Tag: campus activism

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 61

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, with a pref­er­ence for con­tent from aca­d­e­mics and influ­en­tial voic­es. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Church Wor­ship Music You Need To Know About (Greg Atkin­son, personal blog): “I… prob­a­bly expe­ri­ence music and wor­ship in more church­es year­ly, than just about any­one else…”
  2. Divorce Con­tin­ues To Take A Psy­cho­log­i­cal Toll on Kids (no byline, Guardian): pon­der anew Malachi 2:13–16 and Matthew 19:1–8.
  3. ‘There isn’t real­ly any­thing mag­i­cal about it’: Why more mil­len­ni­als are avoid­ing sex (Tara Bahram­pour, Wash­ing­ton Post):  Your peers are less sex­u­al­ly active than you assume. They “are more than twice as like­ly to be sex­u­al­ly inac­tive in their ear­ly 20s as the pre­vi­ous gen­er­a­tion was.” 
  4. Are Soar­ing Lev­els of Income Inequal­i­ty Mak­ing Us A More Polar­ized Nation? (Chris­tos Makridis, The Con­ver­sa­tion): “We all real­ize that greater inequal­i­ty has tan­gi­ble impli­ca­tions for who wins and los­es in soci­ety. How­ev­er, all these pieces of evi­dence sug­gest it may also induce more extreme polit­i­cal atti­tudes and ide­olo­gies.” Note the author — one of our own Chi Alpha stu­dents! It’s also on AP’s the Big Sto­ry, so it might get syn­di­cat­ed. Get your self­ies with Chris­tos now before he becomes famous.
  5. Col­lege Stu­dents Protest, Alumni’s Fond­ness Fades, and Checks Shrink (Anemona Hor­to­col­lis, NY Times): we should not be sur­prised when things that polar­ize stu­dents also polar­ize alum­ni.

Things Glen Found Diverting

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 52

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about 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. Nicole Cliffe: How God Messed Up My Hap­py Athe­ist Life (Nicole Cliffe, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “I emailed a friend who is a Chris­t­ian, and I asked if we could talk about Jesus. I instant­ly regret­ted send­ing that email and if human­ly pos­si­ble would have clawed it back through the Inter­net.”
  2. The Sun Is Always Shin­ing In Mod­ern Chris­t­ian Pop (Leah Libresco, FiveThir­tyEight): inter­est­ing, although the author is com­par­ing con­tem­po­rary per­for­mance songs to old­er wor­ship songs, and I sus­pect the genre dif­fer­ence accounts for some of her find­ings. Doing some research on the author I dis­cov­ered that she wrote a fas­ci­nat­ing arti­cle at First Things called Stat­ting While Catholic — you should read it if you’re a social sci­en­tist.
  3. Why Amer­i­cans Don’t Trust Gov­ern­ment (Lar­ry Sum­mers, Wash­ing­ton Post): “I’m a pro­gres­sive, but it seems plau­si­ble to won­der if gov­ern­ment can build a nation abroad, fight social decay, run schools, man­date the design of cars, run health insur­ance exchanges, or set prop­er sex­u­al harass­ment poli­cies on col­lege cam­pus­es, if it can’t even fix a 232-foot bridge com­pe­tent­ly.“ Sum­mers is, of course, the for­mer pres­i­dent of Har­vard.
  4. Could a neu­ro­sci­en­tist under­stand a micro­proces­sor? (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “Could the tools of neu­ro­science be used to under­stand the much sim­pler Atari brain? The answer is most­ly no. The authors, for exam­ple, looked at three ‘behav­iors’, Don­key Kong, Space Invaders and Pit­fall (!) and they are able to find tran­sis­tors which unique­ly crash one of the games but not the oth­ers. ‘We might thus con­clude they are unique­ly respon­si­ble for the game – per­haps there is a Don­key Kong tran­sis­tor or a Space Invaders tran­sis­tor.’ Of course, this con­clu­sion would be very mis­lead­ing but what are we then to make of sim­i­lar brain lesion stud­ies?”
  5. Study: Same-sex expe­ri­ences are on the rise, and Amer­i­cans are increas­ing­ly chill about it (Rachel Felt­man, Wash­ing­ton Post): noth­ing to see here, folks. Every­thing is 100% genet­ic. There are no moral choic­es involved at any point on the jour­ney. Move along, please.
  6. The Return of Bernard Lewis (Mar­tin Kramer, Mosa­ic): “Forty years ago, nobody fore­saw the rise of rad­i­cal Islam—except for the pre­em­i­nent his­to­ri­an who both pre­dict­ed and explained it, and much else besides.”
  7. Under Attack (edi­to­r­i­al, The Econ­o­mist): “…when pro­gres­sive thinkers agree that offen­sive words should be cen­sored, it helps author­i­tar­i­an regimes to jus­ti­fy their own much harsh­er restric­tions…“
  8. Like A Prayer: Is Social Jus­tice The New Cam­pus Reli­gion? (Ana Marie Cox, MTV News): Cox came out as a Chris­t­ian (her words) last year. She has a much more enthu­si­as­tic take on cam­pus activism than many of the arti­cles I share (such as the ones above and below).
  9. The amaz­ing 1969 prophe­cy that racial pref­er­ences would cause the exact griev­ances of pro­test­ers today (Jonathan Haidt, Het­ero­dox Acad­e­my): the dis­claimers at the bot­tom apply to this one most of all. I at first won­dered if it was based upon a hoax, but it seems legit­i­mate. If you have a strong neg­a­tive reac­tion to this piece, you’re wel­come. Think­ing through why will help you be more per­sua­sive.
  10. 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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 51

