Tag: africa

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 237

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. “My Gang Is Jesus” (Alex Cuadros, Harpers Mag­a­zine): “A year ago, I flew to Rio and fol­lowed Mar­tins around for a few weeks as he preached. I hoped to rec­on­cile two com­pet­ing nar­ra­tives of the evan­gel­i­cal church’s role in the fave­las. For the country’s poor, all but neglect­ed by the state, church­es serve not only as a source of spir­i­tu­al sal­va­tion but as a haven of last resort—a place to find com­mu­ni­ty, job tips, and coun­sel­ing, or sim­ply to gath­er and sing with­out fear of vio­lence. Yet sto­ries of crooked pas­tors abound in the new Brazil; in recent years, sev­er­al have been caught trans­port­ing weapons for the drug trade. While many gang mem­bers find in Jesus the courage to quit this life, oth­ers seem to have inter­nal­ized a skewed set of bib­li­cal lessons, even com­mit­ting acts of vio­lence in Jesus’ name.”
  2. Reli­gious Lib­er­ty: Not Just for Social Con­ser­v­a­tives (David French, The Dis­patch): “The beau­ty of civ­il lib­er­ties case law is that each law­ful exer­cise of lib­er­ty rein­forces anoth­er. So it is with this case. Pro­gres­sives will like­ly cheer that these four activists will escape pun­ish­ment for sav­ing immi­grant lives. And which cas­es helped them win? One of them was Hob­by Lob­by—an asser­tion of reli­gious free­dom by Chris­t­ian con­ser­v­a­tives against the Oba­ma administration’s con­tra­cep­tion man­date, a cause that many pro­gres­sives despised.”
  3. Lov­ing to Know (N.T. Wright, First Things): “The sci­en­tist may be fas­ci­nat­ed by the way a can­cer cell grows, but that fas­ci­na­tion will increase his deter­mi­na­tion to stop it in its tracks. The his­to­ri­an may be intrigued by the caus­es of the First World War, but she may well hope that her inves­ti­ga­tion of the com­plex tan­gle of moti­va­tions will help us spot future warn­ing signs. And the par­ent who enjoys watch­ing the child climb­ing a tree will, as a mat­ter of love, simul­ta­ne­ous­ly affirm the child’s free­dom and seek to mit­i­gate any clear dan­ger. Love is always on the look­out.” This arti­cle is a lit­tle uneven but very insight­ful at places.
  4. Edu­cat­ed Fools (Thomas Geoghe­gan, The New Repub­lic): “Mer­i­toc­ra­cy has its own deep state—with secrets unknown even to those of us who are part of it. And the worst thing is the way it can taunt the work­ing class with the ideals of the Enlight­en­ment, when it is we mer­i­to­crat­ic lib­er­als who have the great­est inter­est in lim­it­ing its spread. We think we’re act­ing in such good faith in push­ing for col­lege and even com­mu­ni­ty col­lege edu­ca­tion. But real sal­va­tion can be offered only to a few, on a retail, not a whole­sale, basis: Instead of rais­ing peo­ple up col­lec­tive­ly, we’re being care­ful to do it one diplo­ma at a time.
”
    • The author’s blind­ness to the con­tin­ued exis­tence of church­es stood out to me. “There is no foothold left in big cities, or any­place else where the glob­al win­ners live, for high school grad­u­ates to exer­cise even a tiny bit of pow­er. There’s no church to slot into as a dea­con…” (empha­sis added) Fact check: church­es are flour­ish­ing in big cities.
  5. Nige­ria is a killing field of defense­less Chris­tians (Reli­gion Unplugged): “The list of Niger­ian Chris­tians slaugh­tered, shot dead, hacked to death, stran­gled and tor­tured to death, grows by the day. From vil­lages in the arid North­ern Nige­ria to ham­lets in the lush Savan­nah South, wail­ing, mourn­ing, and curs­es pierce the air, while tears fall from tired eyes.”
    • Relat­ed: All Across Nige­ria, Chris­tians Marched Sun­day to Protest Per­se­cu­tion (Jayson Casper, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Ade­boye and his con­gre­ga­tion, one of the largest in the world, answered the call issued by the Chris­t­ian Asso­ci­a­tion of Nige­ria (CAN) for a three-day fast this past week­end, con­clud­ing in a prayer walk. Based on reports from its state chap­ters and local media, CAN esti­mates 5 mil­lion peo­ple marched in 28 of Nigeria’s 36 states on Sun­day.”
