Tag: abortion

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 235

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. Weathering the Storm: How Faith Affects Well-Being (Byron Johnson & Christos Makridis, Public Discourse): “First, and consistent with prior studies, active Christians exhibit 6 percent greater current life satisfaction and are 6 percentage points more likely to report that they are thriving—a measure from Gallup that combines respondent information on both current life satisfaction and expected future life satisfaction over the next five years. Second, and at least as important, we found that SWB is either acyclical or slightly countercyclical for active Christians, whereas it is strongly procyclical for (inactive) Christians and theists.”
  2. More Non-Evangelicals Are Calling Themselves Born Again (Ryan Burge, Christianity Today): “Just over 36 percent of the entire sample said that they were born again in 1988, the first year the question was asked. The question appeared sporadically on the GSS until 2004, when it became a part of every bi-annual survey as the number of affirmative responses began to rise. In the last 14 years, the share of born-again Americans has risen to 41 percent, and much higher (54%) among people of color. Since 2010, at least half of people of color say that they have had a ‘turning point in their life’ when they committed themselves to Christ.”
  3. Sex differences in chimpanzees’ use of sticks as play objects resemble those of children (Sonya M. Kahlenberg & Richard W. Wrangham, Current Biology): “…when presented with sex-stereotyped human toys, captive female monkeys play more with typically feminine toys, whereas male monkeys play more with masculine toys. In human and nonhuman primates, juvenile females demonstrate a greater interest in infants, and males in rough-and-tumble play. This sex difference in activity preferences parallels adult behavior and may contribute to differences in toy play. Here, we present the first evidence of sex differences in use of play objects in a wild primate, in chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes). We find that juveniles tend to carry sticks in a manner suggestive of rudimentary doll play and, as in children and captive monkeys, this behavior is more common in females than in males.” https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2010.11.024
  4. When a sex offender calls, she’s there to listen (Serena Solomon, Vox): “On the desk in her living room, a [Women Against Registry] sign summarizes her pitch: ‘Destroying Families Does Not Protect Children.’ It’s a message geared toward women. WAR argues that the registry can prevent registrants from living with supporting relatives; it can bankrupt families and invites vigilante attacks.” A fascinating article. Recommended by a Chi Alphan.
  5. Detroit man settles race discrimination lawsuit, then bank won’t cash his check (Tresa Baldas, Detroit Free Press): “Thomas closed his [existing bank] account that day and left the premises. Within an hour, he deposited the checks into a new account at a Chase bank in Detroit. They cleared within 12 hours. Thomas, who had no car and walked to work, used the money to buy a 2004 Dodge Durango.” This story boggles the mind.
  6. Adventures in the Old Atheism, Part IV: Marx (Ed Feser, personal blog): “Indeed, opposition to Marxism is in my view a prerequisite to being a serious critic of capitalism, for Marxism contains none of the good that is in capitalism, much of the bad that is in it, and adds grave evils of its own to boot.” That’s not the main thrust of this essay, but I loved that quote. The whole thing is worth reading.
  7. People criticize pro-lifers for focusing so much on abortion. But there’s a reason we do. (Matthew Lee Anderson, Vox): “But for the pro-lifer, that ‘clump of cells’ is as wondrous, as potent, as mysterious as, well, the cosmos. The recognition of the ‘baby’ induces a hushed reverence. The universe once appeared out of nothing, a fact that reasonably seems to induce the strange vertigo of awe, but the formation of a new human being is not so different from this. The embryo contains a whole world of possibilities and adventures.”
    • Related: Abortion Regret Isn’t a Myth, Despite New Study (Maria Baer, Christianity Today): “…researcher Michael J. New noted that women who volunteer to respond to questions following an abortion are more likely to be the ones who feel positively about it, and therefore the findings do not represent the full spectrum of women who have had abortions. New—a professor at the Catholic University of America and a scholar with the pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute—noted that of all the women asked to participate, less than 40 percent agreed, and roughly 30 percent of the 667 who participated had stopped responding by the end of the five-year study.”
    • Related: Trump Marches For Life (Rod Dreher, The American Conservative): “So, I am genuinely surprised that Donald Trump has been so good on prolife issues, and that he came to the March For Life today. And if people worry that the march is becoming too associated with Republican politics, then they should not fault Trump for it, but should redouble efforts to get more Democrats to get involved.”

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 Making Sense of the Numbers of Genesis [pdf link] (Carol Hill, Perspectives on Science and the Christian Faith): “Joseph and Joshua were each recorded as dying at age 110—a number considered ‘perfect’ by the Egyptians. In ancient Egyptian doctrine, the phrase ‘he died aged 110’ was actually an epitaph commemorating a life that had been lived selflessly and had resulted in outstanding social and moral benefit for others. And so for both Joseph and Joshua, who came out of the Egyptian culture, quoting this age was actually a tribute to their character. But, to be described as ‘dying at age 110’ bore no necessary relationship to the actual time of an individual’s life span.” You will not agree with everything in this article, but it is full of fascinating insights. (first shared in volume 51)

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 227

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.

