Tag: alcohol

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 146

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. Every­one Got The Pulse Mas­sacre Sto­ry Com­plete­ly Wrong (Melis­sa Jelt­sen, Huff­in­g­ton Post): “…in acquit­ting Salman, 31, on Fri­day, a jury also deliv­ered a ver­dict on the sto­ry we’d told our­selves about the killings: We’d got­ten it wrong. In the wake of the shoot­ing, the media and pub­lic focused on cer­tain details, many of which were lat­er deter­mined to be unfound­ed, and dis­count­ed oth­ers, like Mateen’s own expla­na­tion for his actions.” This is a must-read. It’s amaz­ing how wrong the cul­tur­al con­sen­sus is. 
  2. Altered Brain Devel­op­men­tal Tra­jec­to­ries in Ado­les­cents After Ini­ti­at­ing Drink­ing (Adolf Pfef­fer­baum, et al, Amer­i­can Jour­nal of Psy­chi­a­try): “Ini­ti­a­tion of drink­ing dur­ing ado­les­cence, with or with­out mar­i­jua­na co-use, dis­or­dered nor­mal brain growth tra­jec­to­ries.” Ado­les­cence is defined as up to 21 in this study, which means most col­lege stu­dents should be far more leery of alco­hol than they are. 
  3. “Engag­ing the Cul­ture” Doesn’t Work Because Chris­t­ian Beliefs Are a Mark of Low Sta­tus (Dean Abbot, Patheos): “Evan­gel­i­cals sought to engage the cul­ture by being rel­e­vant, by cre­at­ing works of art, by offer­ing good argu­ments for their posi­tions. None of these addressed the real prob­lem: that Chris­t­ian belief sim­ply isn’t cool, and that very few peo­ple want to low­er their social sta­tus by iden­ti­fy­ing pub­licly with it.”
    • See also his fol­low-up Tra­di­tion­al Chris­t­ian Belief and Low Social Sta­tus: Four Respons­es: “The cul­tur­al shift that dis­lodged tra­di­tion­al Chris­tian­i­ty from its place as the foun­da­tion of Amer­i­can cul­ture has pro­voked a num­ber of respons­es among believ­ers. Though these respons­es may seem infi­nite­ly var­ied on the sur­face, the bulk of them can actu­al­ly be cat­e­go­rized under four head­ings: accom­mo­da­tion, appease­ment, accep­tance and aggres­sion.”
    • And the sequel to that, The Low Social Sta­tus of Chris­t­ian Belief Is Part of a Larg­er Prob­lem: “In Christianity’s place, a new default reli­gion stands. In this sys­tem, the human prob­lem is lack of lib­er­ty, specif­i­cal­ly the lack of lib­er­ty for each indi­vid­ual to deter­mine his own val­ues, pur­pose and morals. The solu­tion is to lib­er­ate oth­ers by advo­cat­ing, even in an abstract and risk-free way, for ‘social jus­tice.’”
  4. Plumbers and Priests (Tony Wood­lief, per­son­al blog): “I don’t know how I got to the point where I’m inclined to dis­be­lieve any­thing an aca­d­e­m­ic claims. I’m not anti-intel­lec­tu­al. I read stuff. I even hold a PhD, and a Mas­ter of Fine Arts on top of that. I can show you math­e­mat­i­cal­ly why a sin­gle-mem­ber plu­ral­i­ty vot­ing sys­tem tends to yield two major par­ties, and for the chas­er I can hit you with an expli­ca­tion of the roots of lit­er­ary mod­ernism.… [and yet] the fact is I don’t have any con­fi­dence in those N.C. State find­ings.” The author has a Ph.D. in polit­i­cal sci­ence. I almost didn’t include this one, but I can’t stop think­ing about it.
  5. ‘I Know I Will Be Crit­i­cized’: The Lati­no Evan­gel­i­cal Who Advis­es Trump on Immi­gra­tion (Lau­rie Good­stein, New York Times):  “Mr. Rodriguez rep­re­sents a grow­ing seg­ment of the evan­gel­i­cal move­ment, and one that is often over­looked in all the atten­tion paid to the white evan­gel­i­cals serv­ing as Mr. Trump’s cheer­lead­ers. One in four evan­gel­i­cals in the Unit­ed States is now an immi­grant or the child of one. In the younger gen­er­a­tion of evan­gel­i­cals, there are now more His­pan­ic peo­ple than non-His­pan­ic whites.” Dis­clo­sure: I have met Sam­my but don’t know him. We’re in the same denom­i­na­tion.
