not only advo­cat­ed for uni­ver­sal edu­ca­tion but also made it acces­si­ble to women (Beck­er and Woess­mann, 2008). Close­ly relat­ed to our research is a lit­er­a­ture that demon­strates the par­tic­u­lar­ly pos­i­tive effect of Protes­tant mis­sions on women’s lit­er­a­cy in devel­op­ing coun­tries with low gen­der equal­i­ty (Calvi et al., 2020; Izu­mi et al., 2023; Meier zu Sel­hausen, 2014; Nunn et al., 2014). How­ev­er, we shift the focus from basic edu­ca­tion to high­er learn­ing, show­ing that by pio­neer­ing gen­der-inclu­sive uni­ver­si­ties, Protes­tant mis­sions gen­er­at­ed China’s first wave of female elites, thus extend­ing the link between Protes­tantism and gen­der equal­i­ty to upper-tail human cap­i­tal.”
   • I skimmed but did not thor­ough­ly read this paper.
6. Does it help to be reli­gious? (Vic­to­ria Moul, Sub­stack): “Why is it that so many of the best con­tem­po­rary poets in Eng­lish are (broad­ly speak­ing) reli­gious? And in par­tic­u­lar, why does this seem (to me) to be more true now than it was thir­ty years ago when I start­ed read­ing poet­ry seri­ous­ly? If any­thing you might expect the like­li­hood that any indi­vid­ual good poet has a reli­gious for­ma­tion to have declined as reli­gious obser­vance has fall­en, albeit to dif­fer­ent degrees and from very dif­fer­ent start­ing points, in both the UK and the US. By ‘reli­gious’ I don’t mean Chris­t­ian — I’m think­ing equal­ly of poets like Khaled Hakim or Amit Maj­mu­dar — and I don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly mean ‘prac­tic­ing’ either, and cer­tain­ly not that the best _poems_ are reli­gious ones. But just that there does seem to be quite a strong cor­re­la­tion between a reli­gious for­ma­tion or frame­work influ­en­tial enough to be audi­ble in the poet­ry, and pro­nounced apti­tude.”
   • The author has a PhD in a relat­ed field, but has left acad­e­mia to focus on being a writer.
7. $400 Bibles? Lux­u­ri­ous Scrip­ture Is on the Rise. (Ruth Gra­ham, New York Times): “Col­lec­tors of pre­mi­um Bibles tend to share a few char­ac­ter­is­tics, pub­lish­ers and experts say: They are typ­i­cal­ly evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians who own mul­ti­ple oth­er Bibles already, and many of them are men. Mr. Arroyo esti­mates that at least 60 per­cent of his cus­tomers are men. Mr. Wild­smith, the Bible review­er, said his YouTube audi­ence was about three-quar­ters male. Some recent sur­veys have detect­ed Bible read­ing and church atten­dance sta­bi­liz­ing or even ris­ing after years of decline, shifts fueled in part by young men.”

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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.