Tag: china

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 233

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.

I had hoped to include some stuff on Iran but that did­n’t hap­pen. Too much oth­er inter­est­ing stuff came up.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The His­to­ri­an as Moral­ist (Yuval Levin, Nation­al Review): “Prop­er­ly under­stood, the moral­ist calls soci­ety to its high­est self, per­haps espe­cial­ly by help­ing a soci­ety under­stand the ways in which what it thinks are its strengths are actu­al­ly its weak­ness­es. And an effec­tive moral­ist would do this in an engag­ing and com­pelling way. The ablest moral­ist is thus almost inevitably a kind of intel­lec­tu­al.” This was much bet­ter than I expect­ed.
  2. Scam Lures Speak­ers to Fake UK Church Con­fer­ences (Kate Shell­nut, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “This email scheme has become the “Niger­ian prince” offer of the Chris­t­ian speak­ing cir­cuit, with hun­dreds of US Chris­t­ian lead­ers invit­ed to events at UK church­es by scam­mers who hope to col­lect hun­dreds of dol­lars in visa fees ahead of the pur­port­ed con­fer­ences.” What a niche scam! I won­der if this exists for oth­er pro­fes­sions.
  3. Chi­na: State­ment from Ear­ly Rain Covenant Church regard­ing Pas­tor Wang Yi’s severe sen­tence (Adam Ford, Dis­rn): “In Christ, we issue the fol­low­ing exhor­ta­tion and protest against Pas­tor Wang Yi’s severe sen­tence. Do you gov­ern­ment offi­cials not know that this is a sin against God? Do you not know that this is an abuse of your author­i­ty (Rom. 13:3)? Even so, we do not hate you. On the con­trary, our mer­ci­ful and right­eous God wants us to love you and to pray for you.”
  4. Hav­ing Kids (Paul Gra­ham, per­son­al blog): “I remem­ber per­fect­ly well what life was like before. Well enough to miss some things a lot, like the abil­i­ty to take off for some oth­er coun­try at a momen­t’s notice. That was so great. Why did I nev­er do that? See what I did there? The fact is, most of the free­dom I had before kids, I nev­er used. I paid for it in lone­li­ness, but I nev­er used it.” 
  5. The Big Farmer Bailout Was Nev­er Debat­ed (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “This is a telling exam­ple of how pol­i­tics works–the process rather than the fun­da­men­tal ques­tion deter­mines much of the out­come.” Fas­ci­nat­ing. 
  6. Too much trans­paren­cy makes the world more opaque. (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “The demand for trans­paren­cy seems so innocu­ous. Who could be against greater trans­paren­cy? But trans­paren­cy is inim­i­cal to pri­va­cy. And we care about pri­va­cy in part, because we can be more hon­est and truth­ful in pri­vate than in pub­lic.”
  7. 1776 Hon­ors America’s Diver­si­ty in a Way 1619 Does Not (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): “My own judg­ment diverges some­what from the main rival fac­tions in this debate. Like many crit­ics, I hope the Times Mag­a­zine’s work suc­ceeds in caus­ing more Amer­i­cans to rec­og­nize the remark­able faith that African Amer­i­cans showed in our country’s promise even in eras when Amer­i­ca least deserved it. Yet the core refram­ing that the 1619 Project advo­cates would unwit­ting­ly set back, rather than advance, the caus­es of equi­ty and racial inclu­sion.”

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 No Food Is Healthy. Not Even Kale. (Michael Ruhlman, Wash­ing­ton Post): Peo­ple can be healthy. Food can be nutri­tious. This is a won­der­ful essay about how we mis­use lan­guage to our detri­ment. If you’re sur­prised I includ­ed this, I believe that our cul­ture has a qua­si-reli­gious rela­tion­ship to health and to food, and I also believe that the use of lan­guage is pro­found­ly moral and that our cul­ture is a lin­guis­tic mess (to which I know of no fin­er guide than The Under­ground Gram­mar­i­an). (first shared in vol­ume 33)

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 229

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. Should Lebanon’s Chris­tians Join Protests? Viral Ser­mons Argue Yes and No. (Jayson Casper, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “”For the past month, Lebanese evan­gel­i­cals have debat­ed Scrip­ture, shar­ing ser­mons online. One viral effort urges believ­ers to stay away from wide­spread demon­stra­tions in sub­mis­sion to author­i­ty. Anoth­er licens­es par­tic­i­pa­tion in the pop­u­lar push for jus­tice.”
    • I like this arti­cle because it helps us look at a con­tentious Bib­li­cal issue in a set­ting where most of us don’t have a strong bias one way or the oth­er. Decide whose argu­ments you find most com­pelling, and then think about how they apply in your own set­ting.
  2. Most peo­ple are bad at argu­ing. These 2 tech­niques will make you bet­ter. (Bri­an Resnick, Vox): “1) If the argu­ment you find con­vinc­ing doesn’t res­onate with some­one else, find out what does…. 2) Lis­ten. Your ide­o­log­i­cal oppo­nents want to feel like they’ve been heard.”
  3. See­ing Like A Finite State Machine (Hen­ry Far­rell, Crooked Tim­ber): “In short, there is a very plau­si­ble set of mech­a­nisms under which machine learn­ing and relat­ed tech­niques may turn out to be a dis­as­ter for author­i­tar­i­an­ism, rein­forc­ing its weak­ness­es rather than its strengths, by increas­ing its ten­den­cy to bad deci­sion mak­ing, and reduc­ing fur­ther the pos­si­bil­i­ty of neg­a­tive feed­back that could help cor­rect against errors.” The author is a polit­i­cal sci­ence pro­fes­sor at George Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty.
  4. LGBT Rights-Reli­gious Lib­er­ty Bill Pro­posed in Con­gress (Daniel Sil­li­man, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Con­gress­man Chris Stew­art doesn’t expect his bill to pass. But he is propos­ing the Fair­ness for All Act any­way. It’s a step of faith for Stew­art, a Repub­li­can who rep­re­sents Utah’s sec­ond dis­trict, and a mark­er on the bet that it’s pos­si­ble to find a com­pro­mise that pro­tects both reli­gious lib­er­ty and LGBT rights.”
  5. How the Trump Cabinet’s Bible Teacher Became a Shad­ow Diplo­mat (Mat­tathias Schwartz, New York Times): “Sev­en years ago, Drollinger pub­lished a short book called ‘Rebuild­ing Amer­i­ca: The Bib­li­cal Blue­print,’ which lays out his ambi­tion to ‘to reach all the cap­i­tals of the world for Christ.’ Drollinger, like many evan­gel­i­cals, refers to this God-giv­en glob­al remit as the Great Com­mis­sion, a phrase pop­u­lar­ized by the 19th-cen­tu­ry mis­sion­ary James Hud­son Tay­lor; Drollinger traces its man­date to Jesus’ charge, as relat­ed by Matthew, to ‘make dis­ci­ples of all the nations.’ A chart in ‘Rebuild­ing Amer­i­ca’ dia­grams the ‘influ­ence path’ of a pub­lic ser­vant as a base­ball dia­mond, run­ning through local gov­ern­ment (first base), state gov­ern­ment (sec­ond base) and nation­al gov­ern­ment (third base) and cul­mi­nat­ing in ‘inter­na­tion­al influ­ence’ (home plate).” I shared anoth­er arti­cle about Drollinger back in vol­ume 147.
  6. China’s Sov­er­eign­ty Trip­wire in Hong Kong (David P. Gold­man, First Things): “Chi­na is a poly­glot, mul­ti­eth­nic empire, not a nation-state. Infringe­ment of its con­trol over any part of its ter­ri­to­ry threat­ens the whole. For­eign inter­ven­tion and region­al divi­sions is the stuff of China’s his­tor­i­cal night­mares. Any loss of sov­er­eign­ty, in China’s expe­ri­ence, begins a slip­pery slope toward impe­r­i­al crack­up. For­eign inva­sion is still a liv­ing mem­o­ry in Chi­na, and Bei­jing reads the worst into Amer­i­can inter­ven­tion over Hong Kong.”
  7. The Sal­va­tion Army’s Actions Speak Loud­er Than Its The­ol­o­gy (Stephen L. Carter, Bloomberg): “Vol­un­teers are sig­nif­i­cant­ly more like­ly than non-vol­un­teers to be reli­gious; and the reli­gious are sig­nif­i­cant­ly more like­ly than the non-reli­gious to vol­un­teer. As reli­gion declines, so does vol­un­teer­ing. If we put the reli­gious vol­un­teers out of busi­ness, a lot of peo­ple will sud­den­ly be unhelped. We need all the vol­un­teers we can get. And we can­not rea­son­ably expect to replace them with paid labor. Accord­ing to the Urban Insti­tute, the 8.7 bil­lion hours vol­un­teered in the U.S. in 2016 were worth about $187.4 bil­lion.” The author is a law pro­fes­sor at Yale.

