Tag: Assemblies of God

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 516: God in history & confused physicists

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. Why Did God Favor France? (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “[Joan of Arc’s] sto­ry is one of the most exten­sive­ly doc­u­ment­ed cas­es of a mirac­u­lous-seem­ing inter­ven­tion into sec­u­lar his­to­ry, cal­cu­lat­ed to baf­fle, fas­ci­nate and even charm like almost noth­ing else in West­ern his­to­ry. Every­thing in the sto­ry sounds like a pious leg­end con­fab­u­lat­ed cen­turies after the fact. A peas­ant girl with zero polit­i­cal or mil­i­tary expe­ri­ence shows up at a roy­al court, announces a divine mis­sion and makes a series of prophe­cies about what God wants for France that she con­sis­tent­ly ful­fills — a ful­fill­ment that requires not mere­ly some for­tu­nate hap­pen­stance, but her tak­ing com­mand of a medieval army and win­ning an imme­di­ate series of vic­to­ries over an intim­i­dat­ing adver­sary with Alexan­drine or Napoleon­ic skill.”
    • Worth a pon­der.
  2. Physi­cists dis­agree wild­ly on what quan­tum mechan­ics says about real­i­ty, Nature sur­vey shows (Eliz­a­beth Gib­ney, Nature): “Nature asked researchers what they thought was the best inter­pre­ta­tion of quan­tum phe­nom­e­na and inter­ac­tions — that is, their favourite of the var­i­ous attempts sci­en­tists have made to relate the math­e­mat­ics of the the­o­ry to the real world. The largest chunk of respons­es, 36%, favoured the Copen­hagen inter­pre­ta­tion — a prac­ti­cal and often-taught approach. But the sur­vey also showed that sev­er­al, more rad­i­cal, view­points have a healthy fol­low­ing. Asked about their con­fi­dence in their answer, only 24% of respon­dents thought their favoured inter­pre­ta­tion was cor­rect; oth­ers con­sid­ered it mere­ly ade­quate or a use­ful tool in some cir­cum­stances. What’s more, some sci­en­tists who seemed to be in the same camp didn’t give the same answers to fol­low-up ques­tions, sug­gest­ing incon­sis­tent or dis­parate under­stand­ings of the inter­pre­ta­tion they chose.”
  3. How a Chris­t­ian col­lege min­istry glo­ri­fied a sex offend­er and enabled him to keep abus­ing stu­dents (Mike Hix­en­baugh, NBC News): “The pas­tors who shep­herd­ed hun­dreds of high school and col­lege stu­dents to Savala’s home were part of Chi Alpha, a Chris­t­ian min­istry that evan­ge­lizes on uni­ver­si­ty cam­pus­es. Stu­dents seek out Chi Alpha to con­nect with God and each oth­er, through small Bible stud­ies and rol­lick­ing wor­ship ser­vices — and, for more than 30 years, through Savala. Gen­er­a­tions of Chi Alpha lead­ers hailed him as a spir­i­tu­al savant who could answer life’s deep­est mys­ter­ies.”
    • Heart­break­ing. I’ve post­ed about this scan­dal in Texas before (in oth­er words, this is the same scan­dal from a few years ago with addi­tion­al report­ing). Now that it is being cov­ered on NBC the high­er-qual­i­ty jour­nal­ism is uncov­er­ing even more trag­ic details.
  4. Put Down the Sho­far (Brad East, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “You’re like­ly famil­iar with sho­fars blown in pub­lic, Seder meals for Passover, and cir­cum­ci­sion for baby boys. But as com­mon and well-intend­ed as these may be, I want to explain why I told my stu­dent that, yes, his house church was wrong—or at least, mis­guid­ed.”
    • A the­o­log­i­cal­ly rich arti­cle.
  5. The Sim­ple Truth About the War in Gaza (Cole­man Hugh­es, The Free Press): “Amid these devel­op­ments, it may seem car­toon­ish, even obscene, to say that in the war between Israel and Hamas, Israel is the good guy. But it’s the truth. And it’s a truth that’s incred­i­bly easy to for­get amid the day-to-day cov­er­age of this ter­ri­ble war.… Israel’s goal is to live in peace with its neigh­bors. Through­out its 77-year his­to­ry, it has agreed to half a dozen peace deals with the Pales­tini­ans. It vol­un­tar­i­ly left Gaza in 2005. If it had any inter­est in wip­ing Gaza off the map, it could have done so any time in the last sev­er­al decades.”
