Tag: apologetically interesting

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 45

On Fri­days I share articles/resources I have found help­ful recent­ly in think­ing about broad­er cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

This week there are a few more links than nor­mal. Enjoy!

  1. New Evi­dence On When The Bible Was Writ­ten: Ancient Shop­ping Lists (Isabel Ker­sh­n­er, New York Times): “One of the long­stand­ing argu­ments for why the main body of bib­li­cal lit­er­a­ture was not writ­ten down in any­thing like its present form until after the destruc­tion and exile of 586 B.C. is that before then there was not enough lit­er­a­cy or enough scribes to sup­port such a huge under­tak­ing. But if the lit­er­a­cy rates in the Arad fortress were repeat­ed across the king­dom of Judah, which had about 100,000 peo­ple, there would have been hun­dreds of lit­er­ate peo­ple, the Tel Aviv research team sug­gests.” — also check out the AP/Guardian on this.
  2. Is Porn Immoral? That Doesn’t Mat­ter: It’s a Pub­lic Health Cri­sis (Gaile Dines, Wash­ing­ton Post): “After 40 years of peer-reviewed research, schol­ars can say with con­fi­dence that porn is an indus­tri­al prod­uct that shapes how we think about gen­der, sex­u­al­i­ty, rela­tion­ships, inti­ma­cy, sex­u­al vio­lence and gen­der equal­i­ty — for the worse…. just as the tobac­co indus­try argued for decades that there was no proof of a con­nec­tion between smok­ing and lung can­cer, so, too, has the porn indus­try, with the help of a well-oiled pub­lic rela­tions machine, denied the exis­tence of empir­i­cal research on the impact of its prod­ucts.”
  3. Face­book Employ­ees Asked Mark Zucker­berg If They Should Try To Stop A Don­ald Trump Pres­i­den­cy (Michael Nunez, Giz­mo­do): “Face­book has toyed with skew­ing news in the past. Dur­ing the 2008 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, Face­book secret­ly tam­pered with 1.9 mil­lion user’s news feeds. An aca­d­e­m­ic paper was pub­lished about the secret exper­i­ment, claim­ing that Face­book increased vot­er turnout by more than 340,000 peo­ple. In 2010, the com­pa­ny tam­pered with news feeds again. It con­duct­ed a 61-mil­lion-per­son exper­i­ment to see how Face­book could impact the real-world vot­ing behav­ior of mil­lions of peo­ple. In 2012, Face­book delib­er­ate­ly exper­i­ment­ed on its users’ emo­tions.  The com­pa­ny, again, secret­ly tam­pered with the news feeds of 700,000 peo­ple and con­clud­ed that Face­book can basi­cal­ly make you feel what­ev­er it wants you to.”
  4. I Was A Clos­et­ed Chris­t­ian At The Pen­ta­gon (Matthew Spence, Wash­ing­ton Post): “I feared how com­ing out as a prac­tic­ing Chris­t­ian would define me. I wor­ried that my boss­es, peers and sub­or­di­nates might asso­ciate me with Amer­i­can offi­cials who have spo­ken of U.S. mil­i­tary engage­ments in the Mid­dle East as ‘cru­sades’ or with the Islam­ic State’s dec­la­ra­tion of holy war. I feared that talk­ing about my faith would detract from the log­ic of my argu­ments. And, as a rel­a­tive­ly young per­son in a senior posi­tion, I need­ed every scrap of cred­i­bil­i­ty I could claim.”
  5. Why Jesus’ Skin Col­or Mat­ters (Chris­te­na Cleve­land, Chris­tian­i­ty Today):  “While Christ the Lord tran­scends skin col­or and racial divi­sions, white Jesus has real con­se­quences.”
  6. Hous­ton police offi­cer presents a few “dou­ble-edged sword” sce­nar­ios regard­ing body cam­eras (red­dit): unin­tend­ed con­se­quences are always dif­fi­cult to pre­dict.
  7. Was It Wrong To Hack and Leak the Pana­ma Papers? (Tyler Cowen, blog): sur­pris­ing­ly stim­u­lat­ing.
  8. Onward Chris­t­ian Sol­diers: In the Era of Trump-Style Pol­i­tics, Evan­gel­i­cal Vot­ers Are Not a Mono­lith (Julie Lyons, Hous­ton Press): this is a very insight­ful and data-rich arti­cle.
  9. The Ten­sions Threat­en­ing the Future of Reli­gious Free­dom Law (Kelsey Dal­las, Deseret News): this is a very good sum­ma­ry of the cur­rent state of reli­gious free­dom leg­is­la­tion.
  10. Chris­tian­i­ty and Korea (Dave Haz­zan, The Diplo­mat): “Evan­gel­i­cal zeal to send mis­sion­ar­ies to places most oth­ers would nev­er go – includ­ing Afghanistan, Iraq, Jor­dan, and Yemen – have caused headaches for the gov­ern­ment. In 2007, after ignor­ing the government’s advice, 27 Kore­an mis­sion­ar­ies to Afghanistan were kid­napped by the Tal­iban, and two were killed. In 2009, the Kore­an for­eign min­istry warned Kore­an Chris­tians to stop mis­sion­iz­ing in Arab coun­tries, fear­ing it was mak­ing Kore­ans ter­ror­ist targets.”9
  11. Kin­da Ran­dom