In case you were wondering, so far I have found the impeachment hearings and the commentary on them uninteresting. Let me know if you read something fascinating about them, though.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The Dishonesty of the Abortion Debate (Caitlin Flanagan, The Atlantic): “The argument for abortion, if made honestly, requires many words: It must evoke the recent past, the dire consequences to women of making a very simple medical procedure illegal. The argument against it doesn’t take even a single word. The argument against it is a picture…. The truth is that the best argument on each side is a damn good one, and until you acknowledge that fact, you aren’t speaking or even thinking honestly about the issue. You certainly aren’t going to convince anybody. Only the truth has the power to move.”
    • This article has received praise from across the ideological spectrum. There is an interesting Twitter response thread by Charlie Camosy, a professor of ethics at Fordham. 
  2. India is trying to build the world’s biggest facial recognition system (Julie Zaugg, CNN): “‘We were able to match 10,561 missing children with those living in institutions,’ he told CNN. ‘They are currently in the process of being reunited with their families.’ Most of them were victims of trafficking, forced to work in the fields, in garment factories or in brothels, according to Ribhu. This momentous undertaking was made possible by facial recognition technology provided by New Delhi’s police. ‘There are over 300,000 missing children in India and over 100,000 living in institutions,’ he explained. ‘We couldn’t possibly have matched them all manually.’”
    • That’s a really wonderful use of the technology and it makes me very afraid, because the obvious positive uses are likely to prevent us from building in adequate legal safeguards against the outlandish tyrannical power this technology makes possible.
  3. Mental Health, Bullying, Career Uncertainty (Colleen Flaherty, Inside Higher Ed): “More than a third of Ph.D. students have sought help for anxiety or depression caused by Ph.D. study, according to results of a global survey of 6,300 students from Nature. Thirty-six percent is a very large share, considering that many students who suffer don’t reach out for help. Still, the figure parallels those found by other studies on the topic. A 2018 study of mostly Ph.D. students, for instance, found that 39 percent of respondents scored in the moderate-to-severe depression range. That’s compared to 6 percent of the general population measured with the same scale.”
  4. Pete Buttigieg wants to build a bridge to the religious right. But tension within his in-laws’ family highlights how difficult that may be. (Amy B. Wang, Washington Post): “Three days after Christmas 2017, Rhyan Glezman got a text from his youngest brother, Chasten, saying he was engaged to his boyfriend of 2½ years — Pete Buttigieg, mayor of South Bend, Ind. Rhyan, an evangelical Christian pastor, texted back: ‘I love you and is the only reason I’m going to share this one question to you. Are you willing to surrender to God ‘the one who created you and I’ to whatever he says? I love you beyond what you will ever think or know. I think the world of you and Pete, you need to know that. Have a great day brother!!!’”
  5. Why my college pals went to Yale while my high school friends went to jail (Rob Henderson, NY Post): “It is fascinating to hear affluent people discuss the reasons for upward mobility. They suggest solutions like ‘opportunity’ and ‘education.’ Seldom do they mention ‘parents’ or ‘family.’ This is why: Affluent people take their families for granted. They’re so used to having stable families, it doesn’t occur to them what it would be like to go without. It’s like asking a fish about the importance of water.”
    • This is something I’ve been fascinated by for years — Stanford students are far more likely to come from intact families than are the students I meet while doing retreats for other Chi Alphas. The author is a doctoral candidate in psychology at Cambridge.
  6. Statement from Medill Dean Charles Whitaker (Northwestern University):”…I patently reject the notion that our students have no right to report on communities other than those from which they hail, and I will never affirm that students who do not come from marginalized communities cannot understand or accurately convey the struggles of those populations. And, unlike our young charges at The Daily, who in a heartfelt, though not well-considered editorial, apologized for their work on the Sessions story, I absolutely will not apologize for encouraging our students to take on the much-needed and very difficult task of reporting on our life and times at Northwestern and beyond.” This is straight fire. Recommended by an alumnus.
    • The backstory: Jeff Sessions (former US Attorney General) spoke at Northwestern University. The campus paper covered the event and the protestors, and received sharp criticism from activists for so doing. The editorial board of the Daily Northwestern issued an apology via op-ed. A lot of people (including high-profile professional journalists) expressed strong opinions about the coverage of the event and the apology, and this is the dean’s response.
  7. The Place of Christian Religion in the American Founding (Thomas Tacoma, Public Discourse): “Take the notion that ‘almost all’ of the American founders were deists. Ethan Allen was the lone confirmed American deist of any influence in the founding period. Thomas Paine, who spent relatively little time in the United States—and became deeply unpopular in America after writing The Age of Reason—was the era’s other famous deist. Jefferson, Adams, and Franklin were much quieter about their heterodox beliefs, and even they were not dyed-in-the-wool deists. Franklin, for example, often spoke of Providence, and of a God who did in fact intervene in the affairs of men.” The author is a history professor at Blue Mountain College and is reviewing a book by Mark Hall, a professor of political science at George Fox University.

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 On Obstinacy In Belief (C.S. Lewis, The Sewanee Review): this is a rewarding essay from way back in 1955. (first shared in volume 6)

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 206

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. 30 Years After Tiananmen, a Chinese Military Insider Warns: Never Forget (Chris Buckley, New York Times): “…Ms. Jiang’s decision to challenge the silence carries an extra political charge because she is not only an army veteran but also the daughter of the military elite. Her father was a general, and she was born and raised in military compounds. She proudly enlisted in the People’s Liberation Army about 50 years ago, and in photos from her time as a military journalist, she stands beaming in her green army uniform, a notebook in hand and camera hanging from her neck.”
  2. Clarence Thomas’s Dangerous Idea (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “And in any other area of policy Thomas’s point about how legal abortion appears, in the aggregate, to act in racist and eugenic ways would be taken as an indicator that something more than just emancipation is at work. ”
  3. If you have not been following it, a remarkable argument has developed in the world of religious conservative intelligentsia. The quickness with which others have jumped into shows that there’s a real division here.
    • Against David French-ism (Sohrab Ahmari, First Things): “Progressives understand that culture war means discrediting their opponents and weakening or destroying their institutions. Conservatives should approach the culture war with a similar realism. Civility and decency are secondary values. They regulate compliance with an established order and orthodoxy. We should seek to use these values to enforce our order and our orthodoxy, not pretend that they could ever be neutral. To recognize that enmity is real is its own kind of moral duty.”
    • What Sohrab Ahmari Gets Wrong (David French, National Review): “I firmly believe that the defense of these political and cultural values must be conducted in accordance with scriptural admonitions to love your enemies, to bless those who persecute you, with full knowledge that the ‘Lord’s servant’ must be ‘kind to everyone, able to teach, and patiently endure evil.’”
    • What A Clash Between Conservatives Reveals (Alan Jacobs, The Atlantic): “It’s important to note that Ahmari sees the differences between him and French as rooted, ultimately, in their different Christian traditions: Catholicism for Ahmari—who recently published a memoir of his conversion—and evangelical Protestantism. But whether this is indeed the heart of the matter, the dispute so far hasn’t fallen out that way. Some Catholics are with French, some Protestants with Ahmari.”
      • A follow-up piece Jacobs published on his own blog, well worth reading on its own. Fair Play To You (Alan Jacobs, personal blog): “Conscience exemptions ain’t what they used to be — about that there is surely no disagreement. The dispute is simply whether that’s good or bad.” This post contains a beautiful imaginary dialog which I highly commend to you — read that if you read nothing else.
    • The Ahmari/French debate: A reading list (Joe Carter, Acton Institute): the level of debate this has kicked off is amazing. Click here to see all the ins and outs.
  4. These Men Say the Boy Scouts’ Sex Abuse Problem Is Worse Than Anyone Knew (Eliana Dockterman, Time): “‘They were reporting…that they were a wholesome organization,’ says Tim Kosnoff, one of the attorneys, ‘when they were kicking out child molesters at the rate of one every two days for 100 years.’”
  5. Deepfake Propaganda Is Not A Real Problem (Russell Brandom, The Verge): “In any of these cases, attackers had the motive and the resources to produce a deepfake video. The technology is cheap, easily available, and technically straightforward. But given the option of fabricating video evidence, each group seems to have decided it wasn’t worth the trouble. Instead we saw news articles made up from whole cloth, or videos edited to take on a sinister meaning.”
  6. There was a controversy recently when Trump showed up at a church and the pastor prayed for him.
    • On Praying for the President (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “What’s remarkable about this prayer is not that it happened, but that it shows how thoroughly the Trump era has opened the way for cynicism and outrage over even mundane, predictable Christian behavior.”
    • David Platt Asks God to Grant Trump ‘All the Grace He Needs to Govern’ (Kate Shellnut, Christianity Today): “Platt is in an interesting position. For years, he’s preached against the American focus on “self-advancement, self-esteem, and self-sufficiency” and “individualism, materialism, and universalism.” And now he’s the pastor of a suburban Washington congregation full of Christians who work on the Hill, a place once deemed ‘a holy destination for GOP senators and Bush aides.’”
    • Prayer For The President (David Platt): this is Platt’s letter to the congregation explaining his actions. “At the end of my sermon at the 1:00 worship gathering, I stepped to the side for what I thought would be a couple of moments in quiet reflection as we prepared to take the Lord’s Supper. But I was immediately called backstage and told that the President of the United States was on his way to the church, would be there in a matter of minutes, and would like for us to pray for him.”
    • In case you’re wondering, I would 100% have done what Platt did. And I would have done it for Obama, Clinton, Bush, or whoever. I would have done it for Nero. I cannot understand how this is controversial or is being perceived as partisan.
  7. Asymmetric Weapons Gone Bad (Scott Alexander, Slate Star Codex): “Every day we do things that we can’t easily justify. If someone were to argue that we shouldn’t do the thing, they would win easily. We would respond by cutting that person out of our life, and continuing to do the thing.” This entire series of articles (this is the fourth, the others are linked at the top of it) is 100% worth reading. It’s a very interesting way to think about the limits of reason and the wisdom hidden in tradition.