  6. How the Elite Changed Its Mind on Chris­tian­i­ty (Emma Camp, Rea­son): “As the decline in reli­gious atten­dance has slowed, the past few years have also seen a clear rise in the sta­tus of reli­gion. It’s becom­ing more and more social­ly accept­able to be reli­gious in elite intel­lec­tu­al spaces—something that could have a real impact on how reli­gion is per­ceived by every­one else.… Reli­gion became cool again among the edu­cat­ed elite once it gained an asso­ci­a­tion with good aes­thet­ics, high art, and sacred music—not Bush-era Repub­li­can soft theoc­ra­cy.  Today, one can belong to the ideas-mak­ing class—an aspir­ing pub­lic intel­lec­tu­al or artist—and still be reli­gious, so long as one steers clear of evan­gel­i­cal kitsch. Whether or not a real reli­gious revival is under­way in Amer­i­can pub­lic life, one thing is clear: The cool kids aren’t the smug, stri­dent athe­ists anymore—they’re the Chris­tians.”
    • Fas­ci­nat­ing, although it reminds me I need to write that essay I’ve been mulling over defend­ing low-church Protes­tantism as the best and most authen­tic expres­sion of Chris­tian­i­ty.
  7. Influ­encer Mis­sion­ar­ies (Lau­ren Jack­son, New York Times): “Church­es are turn­ing to the inter­net to reach new audi­ences. Evan­gel­i­cal pas­tors are bring­ing their famous­ly high-pro­duc­tion ser­mons into ver­ti­cal video. The Church of Jesus Christ of Lat­ter-day Saints is pre­sent­ing a diverse, younger image to its 1.4 mil­lion Insta­gram fol­low­ers.”
    • A short arti­cle, not super-infor­ma­tive. Most­ly inter­est­ing because of the trend reach­ing the point that the Times is tak­ing note of it. Also because of some of the small vignettes: “Per­haps that explains the celebri­ty of Father Rafael Capo, 57, a body­build­ing priest in Mia­mi who fus­es fit­ness with faith for his 112,000 Insta­gram fol­low­ers. He often posts pho­tos of him­self lift­ing weights and con­se­crat­ing com­mu­nion.”

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 510: gambling, persecution, and free will

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. Online Sports Gam­bling and Col­lege Stu­dents: A Chris­t­ian Response to a Grow­ing Indus­try (Kim­ber­ley Reeve and Jared Pincin, Chris­t­ian High­er Edu­ca­tion): “Because the Bible does not offer direct guid­ance on the top­ic of gam­bling, Chris­t­ian denom­i­na­tions take dif­fer­ing posi­tions.… The com­mon thread across these tra­di­tions is that there is a point where gam­bling becomes moral­ly imper­mis­si­ble.”
    • Relat­ed: How to Rein in Run­away Sports Bet­ting (Lyman Stone, Sub­stack): “A good reg­u­la­to­ry response is sim­ple: ban all win lim­its. Let win­ners win. Bet­tors don’t like lim­its on win­nings. They are obvi­ous­ly unfair. They are also clear­ly a key source of prof­its for com­pa­nies.… Sec­ond­ly, there should be lim­its on how much an indi­vid­ual can lose on a web­site. Once an indi­vid­ual has lost a cer­tain amount of mon­ey, bet­ting web­sites should be required to shut down their account. The harms of gam­bling are dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly caused by big-losers, and gam­bling com­pa­nies can iden­ti­fy those big losers and pro­tect them. They don’t do this because they make mon­ey when losers lose.… So no lim­its for win­ning, lim­its for los­ing is a pret­ty rea­son­able reg­u­la­to­ry approach. Win­ners don’t threat­en seri­ous social harms. Losers do. Uncap­ping win­ners and pro­tect­ing losers will also dra­mat­i­cal­ly wors­en the bal­ance sheet of gam­bling sites, forc­ing them to charge high­er spreads on bets, which will deter many gam­blers.”