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 34

Here are some things I found inter­est­ing this week. See the bot­tom for con­text.

  1. On The Via­bil­i­ty of Con­spir­a­to­r­i­al Beliefs (David Robert Grimes, PLOS One): Oxford physi­cist Grimes came up with an equa­tion that shows how like­ly a con­spir­a­cy will be to suc­ceed under ide­al con­di­tions. Of par­tic­u­lar inter­est is the chart on the bot­tom of page 11, show­ing that a con­spir­a­cy with more than 502 peo­ple has a 95% like­li­hood of expo­sure after just 25 years. Read­ing that puts 1 Corinthi­ans 15:3–6 in a new light: “For what I received I passed on to you as of first impor­tance: that Christ died for our sins accord­ing to the Scrip­tures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day accord­ing to the Scrip­tures, and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hun­dred of the broth­ers and sis­ters at the same time, most of whom are still liv­ing, though some have fall­en asleep.” Please note that there are all kinds of assump­tions in the paper that are sub­ject to chal­lenge… but if one of your friends brings this study up you should men­tion this pas­sage to them. 🙂
  2. Cer­ti­tude And Seek­ing The Truth (Peter Wehn­er, Com­men­tary). Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus (the rec­om­men­da­tion was actu­al­ly for a blog post excerpt­ing this arti­cle, but I thought the whole thing was worth read­ing — it aligns nice­ly with my dis­claimer at the bot­tom).
  3. My Major, Myself: (Olga Khaz­an, The Atlantic). What does your major reveal (prob­a­bilis­ti­cal­ly) about your per­son­al­i­ty?
  4. Why Humans Find It Hard To Do Away With Reli­gion (John Gray, The New States­man): Gray is him­self an athe­ist. My favorite line: “The invet­er­ate human incli­na­tion to reli­gion is, in effect, the athe­ist prob­lem of evil.” This isn’t quite right but it is amus­ing.
  5. Peo­ple Can Be Con­vinced They Com­mit­ted A Non-Exis­tant Crime In Just Three Hours (Bec Crew, Sci­ence Alert). Dis­turb­ing. This is a sum­ma­ry of the find­ings of an aca­d­e­m­ic paper: Con­struct­ing Rich False Mem­o­ries of Com­mit­ting Crime (Shaw & Porter, Psy­cho­log­i­cal Sci­ence).
  6. How Reli­gion Is Shap­ing the 2016 Pres­i­den­tial Race (Pew Research). If pol­i­tics is your thing, this arti­cle will be inter­est­ing.
  7. Are Aca­d­e­mics Dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly Gay? (Colleen Fla­her­ty, Inside High­er Edu­ca­tion). The tl;dr ver­sion is yes.