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 Ian McEwan ‘dubious’ about schools studying his books, after he helped son with essay and got a C+ (Hannah Furness, The Telegraph): this is a real article. First shared in volume 151.

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 203

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. The Heart of the Evangelical Crisis (Mark Galli, Christianity Today): “My next thought was, ‘Well, if I call myself a Christian, I should have greater love and desire to know God more deeply. Perhaps I should pray for that.’ And that’s when something occurred to me with great force: I wasn’t sure I wanted that. I recognize that was an odd admission for a person who claimed to be a good Christian. But there it was. I didn’t think I really wanted to love God more. The reasons for that are complex and will be touched on later, but the bottom line was: I really didn’t want to love God.” First essay in a series.
  2. Abortion in America, explained in 10 facts (Anna North, Vox): “Even though the abortion rate has declined, the procedure remains commonplace. According to a 2017 analysis by the Guttmacher Institute, 23.7 percent of women in the United States will have an abortion by the age of 45. Nineteen percent will have one by age 30, and 4.6 percent will have one by age 20.”
    • Debunking 9 Myths Surrounding Alabama’s Abortion Law (Carole Novielli, Live Action): “This bill, HB314, was sponsored by a female lawmaker, Representative Terri Collins, and was signed into law by female Governor Kay Ivey. Pro-life organizations are led by women. The Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision, on the other hand, was imposed by all men.”
    • Alabama and Georgia Are Throwing Down the Gauntlet against Roe. Good. (David French, National Review): difficult to excerpt. A good summary of the legal strategy the southern states are pursuing.
    • I’m an anti-abortion Christian. But Alabama’s ban will do more harm than good. (Katherine Kelaidis, Vox): “Draconian bans on abortion — and frankly anything other than liberal access to abortions along with comprehensive sex education and access to contraception — fail to protect human life, both in the womb and outside of it. This, in itself, should be intolerable to any Christian, particularly one who views abortion as morally suspect.”
    • Why some anti-abortion conservatives think Alabama’s abortion law goes too far (Jane Coaston, Vox): “A 2018 Gallup poll found that just 29 percent of Americans believe abortion should be legal in all circumstances, but that outweighs the 18 percent of Americans who believe abortion should be illegal in all circumstances. The vast majority of Americans think abortion should be legal, with restrictions of some kind (abortions being permitted only within the first three months of pregnancy, for example).”
    • That latest Pat Robertson juridical quote: Journalists may want to note these interesting facts (Terry Mattingly, GetReligion): “Robertson is (a) making a comment about legal questions linked to this Alabama law and, (b) also about the political realities surrounding it. Thus, I am asking: Should journalists consider adding one or two sentences to their reports noting that Robertson is (a) a graduate of Yale Law School and (b) someone who grew up in Washington, D.C., as the son of a U.S. Senator? How many readers know these two facts about this famous religious leader?” Wait. What? I had no idea.
    • Most Abortion-Minded Women Aren’t Calculating Killers. They’re Afraid (Maria Baer, Gospel Coalition): the whole thing is worth reading — this bit caught my attention but isn’t really close to her main point: “Evil often begets more evil. While many who support so-called abortion rights believe they’re serving needy women, they’re overlooking one critical reality: Women are often brought—reluctantly—to the abortion doctor. These women are compelled toward abortion not by their own empowering, my-body-is-my-own sense of autonomy, but by another person seeking control. Angry boyfriends, angry husbands, angry mothers, angry employers—these are so often the wind at the back of an abortion-minded woman.”
  3. Too many men: China and India battle with the consequences of gender imbalance (Simon Denyer & Annie Gowen,South China Morning Post): this article is a year old, it’s long but good. “Nothing like this has happened in human history. A combination of cultural preferences, government decree and modern medical technology in the world’s two largest countries has created a gender imbalance on a continental scale. Men outnumber women by 70 million in China and India…. In any given age group, a proportion of men will fail to find brides, but they will stay in the marriage market, competing with younger men to marry younger women. The disproportion keeps growing. By 2050, French demographer Christophe Guilmoto estimates, there could be between 150 to 190 men for every 100 women in China’s marriage market.”
  4. A few brief observations about thinking clearly:
    • Accounting Identities and the Implicit Theory of Inertia (Nick Rowe, Worthwhile Canadian Initiative): “Animals can be divided into Carnivores and Non-Carnivores: A = C + NC. Therefore, if we add some wolves to an island of sheep, the number of animals on that island will increase. It’s easy to see why that argument might not be right. Wolves kill sheep. But if you didn’t know that fact about wolves and sheep, the argument looks very appealing. But the equation A = C + NC tells us absolutely nothing about the world; it’s an accounting identity that is true by definition. The only thing it tells you is how I have chosen to divide up the world into parts. And I can choose an infinite number of different ways to divide the world up into parts.” This is an important insight.
    • Why Do Experiments Make People Uneasy? (Alex Tabarrok, Marginal Revolution): “One factor which comes out of respondent comments is that the experiment forces people to reckon with the idea that even experts don’t know what the right thing to do is and that confession of ignorance bothers people. (This is also one reason why people may prefer pundits who always ‘know’ the right thing to do even when they manifestly do not).”
    • Our first instinct is far too often wrong (Tim Harford, Financial Times): “In a multiple-choice test, you sometimes write down an answer and then have second thoughts. Is it wise to stay with your first instincts, or better to switch? Most people would advise that the initial answer is usually better than the doubt-plagued second guess…. Researchers have been studying this question since the 1920s. They have overwhelmingly concluded both that individual answer changes are more likely to be from wrong to right, and that students who change their answers tend to improve their scores.”
    • The Big Story You Don’t Read About (David Brooks, New York Times): “How did we in our business get in the spot where we spend 90 percent of our coverage on the 10 percent of our lives influenced by politics and 10 percent of our coverage on the 90 percent of our lives influenced by relationship, community and the places we live in every day?”
  5. When Male Runners Lose to Women (Leyland Cecco, The Walrus): “Studies are starting to show that male and female bodies respond differently to fatigue: during long periods of exercise, the brain monitors and triages the body’s output, regulating feelings of exhaustion to ensure the runner doesn’t overextend themselves. If the central nervous system senses the activity is becoming too intense, it reduces the muscle’s output…. ‘It turns out women have a slightly, it seems, better resistance to that kind of fatigue.’”
  6. The Incompatibility of Critical Theory and Christianity (Neil Shenvi & Pat Sawyer, Gospel Coalition): “Christianity provides us with an overarching metanarrative that runs from creation to redemption: We are creatures made in God’s image, who have sinned against him, who need to be rescued through the atoning work of Jesus, and who are called to love both God and neighbor. In contrast, critical theory is associated with a metanarrative that runs from oppression to liberation: We are members either of a dominant group or of a marginalized group with respect to a given identity marker. As such, we either need to divest ourselves of power and seek to liberate others, or we need to acquire power and liberate ourselves by dismantling all structures and institutions that subjugate and oppress. In critical theory, the greatest sin is oppression, and the greatest virtue is the pursuit of liberation.”
    • Related (at least in my mind): Christians Cannot Be Mistreated (George Yancey, Patheos): “I believe that some individuals are unable to see anti-Christian discrimination no matter what evidence is presented to them. For them the cultural narrative that Christians are the dominant group is simply too powerful for them to consider alternative information.” The author, whose work I have featured before, is a sociologist at the University of North Texas.
  7. The ‘3.5% Rule’: How A Small Minority Can Change The World (David Robson, BBC): “Looking at hundreds of campaigns over the last century, Chenoweth found that nonviolent campaigns are twice as likely to achieve their goals as violent campaigns. And although the exact dynamics will depend on many factors, she has shown it takes around 3.5% of the population actively participating in the protests to ensure serious political change.”