  6. Some news from the glob­al church:
      • Mis­sion­ar­ies at bor­der spread Chris­tian­i­ty to North Korea (Hyung-jin Kim And Ger­ry Shih, AP News): “Among the mis­sion­ar­ies and pas­tors killed under mys­te­ri­ous cir­cum­stances in recent years is the Rev. Han Chung-rye­ol, a Chi­nese pas­tor of Kore­an descent who head­ed a front-line church in the Chi­nese bor­der town of Chang­bai before he was found dead of mul­ti­ple stab wounds and a punc­tured skull in April 2016, rais­ing sus­pi­cions that North Korea was involved.”
      • Chi­na Bans Bibles from Online Sell­ers Like Ama­zon (Mor­gan Lee, Chris­tian­i­ty Today):  “Two days before the Bibles were banned from online pur­chase, the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment released a doc­u­ment out­lin­ing how it intends to pro­mote ‘Chi­nese Chris­tian­i­ty’ over the next five years. Accord­ing to the doc­u­ment, one of the government’s key objec­tives is to rein­ter­pret and retrans­late the Bible in order to enhance ‘Chi­nese-style Chris­tian­i­ty and the­ol­o­gy.’”
      • Meet the First Female Evan­gel­i­cal Pres­i­den­tial Can­di­date of Colom­bia (Deann Alford, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “My pub­lic par­tic­i­pa­tion fol­lows a bib­li­cal mod­el. The Bible teach­es that we must be wit­ness­es of the Lord when­ev­er we are. In the last cen­tu­ry, US mis­sion­ar­ies taught that pol­i­tics was of the dev­il, and the church here was apa­thet­ic. For­tu­nate­ly, we’re wak­ing up. But we must wake up prop­er­ly, mind­ful to not con­fuse the church with a polit­i­cal par­ty.”
      • Con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian Singer Los­es Cos­ta Rica Pres­i­den­tial Race (Mor­gan Lee, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “The evan­gel­i­cal can­di­date had emerged from obscu­ri­ty to take a plu­ral­i­ty of the vote in the first round of the pres­i­den­tial race…. Despite his loss, Alvara­do Muñoz’s suc­cess is ‘a cul­tur­al game chang­er,’ says Dou­glass Sul­li­van-González, a Uni­ver­si­ty of Mis­sis­sip­pi Hon­ors Col­lege dean who has done reli­gious research in Cen­tral Amer­i­ca. ‘[Evangéli­cos] are now going to be seen a polit­i­cal chal­lenge thanks to the suc­cess of Fabri­cio Alvara­do, said Sul­li­van-González.”
  7. Two relat­ed arti­cles by the Chair­man of the US Com­mis­sion on Inter­na­tion­al Reli­gious Free­dom (he is also a pro­fes­sor of polit­i­cal sci­ence at Vil­lano­va).
    • Reli­gious Total­i­tar­i­an­ism, Sec­u­lar Total­i­tar­i­an­ism, and Oth­er Threats to Inter­na­tion­al Reli­gious Free­dom (Daniel Mark, The Pub­lic Dis­course): “Serv­ing on USCIRF, which mon­i­tors and reports on the worst reli­gious free­dom sit­u­a­tions in the world, I am acute­ly aware of how our chal­lenges at home pale in com­par­i­son to what goes on abroad. But the les­son from this is not what you think. It’s not that we should feel so good as to become com­pla­cent about our own present cir­cum­stances. On the con­trary, the painful inter­na­tion­al scene should be an ever-present reminder to us of how rare, how pre­cious, and how vul­ner­a­ble reli­gious free­dom is—and how vig­i­lant we must be in defend­ing it.” 
    • Domes­tic Chal­lenges to Reli­gious Lib­er­ty From Left and Right (Daniel Mark, The Pub­lic Dis­course): “One cen­tral con­se­quence of this denial of human nature is that it leads ineluctably to a denial of human rights. With­out a firm view of human nature, we can­not con­struct a coher­ent account of human rights. I am aware, of course, that the peo­ple I have in mind here claim all sorts of things in the name of human rights. But the new menu of human rights is selec­tive, sub­jec­tive, and, final­ly, inde­fen­si­ble.”  