  6. The Ene­mies of Writ­ing (George Pack­er, The Atlantic): “Fear breeds self-cen­sor­ship, and self-cen­sor­ship is more insid­i­ous than the state-imposed kind, because it’s a sur­er way of killing the impulse to think, which requires an unfet­tered mind. A writer can still write while hid­ing from the thought police. But a writer who car­ries the thought police around in his head, who always feels com­pelled to ask: Can I say this? Do I have a right? Is my ter­mi­nol­o­gy cor­rect? Will my allies get angry? Will it help my ene­mies? Could it get me ratioed on Twit­ter?—that writer’s words will soon become life­less.”
  7. 11 Rea­sons Not to Become Famous (or “A Few Lessons Learned Since 2007”) (Tim Fer­riss, per­son­al blog): “In that short span of time, my month­ly blog audi­ence had explod­ed from a small group of friends (20–30?) to the cur­rent size of Prov­i­dence, Rhode Island (180,–200,000 peo­ple). Well, let’s dig into that. What do we know of Prov­i­dence? Here’s one snip­pet from Wikipedia, and bold­ing is mine: ‘Com­pared to the nation­al aver­age, Prov­i­dence has an aver­age rate of vio­lent crime and a high­er rate of prop­er­ty crime per 100,000 inhab­i­tants. In 2010, there were 15 mur­ders, down from 24 in 2009. In 2010, Prov­i­dence fared bet­ter regard­ing vio­lent crime than most of its peer cities. Spring­field, Mass­a­chu­setts, has approx­i­mate­ly 20,000 few­er res­i­dents than Prov­i­dence but report­ed 15 mur­ders in 2009, the same num­ber of homi­cides as Prov­i­dence but a slight­ly high­er rate per capi­ta.’ The point is this: you don’t need to do any­thing wrong to get death threats, rape threats, etc. You just need a big enough audi­ence. Think of your­self as the leader of a tribe or the may­or of a city. The aver­ages will dic­tate that you get a cer­tain num­ber of cra­zies, con artists, extor­tion­ists, pos­si­ble (or actu­al) mur­der­ers, and so on.”

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 223

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. Ethiopia’s Evan­gel­i­cal Prime Min­is­ter Wins Nobel Peace Prize (Kate Shell­nutt, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “The son of a Mus­lim father and Ortho­dox moth­er, Ahmed is a Protes­tant Pen­te­costal, or ‘Pen­tay,’ like many Ethiopi­an politi­cians. His faith is seen as a dri­ving fac­tor in his push for peace.”
  2. Alge­ria Forces Chris­tians Out of the Country’s Largest Church­es (Kate Shell­nutt, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “At least 15 Protes­tant churches—out of only about 46 in the country—have been shut­tered since Jan­u­ary 2018, accord­ing to the Chris­t­ian advo­ca­cy group Mid­dle East Con­cern. The coun­try, home to just 125,000 Chris­tians, few­er than 1 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion, ranks 22nd on Open Doors’ World Watch List. Chris­t­ian con­gre­ga­tions strug­gle to reg­is­ter with the gov­ern­ment agency tasked with reg­u­lat­ing non-Mus­lim wor­ship, per a 2006 law. It nev­er con­venes and has not issued a sin­gle approval.”
  3. The Per­ilous Pow­er of the Preacher’s Wife (Kate Bowler, New York TImes): “Ordained pro­gres­sive women secure a mea­sure of insti­tu­tion­al sway, but they lack the cul­tur­al cap­i­tal of their con­ser­v­a­tive coun­ter­parts. My research shows that con­ser­v­a­tive women gain con­sid­er­able influ­ence with­out insti­tu­tion­al pow­er, and lib­er­al women gain insti­tu­tion­al pow­er with­out con­sid­er­able influ­ence.” The author is a pro­fes­sor at Duke Divin­i­ty School and I have spot­light­ed arti­cles by her three times pre­vi­ous­ly, in vol­ume 37, vol­ume 116, and vol­ume 143.