  2. As Chris­tians Are Slaugh­tered, the World Looks Away (Madeleine Kearns, The Free Press): “The world should have seen it com­ing. Since 2009, Islamists in north­ern Nige­ria have destroyed over 18,000 church­es and, through­out the coun­try, have mur­dered over 50,000 Chris­tians. A fur­ther 5 mil­lion Chris­tians have been dis­placed with­in the coun­try, accord­ing to a 2023 Vat­i­can report.… If West­ern media reports on the per­se­cu­tion at all, it typ­i­cal­ly char­ac­ter­izes it as land dis­putes between neigh­bor­ing eth­nic groups. For instance, after the atroc­i­ties at Yel­wa­ta, the BBC report­ed: ‘The author­i­ties have not blamed any group, but it is safe to assume that there are lots of vic­tims on both sides, as any attack usu­al­ly leads to revenge and then a cycle of vio­lence.’ But where is the evi­dence that Chris­tians are killing Fulani Mus­lims by the hun­dreds, shout­ing ‘Christ is king’ as they hack peo­ple of oth­er faiths to death?”
  3. Pen­te­costals Keep Grow­ing: What the Assem­blies of God’s 2024 Report Shows About the Spir­it-Filled Move­ment (Ed Stet­zer and Todd Kor­pi, Church­Lead­ers): “The AG in the Unit­ed States is a part of the World Assem­blies of God Fel­low­ship (WAGF), which togeth­er makes up one of the largest Protes­tant bod­ies on the plan­et with over 85 mil­lion adher­ents. The WAGF is now larg­er than the Angli­can com­mu­nion, which is often cit­ed as the third-largest Chris­t­ian tra­di­tion. Instead, the WAGF is itself now the third-largest Chris­t­ian denom­i­na­tion­al tra­di­tion.”
    • Ed Stet­zer is a professor/dean at the Tal­bot School of The­ol­o­gy, and Todd Kor­pi is a pro­fes­sor at Fuller The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary. The Assem­blies of God is, of course, the spon­sor of Chi Alpha and the group with which I am ordained.
  4. When Women Are Rad­i­cal­ized (Claire Lehmann, The Dis­patch): “There is grow­ing aware­ness of how young men can be drawn into far-right extrem­ism or misog­y­nis­tic sub­cul­tures, but we in the media—and soci­ety more broadly—pay less atten­tion to how young women become drawn into polit­i­cal sub­cul­tures. Indeed, the terms ‘rad­i­cal­iza­tion’ and ‘women’ are rarely—if ever—seen togeth­er. This over­sight has con­se­quences, because radicalization—defined as rigid com­mit­ment to an ide­o­log­i­cal cause to the point where it dis­torts one’s world­view, harms men­tal health, under­mines rela­tion­ships, or dis­rupts functioning—is not a male-only phe­nom­e­non.”
  5. Solipsism»Determinism (Bryan Caplan, Sub­stack): “A large major­i­ty of my smartest friends insist that deter­min­ism is true. Physics text­books say so, basic log­ic (‘Every effect must have a cause’) says so, and they say so. Who am I to dis­agree? My answer begins with a tru­ism: The foun­da­tion of sci­ence is repeat­ed, care­ful obser­va­tion. If sci­en­tists are allowed to dis­miss piles of repeat­ed, care­ful obser­va­tions as ‘illu­sion,’ there is no sci­ence. Next step: I have a life­time of repeat­ed, care­ful obser­va­tion of my own mind. Via intro­spec­tion, I direct­ly observe myself mak­ing gen­uine choic­es in every wak­ing moment. There­fore: Any ‘sci­en­tif­ic’ the­o­ry that con­tra­dicts these obser­va­tions is, at best, incom­plete.”
  6. God and Woman at Cor­nell (Mary Eber­stadt, First Things): “Why does sec­u­lar­ism flour­ish on col­lege cam­pus­es? Ear­li­er today, some of us were talk­ing about the philoso­pher René Girard, who had an idea that sounds sim­ple, but isn’t: We fig­ure out what we desire by see­ing what oth­er peo­ple desire. That’s part of what hap­pens with stu­dents on cam­pus, and it’s why even those raised in a reli­gious home tend to become more secular—because they don’t see a lot of peo­ple like them­selves in a place like Cor­nell. The idea dawns, even sub­con­scious­ly, ‘Well, maybe there’s a rea­son why they all think dif­fer­ent­ly from me. After all, we’re in a very sophis­ti­cat­ed place with high­ly edu­cat­ed peo­ple, so maybe I should be like that.’ That’s the rel­a­tive­ly benign force that dri­ves peo­ple who were raised reli­gious toward sec­u­lar­ism. There is anoth­er force, more malev­o­lent: intim­i­da­tion, the chill­ing effect of being sur­round­ed by, or per­ceiv­ing one­self to be sur­round­ed by, peo­ple who think your belief sys­tem is ridicu­lous. There is also the fact that col­lege is famous­ly the place where a lot of young peo­ple break free from the con­strain­ing Judeo-Chris­t­ian rule­book about sex and mar­riage. These real­i­ties togeth­er con­spire to dri­ve col­lege kids away from faith.”