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).

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 90

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 Sto­ry of Those Lit­tle Com­mu­nion Cups, What­ev­er Those Are Tech­ni­cal­ly Called (Luke Har­ring­ton, Christ and Pop Cul­ture): “If you’re won­der­ing, there’s actu­al­ly nev­er been a dis­ease out­break traced back to the com­mon com­mu­nion cup. Nor is it like­ly to occur, giv­en the par­tic­u­lars of the ceremony—silver and gold don’t con­sti­tute a hos­pitable envi­ron­ment for bac­te­ria, and nei­ther does an alco­holic bev­er­age. And if you come from a tra­di­tion, as I do, that believes Jesus is actu­al­ly present in the wine (and the bread), it seems per­ti­nent to point out that that guy is in the busi­ness of heal­ing dis­ease, not spread­ing it.”
  2. Chance the Rap­per, Chris­tian­i­ty, and Black­ness (Ernest Ezeu­go, New Amer­i­ca): “For dis­en­chant­ed Chris­t­ian millennials—specifically those of color—Chance’s pro­found faith is a reminder that there is a place where we belong, because it was made for us, labored over for us, bled over for us, no mat­ter what the rest of it looks like.”
  3. Black Church­es Mat­ter: Research Ties Atten­dance to Pos­i­tive Out­comes (David Brig­gs, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Sev­er­al new stud­ies build on past research to con­tin­ue reveal­ing how faith is asso­ci­at­ed with pos­i­tive out­comes for black Amer­i­cans amid the real­i­ties of dis­crim­i­na­tion and eco­nom­ic, polit­i­cal, and social inequal­i­ty.”
  4. Some Groups of Peo­ple Who May Not 100% Deserve Our Eter­nal Scorn (Scott Alexan­der, Slate Star Codex): this is a fun list includ­ing celebri­ties who speak out about pol­i­tics, peo­ple who com­pare events to Har­ry Pot­ter, and pun­dits who failed to pre­dict Trump.
  5. How Pro-Life Move­ment Was Born A Lib­er­al Cause (Charles Camosy, Crux):  “The con­tro­ver­sy over abor­tion orig­i­nat­ed as a con­flict between two dif­fer­ent groups of lib­er­als.  For that rea­son, it has not fol­lowed the polit­i­cal tra­jec­to­ry of oth­er social­ly con­ser­v­a­tive move­ments.” The title is not a typo, by the way.
  6. The true sto­ry of Army medic Desmond Doss, the soft-spo­ken Chris­t­ian super­hero (Ter­ry Mat­ting­ly, On Reli­gion): “Work­ing alone, Doss – who refused a weapon, because of his Sev­enth-day Adven­tist con­vic­tions – low­ered at least 75 injured men over a 400-foot cliff dur­ing the World War II Bat­tle of Oki­nawa. He col­lapsed sev­er­al times dur­ing that night, but kept going with these words on his lips: ‘Please Lord, help me get one more.’ A Japan­ese sol­dier lat­er tes­ti­fied that he aimed at Doss sev­er­al times, but his rifle kept jam­ming when he tried to fire.”
  7. Van Jones’ Excel­lent Metaphors About the Dan­gers of Ide­o­log­i­cal Safe­ty (Jonathan Haidt, Het­ero­dox Acad­e­my): the link has a com­pelling video of Van Jones talk­ing about how to deal with offen­sive words. There is a tran­script, but the ver­bal deliv­ery is pow­er­ful. It’s under five min­utes and well worth your time.

Things Glen Found Entertaining

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.