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

  1. Why Amer­i­ca Spends So Much On The Mil­i­tary (red­dit): this was a sur­pris­ing­ly edu­ca­tion­al read. It was writ­ten in response to the claim that “next year’s pro­posed mil­i­tary bud­get could buy every home­less per­son a $1 mil­lion home.”
  2. Chew­bac­ca Laugh­ter Brings Unex­pect­ed Plat­form (Dan Van Veen, PE News): “On Wednes­day night before mak­ing the video, she felt that the Holy Spir­it had direct­ed her to a spe­cif­ic restau­rant for sup­per just pri­or to church. There, God had a ‘divine oppor­tu­ni­ty’ wait­ing.”
  3. Mak­ing Sense of the Num­bers of Gen­e­sis [pdf link] (Car­ol Hill, Per­spec­tives on Sci­ence and the Chris­t­ian Faith): “Joseph and Joshua were each record­ed as dying at age 110—a num­ber con­sid­ered ‘per­fect’ by the Egyp­tians. In ancient Egypt­ian doc­trine, the phrase ‘he died aged 110’ was actu­al­ly an epi­taph com­mem­o­rat­ing a life that had been lived self­less­ly and had result­ed in out­stand­ing social and moral ben­e­fit for oth­ers. And so for both Joseph and Joshua, who came out of the Egypt­ian cul­ture, quot­ing this age was actu­al­ly a trib­ute to their char­ac­ter. But, to be described as ‘dying at age 110’ bore no nec­es­sary rela­tion­ship to the actu­al time of an individual’s life span.” You will not agree with every­thing in this arti­cle, but it is full of fas­ci­nat­ing insights.
  4. Unsafe Cars Can Save Lives (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “Safe­ty is rel­a­tive so cars judged unsafe by glob­al stan­dards could save lives in India. The big­ger les­son is that it’s always dan­ger­ous to impose glob­al stan­dards with­out tak­ing into account the dif­fer­ing cir­cum­stances of time and place.”
  5. The Big Uneasy (Nathan Heller, The New York­er): “A [uni­ver­si­ty] president’s job is to push past con­tra­dic­tions, while an activist’s duty is to call them out. The insti­tu­tions that give many peo­ple a lan­guage and a forum to denounce injus­tice are, inevitably, the near­est tar­gets of their crit­i­cism.” Bonus points for quot­ing Toc­queville. 
  6. The Trans­gen­der Bath­room Debate and the Loom­ing Title IX Cri­sis (Jean­nie Suk, New York­er): “Whether or not the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment act­ed unlaw­ful­ly, it has now set in motion a poten­tial Title IX col­li­sion course between its direc­tives on sex­u­al vio­lence and on bath­rooms…. The dis­com­fort that some peo­ple, some sex­u­al-assault sur­vivors, in par­tic­u­lar, feel at the idea of being in rest rooms with peo­ple with male sex organs, what­ev­er their gen­der, is not easy to brush aside as big­otry.“ The author is a pro­fes­sor at Har­vard Law School.
  7. Claims by trans­gen­der school­teacher (who wants to be called ‘they’) yield $60,000 set­tle­ment, agree­ment to cre­ate dis­ci­pli­nary rules reg­u­lat­ing ‘pro­noun usage (Eugene Volokh, Volokh Con­spir­a­cy): the sec­ond half is what cap­tured my atten­tion. “When the gov­ern­ment is act­ing as sov­er­eign, telling us what we must or must not say on pain of coer­cive­ly imposed legal lia­bil­i­ty, the First Amend­ment is at full force. That force, I think, should pre­clude gov­ern­ment com­mands that we start using new words — or rad­i­cal gram­mat­i­cal mod­i­fi­ca­tions of old, famil­iar words — that con­vey gov­ern­ment-favored mes­sages about gen­der iden­ti­ty or any­thing else.”
  8. Peter Thiel’s fund­ing of Hulk Hogan-Gawk­er lit­i­ga­tion should not raise con­cerns (Eugene Kon­torovich, Volokh Con­spir­a­cy):  “if the law­suit is not friv­o­lous, it is hard to see how the moti­va­tions of fun­ders are rel­e­vant (or dis­cernible). One would not say a civ­il rights orga­ni­za­tion could not accept dona­tions from phil­an­thropists angered by a per­son­al expe­ri­ence with dis­crim­i­na­tion.” Also see Tyler Cowen’s take.
  9. Amus­ing: Oth­er Promis­es of God (xkcd)