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 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. (first shared in vol­ume 14)

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 228

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. A Tale of Two Church­es (Batya Ungar-Sar­gon, NY Review of Books): “To many reli­gious peo­ple, there’s no such thing as coin­ci­dence: Pas­tor Jay and Pas­tor Der­rick felt acute­ly the prophet­ic nature of their union tak­ing place just the day before the shoot­ing. It felt as though, in the midst of the chaos and the con­fu­sion, God was using them to write a bet­ter sto­ry. The Lord had guid­ed them to their merg­er at exact­ly the right time to redi­rect the anger and pain in the com­mu­ni­ty to a high­er, holy pur­pose.”
    • This my must-read link of the week. SO GOOD. I almost cried.
    • Kind of relat­ed but only mar­gin­al­ly: Pray­ing for Hong Kong Can Be Polit­i­cal­ly Disruptive—Even in Amer­i­ca  (D Cheng, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Dif­fer­ent ori­gins among eth­nic Chi­nese immi­grants can fos­ter dif­fer­ent polit­i­cal views, with more Chris­tians from Chi­na sup­port­ing the poli­cies of the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment, and those from else­where often more crit­i­cal of the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty.”
  2. ‘Absolute­ly No Mer­cy’: Leaked Files Expose How Chi­na Orga­nized Mass Deten­tions of Mus­lims (Austin Ramzy and Chris Buck­ley, NY Times): “…one of the most sig­nif­i­cant leaks of gov­ern­ment papers from inside China’s rul­ing Com­mu­nist Par­ty in decades. They pro­vide an unprece­dent­ed inside view of the con­tin­u­ing clam­p­down in Xin­jiang, in which the author­i­ties have cor­ralled as many as a mil­lion eth­nic Uighurs, Kaza­khs and oth­ers into intern­ment camps and pris­ons over the past three years.” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
  3. More Preg­nan­cy, Less Crime (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “More gen­er­al­ly, how­ev­er, there are pol­i­cy impli­ca­tion if we think beyond the imme­di­ate results. First, these results show that crime isn’t sim­ply a prod­uct of fam­i­ly back­ground, pover­ty and neglect. Crime is a choice.”
    • The orig­i­nal study: Fam­i­ly For­ma­tion and Crime (Max­im Massenkoff and Evan K. Rose, job mar­ket paper, pdf link): “Our event-study analy­sis indi­cates that preg­nan­cy trig­gers sharp declines in crime rival­ing any known inter­ven­tion.”
    • Some­what relat­ed: The Dat­ing Mar­ket (Tyro Part­ners, pdf link): “With the advent of online dat­ing, women in prime repro­duc­tive age are in the dom­i­nant posi­tion in the dat­ing mar­ket for the first time in human history.This comes with huge social ram­i­fi­ca­tions.” The authors are hedge fund guys. Inter­est­ing through­out and at times quite amus­ing. I espe­cial­ly com­mend to you the chart at the bot­tom of the page 5 con­trast­ed with the chart at the top of page 6.
  4. Thread on the protests in Iran (Shay Khatiri, Twit­ter): “Dur­ing its first 24 hours, it’s already been the most vio­lent protests in decades, if not ever. 1979 rev­o­lu­tion did not reach this lev­el of vio­lence.”
    • Amnesty Says At Least 106 Killed In Iran Protests (John Gam­brell, Asso­ci­at­ed Press): “Days of protests in Iran over ris­ing fuel prices and a sub­se­quent gov­ern­ment crack­down have killed at least 106 peo­ple across the Islam­ic Repub­lic, Amnesty Inter­na­tion­al said Tues­day, cit­ing ‘cred­i­ble reports.’”
  5. Why Some Peo­ple Are Impos­si­bly Tal­ent­ed (David Rob­son, BBC): “…influ­en­tial sci­en­tists are much more like­ly to have diverse inter­ests out­side their pri­ma­ry area of research than the aver­age sci­en­tist, for instance. Stud­ies have found that Nobel Prize-win­ning sci­en­tists are about 25 times more like­ly to sing, dance or act than the aver­age sci­en­tist. They are also 17 times more like­ly to cre­ate visu­al art, 12 times more like­ly to write poet­ry and four times more like­ly to be a musi­cian.”
  6. 2019 Reli­gious Free­dom Index (Beck­et Law): “If Amer­i­ca is becom­ing less reli­gious, as some polls indi­cate, does that nec­es­sar­i­ly mean it is also becom­ing less sup­port­ive of reli­gious lib­er­ty pro­tec­tions? Are we, in fact, divid­ed on ques­tions of reli­gious free­dom?… With a cur­rent score of 67, the 2019 Index indi­cates strong sup­port for reli­gious free­dom pro­tec­tions. ”
  7. Why Did the Wall Fall, 30 Years Ago? (George Weigel, First Things): “Get­ting this his­to­ry straight is impor­tant, not just as a mat­ter of intel­lec­tu­al hygiene but for the future. Pub­lic offi­cials who do not grasp the cen­tral­i­ty of reli­gious free­dom to the col­lapse of Euro­pean com­mu­nism and the emer­gence of new democ­ra­cies in cen­tral and east­ern Europe are unlike­ly to appre­ci­ate the cen­tral­i­ty of reli­gious free­dom to free and vir­tu­ous 21st-cen­tu­ry soci­eties and to 21st-cen­tu­ry democ­ra­cy.”