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 86

1 Chronicles 12:32 - they "understood the times"
1 Chron­i­cles 12:32 — they “under­stood the times”

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. Here are the two arti­cles I allud­ed to in this week’s mes­sage: Why The Best Thing This Gen­er­a­tion Can Do Is Put Down The Drink (Alex­ia LaFe­ta, Elite Dai­ly) and The Alco­hol Black­out (Sarah Hep­o­la, Texas Month­ly). The lat­ter is par­tic­u­lar­ly insight­ful. I have shared these both before (see vol­ume 18 and vol­ume 25).
  2. Who Is To Blame For The Great­est Myth In The His­to­ry Of Sci­ence And Reli­gion? These Two Guys (Justin Tay­lor, Gospel Coali­tion): “The so-called ‘war’ between faith and learn­ing, specif­i­cal­ly between ortho­dox Chris­t­ian the­ol­o­gy and sci­ence, was man­u­fac­tured…. It is a con­struct that was cre­at­ed for polem­i­cal pur­pos­es.”
  3. Home­less Find Rest In Faith-Based Shel­ters More Than Oth­ers (Adelle Banks, Reli­gion News Ser­vice): “In a pre­lim­i­nary study of 11 U.S. cities, 58 per­cent of emer­gency beds for the home­less were at faith-based orga­ni­za­tions. That per­cent­age ranged wide­ly across the cities, with 90 per­cent of emer­gency beds in Oma­ha, Neb., pro­vid­ed by faith groups and 33 per­cent in Port­land, Ore.”
  4. How To Protest Bet­ter (Leah Sargeant, First Things): excel­lent sub­ti­tle, “light hearts, not trash cans, on fire.” Relat­ed per­spec­tive from the oppo­site side of the ide­o­log­i­cal aisle: And Now It’s Time To Do The Real Work (Fred­erik deBoer). Also worth not­ing, Anar­chists, NOT Cal stu­dents, respon­si­ble for vio­lence in UC Berke­ley protests.
  5. The biggest news since last Friday’s email is Trump’s immi­gra­tion action. The two pieces I saw shared most by my thought­ful friends on social media are Malev­o­lence Tem­pered by Incom­pe­tence: Trump’s Hor­ri­fy­ing Exec­u­tive Order on Refugees and Visas (Ben­jamin Wittes, Law­fare) and Trump’s Exec­u­tive Order on Refugees, Sep­a­rat­ing Fact from Hys­te­ria (David French, Nation­al Review). Two insight­ful fol­low-ups are What Con­ser­v­a­tives Get Wrong About Trump’s Immi­gra­tion Order (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic) and Tal­ly­ing Up Trump (Peter Lei­thart, First Things). George Wood, the leader of my denom­i­na­tion, penned a Response To The Exec­u­tive Order on Immi­gra­tion.
  6. An Evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian Defends Trump’s First Week In Office (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “I’m will­ing to give him the ben­e­fit of the doubt thus far because I, and many Amer­i­cans, have been unfor­tu­nate­ly trained by the press in recent years not to take their side auto­mat­i­cal­ly any­more. They have tremen­dous­ly under­mined them­selves.” It’s inter­est­ing to read Fake News and Evan­gel­i­cals (Alex Wil­gus, Com­mon Vision) in con­junc­tion with this.
  7. Neil Gor­such belongs to a notably lib­er­al church — and would be the first Protes­tant on the Court in years (Julie Zauzmer, Wash­ing­ton Post): He is Epis­co­pal, yet many Epis­co­pals (espe­cial­ly cler­gy) are opposed to his nom­i­na­tion, where­as evan­gel­i­cals and Catholics are most­ly delight­ed. 

Things Glen Found Amusing/Entertaining

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.