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 an eye-opening (and dismaying) article, What The Media Gets Wrong About Israel (Mattie Friedman, The Atlantic). (first shared back in volume 5): “one of the most important aspects of the media-saturated conflict between Jews and Arabs is also the least covered: the press itself. The Western press has become less an observer of this conflict than an actor in it, a role with consequences for the millions of people trying to comprehend current events, including policymakers who depend on journalistic accounts to understand a region where they consistently seek, and fail, to productively intervene.”

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 192

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. The Bible Says Jesus Was Real. What Other Proof Exists? (Christopher Klein, History.com): “Within a few decades of his lifetime, Jesus was mentioned by Jewish and Roman historians in passages that corroborate portions of the New Testament that describe the life and death of Jesus.”
  2. Jesus, Mary, and Joe Jonas (Jonathan Parks-Ramage, Medium): “How, in famously liberal Hollywood and among statistically progressive millennials, had good old-fashioned evangelism [sic] gained popularity? In this context, a church like Reality L.A. seemed like something that could never work. But that evening, as I reflected on the troubled actress and the psychic brutalities inflicted by the entertainment industry, it occurred to me that I had underestimated Hollywood’s biggest product: lost souls.”
    • Highly recommended. Stories like this are catnip for me. The author is gay, a fact which weighs heavily in his reporting. A friend passed this my way, and I remind you that I always welcome such suggestions.
  3. Conservative Christians Just Retook the United Methodist Church (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “In the final hours of the conference on Tuesday, the debate turned acrimonious: One delegate alleged, without clear evidence, that people at the conference were bribing others for votes. Another speaker’s mic was silenced when he threatened to filibuster any vote before the end of the day. And the debate came to an abrupt halt: Delegates had to clear out of the conference hall so that it could be turned over for a monster-truck rally.”
    • That final sentence, while factual, feels like a metaphor for something.
    • I predict the victorious traditionalists in the UMC will be far more magnanimous toward churches that wish to leave than the revisionists in other denominations have been to their vanquished (I’m looking at you, Episcopal Church).
  4. The Trauma Floor (Casey Newton, The Verge): “One [Facebook content moderator] walks the floor promoting the idea that the Earth is flat. A former employee told me he has begun to question certain aspects of the Holocaust. Another former employee, who told me he has mapped every escape route out of his house and sleeps with a gun at his side, said: ‘I no longer believe 9/11 was a terrorist attack.’”
  5. Black men are less religious than black women, but more religious than white women and men (Kiana Cox and Jeff Diamant, Pew Research Center): “About seven-in-ten (69%) black men say religion is very important to them, compared with 80% of black women. But black men place more importance on religion than white women (55%) and Hispanic women (65%), according to the 2014 Religious Landscape Study.”
    • I doubt many antireligious people think of themselves as racist, so they should realize that their attempts to erase religion from the public square disproportionately harm black people.
  6. ‘Every day was about survival’ : Inside the graduate student affordability crisis (Charlie Curnin, Stanford Daily): “…when Shalev Marom wakes up with only $18 in her bank account, she finds it hard to be excited about her financial situation. Shalev Marom, who relies on picking produce from campus trees to sustain herself, eats just one full meal a day…. At Stanford, Shalev Marom lives in the cheapest housing option open to her — and as an international student on a J‑1 visa, she is subject to strict federal laws that regulate any additional income she could receive from further employment. In each pay period — roughly two-weeks long — she says she currently receives around $200 to $300 from her research assistantship, after the deduction of housing costs and University fees.”
    • This is heartbreaking. If you know a Stanford student who can’t afford to eat, let me know. We can help.
  7. Mainstream Media Blacks Out The Democrats’ Infanticide Vote (David Harsyani, The Federalist): “So I was going to have a little fun at the expense of CNN this morning, contrasting the news site’s headline for the Democrats’ gun restriction bill—’House to vote on guns background check bill with bipartisan support’—which has garnered exactly four Republican co-sponsors, with its headline for the Sen. Ben Sasse’s anti-infanticide bill, which I was certain would be solely about the “GOP” despite having four Democrat senators voting to move the bill forward. Turns out, it was even better. There was nothing to contrast because, as far as I can tell, CNN doesn’t feature a single story on their website regarding the Democratic Party blocking of Sasse’s Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, which would have saved newborn babies who survive abortion attempts from negligent homicide.”
    • A survey of the results of a Google News search confirms that this bill received almost no reporting coverage — almost all of the hits are opinion pieces.
    • Related: Ben Sasse Heightens the Contradictions (Jake Meador, Mere Orthodoxy): “The days in which “safe, legal, and rare,” could appeal to a wide swathe of Americans are over. For pro-lifers, abortion is the taking of innocent life, a thing which simply should not be legal or should only be legal in the most extreme cases. For ‘reproductive justice’ advocates, the right to legal abortion is about protecting the autonomy of human persons, of preserving the unencumbered choice of women whose choice would otherwise be naturally encumbered in ways that a man’s is not simply because of their ability to bear children.”
    • Related: The Abortion Debate Needs Moral Lament (Michael Wear, The Atlantic): “After decades of earnest attempts to find some common ground on this most tender and personal issue—think of Senators Ted Kennedy and Sam Brownback’s work on a Down Syndrome registry, bipartisan support for the Hyde Amendment, and President Obama’s first-term appeal for efforts to reduce the number of women seeking abortions—that impulse has been virtually eradicated among elected officials.”