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 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.” (first shared in vol­ume 25)

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 225

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.

Inci­den­tal­ly, 225 is a very cool num­ber.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Meet the Min­nie Church (Ted Olsen, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Cast Mem­ber Church is tru­ly a church for Dis­ney Cast Mem­bers. It’s not a church to attend on vaca­tion. It’s not a church for Dis­ney fans in Cen­tral Flori­da. It’s a church for a cer­tain kind of employ­ee from one com­pa­ny…. Walt Dis­ney World has almost 70,000 employees—a pop­u­la­tion about the size of Can­ton, Ohio. It’s the largest sin­gle-site employ­er in the coun­try. At 40 square miles, it’s about as big as Mia­mi or San Fran­cis­co.” I did not think I would find this arti­cle inter­est­ing, but it’s thor­ough and explores some unex­pect­ed angles. 
  2. “This Should Be a Wake-up Call to the Whole World”: Inside the Hong Kong Protests (Jor­dan Rit­ter Conn, The Ringer): “The street goes qui­et. The pro­test­ers crouch and face the police togeth­er, remain­ing still. They open their umbrel­las and hold them aloft. Sec­onds lat­er, the explo­sions begin.”
  3. Did Emma Sulkow­icz Get Red­pilled? At the very least, she’s found a new social set. (Sylvie McNa­ma­ra, The Cut): “Sulkow­icz is telling me about the “polit­i­cal jour­ney” she’s late­ly been on, a lis­ten­ing tour of ide­o­log­i­cal posi­tions that she’s always con­sid­ered too right-wing to engage: cen­trists, con­ser­v­a­tives, lib­er­tar­i­ans, and what­ev­er Jor­dan Peter­son is — var­i­ous and sundry souls that Jeze­bel­has can­celed, whose names chill din­ner con­ver­sa­tion across pro­gres­sive New York. Sulkow­icz hasn’t been red­pilled; she’s still a fem­i­nist and an advo­cate for sur­vivors of sex­u­al assault. What’s changed is her pos­ture.“ This arti­cle was fun to read and full of sur­pris­es.
  4. Have 1 in 5 Amer­i­cans Been in a Con­sen­su­al Non-Monog­a­mous Rela­tion­ship? (Charles Fain Lehman, Insti­tute For Fam­i­ly Stud­ies): “In pro­mot­ing the show, the net­work tweet­ed out the eye-catch­ing claim that ‘1 in 5 Amer­i­cans have been involved in a con­sen­su­al­ly non-monog­a­mous rela­tion­ship at some point in their life.’ CBS is far from the only out­let to push the ‘one in five’ claim: it’s appeared in Rolling Stone, Quartz (as cit­ed by NPR), Time, Men’s Health, and Psy­chol­o­gy Today, among oth­ers. Where does that num­ber come from?”
  5. The Glob­al Protest Wave, Explained (Max Fish­er and Aman­da Taub, New York Times): “Only 20 years ago, 70 per­cent of protests demand­ing sys­temic polit­i­cal change got it — a fig­ure that had been grow­ing steadi­ly since the 1950s. In the mid-2000s, that trend sud­den­ly reversed. World­wide, pro­test­ers’ suc­cess rate has since plum­met­ed to only 30 per­cent, accord­ing to a study by Eri­ca Chenoweth, a Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty polit­i­cal sci­en­tist who called the decline ‘stag­ger­ing.’”
  6. And if you haven’t heard Kanye West is now pro­fess­ing Christ and peo­ple have opin­ions.
    1. Kanye West Air­pool Karaoke (The Late Late Show with James Cor­den, YouTube): first some thoughts from the man him­self, 20 min­utes. Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
    2. ‘Jesus Is King’ and Kanye West is a tax col­lec­tor (Esau McCaul­ley, Wash­ing­ton Post): “As an African Amer­i­can Chris­t­ian try­ing to make sense of West’s deci­sions, I have repeat­ed­ly reflect­ed on the sto­ries of Jesus eat­ing with tax col­lec­tors that upset many of his con­tem­po­raries.” The author is a pro­fes­sor at Wheaton. Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus.
    3. Yeezus Fol­lows Jesus (Nic Rowan, First Things): “I’m good with it. After all, per­fect­ly nice peo­ple don’t become saints. God tends to pre­fer work­ing with jack­ass­es.”
    4. Kanye West’s Con­ver­sion Could Be a Cul­tur­al Wreck­ing Ball (Andrew Walk­er, Nation­al Review): “The Apos­tle Paul warns in the New Tes­ta­ment about vest­ing too much hope and con­fi­dence in new con­verts, fear­ing they would be puffed up with pride (some­thing, let’s be hon­est, Kanye has no prob­lem exud­ing). We need to let Kanye be a Chris­t­ian Kanye with­out mak­ing him into a Chris­t­ian celebri­ty.”
  7. 11 Places Where Per­se­cut­ed Chris­tians Need Our Prayers (Megan Fowler, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Over 245 mil­lion Chris­tians live in the 50 coun­tries ranked on the World Watch List as worst for Chris­tians. Between Novem­ber 2017 and Octo­ber 2018, 4,136 Chris­tians were killed for their faith in these coun­tries, over 1,266 church­es or Chris­t­ian build­ings were attacked, and 2,625 believ­ers were detained, arrest­ed, sen­tenced, or impris­oned — many of them with­out a tri­al.”

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 The Spir­i­tu­al Shape of Polit­i­cal Ideas (Joseph Bot­tum, The Week­ly Stan­dard): many mod­ern polit­i­cal ideas are derived from Chris­t­ian the­o­log­i­cal con­cepts. (first shared in vol­ume 1)