  7. Audi­ences Prove that Experts Are Dead Wrong (Ted Gioia, Sub­stack): “The rebirth of long­form runs counter to every­thing media experts are ped­dling. They are all try­ing to game the algo­rithm. But they’re mak­ing a huge mis­take. They believe that long­form is doomed. They see that dig­i­tal plat­forms reward ultra-short videos on an end­less scroll. And they under­stand that this works because the inter­face is extreme­ly addic­tive. So short must defeat long in the dig­i­tal mar­ket­place. That’s obvi­ous to them. But all the evi­dence now proves that this isn’t hap­pen­ing.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

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.

Volume 491: a philosopher converts, a Christian cyborg, and a comedian riffs on pastors who scam

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. How a Skep­ti­cal Philoso­pher Becomes a Chris­t­ian (Lar­ry Sanger, per­son­al blog): “When I real­ly sought to under­stand it, I found the Bible far more inter­est­ing and—to my shock and consternation—coherent than I was expect­ing. I looked up answers to all my crit­i­cal ques­tions, think­ing that per­haps oth­ers had not thought of issues I saw. I was wrong. Not only had they thought of all the issues, and more that I had not thought of, they had well-worked-out posi­tions about them. I did not believe their answers, which some­times struck me as con­trived or unlike­ly. But often, they were shock­ing­ly plau­si­ble. The Bible could sus­tain inter­ro­ga­tion; who knew? It slow­ly dawned on me that I was acquaint­ing myself with the two-thou­sand-year-old tra­di­tion of the­ol­o­gy. I found myself pos­i­tive­ly ashamed to real­ize that, despite hav­ing a Ph.D. in phi­los­o­phy, I had nev­er real­ly under­stood what the­ol­o­gy even is. The­ol­o­gy is, I found, an attempt to sys­tem­atize, har­mo­nize, expli­cate, and to a cer­tain extent jus­ti­fy the many, many ideas con­tained in the Bible. It is what ratio­nal peo­ple do when they try to come to grips with the Bible in all its rich­ness. The notion that the Bible might actu­al­ly be able to inter­est­ing­ly and plau­si­bly sus­tain such treat­ment is a propo­si­tion that had nev­er entered my head.”
    • Sanger, of course, is the co-founder of Wikipedia. He has a Ph.D. in phi­los­o­phy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Sanger
    • Vague­ly relat­ed with a won­der­ful title is this review of Douthat’s new book Believe: The Erot­ic Case for God (Audrey Poll­now, Com­pact Mag­a­zine): “If you are being chased by a tiger down a cor­ri­dor, and reach a T, one side of which you believe leads to more tigers and the oth­er leads to safe­ty (but you don’t know which is which), you had bet­ter guess and run. The alter­na­tive is to stay still and get eat­en by the first tiger. I’m not sug­gest­ing that we should choose a love, faith, career or any­thing else on the basis of fran­tic anx­i­ety, just that the promise of ‘safe­ty’ offered by dis­be­lief, by stay­ing aloof, by refus­ing to act, is illu­so­ry. Psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly com­fort­ing, per­haps, but not a real form of safe­ty in any sense.”
  2. Meet the Chris­t­ian Cyborg Who Named His Brain Chip Eve (Maaike E. Harm­sen inter­view­ing Noland Arbaugh, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “In this field, I don’t expect to see a lot of reli­gious people—in the tech field, the med­ical side of things. But then we start­ed meet­ing peo­ple face-to-face, and they met with me and my mom. My mom is very open with every­one about her faith, so it very quick­ly became known who we were. And I was blown away by the num­ber of peo­ple who shared our beliefs. I think about every­one that I met on the med­ical side; the vast major­i­ty of them were Chris­tians. We very quick­ly con­nect­ed with all of them on a very per­son­al lev­el. And it became more of an open dis­cus­sion. When I went in to do my surgery, the last thing I did before they put me under anes­the­sia was ask if I could pray over the room. And so I prayed over all the sur­geons and the nurs­es and every­one that was a part of this. My prayer was put on the hos­pi­tal inter­com, and even Elon was lis­ten­ing in by phone.”