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 How Can I Learn To Receive – And Give – Criticism In Light Of The Cross? (Justin Taylor, Gospel Coalition): “A believer is one who identifies with all that God affirms and condemns in Christ’s crucifixion. In other words, in Christ’s cross I agree with God’s judgment of me; and in Christ’s cross I agree with God’s justification of me. Both have a radical impact on how we take and give criticism.” This is based on a longer article (4 page PDF). (first shared in volume 63)

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 188

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. Assessing Betsy DeVos’s Proposed Rules on Title IX and Sexual Assault (Jeannie Suk Gerson, New Yorker): “The truth is that there is much to criticize in DeVos’s proposal but also much that would help to make schools’ processes for handling sexual misconduct fairer to all parties.” Gerson, a Harvard law prof, consistently offers insightful perspective on issues surrounding campus sexual assault.
  2. Cruel and Unusual Punishment (Lionel Shriver, Harpers): “The contemporary impulse to rebuke disgraced creators by vanishing their work from the cultural marketplace exhibits a mean-­spiritedness, a vengefulness even, as well as an illogic. Why, if you catch someone doing something bad, would you necessarily rub out what they’ve done that’s good? If you’re convicted of breaking and entering, the judge won’t send bailiffs around to tear down the tree house you built for your daughter and to pour bleach on your homemade pie.”
  3. How I Knew the #CovingtonBoys Video Was Clickbait (Clair Potter, Public Seminar): “I think the most underreported story about #CovingtonBoys is how it got to us in the first place. It originated with a piece of clickbait that was chosen and edited, by persons unknown, to produce outrage on the right and the left. Originating in a fake account, and proliferated by other fake accounts, it was part of a professional social media campaign intended to disrupt.”
    • Related: Bad, Press (Charles Cooke, National Review): “For a neat illustration of how farcical things have become, take a look at the Washington Post’s most recent ‘fact check,’ which helpfully informs its readers that the claimed ‘one thousand burgers’ President Trump bought for the Clemson football team were not, in fact, ‘piled up a mile high’ because, ‘at two inches each, a thousand burgers would not reach one mile high.’ Democracy dies in darkness, indeed.”
  4. Imagine Nations Were Selfless—It’s No Paradise (Brad Littlejohn, Providence): “We hear often today about how we live in “a global society” and have to take up the responsibilities of “global citizenship.” But what these exhortations miss is that the exponential growth in human knowledge over the past century has not been matched by nearly as rapid growth in human agency. It is now possible for a housewife in Tennessee to be aware of a rape in Bangladesh within hours or minutes, but she is only marginally more able to do anything about it now than she was 100 years ago.” The article as a whole is not great, but it makes a very interesting argument: patriotism is a necessary way to make our empathy productive.
  5. In polarized Washington, a Democrat anchors bipartisan friendships in faith (Jack Jenkins, Religion News Service): “A bridge builder with Republicans, Coons is known for helping create rare flickers of bipartisan agreement. Part of his secret, it seems, is religion…. Coons, who grew up attending Red Clay Creek Presbyterian Church in Hockessin, Del., explained that his faith has not only provided grounding for his own life but has also emerged as a point of connection with Republicans, with whom he has forged lasting relationships — and legislation.”
  6. What The Establishment Right Doesn’t Get (Rod Dreher, The American Conservative): this essay, a large part of which is actually commentary from a reader, is like a flamethrower. “…those who preach the bourgeois virtues can’t get a hearing if there is no stable employment for people who do the right thing. And, if those who do the right thing (by which I mean play by the rules: live lives of hard work, fair play, and self-discipline) can find everything kicked out from under them all of a sudden, it destabilizes the entire society.”
    • The follow-up, Liberty, Equality — But Where’s The Fraternity? is also stimulating.
    • Reading the latter one brought to my attention a very short essay by G.K. Chesterton. I highly recommend it. “The English people as a body went blind, as the saying is, for interpreting democracy entirely in terms of liberty. They said in substance that if they had more and more liberty it did not matter whether they had any equality or any fraternity. But this was violating the sacred trinity of true politics; they confounded the persons and they divided the substance.”
  7. 4 Facts Every American Should Know About Third-Trimester Abortions (Joe Carter, Gospel Coalition): “As I noted in an article last week, Democratic legislators in places like New York and Virginia are moving to codify abortion rights in state law to prepare for the day when Roe and Doe are overturned. When the Supreme Court throws the abortion issue back to the individual states, third-trimester abortions will still be protected in states that reiterate Doe’s standards for ‘viability’ or ‘health.’”