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 224

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. A Mil­lion Peo­ple Are Jailed at Chi­na’s Gulags. I Man­aged to Escape. Here’s What Real­ly Goes on Inside (David Stavrou, Ha Aretz): “Tor­ture – met­al nails, fin­ger­nails pulled out, elec­tric shocks – takes place in the ‘black room.’ Pun­ish­ment is a con­stant. The pris­on­ers are forced to take pills and get injec­tions. It’s for dis­ease pre­ven­tion, the staff tell them, but in real­i­ty they are the human sub­jects of med­ical exper­i­ments. Many of the inmates suf­fer from cog­ni­tive decline. Some of the men become ster­ile. Women are rou­tine­ly raped.” This is one of the worst things hap­pen­ing in the world right now, and that is say­ing some­thing since ‘glob­al hor­rors’ is a fright­en­ing­ly com­pet­i­tive cat­e­go­ry.
  2. Stan­ford fails its Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty (Sarah Myers, Stan­ford Dai­ly): “This year, class­es were held on both Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kip­pur. These hol­i­days are the High Holy Days of Judaism, so-called because they are the holi­est days of the year for Judaism. Rosh Hashanah lasts two days and Yom Kip­pur one. Many Jews attend ser­vices for most of the day on these hol­i­days. Fast­ing is con­sid­ered a key part of observ­ing Yom Kip­pur. Yet, Stan­ford decid­ed that class­es would be held, and pro­fes­sors would be free to cre­ate assign­ments with no regard for stu­dents observ­ing these days.”
  3. Black Bap­tist church shaped Cum­mings’ com­mit­ment (Jeff Karoub, AP News): “To many black cler­gy, Mary­land Rep. Eli­jah E. Cum­mings was more than a for­mi­da­ble ora­tor, civ­il rights cham­pi­on and pas­sion­ate pub­lic ser­vant, he was also one of them — in prac­tice, if not pro­fes­sion.”
  4. How To Ask Your Men­tors For Help (Derek Sivers): this is super-short and very good. Excerpt­ing it would ruin it. Read the whole thing.
  5. The Codev­il­la Tapes (David Samuels, Tablet Mag­a­zine): “Samuels: ‘Please remove me from temp­ta­tion, said no one, ever.’ “Codev­il­la: ‘Well as a mat­ter of fact, Chris­tians do “lead us not into temp­ta­tion” all the time.’ Samuels: ‘You do say “lead us not into temp­ta­tion,” but I am not aware of the Chris­t­ian prayer that says “please take away the choco­late cake while I’m in the mid­dle of eat­ing it.”’ Codev­il­la: ‘Well, St. Augus­tine said exact­ly that, you know, “Lord make me pure, but not yet.”’ This is a super-long, wide-rang­ing inter­view. It is full of fas­ci­nat­ing tid­bits and will reward skim­ming.
  6. On Mex­i­can State Col­lapse (El Anti-Pozolero, a per­son­al blog): “It’s an absolute­ly extra­or­di­nary episode even by the grim and bizarre annals of what we mis­tak­en­ly call the post-2006 Mex­i­can Drug War. The Bat­tle of Culi­acán stands on a lev­el above, say, the Ayotz­i­na­pa mas­sacre, or the Zetas’ expul­sion of the entire pop­u­la­tion of Ciu­dad Mier. Killing scores of inno­cents and bru­tal­iz­ing small towns is one thing: seiz­ing region­al cap­i­tal cities and crush­ing the nation­al armed forces in open fight­ing in broad day­light is some­thing else.”
    • Mex­i­co’s bid to detain El Chapo son ‘a fail­ure of every­thing’ (Will Grant, BBC News): “It was a huge embar­rass­ment for the gov­ern­ment. They had cap­tured one of the most want­ed men in Mex­i­co and, out­gunned and over­whelmed by the car­tel, they sim­ply turned him back over to his men.”
    • How Mex­i­co became a failed state (Manuel Suárez-Mier, Asia Times): “When we think about what’s impres­sive here, it is the sheer amount of dev­as­ta­tion of a large coun­try (14th in GDP; 135 mil­lion peo­ple) that a dog­mat­ic, self-cen­tered, nar­cis­sis­tic and igno­rant leader can inflict in such short time.”
  7. What Teach­ing Ethics in Appalachia Taught Me About Bridg­ing America’s Par­ti­san Divide (Evan Man­dery, Politi­co): “We teach peo­ple that it’s impo­lite to dis­cuss reli­gion and pol­i­tics in pub­lic. It’s wrong. We need to teach peo­ple how to dis­cuss reli­gion and pol­i­tics.”

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 Jesus, Mary, and Joe Jonas (Jonathan Parks-Ramage, Medi­um): “How, in famous­ly lib­er­al Hol­ly­wood and among sta­tis­ti­cal­ly pro­gres­sive mil­len­ni­als, had good old-fashioned evan­ge­lism [sic] gained pop­u­lar­i­ty? In this con­text, a church like Real­i­ty L.A. seemed like some­thing that could nev­er work. But that evening, as I reflect­ed on the trou­bled actress and the psy­chic bru­tal­i­ties inflict­ed by the enter­tain­ment indus­try, it occurred to me that I had under­es­ti­mat­ed Hollywood’s biggest prod­uct: lost souls.” First shared in vol­ume 192

Why Do You Send This Email?

In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world. I pray this email gives you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar.

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it). And to the extent you can dis­cern my opin­ions, please under­stand that they are my own and not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of Chi Alpha or any oth­er orga­ni­za­tion I may be per­ceived to rep­re­sent. Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it. If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 223

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions. If you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

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

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

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

Why Do You Send This Email?

In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world. I pray this email gives you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar.

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it). And to the extent you can dis­cern my opin­ions, please under­stand that they are my own and not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of Chi Alpha or any oth­er orga­ni­za­tion I may be per­ceived to rep­re­sent. Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it. If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 222

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

This has been a crazy week for me, so a short­er list than nor­mal. Enjoy!