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 76

1 Chronicles 12:32 - they "understood the times"
1 Chron­i­cles 12:32 — they “under­stood the times”

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. 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.
  2. Struc­tur­al Racism (John Piper, Desir­ing God): “if your mind is Bible-sat­u­rat­ed, you would con­sid­er it absolute­ly aston­ish­ing if struc­tur­al racism were not per­va­sive wher­ev­er sin is per­va­sive. In oth­er words, Bible-shaped peo­ple should expect to see struc­tur­al racism almost every­where in a fall­en world.”
  3. How Methodists Invent­ed Your Kid’s Grape Juice Sug­ar High (Luke Har­ring­ton, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): why many church­es use grape juice for com­mu­nion.
  4. More post-elec­tion thoughts:
    1. Why Can’t I Mourn? (Kyle James Howard, per­son­al blog): “For many, it appears that it is unac­cept­able for me to grieve racism and abor­tion equal­ly. That for many, a Chris­t­ian only has the capac­i­ty to grieve one or the oth­er but not both.”
    2. No, the Major­i­ty of Amer­i­can Evan­gel­i­cals Did Not Vote for Trump (Joe Carter, Gospel Coali­tion): you may recall that I sug­gest­ed some­thing sim­i­lar in last week’s email — here’s a wide-rang­ing expla­na­tion. There is no doubt more to be said on this.
    3. You Are Still Cry­ing Wolf (Scott Alexan­der, Slat­eStar­Codex): “I real­ize that all of this is going to make me sound like a crazy per­son and put me com­plete­ly at odds with every respectable thinker in the media, but luck­i­ly, being a crazy per­son at odds with every respectable thinker in the media has been a pret­ty good tick­et to pre­dic­tive accu­ra­cy late­ly, so what­ev­er.” This is a long and detailed argu­ment that Trump is not racist (or at least not more racist than lots of peo­ple). I was sur­prised at how well it held my inter­est. See also Ross Douthat’s insight­ful twit­ter cri­tique of the arti­cle. For a con­trary point of view (sort of — it’s less about Trump and more about what Trump sig­ni­fies), see Racism Prob­a­bly Is Get­ting Worse. (I Hope I’m Wrong.) (Tyler Cowen, Bloomberg View). If you read one, read all three.
    4. Stunned By Trump, The New York Times Finds Time For Some Soul-Search­ing (Michael Cieply, Dead­spin): “By and large, tal­ent­ed reporters scram­bled to match sto­ries with what inter­nal­ly was often called ‘the nar­ra­tive.’ We were occa­sion­al­ly asked to map a nar­ra­tive for our var­i­ous beats a year in advance, square the plan with edi­tors, then gen­er­ate sto­ries that fit the pre-des­ig­nat­ed line.” This piece is impor­tant and depress­ing.
    5. The coali­tion for diver­si­ty whose diver­si­ty did diver­si­ty just win? (Tyler Cowen, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): do not let the con­fus­ing title put you off. Cowen argues that the Repub­li­cans are in some sens­es sig­nif­i­cant­ly more diverse than the Democ­rats.
    6. #Nev­erTrump And Pres­i­dent Trump (Jake Meador, Mere Ortho­doxy): “The church’s great­est the­olo­gians have long said that a prop­er­ly Chris­t­ian com­mon­wealth will be con­cerned not with the greater good—the most good for the most people—or with the pri­vate good of Chris­tians alone, but with the com­mon good.”
    7. How cov­er­ing the Red­skins name debate pre­pared me for Don­ald Trump’s win (Dan Stein­berg, Washing­ton Post): “They told me that media Twit­ter wasn’t the real world, that it cre­at­ed a pho­ny idea of con­sen­sus for a stance that wasn’t actu­al­ly ascen­dant. And they argued that a polit­i­cal­ly cor­rect onslaught from big-city elites would only strength­en their con­vic­tions.”
    8. Don­ald Trump can absolute­ly ban Mus­lims from enter­ing the US, with­out Con­gress (Zack Beauchamp, Vox): “I [asked] sev­er­al experts on US immi­gra­tion law. Their answer was unan­i­mous: Trump would be able to imple­ment his ban. In fact, he would be able to do it eas­i­ly.” I didn’t know the pres­i­dent had this pow­er. Sur­pris­ing giv­en our sys­tem of checks and bal­ances.
    9. The Cul­ture That Cre­at­ed Don­ald Trump Was Lib­er­al Not Con­ser­v­a­tive (Jim Lewis, The Inter­cept): “Lib­er­als were sure the dev­il would come slouch­ing out of Alaba­ma or Texas, beat­ing a bible and shout­ing about sodomy and sin. They didn’t expect him to be a busi­ness­man who lives on Fifth Avenue and 57th Street.” This is some­thing I saw allud­ed to in the pri­maries but haven’t seen men­tioned in a while. 

Things Glen Found Amusing

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.