  4. The delud­ed cult of social jus­tice (John Gray, UnHerd): “Sel­dom have the demands of jus­tice been so man­i­fest­ly fad­dish. Increas­ing­ly, jus­tice is seen as not an attribute of legal sys­tems but of entire soci­eties. At the same time it is believed to be owed to groups more than indi­vid­u­als. In these cir­cum­stances, every­thing depends on whether the group to which peo­ple are deemed to be belong is in vogue.” The author is a retired pro­fes­sor of polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy (Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics) and a well-known athe­ist. 
  5. How to Con­vince an Athe­ist that God Exists (John Ellis, per­son­al blog): “I didn’t become an athe­ist because that’s what I want­ed; I became an athe­ist because I believed it was the truth. So, stand­ing on that side­walk while try­ing not to think about my mom pray­ing for me, I cursed a God I didn’t even believe exist­ed.”
  6. Some thoughts about China’s gov­ern­ment:
    • What are the Options Part III: The Big­ger Pic­ture (Christo­pher Bald­ing, per­son­al blog): “The Unit­ed States must be pre­pared to lay­out a vision for the val­ue it wants to pro­mote, to make the biggest sac­ri­fices to real­ize those val­ues, share the ben­e­fits with aligned coun­tries, and deny ben­e­fits to adver­sary or non­aligned coun­tries.” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent. I linked to anoth­er of Balding’s posts about Chi­na back in vol­ume 162. 
    • Here’s a grow­ing list of com­pa­nies bow­ing to Chi­na cen­sor­ship pres­sure (Natasha Pinon, Mash­able): “Major glob­al com­pa­nies have been bow­ing to both direct and indi­rect pres­sure from Chi­na’s polit­i­cal lead­ers to con­trol how the eco­nom­ic pow­er­house of a coun­try is por­trayed for some time.”
    • Chi­na’s Vision of Vic­to­ry? (Tan­ner Greer, per­son­al blog): “So-called influ­ence oper­a­tions are aimed at the ene­mies China’s lead­ers fear most: the ones who pose an ide­o­log­i­cal, not a geopo­lit­i­cal, threat to the Com­mu­nist Par­ty. These are the hos­tile forces that threat­en the sta­bil­i­ty of the Com­mu­nist regime, and many of them—from Chris­tians and Uighurs flee­ing reli­gious per­se­cu­tion to Tai­wanese, Hong Kongers, and oth­ers of Chi­nese descent who dare imag­ine dif­fer­ent futures for their people—live in Amer­i­ca. As long as these groups can safe­ly assem­ble and freely speak with­in the Unit­ed States, Amer­i­ca will be seen as a threat to the Chi­nese par­ty-state. Sim­i­lar fears have already led Bei­jing to demand ide­o­log­i­cal feal­ty from its for­eign debtors. China’s lead­ers do not ask clients to change their sys­tem of gov­ern­ment but to squelch crit­i­cism of Chi­nese com­mu­nism inside their bor­ders.” Greer has appeared once before in vol­ume 217.
    • China’s Loom­ing Class Strug­gle (Joel Kotkin, Quil­lette): “Ini­tial­ly, China’s progress lift­ed up all class­es, rais­ing as many as 850 mil­lion peo­ple out of extreme pover­ty in 40 years, one of the great­est eco­nom­ic accom­plish­ments in his­to­ry. Yet the boom has been less suc­cess­ful in cre­at­ing a West­ern-style mass mid­dle class which ana­lyst Nan Chen esti­mates at rough­ly 12 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion. ‘Rather than repli­cat­ing the mid­dle-class growth of post-World War II Amer­i­ca,’ she observes, ‘Chi­na appears to have skipped that stage alto­geth­er and head­ed straight for a mod­el of extra­or­di­nary pro­duc­tiv­i­ty but dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly dis­trib­uted wealth.’” Kotkin is a pro­fes­sor of urban stud­ies at Chap­man Uni­ver­si­ty.