  1. More on Both­am Jean, Amber Guyger, and for­give­ness:
    • Both­am Jean’s Brother’s Offer of For­give­ness Went Viral. His Mother’s Calls for Jus­tice Should Too. (Dore­na Williamson, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “When a black per­son extends rad­i­cal for­give­ness, we see the grace of the gospel. But when we ignore a black person’s call for jus­tice, we cheap­en that grace. Both are act­ing like the God we serve; we need to lis­ten to them both.” Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus.
    • Pas­tor Delonte Gholston’s Face­book post. “I agreed with so much of what this broth­er said and did because what he did is deeply root­ed in the truth of the gospel. What I despise is the ways that the pow­ers love to use sto­ries like these to tell peo­ple who are being active­ly oppressed, ‘why don’t you just for­give like them?’” Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus.
    • Amber Guyger’s Judge Gave Her a Bible and a Hug. Did That Cross a Line? (Sarah Mer­vosh and Nicholas Bogel-Bur­roughs, New York Times): Deb­o­rah Rhode, an expert in legal ethics and the direc­tor of the Cen­ter on the Legal Pro­fes­sion at Stan­ford Law School, said she believed that Judge Kemp’s behav­ior stayed with­in eth­i­cal bounds, espe­cial­ly because it came after the sen­tenc­ing had end­ed. ‘All the judge did is express some bonds of com­mon human­i­ty, and I don’t think we should be pun­ish­ing judges for that,’ she said. ‘If any­thing, our legal sys­tem has suf­fered from an absence of ade­quate com­pas­sion.’”
    • Why a Judge Says She Gave Amber Guyger a Bible, a Hug and Hope of Redemp­tion (Sarah Mer­vosh, New York Times): ““‘She asked me if I thought her life could have pur­pose,’ Judge Kemp recalled. “I said, “I know that it can.” She said, “I don’t know where to start, I don’t have a Bible.”’ Judge Kemp said she thought of the Bible in her cham­bers. “I said, “Well, hold on, I’ll get you a Bible.”’”
    • Don’t Mis­un­der­stand the ‘White Chris­t­ian’ Reac­tion to Brandt Jean’s Act of For­give­ness (David French, Nation­al Review): “The moment went so viral not because for­give­ness was expect­ed or white inno­cence was pre­sumed. The moment went viral because the guilt was so obvi­ous, and rage was so under­stand­able. The moment went so viral because it was shock­ing. Brandt Jean demon­strat­ed a lev­el of grace that most Chris­tians (white or oth­er­wise) sim­ply couldn’t com­pre­hend, and they couldn’t com­pre­hend it because the hor­ror inflict­ed on his broth­er was so obvi­ous and so thor­ough­ly unjus­ti­fi­able.”
    • Both­am Jean’s neigh­bor, a key wit­ness in Amber Guyger tri­al, shot to death in Dal­las (Dal­las News): “A key wit­ness in Amber Guyger’s mur­der tri­al was shot and killed Fri­day evening at an apart­ment com­plex near Dal­las’ Med­ical Dis­trict, author­i­ties said.” 👀 Real­i­ty is entire­ly too much like a movie script late­ly.
  2. And some thoughts on Chi­na, Hong Kong, and free­dom.
    • The Chi­na Cul­tur­al Clash (Ben Thomp­son, Strat­e­ch­ery): “The prob­lem from a West­ern per­spec­tive is that the links Clin­ton was so sure would push in only one direc­tion — towards polit­i­cal free­dom — turned out to be two-way streets: Chi­na is not sim­ply resist­ing West­ern ideals of free­dom, but seek­ing to impose their own.”
    • I Can See Clear­ly Now (Alan Jacobs, per­son­al blog): “I thought this day was com­ing, but I didn’t expect it to come so soon. I don’t believe Bei­jing expect­ed it to come so soon either: the Chi­nese author­i­ties were play­ing a long game, bid­ing their time and build­ing their pow­er, and I do not think they were rel­ish­ing an imme­di­ate con­fronta­tion with West­ern cap­i­tal­ism. But the Hong Kong protests forced their hand. Bei­jing clear­ly per­ceives these protests as an exis­ten­tial threat, and have decid­ed that the moment has come to go all-in. They have pushed all their chips into the cen­ter of the table … and the cap­i­tal­ists imme­di­ate­ly fold­ed like a Chi­nese-made lawn chair.”
    • In relat­ed news: US announces visa restric­tions on Chi­na for Xin­jiang abus­es (Jen­nifer Hansler, CNN): “The move comes as the State Depart­ment has increased its pub­lic con­dem­na­tion of Chi­na’s arbi­trary deten­tion of up to two mil­lion Uyghurs in ‘in intern­ment camps designed to erase reli­gious and eth­nic iden­ti­ties.’”
  3. Upcom­ing book leaves sci­en­tif­ic pos­si­bil­i­ty for exis­tence of ‘Adam and Eve’ (USA Today): “…a lead­ing pub­lic schol­ar — Joshua Swami­dass, a physi­cian and genome sci­en­tist at Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty in St. Louis, Mis­souri — is mak­ing a bold new attempt to rec­on­cile the bib­li­cal sto­ry of Adam and Eve with what we know about the genet­ic ances­try of the human race…. [He] makes an auda­cious claim: A de novo-cre­at­ed Adam and Eve could very well be uni­ver­sal human ances­tors who lived in the Mid­dle East in the last 6,000–10,000 years. This is not the first attempt to rec­on­cile the Gar­den of Eden sto­ry with sci­ence, but rarely does some­one with Swami­dass’ cre­den­tials do what most sci­en­tists would deem unthink­able: Take the sto­ry seri­ous­ly. How­ev­er, some athe­ist sci­en­tists are tak­ing Swami­dass seri­ous­ly.” The author is a biol­o­gy pro­fes­sor at the City Uni­ver­si­ty of New York.

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 The Philoso­pher Redefin­ing Equal­i­ty (Nathan Heller, New York­er): “When she was three, her moth­er asked, ‘Why do you allow your broth­er to talk for you?’—why didn’t she speak for her­self? ‘Until now, it sim­ply was not nec­es­sary,’ Eliz­a­beth said. It was the first full sen­tence that she had ever uttered.” I think that’s the best first sen­tence I’ve ever heard of. A tad long, but rec­om­mend­ed. First shared in vol­ume 189.