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.

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). 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.

Past emails are archived at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 30

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. A Carved Stone Block Upends Assump­tions About Ancient Judaism (NY Times, Isabel Kir­sh­n­er): I find the title amus­ing (the find­ing lines up per­fect­ly with my assump­tions about Judaism before the destruc­tion of the tem­ple).
  2. Jesus’ Left­ward Bias (Pacif­ic Stan­dard, Tom Jacobs): warn­ing — this is not about what you think it prob­a­bly is. It is based on the study Did Bud­dha Turn The Oth­er Cheek Too? A Com­par­i­son of Pos­ing Bias­es Between Jesus and Bud­dha and weaves togeth­er art, self­ies, and the role of emo­tions in Chris­tian­i­ty. Real­ly.
  3. Shut­ting Down Con­ver­sa­tions About Rape at Har­vard Law (New York­er, Jean­nie Suk): a Har­vard Law prof com­ments on how cam­pus­es should han­dle rape accu­sa­tions, and points out that a rigid “believe the accuser” stance will result in great injus­tice against black men.
  4. Amer­i­can Chris­tians Could Take A Les­son From Angela Merkel (Reli­gion News Ser­vice, Guthrie Graves-Fitzsim­mons): I did not know Merkel (Ger­man Chan­cel­lor and Time Per­son of the Year) was pious. See the com­ments for clar­i­fi­ca­tion about what tribe of Chris­tian­i­ty she belongs to. As always, take claims about the faith of pub­lic fig­ures with a grain of salt, espe­cial­ly when they are from anoth­er cul­ture. I was also inter­est­ed by Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism Is A Sham, Says Angela Merkel (Wash­ing­ton Post, Rick Noack)
  5. Beyond Fight or Flight: $1 Mil­lion Reveals How Chris­tians Cope with Per­se­cu­tion in 30 Coun­tries (Chris­tian­i­ty Today, Sarah Zyl­stra): Fas­ci­nat­ing research on what Chris­tians actu­al­ly do when they face intense per­se­cu­tion. Relat­ed: Glob­al­ly, Reli­gious Per­se­cu­tion is Chris­t­ian Per­se­cu­tion (Crux, John Allen): I appre­ci­at­ed the selec­tion of sto­ries in this arti­cle. They avoid­ed the crazy, gory sto­ries that make you put this into a spe­cial place in your brain and chose much sim­pler anec­dotes that make you see what this is a like on a day-to-day basis in cer­tain parts of the world. See also, The Biggest Apol­o­gy For Chris­t­ian Per­se­cu­tion of Oth­er Chris­tians Ever. (Chris­tian­i­ty Today, Sarah Zyl­stra).
  6. Quick Links