  7. Attor­ney Gen­er­al William P. Barr Deliv­ers Remarks to the Law School and the de Nico­la Cen­ter for Ethics and Cul­ture at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Notre Dame (William Barr, Depart­ment of Jus­tice): “From the Found­ing Era onward, there was strong con­sen­sus about the cen­tral­i­ty of reli­gious lib­er­ty in the Unit­ed States. The imper­a­tive of pro­tect­ing reli­gious free­dom was not just a nod in the direc­tion of piety. It reflects the Framers’ belief that reli­gion was indis­pens­able to sus­tain­ing our free sys­tem of gov­ern­ment.” (you can watch a video of the speech instead)
    • What Barr Got Right — And What He Might Add (Howard Husock, Nation­al Review): “Barr stands accused of endors­ing some sort of Chris­t­ian theoc­ra­cy. Barr, of course, hard­ly endorsed the idea the church–state divide should be erased in the Unit­ed States. Nor did he insist that only the reli­gious could live a healthy and pro­duc­tive life. Rather, he sin­gled out for crit­i­cism those who believe that, in effect, gov­ern­ment social pro­grams could replace the virtues instilled by reli­gion. It’s an impor­tant dis­tinc­tion.”
    • William Barr Is Neck-Deep in Extrem­ist Catholic Insti­tu­tions (Joan Walsh, The Nation): “In a histri­on­ic speech at Notre Dame Law School on Fri­day, he blamed ‘sec­u­lar­ists’ and ‘so-called pro­gres­sives’ for destroy­ing soci­ety and pre­cip­i­tat­ing the crises of fam­i­ly dis­so­lu­tion, crime, and drugs, while talk­ing of a war between reli­gious and non­re­li­gious Amer­i­cans.”
    • Bill Barr: Reli­gious Lib­er­ty War­rior (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “It’s a stan­dard defense of religion’s role in Amer­i­can life. It would have been unre­mark­able for any US Attor­ney Gen­er­al, Repub­li­can or Demo­c­rat, pri­or to 2008 to have giv­en. But now, many on the Left have become so hate­ful of reli­gion that Barr’s speech strikes the ears of peo­ple like Nobel Prize-win­ning econ­o­mist Paul Krug­man as the hand­i­work of a Cos­sack pro­pa­gan­dist…” I prob­a­bly include more arti­cles from Dreher than any­one else because he is so amaz­ing­ly pro­lif­ic and often writes about top­ics I am inter­est­ed in.

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 A (Not So) Sec­u­lar Saint (James K.A. Smith, Los Ange­les Review of Books): “Mill’s lega­cy was effec­tive­ly ‘edit­ed’ by his philo­soph­i­cal and polit­i­cal dis­ci­ples, excis­ing any hint of reli­gious life. One would nev­er know from the canon in our phi­los­o­phy depart­ments, for exam­ple, that Mill wrote an appre­cia­tive essay on ‘The­ism.’” First shared in vol­ume 190.

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 215

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 1619 Project (many authors, New York Times Mag­a­zine): “…[many believe] that 1776 is the year of our nation’s birth. What if, how­ev­er, we were to tell you that this fact, which is taught in our schools and unan­i­mous­ly cel­e­brat­ed every Fourth of July, is wrong, and that the country’s true birth date, the moment that its defin­ing con­tra­dic­tions first came into the world, was in late August of 1619? Though the exact date has been lost to his­to­ry (it has come to be observed on Aug. 20), that was when a ship arrived at Point Com­fort in the British colony of Vir­ginia, bear­ing a car­go of 20 to 30 enslaved Africans. Their arrival inau­gu­rat­ed a bar­bar­ic sys­tem of chat­tel slav­ery that would last for the next 250 years. This is some­times referred to as the country’s orig­i­nal sin, but it is more than that: It is the country’s very ori­gin.” The link is to a PDF of the entire issue.
    • A pos­i­tive lib­er­al reac­tion: A Brief His­to­ry of the His­to­ry Wars (Rebec­ca Onion, Slate): “For the sake of our col­lec­tive car­dio­vas­cu­lar health, we would do bet­ter to rec­og­nize these skir­mish­es over Amer­i­can history—in which con­ser­v­a­tives demand that a pos­i­tive vision of our nation’s past, stud­ded with suc­cess­es, inven­tions, and ‘great men,’ take pride of place in our pub­lic culture—as recur­rent episodes in a par­tic­u­lar decades-old front of the cul­ture wars. That way, we could stop wast­ing our good faith on old, dead-end con­ver­sa­tions.”