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 No Food Is Healthy. Not Even Kale. (Michael Ruhlman, Washington Post): People can be healthy. Food can be nutritious. This is a wonderful essay about how we misuse language to our detriment. If you’re surprised I included this, I believe that our culture has a quasi-religious relationship to health and to food, and I also believe that the use of language is profoundly moral and that our culture is a linguistic mess (to which I know of no finer guide than The Underground Grammarian). (first shared in volume 33)

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 171

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. So much ink about the Ford-Kavanaugh hearings! I’m going to avoid posting any articles about it until a little more time has passed and more developments have occurred, except for this insightful bit from the humor site The Babylon Bee: Success: After A Full Day Of Hearings, Everyone Believes Exactly What They Already Believed About Kavanaugh.
    • A verse that keeps coming to mind is Leviticus 19:15 — “Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly.” In other words, God’s standard of justice is straightforward and without partiality. Rich people can sin against poor people, and poor people can sin against rich people. Men can sin against women, and women can sin against men. White people can sin against black people, and black people can sin against white people. True justice comes from judgment that transcends our sympathies and prejudices (a type of unjust prejudgment). Perhaps Judge Kavanaugh sinned against Dr. Ford. Perhaps Dr. Ford is sinning against Judge Kavanaugh. Perhaps her memory is faulty. Perhaps his memory is faulty. We must not show partiality to her or favoritism to him. To do otherwise is to pervert justice.
    • An alumnus sent me this hymn which he found timely (and I concur): A Hymn: O God of Earth and Altar (G.K. Chesterton): “O God of earth and altar, Bow down and hear our cry, Our earthly rulers falter, Our people drift and die; The walls of gold entomb us, The swords of scorn divide, Take not thy thunder from us, But take away our pride.”
  2. Why Atheists Are Not As Rational As Some Like To Think (Lois Lee, The Conversation): “Importantly, the scientific evidence does not tend to support the view that atheism is about rational thought and theism is about existential fulfilments.” The author’s Ph.D. is in sociology from Cambridge and she is a professor of religious studies at the University of Kent.
  3. Terminal Lucidity: The Researchers Attempting to Prove Your Mind Lives On Even After You Die (Zaron Burnett III, Mel): “In essence, terminal lucidity is a mysterious flash of life and vitality that occurs in people just before they die. It’s most remarkable in people who have dementia, Alzheimer’s, meningitis, brain damage, strokes or were in a coma. There’s no known medical explanation for where this sudden surge of vitality and functionality comes from. In large part because as suddenly as it comes, within a few hours or even a day or two, it fades and the person dies, taking any answers with them.” The opening anecdote is wild.
  4. A Christian Singer Is Bigger Than Drake and Ariana Grande This Week (Amy X. Wang, Rolling Stone): “[Lauren Daigle’s] success highlights something broader, however: the deep persistence of Christian music in the U.S. audience — an aspect of music consumption that has been largely skipped over by headlines proclaiming rap as the sole driver of modern music in America. While rap and R&B have indeed risen to become the leading genre of music consumption, Christian music remains a sizable minority mass. Solid numbers are hard to come by, but at its annual conference in 2015, the Gospel Music Association reported that 68 percent of Americans had listened to Christian or gospel music within the last 30 days.”
  5. It’s time to rethink how much booze may be too much (Julia Belluz, Vox): “… the story about the health effects of moderate drinking is shifting pretty dramatically. New research on alcohol and mortality, and a growing awareness about the rise in alcohol-related deaths in the US, is causing a reckoning among researchers about even moderate levels of alcohol consumption.”
  6. Reflecting on “Racism Lives Here, Too”, Part One, see also Part Two, and Part Three (James Banker, Stanford Daily): “As we’ve rallied around our differences, we’ve neglected our commonalities. We ascribe the maximally offensive and hostile interpretations to the words and behavior of others. For fear of giving offense or being offended, we choose silence over dialogue, as we retreat into ever more concentrated factions of like-minded people who think and speak like us. Lines have been drawn. Defenses fortified. But along the way, we lost a common language. With only the brute signals for friend and foe, we communicate across our divides like ships passing in the night: only signs and silence.” The author is a recent Stanford law school grad and writes with unusual skill. Reading this felt more like reading an essay in the Atlantic or the New Yorker than reading a typical op-ed in the Daily. Be sure to read all three parts.
  7. Were Evangelicals Really Silent about Roe v. Wade? (Thomas Kidd, Gospel Coalition): “It has become commonplace for historians to say that evangelicals had a muted response to the Roe v. Wade decision, which struck down state laws against abortion in 1973.… evangelicals, both white and black, registered grave concern about Roe and abortion-on-demand, however. Evidence of this fact is not hard to find. Flagship evangelical magazine Christianity Today wrote that ‘the decision runs counter not merely to the moral teachings of Christianity through the ages but also to the moral sense of the American people.’ Likewise, the National Association of Evangelicals said, ‘We deplore, in the strongest possible terms, the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court which has made it legal to terminate a pregnancy for no better reason than personal convenience or sociological considerations.’” The author is a history professor at Baylor University. I find this article fascinating because I have heard the opposite proclaimed confidently so many times, but Christianity Today and the NAE definitely represent the mainstream of evangelical thought.

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 Dealing With Nuisance Lust (Douglas Wilson, personal blog): “Minimize the seriousness of this, but not so that you can feel good about indulging yourself. Minimize the seriousness of it so that you can walk away from a couple of big boobs without feeling like you have just fought a cosmic battle with principalities and powers in the heavenly places, for crying out loud. Or, if you like, in another strategy of seeing things rightly, you could nickname these breasts of other woman as the ‘principalities and powers.’ Whatever you do, take this part of life in stride like a grown-up. Stop reacting like a horny and conflicted twelve-year-old boy.” (first shared in volume 148)

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 168

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. The Most Momentous Place? (Alex Tabarrok, Marginal Revolution): “The old city of Jerusalem is astonishingly small for a city with so many momentous places. One can walk from Christianity’s holiest site to the holiest site of Judaism, pausing to look at one of the holiest sites of Islam, in less time than it takes to walk from my office on the campus of George Mason University to the campus Starbucks.” Short and provocative.
  2. Australia’s new Pentecostal prime minister: Try to guess how the press is receiving him (Ira Rifkin, GetReligion): “…the new prime minister, Scott Morrison, is an outspoken, politically conservative Pentecostal Christian. This mixing of religion and politics may be old-hat at this point for Americans. But it’s an entirely new experience for Australians.”
  3. My nephew tried to school me on cultural appropriation. It didn’t end well.(Jack VanNoord, Chicago Tribune): fictional, amusing, and makes a serious point about global cultural exchange. “Most weeks, his less-woke friends go out for Taco Tuesdays, but not Kyle. No more hummus. No more bagels. No mo’ pho. Poor Kyle. Living the unappropriated life is tough business. Whenever it rains, Kyle gets soaked. No more umbrellas for him. Chinese. Kyle has stopped binge watching ‘The Walking Dead’ once I mentioned the word for, and the concept of, zombies were appropriated from West Africa. Kyle was taking a summer math course at the community college. But he dropped out. It was just too hard. His homework was taking all evening. He was doing all his assignments using Roman numerals since Arabic numerals are … well, Arabic.”
  4. The Religious Typology (Pew Research Center): “ a new Pew Research Center analysis looks at beliefs and behaviors that cut across many denominations – important traits that unite people of different faiths, or that divide people who have the same religious affiliation – producing a new and revealing classification, or typology, of religion in America.”
  5. A Prison That’s Also a Loony Bin (Rod Dreher, The American Conservative): “A transgender prisoner has admitted sexually assaulting inmates at a women’s jail. Karen White, 51, who was born male but now identifies as a woman, has pleaded guilty to two counts of sexual touching at New Hall Prison, Wakefield.” The story is astounding.
  6. Better Dead Than Disabled? (Charles Camosy, Commonweal): “prolifers are not imagining things: arguments in favor of the autonomous moral and legal choice to commit infanticide are easy to find…. [for example, a] 2012 article by moral philosophers Alberto Giubilini and Francesca Minerva, which appeared in the respected Journal of Medical Ethics, was provocatively titled ‘After-Birth Abortion: Why Should the Baby Live?’”
  7. Diary of a Concussion: What I Learned About Head Injuries By Having One (Elizabeth Lopatto, The Verge): “To have your personality altered by brain trauma seems to upset people more than having it altered by, for instance, emotional trauma. I don’t know why this is! …. If I thought I was my brain, probably I would have found the injury more upsetting. But I didn’t and don’t believe that; my self is an interaction between my body and my brain.” This is a year old but I just stumbled upon it. Super interesting.