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 want to view the archives they are at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 46

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.

  1. The Dan­ger Of A Sin­gle Sto­ry (David Brooks, NY Times): “sto­ries have become iden­ti­ty mark­ers. This is a phe­nom­e­non bor­rowed from cam­pus polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness. In order to express your sol­i­dar­i­ty with the vir­tu­ous team, you have to embrace the social­ly approved sto­ry. If you dif­fer from the offi­cial sto­ry.… it is a sign that you have false alle­giances. You must embrace the approved sto­ry to show you are not com­plic­it in a sys­tem of oppres­sion.”
  2. How To Fix Pol­i­tics (David Brooks, NY Times): “Peo­ple put pol­i­tics at the cen­ter of their psy­cho­log­i­cal, emo­tion­al and even spir­i­tu­al life. This is ask­ing too much of pol­i­tics. Once pol­i­tics becomes your eth­nic and moral iden­ti­ty, it becomes impos­si­ble to com­pro­mise, because com­pro­mise becomes dis­hon­or.”
  3. Ohio State Turns The Con­cept of ‘Safe Space’ Against Stu­dent Pro­test­ers (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): “speech codes imple­ment­ed in the late 1980s and ear­ly 90s with the inten­tion of pro­tect­ing black stu­dents were ulti­mate­ly used to charge and pun­ish more black stu­dents than white stu­dents. Inso­far as cam­pus con­cepts like safe spaces, microag­gres­sions, and claims of trau­ma over minor alter­ca­tions spread from activist cul­ture to cam­pus cul­ture, the pow­er­ful will inevitably make use of them.” See his fol­low-up The Tools Of Cam­pus Activists Are Being Turned Against Them.
  4. Fired For Preach­ing: Geor­gia Dumps Doc­tor Over Church Ser­mons (Todd Starnes, Fox News): “First, they silenced the sheep – and now they are try­ing to silence the shep­herds.”
  5. More From Michael McConnell On The Sup­ple­men­tary Brief­ing In ‘Zubik vs Bur­well’ (Eugene Volokh, Wash­ing­ton Post): the title is a lit­tle snore induc­ing, but the con­tent is quite stim­u­lat­ing. It’s a Stan­ford law professor’s thoughts on the nuns suing the gov­ern­ment.
  6. Brazil’s Evan­gel­i­cals Flex Polit­i­cal Pow­er In Impeach­ment Dra­ma (Cather­ine Osborne, NPR): I rec­om­mend lis­ten­ing to the audio rather than mere­ly read­ing the tran­script.
  7. Har­ri­et Tub­man: The “Moses” Of Her Peo­ple (Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “If a slave want­ed to quit in the midst of a res­cue, Tub­man would hold a revolver to his head and ask him to recon­sid­er.” Note that this arti­cle is not a response to Tub­man appear­ing on the $20 bill, this is from an old series called 131 Chris­tians Every­one Should Know (FYI — the relat­ed arti­cles are quite inter­est­ing). For some­thing more recent, check out the GetRe­li­gion post Hon­or­ing Har­ri­et Tub­man, a Methodist, Repub­li­can, Evan­gel­i­cal Woman For the Ages.
  8. The Absurd Pri­ma­cy of the Car in Amer­i­can Life (Edward Humes, The Atlantic): “If U.S. roads were a war zone, they would be the most dan­ger­ous bat­tle­field the Amer­i­can mil­i­tary has ever encoun­tered.”
  9. Trust Us: Politi­cians Keep Most Of Their Promis­es (Tim­o­thy Hill, FiveThir­tyEight): Inter­est­ing arti­cle, although I note that “most” is a very key word. A friend who keeps â…” of the promis­es they make to you keeps most of their promis­es — but would you call that friend trust­wor­thy?
  10. 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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 42