    • A neg­a­tive lib­er­al reac­tion: The New York Times sur­ren­ders to the left on race (Damon Link­er, The Week): “Through­out the issue of the NYTM, head­lines make, with just slight vari­a­tions, the same rhetor­i­cal move over and over again: ‘Here is some­thing unpleas­ant, unjust, or even down­right evil about life in the present-day Unit­ed States. Bet you did­n’t real­ize that slav­ery is ulti­mate­ly to blame.’ Lack of uni­ver­sal access to health care? High rates of sug­ar con­sump­tion? Cal­lous treat­ment of incar­cer­at­ed pris­on­ers? White record­ing artists ‘steal­ing’ black music? Harsh labor prac­tices? That’s right — all of it, and far more, fol­lows from slav­ery.”
    • A com­pli­cat­ed con­ser­v­a­tive reac­tion: How slav­ery doomed lim­it­ed gov­ern­ment in Amer­i­ca (Philip Klein, Wash­ing­ton Exam­in­er): “A num­ber of con­ser­v­a­tives react­ed to the project by brand­ing it as anti-Amer­i­can. But I don’t think that’s fair, at least based on the lead essay I read from Nikole Han­nah-Jones. In fact, her piece is quite the oppo­site. Sure, it chron­i­cles the bru­tal­i­ty of the insti­tu­tion of slav­ery and the cen­tu­ry of oppres­sion, insti­tu­tion­al­ized dis­crim­i­na­tion, and racist ter­ror­ism that fol­lowed. Yet the piece is ulti­mate­ly about how she rec­on­ciles that his­to­ry with her patri­o­tism and comes to under­stand her own father’s love of a coun­try that treat­ed him so poor­ly.”
    • A neg­a­tive con­ser­v­a­tive reac­tion: How To Dele­git­imize A Nation (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “But who we imag­ine our­selves to be today shapes who we will become tomor­row. If The 1619 Project were mere­ly about expand­ing our com­mon under­stand­ing of the Amer­i­can ori­gins, who could object? It arrives, though, in the midst of an epic cul­ture war over who we are, and who we are going to be.”
    • Relat­ed: Black Amer­i­can His­to­ry Should Give Evan­gel­i­cals a Sense of Per­spec­tive — and Hope (David French, Nation­al Review): “If men and women have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to speak and pos­sess the courage to tell the truth, they have hope that they can trans­form a nation. What was true for black Amer­i­cans (includ­ing the black Amer­i­can church) in the most dire of cir­cum­stances is still true for con­tem­po­rary Chris­tians in far less try­ing times”
    • In response: In Defense Of Evan­gel­i­cal Cul­tur­al Pes­simism (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “This, I think, is a dis­tinc­tion that makes a big dif­fer­ence re: French’s argu­ment. You can’t cease to be black; you can cease to be Chris­t­ian, or at least mean­ing­ful­ly Chris­t­ian.” This piece is way too long but makes some good points.
  2. Don’t Use These Free-Speech Argu­ments Ever Again (Ken White, The Atlantic): “If you’ve read op-eds about free speech in Amer­i­ca, or lis­tened to talk­ing heads on the news, you’ve almost cer­tain­ly encoun­tered emp­ty, mis­lead­ing, or sim­ply false tropes about the First Amend­ment. Those tired tropes are bar­ri­ers to seri­ous dis­cus­sions about free speech. Any use­ful dis­cus­sion of what the law should be must be informed by an accu­rate view of what the law is.” White is best known under his inter­net alias Pope­hat. Rec­om­mend­ed to me by a stu­dent.
  3. The Real Prob­lem at Yale Is Not Free Speech (Natalia Dashan, Pal­la­di­um): “The cam­pus ‘free speech’ debate is just a side-effect. So are debates about ‘diver­si­ty’ and ‘inclu­sion.’ The real prob­lems run much deep­er. The real prob­lems start with Mar­cus and me, and the masks we wear for each oth­er…. In a world of masks and façades, it is hard to con­vey the truth. And this is how I end­ed up offer­ing a sand­wich to a man with hun­dreds of mil­lions in a for­eign bank account.” I liked this one a lot.
    • Relat­ed: ‘Lux­u­ry beliefs’ are the lat­est sta­tus sym­bol for rich Amer­i­cans (Rob Hen­der­son, New York Post): “…as trendy clothes and oth­er prod­ucts become more acces­si­ble and afford­able, there is increas­ing­ly less sta­tus attached to lux­u­ry goods. The upper class­es have found a clever solu­tion to this prob­lem: lux­u­ry beliefs. These are ideas and opin­ions that con­fer sta­tus on the rich at very lit­tle cost, while tak­ing a toll on the low­er class.”