    • Extreme­ly inter­est­ing. Unlocked.
  3. The Assem­blies of God: A Denom­i­na­tion That May Be Grow­ing (Ryan Burge, Sub­stack): “I want­ed to end this by point­ing to a rea­son that I believe that the AG has record­ed long term growth while most oth­er larg­er denom­i­na­tions have been going the oth­er direc­tion — the AG has con­tin­ued to move in the direc­tion of racial diver­si­fi­ca­tion. In 2001, the Assem­blies of God’s records indi­cate that 71% of their rank and file mem­ber­ship was white and anoth­er 16% were His­pan­ic. African Amer­i­cans were just 6% of mem­bers and Asians were only 3%. For ref­er­ence, the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion is cur­rent­ly 71% white, 3% His­pan­ic, and 20% Black. How­ev­er, the pews of the aver­age AG church today look a whole lot dif­fer­ent. Now, only 55% of those mem­bers are white, down 16 points in just 22 years. Mean­while, the Black share has near­ly dou­bled to 11% and the His­pan­ic por­tion has risen to 23%. That’s pret­ty impres­sive giv­en the inabil­i­ty of many oth­er denom­i­na­tions to become less white to reflect the chang­ing demo­graph­ics of the coun­try.”
    • Being an Assem­blies of God min­is­ter I liked this arti­cle a lot, and I even com­ment­ed on it to help explain some of the stats. Click through for details.
  4. Are Athe­ists Right? Is “Free Will” An Unnec­es­sary, Unim­por­tant Illu­sion? (J. Wern­er Wal­lace, blog): “In 2008, researchers from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Min­neso­ta and the Uni­ver­si­ty of British Colum­bia con­duct­ed exper­i­ments high­light­ing the rela­tion­ship between a belief in Deter­min­ism and immoral behav­ior. They found stu­dents who were exposed to deter­min­is­tic lit­er­a­ture pri­or to tak­ing a test were more like­ly to cheat on the test than stu­dents who were not exposed to lit­er­a­ture advo­cat­ing Deter­min­ism. The researchers con­clud­ed those who deny free will are more inclined to believe their efforts to act moral­ly are futile and are, there­fore, less like­ly to do so. In addi­tion, a study con­duct­ed by researchers from Flori­da State Uni­ver­si­ty and Ken­tucky Uni­ver­si­ty found par­tic­i­pants who were exposed to deter­min­is­tic lit­er­a­ture were more like­ly to act aggres­sive­ly and less like­ly to be help­ful toward oth­ers. Even deter­min­ist Michael Gaz­zani­ga con­cedes: ‘It seems that not only do we believe we con­trol our actions, but it is good for every­one to believe it.’ The exis­tence of free will is a com­mon char­ac­ter­is­tic of our expe­ri­ence, and when we deny we have this sort of free agency, there are detri­men­tal con­se­quences.”
  5. Don’t waste a per­fect­ly good decade (Suzanne Venker, Sub­stack): “The mes­sage these sons and daugh­ters receive is sim­ple: Do not pri­or­i­tize love. Get your career in order, and do not make sac­ri­fices for any­one. Life (i.e. mar­riage and fam­i­ly) will fall into place lat­er. And if you have to go into debt to achieve this goal, have at it. You can eas­i­ly pay it off lat­er.  This is spec­tac­u­lar­ly bad advice.”
    • Shared with me by a friend of the min­istry (I think in response to the arti­cle I shared last week).
    • Relat­ed in a nonob­vi­ous way: Why So Blue: Lib­er­al Women are Less Hap­py, More Lone­ly. But Why? (Grant Bai­ley & Brad Wilcox, Insti­tute for Fam­i­ly Stud­ies): “Tak­en togeth­er, our analy­sis leads us to three con­clu­sions. First, the ide­o­log­i­cal divide in emo­tion­al well-being between young lib­er­al and con­ser­v­a­tive women endures. Sec­ond, this ide­o­log­i­cal divide does not appear to be just a con­se­quence of neg­a­tive think­ing; it also seems to flow from the fact that lib­er­al young women are less like­ly to be inte­grat­ed into core Amer­i­can institutions—specifically mar­riage and religion—that lend mean­ing, direc­tion, and a sense of sol­i­dar­i­ty to women’s lives. Third, low­er lev­els of mar­riage and church­go­ing among lib­er­al women may also have a hand in their ele­vat­ed reports of lone­li­ness, which, in turn, dimin­ish­es their odds of being hap­py.”