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 221

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, so if you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The Black Church After Chris­ten­dom (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “I don’t know about you, but I can­not recall the last time I wit­nessed more pow­er­ful pub­lic expres­sions of what it means to be a Chris­t­ian than what Brandt Jean and Judge Tam­my Kemp did in that court­room. Guyger — again, a white woman — is going to prison to do time for her crime — but both Mr. Jean and Judge Kemp want­ed her to know that there is hope for her, and redemp­tion.”
    • There are lots of news sources that fea­ture the video clip of Brandt Jean. I chose Dreher’s piece because he also focus­es on the judge. Both of their actions inspire me.
    • I first saw video clips of Brandt Jean’s mov­ing words surg­ing on social media, and I almost imme­di­ate­ly after­wards saw a back­lash which I found per­plex­ing. Some com­menters even sug­gest­ed that there is some­thing racist about lik­ing this video. I think the truth is much more whole­some — Chris­tians love see­ing cost­ly acts of obe­di­ence to Christ. Wit­ness the sim­i­lar reac­tions Chris­tians had to the gospel-fueled tes­ti­mo­ny of Rachael Den­hol­lan­der against Lar­ry Nas­sar and to the Amish community’s for­give­ness of a school shoot­er years ago. There were dif­fer­ent racial dynam­ics but sim­i­lar respons­es from Chris­tians.
  2. The Inter­net Is Over­run With Images of Child Sex­u­al Abuse. What Went Wrong? (Michael Keller and Gabriel Dance, The New York Times): “Pic­tures of child sex­u­al abuse have long been pro­duced and shared to sat­is­fy twist­ed adult obses­sions. But it has nev­er been like this: Tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­nies report­ed a record 45 mil­lion online pho­tos and videos of the abuse last year…. the prob­lem of child sex­u­al abuse imagery faces a par­tic­u­lar hur­dle: It gets scant atten­tion because few peo­ple want to con­front the enor­mi­ty and hor­ror of the con­tent, or they wrong­ly dis­miss it as pri­mar­i­ly teenagers send­ing inap­pro­pri­ate self­ies.” WARNING — this is very dis­turb­ing. The reporters non-gra­tu­itous­ly describe some of the con­tent. If you sus­pect that the scene pre­ced­ing “The pre­dom­i­nant sound is the child scream­ing and cry­ing” will both­er you, it will.
    • I know some of our alum­ni who work in tech and in pol­i­cy still receive my Fri­day emails. If that is you, you need to read the pre­ced­ing arti­cle.
    • Relat­ed: Porn Cul­ture and Polit­i­cal Courage (Ter­ry Schelling, First Things): “The uncom­fort­able truth is that the rapid growth in child pornog­ra­phy is con­nect­ed to the cul­tur­al nor­mal­iza­tion of online pornog­ra­phy as a whole.”
  3. I Spent Years Search­ing for Magic—I Found God Instead (Tara Isabel­la Bur­ton, Cat­a­pult): “I want­ed mag­ic. I didn’t think too much about mean­ing. Or at least, as long as every­thing meant some­thing, the specifics didn’t seem to mat­ter. Basil could mean love. Thurs­days could mean pow­er. The full moon puri­ty. Why not? The alter­na­tive was that noth­ing meant any­thing at all.” This is won­der­ful­ly writ­ten. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed.
  4. How Do Chris­tians Fit Into the Two-Par­ty Sys­tem? They Don’t (Tim Keller, New York Times): “I know of a man from Mis­sis­sip­pi who was a con­ser­v­a­tive Repub­li­can and a tra­di­tion­al Pres­by­ter­ian. He vis­it­ed the Scot­tish High­lands and found the church­es there as strict and as ortho­dox as he had hoped. No one so much as turned on a tele­vi­sion on a Sun­day. Every­one mem­o­rized cat­e­chisms and Scrip­ture. But one day he dis­cov­ered that the Scot­tish Chris­t­ian friends he admired were (in his view) social­ists. Their under­stand­ing of gov­ern­ment eco­nom­ic pol­i­cy and the state’s respon­si­bil­i­ties was by his lights very left-wing, yet also ground­ed in their Chris­t­ian con­vic­tions. He returned to the Unit­ed States not more polit­i­cal­ly lib­er­al but, in his words, ‘hum­bled and chas­tened.’ He real­ized that thought­ful Chris­tians, all try­ing to obey God’s call, could rea­son­ably appear at dif­fer­ent places on the polit­i­cal spec­trum, with loy­al­ties to dif­fer­ent polit­i­cal strate­gies.”
    • Relat­ed: A Basic Primer on Rights and Oblig­a­tions (Justin Tay­lor, The Gospel Coali­tion): “…the Bible doesn’t say much about rights. It does, how­ev­er, fre­quent­ly address oblig­a­tions, so the key to for­mu­lat­ing a bib­li­cal doc­trine of rights is to flip the doc­trine of oblig­a­tion.”
  5. How Stan­ford Hides Con­flicts of Inter­est (Daniel “Bob” Fer­reira, Stan­ford Sphere): “We start­ed by going through all 127 full-time, non-cour­tesy pro­fes­sors in Biol­o­gy, Chem­istry, Bio­engi­neer­ing, and Chem­i­cal Engi­neer­ing, and we checked what Bloomberg, Crunch­base, and the SEC had on them. Then, we went on to ver­i­fy whether this infor­ma­tion was current—through com­pa­ny web­sites, men­tions on their own pub­lic CVs, or media cov­er­age. Final­ly, we removed fac­ul­ty whose links to busi­ness­es had noth­ing to do with biotech.”
  6. Hong Kong: First Line of Defence against a Ris­ing Fas­cist Pow­er (Aaron Sarin, Quil­lette): “China’s gov­ern­ment has only retained the name ‘Com­mu­nist Par­ty’ because to do oth­er­wise would be a first step towards admit­ting the atroc­i­ties of the past. The sev­er­ing of the link between Xi and Mao would make it pos­si­ble to acknowl­edge that Mao was one of history’s worst vil­lains. This would set a prece­dent for crit­i­cis­ing author­i­ty that would inevitably lead to Xi’s own down­fall. So the name stays, but in truth there is noth­ing ‘com­mu­nist’ about this Com­mu­nist Par­ty (save its author­i­tar­i­an­ism). In fact, Marx­ist stu­dents, activists, and social work­ers have been arrest­ed and tor­tured since Xi took pow­er, and uni­ver­si­ties have shut down Marx­ist soci­eties.”
    • The Prophet­ic Voice of Hong Kong’s Pro­test­ers (Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Many Hong Kong Chris­tians, while com­pris­ing less than 12 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion, have played a promi­nent role in the protests—marching, singing hymns, hold­ing prayer cir­cles, and pro­vid­ing food and shel­ter to oth­er demon­stra­tors. (The Jesus Peo­ple song ‘Sing Hal­lelu­jah to the Lord’ became an unex­pect­ed anthem of the protests, as par­tic­i­pants sang the tune to calm con­fronta­tions with police.) For Chris­tians there, the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty may be the great­est exis­ten­tial threat to the Hong Kong church.”
  7. The Impor­tance of Stu­pid­i­ty in Sci­en­tif­ic Research (Mar­tin A. Schwartz, Jour­nal of Cell Sci­ence): “At some point, the con­ver­sa­tion turned to why she had left grad­u­ate school. To my utter aston­ish­ment, she said it was because it made her feel stu­pid. After a cou­ple of years of feel­ing stu­pid every day, she was ready to do some­thing else. I had thought of her as one of the bright­est peo­ple I knew and her sub­se­quent career sup­ports that view. What she said both­ered me. I kept think­ing about it; some­time the next day, it hit me. Sci­ence makes me feel stu­pid too. It’s just that I’ve got­ten used to it. So used to it, in fact, that I active­ly seek out new oppor­tu­ni­ties to feel stu­pid.” The author is a pro­fes­sor at Yale. This essay is about a decade old but I only recent­ly stum­bled upon it.

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 Amer­i­ca in one tweet:“We are liv­ing in an era of woke cap­i­tal­ism in which com­pa­nies pre­tend to care about social jus­tice to sell prod­ucts to peo­ple who pre­tend to hate cap­i­tal­ism.” (Clay Rout­ledge, Twit­ter) First shared in vol­ume 186.