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 64

1 Chronicles 12:32 - they "understood the times"
1 Chron­i­cles 12:32 — they “under­stood the times”

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Stu­dents seem upset about Stanford’s new alco­hol pol­i­cy. Check out this Har­vard prof’s NY Times op-ed from 1989 argu­ing Actu­al­ly, Pro­hi­bi­tion Was a Suc­cess. For the record, I think the new pol­i­cy is a step in the right direc­tion. I stand by my ear­li­er com­ments and am also amused at how sim­i­lar the argu­ments I hear today are to those I heard back in 2003.
  2. Kay­la Mueller in Cap­tiv­i­ty: Courage, Self­less­ness as She Defend­ed Chris­t­ian Faith to ISIS Exe­cu­tion­er ‘Jiha­di John’ (James Gor­don Meek, Megan Christie, Bri­an Epstein, Bri­an Ross, ABC News): a pow­er­ful and dis­turb­ing sto­ry. Doc­tors With­out Bor­ders comes off bad­ly.
  3. How USA Today unrav­eled Ryan Lochte’s Rio dra­ma (Kris­ten Hare, Poyn­ter): An insight­ful win­dow into jour­nal­ism and why we should trust news cov­er­age a lit­tle less than we think. Lochte still does­n’t come out look­ing awe­some, but nei­ther does he look like the out­ra­geous vil­lain many assumed (and seemed delight­ed to see him as). Proverbs 18:17 wins again.
  4. Sex on cam­pus isn’t what you think: what 101 stu­dent jour­nals taught me (Lisa Wade, The Guardian): “Hookup cul­ture pre­vails, even though it serves only a minor­i­ty of stu­dents, because cul­tures don’t reflect what is, but a spe­cif­ic group’s vision of what should be….  [it] isn’t what the major­i­ty of stu­dents want, it’s the priv­i­leg­ing of the sex­u­al lifestyle most strong­ly endorsed by those with the most pow­er on cam­pus, the same peo­ple we see priv­i­leged in every oth­er part of Amer­i­can life.”
  5. On David Gushee’s Dis­hon­esty (Jake Meador, Mere Ortho­doxy): this is a fas­ci­nat­ing essay with sur­pris­ing insights about the role of gram­mar in polit­i­cal argu­men­ta­tion. Real­ly.
  6. Evan­gel­i­cals For Trump: In Pow­er or Per­se­cut­ed (S.D. Kel­ly, Christ and Pop Cul­ture): “Not only do most evan­gel­i­cals not believe they are the cen­ter of pow­er, they con­sid­er them­selves to be one wed­ding cake away from jail time.” 
  7. Giv­en the per­pet­u­al Bay Area hous­ing cri­sis, I found these arti­cles stim­u­lat­ing: Lais­sez-Faire in Tokyo Land Use and the fol­low-up The Japan­ese Zon­ing Sys­tem (both by George Mason Uni­ver­si­ty econ pro­fes­sor Alex Tabar­rok): “Japan’s zon­ing laws are more ratio­nal, more effi­cient and fair­er than those used in the Unit­ed States.”

Things Glen Found Amusing

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.

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 53

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues, with a pref­er­ence for con­tent from aca­d­e­mics and influ­en­tial voic­es. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