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 29

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. C.S. Lewis Was A Secret Gov­ern­ment Agent (Chris­tian­i­ty Today, Har­ry Lee Poe): It’s not as excit­ing as the title sounds, but it’s still cool. C.S. Lewis did some work for MI6. That’s the same agency as James Bond.  JAMES BOND.
  2. Why I wor­ry exper­i­men­tal social sci­ence is head­ed in the wrong direc­tion (Chris Blattman, per­son­al blog). This is an excel­lent piece by a polit­i­cal sci­ence pro­fes­sor at Colum­bia.
  3. Utah Reduced Chron­ic Home­less­ness By 91 Per­cent. Here’s How. (NPR, Kel­ly McEv­ers). Props to the Mor­mons. It reminds me of an old piece by Mal­colm Glad­well: Mil­lion Dol­lar Mur­ray.
  4. Phil­an­thropy Should Be Con­tro­ver­sial (Bloomberg View, Justin Fox): Fas­ci­nat­ing through­out — the last two para­graphs were quite sur­pris­ing to me.
  5. John Ker­ry Should Rec­og­nize Chris­t­ian Geno­cide (USA Today, Kirsten Pow­ers): I’ve post­ed about this before and will like­ly keep doing so. The sit­u­a­tion is insane.
  6. Why Chris­tians Must Speak Out Against Don­ald Trump’s Mus­lim Remarks (Wash­ing­ton Post, Rus­sell Moore). Relat­ed: Is An Immi­gra­tion Ban on Mus­lims Uncon­sti­tu­tion­al? (Eric Pos­ner, a law prof at U Chica­go).  Moore has been on a tear late­ly, see also his What We Lose When We Prayer Shame Politi­cians After A Mass Shoot­ing (Wash­ing­ton Post, Rus­sell Moore). “The first response to a word of our fel­low cit­i­zens in per­il should be a human response of empa­thy. For reli­gious peo­ple, that means a call to pray for them, and to encour­age oth­ers of like mind to do so…. When that becomes just anoth­er cul­ture war bat­tle­field, we’ve lost more than a set of pol­i­cy pro­pos­als. We’ve lost the social cohe­sion we need to do any­thing.”
  7. How Oba­ma’s Gun-Con­trol Push Invert­ed the Pol­i­tics of the No-Fly List (The Atlantic, David Gra­ham): this is a depress­ing com­men­tary on the polar­iza­tion of Amer­i­can pol­i­tics. See also Eric Posner’s com­ments: The Repub­li­can-Demo­c­ra­t­ic Divide on Civ­il Lib­er­ties. Relat­ed — Par­ty­ism Now Trumps Racism (Bloomberg View, Cass Sun­stein) and Polit­i­cal Iden­ti­ty Is Now Fair Game For Hatred: How Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats Dis­crim­i­nate (Vox, Ezra Klein).
  8. Quick Links:

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 26

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

On this half-year mark, I give you the inter­est­ing things:

  1. Reli­gious Lib­er­ty and Human Dig­ni­ty: Tale Of Two Dec­la­ra­tions (Har­vard Jour­nal of Law and Pub­lic Pol­i­cy, Kevin Has­son). This arti­cle from 2003 argues that reli­gious free­dom is the fun­da­men­tal free­dom. It starts slow as it lays a foun­da­tion, but picks up about halfway through.
  2. While you’re on Thanks­giv­ing break, please reg­is­ter to vote if you have not already done so. I strong­ly sug­gest you reg­is­ter as a Per­ma­nent Vote-By-Mail Vot­er, which sim­ply means that you will receive a bal­lot in the mail before every elec­tion. It gives you plen­ty of time to research the can­di­dates and issues from the com­fort of your dorm room with your bal­lot in front of you. If you pre­fer to vote in anoth­er state then vis­it http://www.brennancenter.org/student-voting). If you’re a cit­i­zen of anoth­er coun­try, do what­ev­er you’re sup­posed to do there. 🙂
  3. Some glob­al per­spec­tive:
  4. More cam­pus activism links: Pres­i­dent Oba­ma weighs in (real­ly). See also A Cri­sis Our Uni­ver­si­ties Deserve (NY Times, Ross Douthat): this is a help­ful big-pic­ture overview of the col­lege scene. Also, Yale’s Activists Deserve Con­struc­tive Crit­i­cism (The Atlantic, Conor Frieder­s­dorf).
  5. Are Non-Reli­gious Chil­dren Real­ly More Altru­is­tic? (Robert Wood­ber­ry) — this is prob­a­bly the last thing I will post on this. I almost didn’t, but WOW what a smack­down. Wood­ber­ry is the author of that arti­cle I keep shar­ing about Chris­tian­i­ty and democ­ra­cy.
  6. Quick Links:

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 25

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

There’s a lot of heavy con­tent in this one. Buck­le your seat­belt. With­out fur­ther ado, I give you the inter­est­ing things:

  1. Alco­hol, Black­outs, and Cam­pus Sex­u­al Assault (Texas Month­ly, Sarah Hep­o­la): I think this is the most thought­ful sec­u­lar piece I’ve read on the issue. “Con­sent and alco­hol make tricky bed­fel­lows. The rea­son I liked get­ting drunk was because it altered my con­sent: it changed what I would say yes to. Not just in the bed­room but in every room and cor­ri­dor that led into the squint­ing light. Say yes to adven­ture, say yes to risk, say yes to karaoke and pool par­ties and argu­ments with men, say yes to a life with­out fear, even though such a life is nev­er pos­si­ble… We drink because it feels good. We drink because it makes us feel hap­py, safe, pow­er­ful. That it often makes us the oppo­site is one of alcohol’s das­tard­ly tricks.”
  2. Fatal Flaws In That Reli­gion And Gen­eros­i­ty Study (The Stream, George Yancey). Yancey is a soci­ol­o­gy prof. Relat­ed: Are Reli­gious Kids Real­ly Mean­er Than Their Coun­ter­parts? by a social psy­chol­o­gist.
  3. Now for a ton of links relat­ed to the racial inci­dents and respons­es at Yale and Miz­zou (which seem dif­fer­ent to me but which hap­pened in such close prox­im­i­ty that they are linked in the nation­al dia­log).
  4. In glob­al news: On The Brink: Chris­tian­i­ty Fac­ing Mid­dle East Purge With­in Decade, Group Says (Fox News). Sto­ries like this have led one law­mak­er to intro­duce a bill to Pri­or­i­tize Refugee Sta­tus For Chris­tians Flee­ing ISIS (The Hill). See also Islam Is A Reli­gion Of Vio­lence by Joel Miller, where­in he argues that the lack of Trini­tar­i­an doc­trine cor­rupts the Mus­lim con­cep­tion of God.
  5. Chris­t­ian Belief Cost This Man His Job: (Wall Street Jour­nal, Jason Riley): appar­ent­ly the fire chief of Atlanta was fired because of some­thing he said in a book he wrote. Note that this is an op-ed, not a news sto­ry.
  6. Hat­ing Queer­ness With­out Hat­ing The Queer (The Atlantic, Emma Green): basi­cal­ly an arti­cle-length inter­ac­tion with Albert Mohler’s book We Can­not Be Silent.
  7. Quick Links:

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 24

News News News 98/365In 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. I heard a mov­ing Radi­o­lab episode: Gray’s Dona­tion. If you’ve nev­er lis­tened to Radi­o­lab before, I high­ly rec­om­mend the episodes Col­ors and Oops. If you’re into pod­casts, check out a list of thought­ful Chris­t­ian pod­casts I com­piled a while back.
  2. ’A Tour of Burned Church­es’ Explores Race, Resilience, and Reli­gion in Amer­i­ca (Huff­in­g­ton Post, Christo­pher Math­ias): an inter­view with a pod­cast­er about a series he did on the burn­ing of black church­es in Amer­i­ca. I have not lis­tened to the series, but the inter­view was good.
  3. Data about Adults Who Do Not Believe In God (Pew Forum) — one of the charts makes me think of a fun­ny clip about athe­ism as white priv­i­lege [the whole thing is worth watch­ing, but you can jump to the sound bite at 5:45]. There is a good sum­ma­ry of some of the take­aways at GetRe­li­gion. On a relat­ed note, there is a study in Cur­rent Biol­o­gy: The Neg­a­tive Asso­ci­a­tion Between Reli­gious­ness and Children’s Altru­ism Across The World. The com­ments on red­dit are inter­est­ing (more inter­est­ing to me than the study itself).
  4. A some­what con­trar­i­an piece: Lib­er­als Are Los­ing The Cul­ture War (Mol­ly Ball, The Atlantic). A semi-response piece: This Isn’t A Cul­ture War, It’s A War On Cul­ture (The Fed­er­al­ist, David Harsanyi).
  5. File under sad: The State Depart­ment Turns Its Back on Syr­i­an Chris­tians and Oth­er Non-Mus­lim Refugees (Nation­al Review, Nina Shea)
  6. The sto­ry I allud­ed to in my ser­mon: How Prop 47 Helped One Man Keep His Job (KQED,  Sara Hos­sai­ni). This is an illus­tra­tion of what jus­ti­fi­ca­tion involves — a legal decree that exempts you from penal­ties the law would oth­er­wise apply (when I quote stuff in my ser­mon I try to remem­ber to share it here).
  7. Quick Links:

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 20

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. From the Glen-allud­ed-to-this-in-his-ser­mon depart­ment:
  2. From the cur­rent events depart­ment
  3. From the all-things-sex­u­al depart­ment:
  4. From the Stan­ford depart­ment: this Dai­ly op-ed caught my eye: Peti­tion To Stu­dent Activ­i­ties and Lead­er­ship to End Open Mem­ber­ship. There was a swift nuh-uh from the admin­is­tra­tion. The peti­tion itself is on change.org. For the record, Chi Alpha has no desire to exclude peo­ple from our min­istry. I do, how­ev­er, think that Stanford’s open mem­ber­ship pol­i­cy need­less­ly abridges stu­dents’ con­sti­tu­tion­al right to free­dom of asso­ci­a­tion. As a pri­vate insti­tu­tion, Stan­ford is allowed to do that… but it is unwise to do so.

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 14

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 athttp://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links

  1. From the big-bang-faith depart­ment: May­im Bia­lik: Hol­ly­wood is not friend­ly to peo­ple of faith (Sasha Bogursky, Fox News): Bia­lik, a devout Jew, is an actress on the Big Bang The­o­ry and in real life holds a Ph.D. in neu­ro­science. This inter­view caused such com­ment that she post­ed a fol­low-up on her blog: Where Faith Meets Sci­ence.

  2. From the his­tor­i­cal analy­sis depart­ment: Did Reli­gion Make The Civ­il War Worse? (Allen Guel­zo, The Atlantic): the author is a respect­ed pro­fes­sor with a sem­i­nary back­ground. I’m not sure what I think of his argu­ment, but I did find it inter­est­ing. The arti­cle made me think about Lincoln’s Sec­ond Inau­gur­al Address, which is always worth a re-read.

  3. From the hap­py news depart­ment: Chris­t­ian Mis­sions and the Spread of Democ­ra­cy (Greg Scan­dlen, The Fed­er­al­ist): This is a sum­ma­ry of some rather won­der­ful research Robert Wood­ber­ry pub­lished in The Amer­i­can Polit­i­cal Sci­ence Review back in 2012: The Mis­sion­ary Roots of Lib­er­al Democ­ra­cy. If it looks famil­iar it’s because I allude to it from time to time in my ser­mons and con­ver­sa­tions.

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 12

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, I share 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

  1. From the too-close-to-home depart­ment: The Cod­dling of The Amer­i­can Mind (Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt, The Atlantic): the the­sis of this essay is that a “cam­pus cul­ture devot­ed to polic­ing speech and pun­ish­ing speak­ers is like­ly to engen­der pat­terns of thought that are sur­pris­ing­ly sim­i­lar to those long iden­ti­fied by cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­a­pists as caus­es of depres­sion and anx­i­ety.” This is a long piece but is worth read­ing even if you sus­pect it will infu­ri­ate you. There is some insight­ful com­men­tary on Red­dit argu­ing that it’s not stu­dents who have changed but admin­is­tra­tors.
  2. From the race-and-reli­gion depart­ment: A Year After Fer­gu­son, Have White Chris­tians Learned Any­thing? (Rus­sell Moore, Wash­ing­ton Post)
  3. From the con­tem­po­rary events depart­ment:
  4. From the ISIS depart­ment:
  5. From the eat-your-wheaties depart­ment: Want ‘Sus­tained Hap­pi­ness’? Get Reli­gion, Study Sug­gests (Sarah Pul­liam Bai­ley, Wash­ing­ton Post): if you have the desire, check out the orig­i­nal study in the Amer­i­can Jour­nal of Epi­demi­ol­o­gy.

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.