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.

  1. Jesus of Nazareth, Whose Mes­sian­ic Mes­sage Cap­ti­vat­ed Thou­sands, Dies at About 33 (Sam Roberts, Van­i­ty Fair): What would Jesus’ New York Times obit­u­ary have looked like? Clever, well-done, and Good Fri­day appro­pri­ate.
  2. Anato­my of Doubt (Ira Glass, This Amer­i­can Life): this is an amaz­ing, dis­turb­ing sto­ry. There are com­pan­ion print pieces as well, but lis­ten to the pod­cast. 
  3. Do We Still Need Pris­ons? (Paul Kir­by, Volte­face): this arti­cle by David Cameron’s for­mer direc­tor of pub­lic pol­i­cy is full of cre­ative ideas. Two relat­ed thoughts worth pon­der­ing: the Bible nev­er com­mands a gov­ern­ment to build pris­ons, and Jesus said He came to set the pris­on­ers free.
  4. How well online dat­ing works, accord­ing to some­one who has been study­ing it for years (Rober­to Fer­d­man, Wonkblog): this an inter­view with a Stan­ford prof.  “It’s kind of super­fi­cial. But it’s super­fi­cial because we’re kind of super­fi­cial; it’s like that because humans are like that. Judg­ing what some­one else looks like first is not an attribute of tech­nol­o­gy, it’s an attribute of how we look at peo­ple. Dat­ing, both mod­ern and not, is a fair­ly super­fi­cial endeav­or.”
  5. A Dia­log On Race and Speech at Yale (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): the colum­nist has a very insight­ful email inter­change with a Yale under­grad.
  6. Ban­ning Cred­it Checks Harms African-Amer­i­cans (Tyler Cowen): “In states that passed cred­it-check bans, it  became eas­i­er for peo­ple with bad cred­it his­to­ries to com­pete for employ­ment. But dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly, they seem to have elbowed aside black job-seek­ers.” — read a more thor­ough sum­ma­ry at Wonkblog.
  7. A clus­ter of voic­es speak­ing about the reli­gious free­dom case recent­ly argued before the Supreme Court:
    • Stan­ford pro­fes­sor Michael McConnell’s take on the oral argu­ments: “At a time of ris­ing divi­sive­ness and polar­iza­tion, it would be great­ly calm­ing if the Court could unite in this case to pro­tect the rights of many with absolute­ly no injury to any­one else, or to the pub­lic good.”
    • Reli­gious Free­dom Deserves Def­er­ence: Our View Edi­to­r­i­al Board, USA Today): “To imag­ine that non-prof­its whose very exis­tence is tied to reli­gion do not deserve more def­er­ence than for-prof­it busi­ness­es is quite a stretch.”
    • Lit­tle Sis­ters, Big Case (Rus­sell Moore, The Hill): “Over 100 mil­lion Amer­i­cans don’t have health plans that must offer the government’s drugs. The gov­ern­ment exempts big busi­ness­es such as Exxon and big munic­i­pal­i­ties such as New York City, and does so just to reduce admin­is­tra­tive incon­ve­nience for these enti­ties. The gov­ern­ment even exempts itself, refus­ing to require the U.S. military—the nation’s largest employer—to pro­vide the same drugs they want to force the Lit­tle Sis­ters of the Poor to pro­vide.”
  8. Quick Links