  6. The para­dox of Trump’s first weeks (Matt Ygle­sias, Sub­stack): “I think there’s a sense in some quar­ters that Trump has accom­plished more in three weeks than Biden did in three years, but this is just not true. I do think it’s true that Biden achieved less durable pol­i­cy change than you’d expect rel­a­tive to the sums of mon­ey appro­pri­at­ed due to Democ­rats’ over-reliance on tem­po­rary pro­grams. But they still made sub­stan­tive changes in absolute terms on the areas they pri­or­i­tized, includ­ing pre­scrip­tion drug afford­abil­i­ty for senior cit­i­zens and clean ener­gy deploy­ment. Much of that seems like­ly to be kept in place by the new GOP tri­fec­ta.  Repub­li­cans, mean­while, are mak­ing very lit­tle for­ward progress on their leg­isla­tive agen­da.”
    • A fair analy­sis of the last few weeks. Pay less atten­tion to peo­ple claim­ing tri­umph or pro­claim­ing doom — pol­i­tics is com­pli­cat­ed and few moments have as much long-term sig­nif­i­cance as they seem to while they are dom­i­nat­ing the head­lines.
    • Relat­ed: The Strat­e­gy Behind Trump’s Defi­ance of the Law (Jean­nie Suk Gersen, The New York­er): “…what is play­ing out through a veneer of chaos is a delib­er­ate and orga­nized tac­ti­cal pro­gram to under­take actions that pro­voke a raft of law­suits, some of which could become good vehi­cles for estab­lish­ing a con­sti­tu­tion­al vision in which the Pres­i­dent has sole author­i­ty over the entire exec­u­tive branch. That vision is not new: it’s known as the uni­tary exec­u­tive the­o­ry and has a long pedi­gree, dat­ing back to the found­ing. Based on where the Supreme Court has been head­ing in its exec­u­tive-pow­er cas­es for some time—even before Trump appoint­ed three Justices—it is like­ly that the Court will, to some extent, affirm that vision. Trump has a pret­ty good track record of judi­cial vin­di­ca­tion after engag­ing in con­duct alleged to be unlaw­ful.”
    • Non-alarmist takes like this are much more per­sua­sive than the freak­outs I see online. As Gersen notes lat­er, “The first Trump Admin­is­tra­tion did not flout judi­cial orders, though some peo­ple wor­ried about it.”
  7. Mar­ket­ing Jesus: The Promise and Per­il of ‘He Gets Us’ (Samuel D. James, The Gospel Coali­tion): “There’s a dan­ger here of con­text col­lapse, where an idea that’s true and cor­rect in one par­tic­u­lar con­text los­es its truth­ful­ness by being broad­cast in a way that dis­re­gards that con­text. For exam­ple, ‘Jesus gets us’ is a mes­sage best used for peo­ple who have already accept­ed their need for a Sav­ior and desire assur­ance that noth­ing they’ve done can cause Jesus to cast them out (John 6:37). In terms of a mass audi­ence whose cul­tur­al reli­gion is most like­ly expres­sive indi­vid­u­al­ism, how­ev­er, ‘he gets us’ sounds like a mantra that rein­forces the pri­ma­cy of the self. This men­tal­i­ty keeps my per­son­al psy­chol­o­gy at the cen­ter, so the ques­tion that mat­ters isn’t ‘What must I do to be saved’ but ‘What must you do to affirm me?’ ”
    • Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

  • Athe­ist Accepts Mul­ti­verse The­o­ry Of Every Pos­si­ble Uni­verse Except Bib­li­cal One (Baby­lon Bee) — an oldie but a good­ie.
  • Pas­tors are Scam­ming Believ­ers out of Mil­lions (Josh John­son, YouTube): sev­en­teen min­utes, most­ly respect­ful and insight­ful­ly humor­ous. The final sto­ry does­n’t feel like it’s going any­where but it actu­al­ly is and is worth the pay­off.
  • Argenti­na canal turns bright red, alarm­ing res­i­dents (Nathan Williams, BBC): “A canal in a sub­urb of Argenti­na’s cap­i­tal Buenos Aires turned bright red on Thurs­day, alarm­ing local res­i­dents. Pic­tures and videos show the intense­ly coloured water flow­ing into an estu­ary, the Rio de la Pla­ta, which bor­ders an eco­log­i­cal reserve.”
    • Want to envi­sion one of the ten plagues? Check this out.