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 How To Pray A Psalm (Justin Taylor, Gospel Coalition): prayer life need a boost? Give this a try. (first shared in volume 69)

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 163

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. China and its creepy facial recognition technology targets Uighur Muslims (Julia Duin, GetReligion): “China’s Muslims are akin to Germany’s Jews in the 1930s; a group of hapless people of a different religion that the government gets to experiment on. They’re already shoving roughly 800,000 Muslims into internment camps and other Muslims worldwide aren’t really noticing.” This is horrifying.
  2. There was quite the clamor recently about antisemitism at Stanford.
    • Stanford Student Threatens Violence against Pro-Israel Students (Dov Greenburg, National Review): “In mid July, Hamzeh Daoud, a student at Stanford University, publicly posted on Facebook: ‘I’m gonna physically fight Zionists on campus next year.’ If his meaning wasn’t clear enough, Hamzeh continued, ‘And after I abolish your ass I’ll go ahead and work every day for the rest of my life to abolish your petty ass ethno-supremacist, settler-colonial state.’ While not reflective of Stanford’s values, the sentiment of this hateful post reveals the state of contemporary life on campuses.”
    • Daoud resigns from Norcliffe RA position (Julia Ingram and Holden Foreman, Stanford Daily): “Hamzeh Daoud ’20 has resigned from his Resident Assistant position in Norcliffe House, he announced in a statement to The Daily on Friday afternoon.”
    • Op Ed: Statement from Hamzeh Daoud (Hamzeh Daoud, Stanford Daily): “After spending a few hours away from Facebook, I read over my post again and realized how infused it was with the same hatred that has caused my own family so much suffering. It was the antithesis of why I chose this path in life. A sloppy comment made during an emotion-filled reaction to yet another layer of trauma, the comment did not convey my values, who I am currently, or who I hope to become.”
    • I know some of you know Hamzeh, so this probably feels a good deal more personal than many of the articles I share. Please remember that what you put on social media actually matters. James 1:19 is a useful memory verse for everyone with a Facebook or Twitter account: “My dear brothers and sisters, take note of this: Everyone should be quick to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry.”
  3. At Prayer Breakfast, Guests Seek Access to a Different Higher Power (Kenneth P. Vogel and Elizabeth Dias, New York Times): “Some describe the gathering as similar to the World Economic Forum, except that Jesus is the organizing principle….With its relative lack of diplomatic protocols and press coverage, the prayer breakfast setting is ideal for foreign figures who might not otherwise be able to easily get face time with top American officials, because of unsavory reputations or a lack of an official government perch, according to lobbyists who help arrange such trips. They also contend that it is easier to secure visas when the breakfast is listed as a destination.”
  4. Jeff Sessions announces a religious liberty task force to combat “dangerous” secularism (Tara Isabella Burton, Vox): “In a bold speech delivered at the Justice Department’s Religious Liberty Summit, Sessions characterized the task force as a necessary step in facing down the prevailing forces of secularism. ‘A dangerous movement, undetected by many, is now challenging and eroding our great tradition of religious freedom,’ he said, which ‘must be confronted and defeated.’”
    • Related: Why Jeff Sessions thinks Christians are under siege in America (Christopher Shea interviews Nelson Tebbe, Vox): One part stood out to me: “The Supreme Court has not decided a religious freedom case in a way that’s adverse to the interest of Christians for the past few terms. I can’t think of a single religious freedom case that they’ve lost.”
    • The above point is very muddled. The things that keep going to the Supreme Court are precisely the things we have a problem with. Do you know what we don’t have a problem with? Cannibalism. We’ve got cultural consensus on that. But religious liberty? That keeps going to the courts and getting successfully appealed to the very top because local and state governments keep trying to violate it. It is a simple fact that significant voices in our culture view religious liberty with reactions ranging from suspicion to hostility. Examples abound (including these two Vox articles).
  5. How Catholic Bishops Are Shaping Health Care In Rural America (Anna Maria Barry-Jester and Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux, FiveThirtyEight): “Best estimates suggest that one in six hospital beds and many of the nation’s largest nonprofit health systems are Catholic-owned or ‑affiliated. From 2001 to 2016, the number of Catholic-affiliated hospitals in the U.S. grew by 22 percent, even as the total number of hospitals in the U.S. shrunk, according to research by MergerWatch and the American Civil Liberties Union.”
    • A response: Standard Procedures (Leah Libresco Sargeant, First Things): “When she lays out my options, there really is just one option: the standard of reproductive care. But I have two reasons to say no: I am a Catholic and I am a statistician. It was faith and reason, the two ways of knowing that St. John Paul II called the ‘two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth,’ that led me to dig in my heels during my third miscarriage.” FYI: the author used to write for FiveThirtyEight.
    • Another response: What FiveThirtyEight gets wrong about Catholic hospitals (Stephanie Slade, America Magazine): “That the A.C.L.U. threw away its commitment to religious freedom in the name of abortion rights is bad enough. A journalistic enterprise as ostensibly sane and data-driven as FiveThirtyEightshould think twice before following the same path.”
  6. “Hypnotic Mass Phenomena” (Florian Schwab interview with Peter Thiel, Die Weltwoche): “The advanced technological civilization of the early 21st century is a complicated world where it is not possible for anybody to think through everything for themselves. You cannot be a polymath in quite the way people were in the 18th century enlightenments. You cannot be like Goethe. So there is some need to listen to experts, to defer to other people. And then, there is always the danger of that going too far and people not thinking critically. This happens in spades in Silicon Valley.”
  7. Spies Are More Common, and Boring, Than You Think (Tyler Cowen, Bloomberg Opinion): “John Negroponte, former director of national intelligence, admitted in 2006 that the U.S. was deploying about 100,000 spies around the world. Given that the U.S. is the world’s technology and military leader, and yet has a relatively small share of global population, is it so crazy to think the number of people spying on us is larger than that?”