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 216

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. No, real­ly. I mean them and they mat­ter. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions, so if you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The Cops Who Abused Pho­to­shop (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): this is out­ra­geous. Dif­fi­cult to excerpt, but well worth read­ing. Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
  2. How Pornog­ra­phy Makes Us Less Human and Less Humane (Matthew Lee Ander­son, The Gospel Coali­tion): “Beneath pornog­ra­phy is the sup­po­si­tion that the mere fact of our desire for a woman makes us wor­thy of her. And so, not being bound by any kind of norm, desire must pro­ceed end­less­ly. It is no sur­prise that the indus­tri­al­ized, cheap-and-easy sex of pornog­ra­phy has answered and evoked an almost unre­strained sex­u­al greed, which allows us to be gods and god­dess­es with­in the safe­ty of our own fan­tasies. It is for deep and impor­tant rea­sons that the Ten Com­mand­ments use the eco­nom­ic lan­guage of ‘cov­et­ing’ to describe the bad­ness of errant sex­u­al desires.” Many insights in this essay.
    1. Relat­ed: In the Face of Sex­u­al Temp­ta­tion, Repres­sion Is a Sure-Fire Fail­ure (Rachel Gilson, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Repres­sion and avoid­ance are ulti­mate­ly human-cen­tered respons­es. They stuff desire, suf­fo­cate it, ban­ish it, and yet rarely suc­ceed at engen­der­ing true puri­ty. By con­trast, Chris­t­ian asceti­cism reminds us that we are not stronger than desire and then invites us to cast our gaze toward the One who is. It asks the Chris­t­ian to fol­low the sight line of desire—like look­ing down the bar­rel of a gun—and train it on what all desire is ulti­mate­ly sat­is­fied by: the glo­ry of God in the face of Jesus Christ (2 Cor. 4:6).”
    2. Relat­ed What Genet­ics Is Teach­ing Us About Sex­u­al­i­ty (Steven M. Phelps and Robbee Wedow, New York Times): “…genet­ic dif­fer­ences account for rough­ly one-third of the vari­a­tion in same-sex behav­ior.” The authors are pro­fes­sors (one of biol­o­gy at UT Austin and the oth­er of soci­ol­o­gy at Har­vard). They are also both gay men. They are reflect­ing on research pub­lished in the jour­nal Sci­ence: Large-scale GWAS reveals insights into the genet­ic archi­tec­ture of same-sex sex­u­al behav­ior (which Wedow coau­thored).
  3. What Major­i­ty-World Mis­sions Real­ly Looks Like (Dor­cas Cheng-Tozun, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “In 2015, 9 of the top 20 send­ing countries—including Brazil, the Philip­pines, Chi­na, India, Nige­ria, and South Africa—were in the major­i­ty world (also referred to as the devel­op­ing world), with a total of 101,000 inter­na­tion­al mis­sion­ar­ies.” For con­text, the com­bined total is close to the num­ber sent from the USA.
  4. Why do Chi­nese peo­ple like their gov­ern­ment? (Kaiser Kuo, SupChi­na): “It’s the rare per­son who can tru­ly sep­a­rate, at both an intel­lec­tu­al and an emo­tion­al lev­el, crit­i­cism of his or her coun­try from crit­i­cism of his or her country’s gov­ern­ment — espe­cial­ly if that gov­ern­ment is not, at present, ter­ri­bly embat­tled and is deliv­er­ing basic pub­lic goods in a rea­son­ably com­pe­tent man­ner.”
    1. Relat­ed: 9 ques­tions about the Hong Kong protests you were too embar­rassed to ask (Jen Kir­by, Vox): “”What began as a tar­get­ed protest against a con­tro­ver­sial extra­di­tion bill in June has trans­formed into what feels like a bat­tle for the future of Hong Kong. Pro­test­ers are not just fight­ing their local gov­ern­ment. They’re chal­leng­ing one of the most pow­er­ful coun­tries on earth: Chi­na.
    2. Relat­ed: Hong Kong Democ­ra­cy Activists Arrest­ed Ahead Of Planned March (Emi­ly Feng & Scott Neu­man, NPR): “Joshua Wong, Hong Kong’s most famous pro-democ­ra­cy leader, was arrest­ed on Fri­day along with fel­low activists and politi­cians in what appeared to be a coor­di­nat­ed sweep by the city’s police ahead of a mass anti-gov­ern­ment march that had been planned for the week­end.”
    3. Relat­ed: The One Unit­ed Strug­gle For Free­dom (David Brooks, New York Times): “Many sus­pect Amer­i­ca will nev­er step in to help. The Amer­i­can right no longer believes in spread­ing democ­ra­cy to for­eign­ers. The Amer­i­can left embraces a nation­al nar­ra­tive that empha­sizes slav­ery and oppres­sion, not that Amer­i­ca is a bea­con or an exam­ple. Nei­ther par­ty any longer sees Amer­i­ca as a van­guard nation whose very mis­sion is to advance uni­ver­sal democ­ra­cy and human dig­ni­ty.”
    4. Relat­ed: China’s Spies Are On The Offen­sive (Mike Giglio, The Atlantic): “Espi­onage and coun­teres­pi­onage have been essen­tial tools of state­craft for cen­turies, of course, and U.S. and Chi­nese intel­li­gence agen­cies have been bat­tling one anoth­er for decades. But what these recent cas­es sug­gest is that the intel­li­gence war is escalating—that Chi­na has increased both the scope and the sophis­ti­ca­tion of its efforts to steal secrets from the U.S.” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
  5. Why Every­thing They Say About The Ama­zon, Includ­ing That It’s The ‘Lungs Of The World,’ Is Wrong (Michael Shel­len­berg­er, Forbes): “‘What is hap­pen­ing in the Ama­zon is not excep­tion­al,’ said Coutin­ho. ‘Take a look at Google web search­es search for ‘Ama­zon’ and ‘Ama­zon For­est’ over time. Glob­al pub­lic opin­ion was not as inter­est­ed in the ‘Ama­zon tragedy’ when the sit­u­a­tion was unde­ni­ably worse. The present moment does not jus­ti­fy glob­al hys­te­ria.’ And while fires in Brazil have increased, there is no evi­dence that Ama­zon for­est fires have.” I found this arti­cle quite infor­ma­tive.
  6. The Trump Admin­is­tra­tion Sides With Nurs­es Who Object to Abor­tion (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “Beyond its out­come, this case is a sig­nal of the Trump administration’s pri­or­i­ties: It sees reli­gious free­dom and con­science pro­tec­tions as cen­tral parts of Amer­i­can civ­il rights, and offi­cials plan to enforce those laws.”
    1. Relat­ed: By their tweets you will know them: The Democ­rats’ con­tin­u­ing God gap (Ryan Burge, Reli­gion News Ser­vice): “While the Nones have grown dra­mat­i­cal­ly over the last 20 years, it’s still impor­tant to real­ize that more than six in ten Amer­i­cans iden­ti­fy as a Chris­t­ian, accord­ing to the 2018 Coop­er­a­tive Con­gres­sion­al Elec­tion Study. If Democ­rats want to win back the White House, it would behoove them to reach out to those Chris­t­ian vot­ers. How­ev­er, at least on social media, Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates fail to do so.”
    2. Relat­ed: Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty embraces non­re­li­gious vot­ers, crit­i­cizes ‘reli­gious lib­er­ty’ in new res­o­lu­tion (Caleb Parke, Fox News): “The Demo­c­ra­t­ic Nation­al Com­mit­tee (DNC) passed a res­o­lu­tion Sat­ur­day prais­ing the val­ues of ‘reli­gious­ly unaf­fil­i­at­ed’ Amer­i­cans as the ‘largest reli­gious group with­in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty.’ The res­o­lu­tion, which was unan­i­mous­ly passed at the DNC’s sum­mer meet­ing on Aug. 24 in San Fran­cis­co, Calif., was cham­pi­oned by the Sec­u­lar Coali­tion of Amer­i­ca, an orga­ni­za­tion that lob­bies on behalf of athe­ists, agnos­tics, and human­ists on pub­lic pol­i­cy.”
    3. Relat­ed: Michael Wear’s com­men­tary on Twit­ter: “I just want to be clear. This is both polit­i­cal­ly stu­pid, but also, just stu­pid on a fun­da­men­tal lev­el that tran­scends elec­toral pol­i­tics.” (Wear was an Oba­ma staffer)
  7. Let’s have open bor­ders for peo­ple and closed bor­ders for cap­i­tal (Jeff Spross, The Week): “…human beings aren’t the only things that cross bor­ders: goods, ser­vices, and finan­cial cap­i­tal do it all the time as well. A bet­ter response to Trump might not be to debate whether bor­ders should be enforced, but rather enforced against what? Specif­i­cal­ly, the left-pro­gres­sive posi­tion on bor­ders should be some­thing like: max­i­mum enforce­ment against the move­ment of finan­cial cap­i­tal, mod­er­ate enforce­ment against goods and ser­vices, and min­i­mal enforce­ment against peo­ple.”
    1. Relat­ed: Chris­tian­i­ty and Cap­i­tal­ism Recon­sid­ered (Alan Jacobs, per­son­al blog): “[the claim] that cap­i­tal­ism makes us wealth­i­er, lets us live longer, and improves our ethics — could be right and even so Chris­tian­i­ty and cap­i­tal­ism might not be com­pat­i­ble. Maybe God doesn’t want us to be rich­er and longer-lived, and maybe there are cer­tain mat­ters of faith­ful­ness that tran­scend what most peo­ple call ‘ethics.’”