  4. How Life Became an End­less, Ter­ri­ble Com­pe­ti­tion (Daniel Markovits, The Atlantic): “Escap­ing the mer­i­toc­ra­cy trap will not be easy. Elites nat­u­ral­ly resist poli­cies that threat­en to under­mine their advan­tages. But it is sim­ply not pos­si­ble to get rich off your own human cap­i­tal with­out exploit­ing your­self and impov­er­ish­ing your inner life, and mer­i­to­crats who hope to have their cake and eat it too deceive them­selves.” The author is a Yale law pro­fes­sor. I found his diag­no­sis more per­sua­sive than his prog­no­sis.
  5. The Com­ing Migra­tion out of Sub-Saha­ran Africa (Christo­pher Cald­well, Nation­al Review): “The pop­u­la­tion pres­sures ema­nat­ing from the Mid­dle East in recent decades, already suf­fi­cient to dri­ve the Euro­pean polit­i­cal sys­tem into con­vul­sions, are going to pale beside those from sub-Saha­ran Africa in decades to come.” Fas­ci­nat­ing.
  6. Why Nice­ness Weak­ens Our Wit­ness (Sharon Hodde Miller, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “We exist in a world that swings between sweet­ness and out­rage, two behav­iors that seem to be at odds with one anoth­er. In real­i­ty, they are two sides of the same coin: a lack of spir­i­tu­al for­ma­tion. When our civil­i­ty isn’t root­ed in some­thing stur­dy and deep, when our good behav­ior isn’t spring­ing from the core of who we are but is instead mere­ly a mask we put on, it is only a mat­ter of time before the façade crum­bles away and our true state is revealed: an entire gen­er­a­tion of peo­ple who are real­ly good at look­ing good.” I agree with the sub­stance of this arti­cle, but the title both­ers me. 
  7. Fact-Check­ing Satire — Is Snopes Seri­ous? (Bill Zeis­er, Real­Clear­Pol­i­tics): “the Bee’s founder and minor­i­ty own­er, Adam Ford, took par­tic­u­lar excep­tion to the tone of the Snopes assess­ment. In a lengthy Twit­ter thread, he called Snopes’ han­dling of the piece on Thomas ‘par­tic­u­lar­ly egre­gious’ and ‘dis­turb­ing.’ He point­ed to a sub­ti­tle that cas­ti­gat­ed the Bee for ‘fan­ning the flames of con­tro­ver­sy’ and ‘mud­dy­ing the details of a news sto­ry’ to the point that it was unclear if the piece qual­i­fied as satire. Ford com­plained that through­out the Snopes sto­ry, sup­pos­ed­ly an ‘objec­tive fact check,’ the assess­ment ‘veered towards pro­nounc­ing a moral judg­ment,’ seem­ing­ly accus­ing the satir­i­cal site of will­ful decep­tion. It is cer­tain­ly under­stand­able how Ford could feel this way: Snopes referred to the Bee’s ‘ruse’ and offered that ‘the Baby­lon Bee has man­aged to fool read­ers with its brand of satire in the past.’”

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 the State Serves Both Sal­va­tion and Reli­gious Free­dom (Jonathan Lee­man, 9 Marks): “Two basic kinds of gov­ern­ments, then, show up in the Bible: those that shel­ter God’s peo­ple, and those that destroy them. Abim­elech shel­tered; Pharoah destroyed. The Assyr­i­ans destroyed; the Baby­lo­ni­ans and Per­sians, ulti­mate­ly, shel­tered. Pilate destroyed; Fes­tus shel­tered. And depend­ing on how you read Rev­e­la­tion, the his­to­ry of gov­ern­ment will cul­mi­nate in a beast­ly slaugh­ter of saint­ly blood. Romans 13 calls gov­ern­ments ser­vants; Psalm 2 calls them imposters. Most gov­ern­ments con­tain both. But some are bet­ter than oth­ers.” First shared in vol­ume 165. 