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 The Weight of Glory (C.S. Lewis): It was originally preached as a sermon and then printed in a theology magazine. Related: see the C. S. Lewis Doodle YouTube channel – it’s really good! (first shared in volume 36)

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).

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 147

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. Inside the White House Bible Study group (Owen Amos, BBC): “But is a bible study for Cabinet members, with political themes, not a merging of church and state? ‘I believe in institutional separation, but not influential separation,’ [Drollinger] says. ‘No matter what the institution is — the family, commerce, education — it needs the bulwark precepts of the word of God in order to function correctly… But the minute I start to amalgamate the church and the state institutionally, then I’m into theocracy.’”
  2. Why you stink at fact-checking (Lisa Fazio, The Conversation): “First, people have a general bias to believe that things are true. (After all, most things that we read or hear are true.) In fact, there’s some evidence that we initially process all statements as true and that it then takes cognitive effort to mentally mark them as false. Second, people tend to accept information as long as it’s close enough to the correct information. Natural speech often includes errors, pauses and repeats. (‘She was wearing a blue – um, I mean, a black, a black dress.’) One idea is that to maintain conversations we need to go with the flow – accept information that is ‘good enough’ and just move on.” The author is a psych professor at Vanderbilt.
  3. One extra glass of wine ‘will shorten your life by 30 minutes’ (Sarah Bosely, The Guardian): “The risks for a 40-year-old of drinking over the recommended daily limit were comparable to smoking, said one leading scientist. ‘Above two units a day, the death rates steadily climb,’ said David Spiegelhalter, Winton professor for the public understanding of risk at the University of Cambridge.” This is certainly going to be contested research, but it caught my eye.
  4. The 10-Year Baby Window That Is the Key to the Women’s Pay Gap (Claire Cain Miller, NY Times): “When women have their first child between age 25 and 35, their pay never recovers, relative to that of their husbands. Yet women who have their first baby either before 25 or after 35 — before their careers get started or once they’re established — eventually close the pay gap with their husbands.”
  5. Two different analyses of California’s state politics:
    • CA is awesome! The Great Lesson of California in America’s New Civil War (Peter Leyden and Ruy Teixeira, Medium): “California today provides a model for America as a whole. This model of politics and government is by no means perfect, but it is far ahead of the nation in coming to terms with the inexorable digital, global, sustainable transformation of our era. It is a thriving work in progress that gives hope that America can pull out of the political mess we’re in.”
    • CA is a train wreck! California Is the Model for National Divorce, Not Democratic Domination (David French, National Review): “…it turns out that California politics and policies are repellent to millions of Californians. Between 2007 and 2016 roughly 6 million California residents left the state. Only 5 million people moved to California from other American states. And where did a plurality of former Californians go? Texas.”
  6. The Sam Harris Debate (Ezra Klein, Vox): this is a long, interesting debate partly about Charles Murray but ultimately about much deeper issues.
    • Sam Harris: “How can we get to a world where the maximum number of people thrive? I view identity politics as among the worst pieces of software you can be running to try to get there. I want to get to a world where, I mean, it’s Martin Luther King’s claim about the content of your character, rather than the color of your skin. That is the goal, and if you want to reverse engineer that goal, giving primacy to identity is one of the worst things you can do.”
    • Ezra Klein: “To Harris… identity politics is something others do. To me, it’s something we all do, and that he and many others refuse to admit they’re doing. This is one of the advantages of being the majority group: Your concerns get coded as concerns; it’s everyone else who is playing identity politics.”
  7. There was a big kerflufffle about The Atlantic firing columnist Kevin Williams over his views on abortion. I was really stunned by how much ink was spilled over it — this is just a small sample. The authors make interesting observations about disagreement in America.
    • Kevin Williamson, Thought Criminal (Jonah Goldberg, The National Review): “Editors or owners should have absolute authority to control what appears in the pages of their magazines. How they exercise that authority, i.e., how much orthodoxy they want to impose or how much free-for-all they want to encourage, is a prudential question (and one I often have strong opinions about). What editors should not have any control over is what their writers are allowed to think.”
    • Among The Abortion Extremists (Ross Douthat, NY Times):  “…this is a case study in exactly the problem establishment editors are trying to address by widening their pool of writers: the inability of contemporary liberalism to see itself from the outside, as it looks to the many people who for some reason, class or religion or historical experience, are not fully indoctrinated into its increasingly incoherent mix of orthodoxies. By this I mean that my pro-choice friends endorsing Williamson’s sacking can’t see that his extremism is mirrored in their own…”
    • Bias against conservatives works like any other prejudice (Megan McArdle, Washington Post): “In a better world, this moment would help us understand each other, and come to some sort of reasonable agreement, rather than swearing mutually assured destruction. That’s because what conservatives are saying about media bias sounds a lot like what liberals are saying about race and gender — and vice versa.”
    • Congrats, Jeff Goldberg. You Just Martyred Kevin Williamson. (Jack Schaefer, Politico): “I’ve long admired Williamson’s writing, if not his ideas, for the way he’s internalized Michael Kinsley’s warning that if you’re afraid to go too far, you won’t go far enough. Williamson almost always goes too far, taking his arguments to thought frontiers where there are no roads, no mobile phone service and sometimes barely enough air to breathe.”
    • A Twitter thread by Elizabeth Bruenig giving another point of view: “So the market incentives inside the rightwing media world — the things you need to do to get ahead there — are opposite those outside of it. To put it another way: You can get famous triggering libs, but if you’re really good at it, well…it works?”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

  • Gracefully Graces Me (YouTube): I am grateful that our worship team doesn’t sing songs like this
  • Never Throw Anything Away (Pearls Before Swine): I am pig, to the tremendous consternation of my wife.
  • What is Skim Milk? The FDA versus Dairy Farmers (Alex Tabarrok, Marginal Revolution): “South Mountain Creamery sells skim milk, i.e. milk with the fat skimmed off. The FDA, however, wants skim milk to contain as many vitamins as whole milk so they define skim milk as including vitamin A and D. If farmers want to sell skim milk and call it ‘skim milk’ they have to add vitamins. To avoid prosecution the FDA is requiring South Mountain Creamery to label their skim milk, ‘imitation skim milk’! Yes. War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Real Skim Milk is Imitation Skim Milk.” This is actually true. I still found it amusing.

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll highlight an older link still worth your consideration. This week we have some thoughts about slavery and the Bible – Does The Bible Support Slavery? (a lecture given by the warden of Tyndale House at Cambridge University, the link is to the video with notes) and Does God Condone Slavery In The Bible? (Part One – Old Testament) and also Part Two – New Testament (longer pieces from Glenn Miller at Christian Thinktank). All three are quite helpful. (first shared in volume 76)

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).

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.