  • Pos­si­bly Kait­lyn Schiess’ spici­est take yet. — I don’t know a lot about the Bachelor/Bachelorette shows, but assum­ing this descrip­tion is accu­rate you can put me on team Kait­lyn.
  • A Gen­e­sis Series Inspired By Ani­me (J. D. Peabody inter­view­ing Jason Moody, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “It’s for both Chris­tians and gen­er­al audi­ences. Think about the paint­ing The Last Sup­per. Lots of peo­ple are moved by it. It has caused mil­lions of peo­ple to reflect on their faith. But da Vin­ci wasn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly a ‘Chris­t­ian painter’—he was just a painter. And you don’t have to have faith to appre­ci­ate his work. The Last Sup­per isn’t ‘Chris­t­ian’ art—it’s just art. We want what we’re cre­at­ing to prompt ques­tions, because that’s what good art does.”

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 313

a dis­turbing­ly high num­ber of pan­dem­ic-relat­ed arti­cles

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.

313 is the 65th prime num­ber.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Pan­dem­ic relat­ed
    • How the Pan­dem­ic Now Ends (Ed Yong, The Atlantic): “Here, then, is the cur­rent pan­dem­ic dilem­ma: Vac­cines remain the best way for indi­vid­u­als to pro­tect them­selves, but soci­eties can­not treat vac­cines as their only defense.”
      • First, this is a free arti­cle that won’t use up a pay­wall click. Sec­ond, this is dis­cour­ag­ing to read and makes me think Stan­ford is going to be way more restric­tive than I was hop­ing come fall.
    • What We Lose When We Livestream Church (Collin Hansen, New York Times): “The very word we trans­late from Greek as ‘church’ in the New Tes­ta­ment sug­gests we must assem­ble in per­son. The church wasn’t just a bridge of 2,000 years until human­i­ty reached Peak Zoom. It’s essen­tial for the reli­gion where God took on flesh and dwelt among us. It’s essen­tial in a faith that believes Jesus phys­i­cal­ly rose from the dead and then sat down to enjoy a meal with his stunned friends.”
    • Covid incom­pe­tence (John Cochrane, per­son­al blog): “Delta is the fourth wave of covid, and amaz­ing­ly the US pol­i­cy response is even more irres­olute than the first time around. Our gov­ern­ment is like a child, sent next door to get a cup of sug­ar, who gets as far as the front stoop and then wan­ders off fol­low­ing a pup­py.”
      • The author is a senior fel­low at Stan­ford’s Hoover Insti­tu­tion.
    • “What Do Full Hos­pi­tals Real­ly Tell Us About COVID?” (Eugene Volokh, Rea­son): “The pub­lic argu­ment for spe­cial­ty hos­pi­tals is more exper­tise and low­er costs because of effi­cien­cy. The real mod­el was no emer­gency room, and thus no way for un- and under-insured peo­ple to get into the hos­pi­tal. All of the finan­cial ben­e­fits of being a hos­pi­tal with­out any of the respon­si­bil­i­ties. So we get wom­en’s hos­pi­tals, ortho­pe­dic hos­pi­tals, etc., suck­ing the prof­itable work from com­mu­ni­ty hos­pi­tals, with­out tak­ing any of the bur­den of com­mu­ni­ty care for the indi­gent.… The hos­pi­tals in Louisiana which take indi­gent patients and patients though the ER—pretty much all COVID patients—are slammed. The spe­cial­ty hos­pi­tals have lots of staff and lots of beds and don’t have much in the way of COVID patients, if there are any at all.”
      • I did not know any of that. Real­ly inter­est­ing. Writ­ten a law prof at Louisiana State Uni­ver­si­ty.
    • Porn­dem­ic? A Lon­gi­tu­di­nal Study of Pornog­ra­phy Use Before and Dur­ing the COVID-19 Pan­dem­ic in a Nation­al­ly Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Sam­ple of Amer­i­cans (Grubbs et al, Archives of Sex­u­al Behav­ior): “In gen­er­al, pornog­ra­phy use trend­ed down­ward over the pan­dem­ic, for both men and women. Prob­lem­at­ic pornog­ra­phy use trend­ed down­ward for men and remained low and unchanged in women.”