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 Eat, Pray, Code: Rule of St. Bene­dict Becomes Tech Developer’s Com­mu­ni­ty Guide­lines (Kate Shell­nutt, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “SQLite—a data­base man­age­ment engine used in most major browsers, smart phones, Adobe prod­ucts, and Skype—adopted a code of ethics pulled direct­ly from the bib­li­cal pre­cepts set by the ven­er­at­ed sixth-century monk.” This arti­cle blew my mind. First shared in vol­ume 175.

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 212

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. Tourist Jour­nal­ism Ver­sus the Work­ing Class (Kevin Mims, Quil­lette): “To uni­ver­si­ty-edu­cat­ed media pro­fes­sion­als like Car­ole Cad­wal­ladr, James Blood­worth, and John Oliv­er, an Ama­zon ware­house must seem like the Black Hole of Cal­cut­ta. But I’ve done low-pay­ing man­u­al labor for most of my work­ing life, and rarely have I appre­ci­at­ed a job as much as my role as an Ama­zon asso­ciate.” I learned many things from this arti­cle.
  2. Six­teen and Evan­gel­i­cal (Lau­ra Turn­er, Slate): “A world with­out God wouldn’t make sense to me. But it now makes sense to many of my friends. I final­ly under­stand that we nev­er had a shared faith struc­ture. We went to the same church, some of us for years. We heard the same ser­mons, slept in the same cab­ins at camp, read the same books of the Bible, lis­tened to the same music. But we went home to dif­fer­ent fam­i­lies.” The author is John & Nan­cy Ortberg’s daugh­ter.
  3. Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty Report­ed­ly Bans All Mar­tial Arts Groups With­out Warn­ing Over Email (Jin Hyun, NextShark): “Accord­ing to Choi, the university’s jus­ti­fi­ca­tion behind the shut­down can be sum­ma­rized in four points: ‘the groups like to unof­fi­cial­ly prac­tice dur­ing dead week, they recruit pro­fes­sion­al, inter­na­tion­al­ly renowned coach­es to run their prac­tices, they com­pete and reg­u­lar­ly win nation­al cham­pi­onships with­out Uni­ver­si­ty help, they par­tic­i­pate heav­i­ly in the local com­mu­ni­ty by teach­ing stu­dents, alum­ni, and com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers.’”
    • Stan­ford often seems con­flict­ed about whether its under­grads are future lead­ers to be empow­ered or lia­bil­i­ties to be micro­man­aged.
  4. As admin­is­tra­tors walk back ‘insuf­fi­cient’ response, police reveal noose may have been on cam­pus since March (Ele­na Shao and Daniel Mar­tinez-Krams, Stan­ford Dai­ly): “The new infor­ma­tion comes amid crit­i­cism of Uni­ver­si­ty admin­is­tra­tors’ response to the inci­dent, and one day after they held a sol­i­dar­i­ty ral­ly and town hall. A self-care event is sched­uled to take place Fri­day after­noon.” There have been a lot of arti­cles about this — but this once grabbed me with the tid­bit in the head­line. SINCE MARCH?
  5. On Court Prophets and Wilder­ness Prophets  (Tim­o­thy Dal­rym­ple, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Whether you view Trump as a David or an Antipas, whether you serve at the court of the resplen­dent king or stand over against the court from the wilder­ness, one thing Nathan and John the Bap­tist held in com­mon was that both were will­ing to con­demn unright­eous­ness in their rulers—even if it cost them every­thing.”
    • Also polit­i­cal: The Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty Is Actu­al­ly Three Par­ties (Thomas Edsall, New York Times): “What the data demon­strates is that the group con­tain­ing the largest pro­por­tion of minor­i­ty vot­ers is the most skep­ti­cal of some of the most pro­gres­sive poli­cies embraced by Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates like Eliz­a­beth War­ren, Bernie Sanders and Kamala Har­ris.” Per­haps the most inter­est­ing part of this op-ed is when he talks about the unin­tend­ed con­se­quences of favor­ing small donors over large donors.
  6. In Hong Kong Protests, Faces Become Weapons (Paul Mozur, New York Times): “The police offi­cers wres­tled with Col­in Che­ung in an unmarked car. They need­ed his face. They grabbed his jaw to force his head in front of his iPhone. They slapped his face. They shout­ed, ‘Wake up!’ They pried open his eyes. It all failed: Mr. Che­ung had dis­abled his phone’s facial-recog­ni­tion login with a quick but­ton mash as soon as they grabbed him.”
  7. Canada’s bizarre trans-wax­ing con­tro­ver­sy (Bren­dan O’Neill, Spiked): “Yaniv says if the case is lost then a dan­ger­ous prece­dent will be set for trans peo­ple. In truth, the real dan­ger is if Yaniv wins the case, because that would set a prece­dent where­by the law could require that women must touch penis­es or risk los­ing their jobs. It would be pro­found­ly misog­y­nis­tic.” The lan­guage in this piece is vul­gar at times but in my esti­ma­tion not reck­less­ly so. Rod Dreher sums things up pith­ily with the head­line: From ‘Bake My Cake’ to ‘Wax My Tes­ti­cles’ (The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive)
    • Relat­ed: Lib­er­als’ aston­ish­ing­ly rad­i­cal shift on gen­der (Damon Link­er, The Week): “Slaves every­where pre­sum­ably know that they are unfree, even if they accept the legit­i­ma­cy of the sys­tem and the mas­ter that keeps them enslaved. But what is this bondage we could­n’t even begin to per­ceive in 2009 that in under a decade has become a bur­den so oner­ous that it pro­duces a demand for the over­turn­ing of well-set­tled rules and assump­tions, some of which (‘the gen­der bina­ry’) go all the way back to the ear­li­est ori­gins of human civ­i­liza­tion?”

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 Are Satanists of the MS-13 gang an under-covered sto­ry on the reli­gion beat? (Julia Duin, GetRe­li­gion): this is a fas­ci­nat­ing bit of news com­men­tary. My favorite bit: “How does one get out of MS-13? An opin­ion piece in the New York Times this past April gives a sur­pris­ing response: Go to a Pen­te­costal church.” High­ly rec­om­mend­ed. First shared in vol­ume 158.

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.