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 211

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. Amer­i­can jour­nal­ists have duty to report on tragedies in coun­tries like Sudan. (Isa­ha Sesay, USA Today): “If the suf­fer­ing of these girls and their par­ents is not enough to make us pay atten­tion to what has hap­pened in Chi­bok, there is some­thing else to con­sid­er: the threat to glob­al secu­ri­ty. The fate of these girls is in many ways a reflec­tion of the Niger­ian fed­er­al government’s long­stand­ing inabil­i­ty to main­tain peace and sta­bil­i­ty in the north­east of the coun­try. Amer­i­cans should see the dis­ap­pear­ance of the Chi­bok girls as a flare, illu­mi­nat­ing the exis­tence of an ‘ungoverned space’ that is fer­tile ground for a pow­er­ful ter­ror­ist group.”
  2. Face­book and Google track what porn you’re watch­ing, even when you’re in incog­ni­to (Iso­bel Ash­er Hamil­ton, Busi­ness Insid­er): “Researchers from Microsoft, Carnegie Mel­lon, and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia ana­lyzed 22,484 pornog­ra­phy sites using a site called webXray to iden­ti­fy track­ing tools feed­ing data back to third par­ties. ‘Our results indi­cate track­ing is endem­ic on pornog­ra­phy web­sites: 93% of pages leak user data to a third-par­ty,’ the study con­cludes.”
    • Num­bers 32:23 comes to mind: “be sure that your sin will find you out.”
    • An unex­pect­ed con­se­quence of porn: Stream­ing online pornog­ra­phy pro­duces as much CO2 as Bel­gium (Michael Le Page, New­Sci­en­tist): “The trans­mis­sion and view­ing of online videos gen­er­ates 300 mil­lion tonnes of car­bon diox­ide a year, or near­ly 1 per cent of glob­al emis­sions. On-demand video ser­vices such as Net­flix account for a third of this, with online porno­graph­ic videos gen­er­at­ing anoth­er third.”
  3. An Epi­dem­ic of Dis­be­lief (Bar­bara Bradley Hager­ty, The Atlantic): “His­tor­i­cal­ly, inves­ti­ga­tors had assumed that some­one who assaults a stranger by the rail­road tracks is noth­ing like the man who assaults his co-work­er or his girl­friend. But it turns out that the space between acquain­tance rape and stranger rape is not a wall, but a plaza. When Cleve­land inves­ti­ga­tors uploaded the DNA from the acquain­tance-rape kits, they were sur­prised by how often the results also matched DNA from unsolved stranger rapes. The task force iden­ti­fied dozens of mys­tery rapists this way.” Infu­ri­at­ing and high­ly rec­om­mend­ed. 
  4. Oil-patch evan­gel­i­cals: How Chris­tian­i­ty and crude fueled the rise of the Amer­i­can right (Dar­ren Dochuk, Wash­ing­ton Post): “In the face of the Rock­e­fellers’ pro­gres­sive way, Tex­an oil­ers cham­pi­oned a the­ol­o­gy of per­son­al encounter with scrip­ture and an active High­er Being. They her­ald­ed church auton­o­my and gospel teach­ings about pros­per­i­ty and end times, a mes­sage that antic­i­pat­ed the vio­lent dis­rup­tions of the oil age and the need to save souls and reap God’s — and the earth’s — rich­es before the world’s end.” The author is a his­to­ry pro­fes­sor at Notre Dame and describes an aspect of mod­ern evan­gel­i­cal his­to­ry I had not heard before.
    • An inter­view with the above author: Anoint­ed with Oil: Evan­gel­i­cals and the Petro­le­um Indus­try (Thomas Kidd, The Gospel Coali­tion): “Oil his­to­ri­ans may be sur­prised to hear it, but in some instances oil’s cor­po­rate struc­tures evolved direct­ly out of the the­o­log­i­cal com­mit­ments of its lead­ers.” The first piece felt a lit­tle hos­tile to me, where­as this one did not at all. 
  5. Stan­ford oppos­es bill that would let col­lege ath­letes in Cal­i­for­nia prof­it from endorse­ments (Ian Park, Stan­ford Dai­ly): “The NCAA earns more than $1 bil­lion in annu­al rev­enue from broad­cast­ing rights and cham­pi­onships. In return, stu­dent-ath­letes receive lit­tle to no com­pen­sa­tion, oth­er than schol­ar­ships. Accord­ing to a study by Drex­el Uni­ver­si­ty and the Nation­al Col­lege Play­ers Asso­ci­a­tion, schol­ar­ships aren’t enough for many stu­dent-ath­letes, as sur­veyed ath­letes had to pay col­leges schol­ar­ship short­falls of as much as $17,000.”