      • The excerpt is from the abstract. It’s a lit­tle sur­pris­ing but also I think peo­ple are less like­ly to watch porn with their fam­i­lies around, which hap­pened a lot dur­ing the pan­dem­ic. I do won­der how their find­ings cross-check with traf­fic stats from porn web­sites. It seems like an obvi­ous way to do a sim­ple check on their find­ings.
  2. The Gap Between Law and Moral­i­ty (Helen Dale, Law & Lib­er­ty): “The planet’s two great legal sys­tems devel­oped in two Euro­pean civil­i­sa­tions, Rome and Eng­land. Their wide prove­nance is not only due to both peo­ples con­quer­ing great empires. It’s also because they worked: they did things no oth­er legal regime did before them, and those oth­ers are still inca­pable of doing now.… Incred­i­bly, these devel­oped inde­pen­dent­ly of each oth­er. The Eng­lish com­mon law did not bor­row from Rome: when it first emerged, Roman law was lost.”
    • This is sur­pris­ing­ly engross­ing. In the words of an alum­nus, “This one was a sleep­er hit. Start­ed slow, blew me away by the end.”
  3. Why a Mas­cu­line Min­istry Rose and Fell (David French, The Dis­patch): “When coun­ter­ing a cul­ture that often attacks tra­di­tion­al mas­cu­line incli­na­tions as inher­ent vice, the answer isn’t to indulge tra­di­tion­al mas­cu­line incli­na­tions as inher­ent virtue.… Driscoll, in all his tough­ness and swag­ger, tried to make men out of Chris­tians. The church, how­ev­er, should make Chris­tians out of men.”
  4. Cor­nel West on Why the Left Needs Jesus (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “When I was in Char­lottesville, look­ing at these sick white broth­ers in neo-Nazi par­ties and the Klan spit­ting and cussing and car­ry­ing on, I could see the hounds of hell rag­ing on the bat­tle­field of their souls. But I also know that there’s greed in me. There’s hatred in me. Peo­ple say, ‘Oh, you’re so qual­i­ta­tive­ly dif­fer­ent than those gang­sters.’ I say, ‘No, I’ve got gang­ster in me. I was a gang­ster before I met Jesus. Now I’m a redeemed sin­ner with gang­ster pro­cliv­i­ties.’ It is a very dif­fer­ent way of look­ing at things than many of my sec­u­lar com­rades.”
  5. Crim­i­nal-Jus­tice Reform­ers Chose the Wrong Slo­gan (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): “Before the pub­lic sours on crim­i­nal-jus­tice reform more broadly—as it may amid ris­ing fears about crime and dis­or­der in cities—a new focus and ral­ly­ing cry are need­ed. And giv­en the spike in homi­cides that has afflict­ed the Unit­ed States dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly killing Black peo­ple, there’s an espe­cial­ly strong case for this over­due slo­gan: Solve All Mur­ders. Pre­cise­ly because Black lives mat­ter, peo­ple who take Black lives shouldn’t get away with it.”
  6. Assem­blies of God Grow­ing with Pen­te­costal Per­sis­tence (Ryan P. Burge, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “It’s dif­fi­cult to pin­point exact­ly why the Assem­blies of God has con­tin­ued to increase over the past 15 years. Research shows that mem­ber­ship of the Assem­blies of God has become more polit­i­cal­ly con­ser­v­a­tive and more reli­gious­ly active today than just a decade ago, but its own num­bers indi­cate that it has achieved incred­i­ble racial diversity—44 per­cent of mem­bers in the Unit­ed States are eth­nic minori­ties.”
    • Since the Assem­blies of God is the group with which I am ordained and is the par­ent orga­ni­za­tion of Chi Alpha, file under “arti­cles that make me hap­py.”
  7. We Need to Build Our Way Out of This Mess (Eli Doura­do, New York Times): “How did the most dynam­ic coun­try on the plan­et become so scle­rot­ic? We did it to our­selves. We enact­ed laws that priv­i­lege the sta­tus quo at the expense of change and progress. We lib­er­al­ly passed out veto rights to any­one with the mon­ey and where­with­al to hire a lawyer. If we want to reverse the dam­age and cre­ate a more pros­per­ous future, we must make it easy to build.”
    • The author is an econ­o­mist at Utah State Uni­ver­si­ty.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have a provoca­tive read, In Defense of Flog­ging (Peter Moskos, Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion) — the author is a for­mer police offi­cer and now a crim­i­nol­o­gist at the City Uni­ver­si­ty of New York. This one was shared back before I start­ed send­ing these emails in a blog post called Pun­ish­ment.

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.