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 35

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.

  1. The Grounds Of Our Assur­ance (D. A. Car­son, YouTube): Dr. Car­son is one of my favorite schol­ars. This youtube clip is def­i­nite­ly worth three min­utes of your time.
  2. Hal­lelu­jah Col­lege (Mol­ly Worthen, NY Times): “The thing you’ll run into with any of the cam­pus activists that I’ve encoun­tered is this idea that human nature is a col­lec­tion of iden­ti­ty cat­e­gories, that I as a human being am com­posed of a gen­der iden­ti­ty, a sex­u­al iden­ti­ty, a racial iden­ti­ty and so forth,” he said. “Their per­cep­tion of Chris­tians, or of reli­gious peo­ple more gen­er­al­ly, is: ‘O.K., these are peo­ple who have this one iden­ti­ty cat­e­go­ry, reli­gion, and the reli­gion they iden­ti­fy as is over­step­ping its bounds. It’s telling my gen­der or sex­u­al iden­ti­ty how to act.’ The Chris­t­ian response has to be: There’s some­thing more to what a human being is than just these col­lec­tive attrib­ut­es.”
  3. Pas­tor Of China’s Largest Church Jailed For Protest­ing Removal of 1,500 Cross­es (Mor­gan Lee, Chris­tian­i­ty Today). Note that he is the pas­tor of China’s largest offi­cial church — there are under­ground church­es that are much larg­er. The Com­mu­nist Par­ty must be get­ting ner­vous about the strength of Chris­tian­i­ty in Chi­na if they are oppress­ing the state-sanc­tioned church as well.
  4. Chris­tians In Latin Amer­i­ca Are Numer­ous But Still Vul­ner­a­ble (John Allen, Crux): a very strong arti­cle about Chris­t­ian per­se­cu­tion in the west­ern hemi­sphere. “Chili­to was exe­cut­ed by a right-wing para­mil­i­tary and Castil­la by a left-wing guer­ril­la group, prov­ing that mar­tyr­dom in Colom­bia is an equal-oppor­tu­ni­ty enter­prise. Glob­al­ly, the two women are chap­ters in one of the most wide­spread human rights scourges of the ear­ly 21st cen­tu­ry, which is lethal anti-Chris­t­ian per­se­cu­tion. Though esti­mates vary wide­ly, even low-end counts sug­gest that one Chris­t­ian is killed for motives relat­ed to the faith some­where in the world every hour of every day.”
  5. Main­stream­ing “Ani­mal Per­son­hood” (Wes­ley J. Smith, First Things): this is some­thing you should do some think­ing about. Start by reflect­ing on Gen­e­sis 1:26–30, Gen­e­sis 9:1–6, Num­bers 22:21–34, Proverbs 12:10, Jon­ah 4:10–11, and Matthew 6:26.
  6. Mey­er vs Nebras­ka: As Told By The Lawyer Who Won It (David Kopel, Wash­ing­ton Post): this sto­ry of a 1922 Supreme Court deci­sion absolute­ly sucked me in. It touch­es on issues of parental rights, pub­lic edu­ca­tion, reli­gious lib­er­ty, and nation­al­is­tic prej­u­dice.
  7. 3 Ways To Work For The Glo­ry of God (Chris­tos Makridis, The Rebe­lu­tion). Yes, this is writ­ten by our very own Chris­tos. Good thoughts, Chris­tos!
  8. Some comics that amused me:

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 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.