  1. Why I Believe Again (A.N. Wil­son, The New States­man): this piece is about sev­en years old, but I don’t remem­ber see­ing it before. “one thing that final­ly put the tin hat on any aspi­ra­tions to be an unbe­liev­er was writ­ing a book about the Wag­n­er fam­i­ly and Nazi Ger­many, and real­is­ing how utter­ly inco­her­ent were Hitler’s neo-Dar­win­ian rav­ings, and how potent was the oppo­si­tion, much of it from Chris­tians; paid for, not with clear intel­lec­tu­al vic­to­ry, but in blood.”
  2. The Evan­gel­i­cal Roots of Amer­i­can Eco­nom­ics (Bradley Bate­man, The Atlantic): “One unlike­ly exam­ple of the Protes­tant influ­ence on Amer­i­can cul­ture is the for­ma­tion of eco­nom­ics as an aca­d­e­m­ic dis­ci­pline in the Unit­ed States.” Fas­ci­nat­ing and high­ly rec­om­mend­ed.
  3. Evan­gel­i­cals like me can’t vote for Trump — or Clin­ton. Here’s what we can do instead. (Alan Noble, Vox): This is a long and thought­ful piece. “unless a third-par­ty can­di­date with broad appeal emerges, evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians would be bet­ter served by abstain­ing from [the pres­i­den­tial] vote and shift­ing their ener­gy toward elect­ing peo­ple to Con­gress and local and state gov­ern­ments who have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to restrain whichev­er can­di­date is elect­ed as need­ed.“  
  4. Here Is The Pow­er­ful Let­ter The Stan­ford Vic­tim Read Aloud To Her Attack­er (Katie J.M. Bak­er, Buz­zfeed): many of you have seen this. If not, it’s worth read­ing. Pow­er­ful and insight­ful.
    • In rela­tion to this case, an anony­mous alum­na con­tact­ed me recent­ly to say: “I’m frus­trat­ed [that peo­ple] are not mak­ing an effort or rec­og­niz­ing the role that alco­hol and the cul­ture sur­round­ing the whole sit­u­a­tion had. What they’re call­ing for is greater pun­ish­ment on col­lege kids who com­mit sex­u­al assault but I think that kin­da miss­es a huge point. They refuse to rec­og­nize the sin in being ok with col­lege drink­ing and the whole frat par­ty thing.” I replied with a sug­ges­tion that she read some­thing I shared way back in issue 25 titled Alco­hol, Black­outs, and Cam­pus Sex­u­al Assault, which I still believe is the most thought­ful sec­u­lar analy­sis I’ve read of the issue.
    • Many peo­ple feel that to crit­i­cize the par­ty scene is to excul­pate rapists. That seems odd to me, because we rec­og­nize that when some­one dri­ves drunk they accept moral respon­si­bil­i­ty for any acci­dents they cause. Their ine­bri­a­tion is not a defense — it is an admis­sion of cul­pa­bil­i­ty. And we also rec­og­nize the prin­ci­ple does not flow in both direc­tions — if you stab me while I am drunk, the fact that I am drunk does not pro­vide you with any excuse. The same prin­ci­ple holds here: Brock Turn­er’s drunk­en­ness is no defense and the vic­tim’s drunk­en­ness is no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion. Fur­ther­more, our con­vic­tions about drunk dri­ving hint at a broad­er prin­ci­ple: drunk­en­ness is a sin because over time it pre­dictably leads to deplorable out­comes. This means that Brock Turn­er is to blame — and so are the parts of cam­pus cul­ture which encour­age drunk­en­ness. The par­ty scene is no excuse for Brock’s wicked­ness, but that does not make the par­ty scene a vir­tu­ous one. 
    • In fact, the par­ty scene on our cam­pus abounds with sin even when it fails to make nation­al news. The worst sin that night (that we know of) was the sex­u­al assault com­mit­ted by Brock Turn­er. But it was far from the only sin. There were numer­ous con­sen­su­al non­mar­i­tal sex­u­al encoun­ters that night — each of them also sin­ful (although less so). There were many peo­ple drunk that night — they too sinned, every one of them. There was arro­gant pos­tur­ing, envy, lust, anger, lying, betray­al, gos­sip, slan­der and a whole host of sins exac­er­bat­ed by alco­hol and the social sce­nario. Our alum­na’s instincts are cor­rect — the sys­tem itself makes sin like­ly and it should not be embraced by Chris­tians.
    • In case you stum­bled over the “worst sin/less sin­ful” judg­ments I made, you should read All Sins Are Not Equal (J.I. Pack­er, Chris­tian­i­ty Today).
    • Thank you for your patience. I rarely add lengthy edi­to­r­i­al com­ments, but my words ran away with me today.
  5. My Life as a ‘Sex Object’ (Jes­si­ca Valen­ti, The Guardian): this is pow­er­ful, slight­ly vul­gar piece. I am always intrigued by authors who embrace the sex­u­al rev­o­lu­tion and are dis­mayed by some of its man­i­fes­ta­tions.
  6. Amus­ing:

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 you have a non-Stan­ford friend who might be inter­est­ed in these emails, they can sign up at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/subscribe, and if you want to view the archives they are at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

[minor edit for clar­i­ty short­ly after post­ing]

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 32

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.