    • In oth­er and com­plete­ly unre­lat­ed local news: SF does not have the high­est rents in the Bay Area (Adam Brin­klow, Curbed): “Men­lo Park, home of Face­book, has the high­est rents in the region, aver­ag­ing $4,638 per month. Palo Alto also beat out SF with a star­tling $3,857 per month price tag.” 
    • Else­where in the arti­cle we learn that Red­wood City rents aver­age $1,956. I love Men­lo Park, but there’s no way it is twice as nice as Red­wood City. Sheesh!
  6. Trump vs. Dems: ‘Racist,’ ‘social­ist’ lines drawn for 2020 (Lisa Mas­caro, AP News): “With tweets and a vote, Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump and House Democ­rats estab­lished the sharp and emo­tion­al­ly raw con­tours of the 2020 elec­tion cam­paigns. In the process, they have cre­at­ed a fraught polit­i­cal frame: ‘racists’ vs. ‘social­ists.’”
    • What Pelosi Ver­sus the Squad Real­ly Means (David Brooks, New York Times): “Lib­er­al­ism arose out of the fact that polit­i­cal rev­o­lu­tions, while excit­ing at the out­set, usu­al­ly end up in bru­tal­i­ty, dic­ta­tor­ship and blood. Work­ing with­in the sys­tem is best. Peo­ple who came of age in the past few decades did not grow up in an atmos­phere of assumed lib­er­al­ism. They often grew up in an atmos­phere that cri­tiques it.”
    • ‘It Makes Us Want to Sup­port Him More’ (Peter Nicholas, The Atlantic): “A few con­ced­ed that Trump occa­sion­al­ly fires off an inap­pro­pri­ate tweet, but said his accom­plish­ments in office over­shad­ow any offense. If any­thing, they said, his lan­guage springs from an authen­tic­i­ty they find refresh­ing. None of the peo­ple I spoke with con­sid­ered his com­ments about the con­gress­women racist.”
    • Peo­ple Who Have Screamed ‘Racism’ For Decades Won­der Why No One Is Lis­ten­ing To Them About Trump (Baby­lon Bee): this would nor­mal­ly go down in the amus­ing sec­tion because the head­line is from a satire site, but this is one of those times where the Bee’s insight is rel­e­vant: “‘I mean, we com­pared John McCain to George Wal­lace,’ stat­ed Demo­c­rat Mag­gie Wilkins, ‘and I’m not sure who to com­pare Trump to in order to show he’s an even more wors­er racist.’ Activists are con­sid­er­ing com­ing up with oth­er words to express that Trump is a worse kind of racist. They con­sid­ered ‘white suprema­cist,’ but they’ve been using that a lot late­ly, so it would only mean to most peo­ple that Trump is as bad as the Bet­sy Ross flag. So they tried to invent a new term — dou­ble plus racist — to express how extra racist Trump is, but then remem­bered they already used that on Mitt Rom­ney.”
  7. 5 Rea­sons to Dis­en­tan­gle Sex­u­al­i­ty and Race (Rebec­ca McLaugh­lin, The Gospel Coali­tion): “Chris­t­ian sex­u­al ethics were as shock­ing to their orig­i­nal first-cen­tu­ry Gre­co-Roman con­text as they are today. If Chris­tians are to learn from his­to­ry, the les­son must be this: hold fast to Scripture’s rad­i­cal demands, whether the cul­tur­al tide is com­ing in or out. You won’t know which side of his­to­ry you’re on until the last day.” Dis­claimer: I know the author and have col­lab­o­rat­ed with her on events at Stan­ford.

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 When Chil­dren Say They’re Trans (Jesse Sin­gal, The Atlantic): “ …to deny the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a con­nec­tion between social influ­ences and gender-identity explo­ration among ado­les­cents would require ignor­ing a lot of what we know about the devel­op­ing teenage brain—which is more sus­cep­ti­ble to peer influ­ence, more impul­sive, and less adept at weigh­ing long-term out­comes and con­se­quences than ful­ly devel­oped adult brains—as well as indi­vid­ual sto­ries like Delta’s.” This is a long and bal­anced piece which has gar­nered out­rage in some online cir­cles. First shared in vol­ume 157.

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.