To that end, on Fri­days I’ve been shar­ing articles/resources I have found help­ful recent­ly in think­ing about broad­er cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues (be sure to see the dis­claimer at the bot­tom). May these give you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar. Past emails are archived at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links

With­out fur­ther ado, I give you the inter­est­ing things:

  1. This Is What Makes Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats So Dif­fer­ent (Vox, Ezra Klein): I was skep­ti­cal of this piece, but it’s insight­ful.
  2. Recog­ni­tion: How A Trav­es­ty Led to Crim­i­nal-Jus­tice Inno­va­tion In Texas  (New York­er, Paul Kix): this is a pow­er­ful arti­cle with a heart­break­ing sto­ry at its cen­ter.
  3. North Korea Gets Com­pe­ti­tion: The Top 50 Coun­tries Where It’s Now Hard­est To Be A Chris­t­ian (Chris­tian­i­ty Today, Sarah Zyl­stra). Sober­ing and sad­ly unsur­pris­ing. “2014 was the world’s worst year for the per­se­cu­tion of Chris­tians in the mod­ern era. Until 2015 sur­passed it.”
  4. Col­lege Par­ty Cul­ture and Sex­u­al Assault (NBER, Lin­do, Siminksi, Swensen): “We find sig­nif­i­cant and robust evi­dence that foot­ball game days increase reports of rape vic­tim­iza­tion among 17–24 year old women by 28 per­cent. Home games increase reports by 41 per­cent on the day of the game and away games increase reports by 15 per­cent.” They pro­pose par­ties asso­ci­at­ed with the game as a causal mech­a­nism.
  5. Inside Grad­u­ate Admis­sions (Inside High­er Ed, Scott Jaschick): if you plan to apply to grad school, read this. There is one reveal­ing anec­dote about how an admis­sions com­mit­tee treat­ed an appli­ca­tion from a Chris­t­ian col­lege stu­dent. My take­away: the pro­fes­sors tried to be fair but found it hard to do, and their stat­ed con­cerns were most­ly about the qual­i­ty of the insti­tu­tion rather than the faith of the appli­cant. Trou­bling nonethe­less.
  6. Short­er Pieces:

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.

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 18

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.

To that end, on Fri­days I’ve been shar­ing articles/resources I have found help­ful recent­ly in think­ing about broad­er cul­tur­al and soci­etal issues (be sure to see the dis­claimer at the bot­tom). May these give you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar. Past emails are archived at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links

With­out fur­ther ado, I give you the inter­est­ing things:

  1. Down­ward­ly Mobile For Jesus (Lawrence Lana­han, Al Jazeera): this is a real­ly well-writ­ten and engag­ing sto­ry that weaves togeth­er faith, race, pover­ty and jus­tice.
  2. If you are in the social sci­ences, read this jour­nal arti­cle from Behav­ioral and Brain Sci­ences: Polit­i­cal Diver­si­ty Will Improve Social Psy­cho­log­i­cal Sci­ence (sum­ma­ry by one of the authors here). There is an arti­cle with relat­ed insights at The Amer­i­can Soci­ol­o­gist: How Ide­ol­o­gy Has Hin­dered Soci­o­log­i­cal Insight. There are many implied reli­gious issues at play besides the polit­i­cal ones which are the focus of these two pieces.
  3. Sad truths: The Decline and Fall Of Amer­i­can Polit­i­cal Debate (John David­son, The Fed­er­al­ist). David­son says “our frag­men­ta­tion and insu­lar­i­ty has reached a dan­ger­ous tip­ping point: we no longer agree on what’s real.” Read espe­cial­ly the sec­tion labeled “Take Two Recent Exam­ples.”
  4. A sur­pris­ingly fas­ci­nat­ing arti­cle: More Tit­il­lat­ed Than Thou: How the Amish Con­quered the Evan­gel­i­cal Romance Mar­ket (Ann Newu­mann, The Baf­fler). Real­ly.
  5. An unex­pect­ed per­spec­tive: Why The Best Thing This Gen­er­a­tion Can Do Is Put Down The Drink (Alex­ia LaFe­ta, Elite Dai­ly): the com­ments sec­tion, unsur­pris­ing­ly, is filled with vit­ri­olic objec­tions. Some of the lan­guage in the arti­cle, inci­den­tal­ly, is less than refined and gen­teel.
  6. This is Timi’s mom: Funke Opeke: Nige­ri­a’s Cyber Rev­o­lu­tion­ary (Femke van Zei­jl, Al Jazeera). I hope her name is pro­nounced the way I am pro­nounc­ing it in my head, because that would be awe­some. Also, Timi’s mom is a boss.

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.