Tag: global christianity

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 45

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

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

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

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it).

Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 40

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 KKK, White Pow­er, and Racism (Chi Alpha’s Dri­ving Diver­si­ty blog): “I woke up a lit­tle after mid­night unable to sleep. On Face­book, an African Amer­i­can stu­dent from one of our Chi Alpha groups mes­saged me ask­ing for my prayers and help. The KKK is hand­ing out fly­ers in his town (more fly­ers).“
  2. An Evan­gel­i­cal Move­ment Takes On Cli­mate Change (Tik Root, Newsweek): “Appalled, Keys found­ed a non­prof­it called Jesus Peo­ple Against Pol­lu­tion in 1992, and for more than two decades that’s been her mis­sion. She calls it her ‘king­dom assign­ment’ from God.“
  3. Defin­ing Evan­gel­i­cals In An Elec­tion Year (Ander­son and Stet­zer, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “The desire to sur­vey white evan­gel­i­cals to deter­mine their polit­i­cal inter­ests inad­ver­tent­ly ends up con­vey­ing two ideas that are not true: that ‘evan­gel­i­cal’ means ‘white’ and that evan­gel­i­cals are pri­mar­i­ly defined by their pol­i­tics…. Bro­ken out by eth­nic­i­ty, 29 per­cent of whites, 44 per­cent of African Amer­i­cans, 30 per­cent of His­pan­ics, and 17 per­cent of peo­ple from oth­er eth­nic­i­ties have evan­gel­i­cal beliefs.” Relat­ed: The Myth of the Evan­gel­i­cal Trump Vot­ers (Dar­ren Guer­ra, First Things): “the anti-Trump vote amongst all evan­gel­i­cals in the coun­try might reach 80–90% once non-Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry vot­ers are account­ed for.” 
  4. This Is A Good Sto­ry About Grow­ing Up Evan­gel­i­cal (Lau­ra Turn­er, Jezebel): “It is rare to hear some­one in main­stream media acknowl­edge that they are glad to be or have been evan­gel­i­cal, even though about a quar­ter of Amer­i­cans are evan­gel­i­cal.” The author is John and Nan­cy Ortberg’s daugh­ter and is on staff with City Church in San Fran­cis­co.
  5. Remem­ber­ing India’s Chris­t­ian Mar­tyrs Should Be a Church Pri­or­i­ty (Thomas Allen, Crux): “In August, 2008, hos­til­i­ty toward the Chris­t­ian “oth­er” explod­ed in Kand­hamal, leav­ing rough­ly 100 peo­ple dead, thou­sands injured, 300 church­es and 6,000 homes destroyed, and 50,000 peo­ple dis­placed, many of them forced to hide in near­by forests where more died of hunger and snakebites.”
  6. The Oba­ma Doc­trine (Jef­frey Gold­berg, The Atlantic): This is real­ly long. Fas­ci­nat­ing, but for polit­i­cal junkies only.
  7. As promised in the meet­ings, some sources to cor­rob­o­rate my claims about the ben­e­fi­cial impact of mis­sions: The Defend­er of the Good News, Ques­tion­ing Lamin San­neh (an inter­view at Chris­tian­i­ty Today), San­neh’s books Trans­lat­ing the Mes­sage: The Mis­sion­ary Impact On Cul­ture (BV2063 .S23 1989), Abo­li­tion­ists Abroad : Amer­i­can Blacks and the Mak­ing of Mod­ern West Africa (DT476.S26 1999) and Dis­ci­ples of All Nations: Pil­lars of World Chris­tian­i­ty (avail­able on reserve at the cir­cu­la­tion desk and also avail­able online), the works of Rod­ney Stark such as How The West Won (CB245 .S715 2014, also avail­able online), The Tri­umph of Chris­tian­i­ty (BR145.3 .S73 2011),  For The Glo­ry of God (BL221 .S747 2003) and, of course, the arti­cle I always allude to: The Mis­sion­ary Roots of Lib­er­al Democ­ra­cy (Wood­ber­ry, Amer­i­can Polit­i­cal Sci­ence Review)
  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.

Past emails are archived at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links (you can also sign up to receive them at that site)

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 38

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. From The The­ol­o­gy Side:
    • Was Jesus Nei­ther a Demo­c­rat Nor a Repub­li­can? (Michael Kruger, blog): Kruger argues that this is a mis­lead­ing and triv­ial­ly true state­ment.
    • The Mega Church­es of Lagos (Andrew Esiebo, The Guardian): this is a col­lec­tion of pic­tures. The third pic­ture is mind-blow­ing.
    • Tran­script: Rev. Paul Scalia’s Eulo­gy for His Father Jus­tice Antonin Scalia (Paul Scalia, USA Today): it’s rare to find a funer­al ser­mon for a famous per­son that is this the­o­log­i­cal­ly rich. Being Protes­tant there are bits I would quib­ble with, but wow.
    • What Con­ser­v­a­tive Gay Chris­tians Want (Dan Hitchens, The Spec­ta­tor): a per­spec­tive rarely heard in main­stream media: “When Shaw writes in praise of the ‘real ele­ments of beau­ty’ in gay rela­tion­ships, or laments how the C of E’s ‘hypocrisy’ has ‘hurt a lot of peo­ple’, he sounds like a lib­er­al Angli­can. At oth­er times, he sounds like any­thing but. Sex is ‘not a small issue that we can afford to dis­agree on’, he says; ‘mar­riage between a man and a woman, union in dif­fer­ence, sex with­in that’ is one of the most impor­tant ‘pic­tures of God’s love for us’. The Bible starts with a mar­riage in Eden and ends with a mar­riage between Christ and the Church. ‘It’s not just a cou­ple of vers­es in Leviti­cus that we need to change,’ Shaw argues: recon­struct­ing mar­riage would mean ‘rip­ping out the heart of almost every part of scrip­ture’.”
    • Three Lies Every Cam­pus Min­is­ter Must Silence (Paul  Worces­ter, Cam­pus Min­istry Today): this arti­cle has an amaz­ing close. Even if you skim the arti­cle, devour the tes­ti­mo­ny at the end. You nev­er know the impact you have.
    • An Economist’s Ratio­nal Road to Chris­tian­i­ty (Eric Falken­stein, per­son­al blog): one man’s jour­ney to con­ver­sion. It’s a bit long. The author’s Ph.D. is from North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty, he works in indus­try, and has pub­lished two well-received books. My favorite line is “in the words of a famous short green deist, ‘Do, or do not, there is no try.’”
  2. From The Polit­i­cal Side
  3. God Loved Alexan­der Hamil­ton (Susan Lim, Chris­tian­i­ty Today) — his­to­ry nerds pay atten­tion — there’s some good stuff here.
  4. Ran­dom Research

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.

Past edi­tions are archived at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links (you can also sign up to receive them via email at that site)

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 36

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 Weight of Glo­ry (C.S. Lewis): this is a PDF of the 9 pages of thought­ful good­ness I ref­er­enced in my ser­mon this week. It was orig­i­nal­ly preached as a ser­mon and then print­ed in a the­ol­o­gy mag­a­zine. Relat­ed: see the C. S. Lewis Doo­dle YouTube chan­nel — it’s real­ly good!
  2. Leave Chi­na, Study In Amer­i­ca, Find Jesus (Han Zhang, For­eign Pol­i­cy) — “U.S. uni­ver­si­ties are the first places that hun­dreds of thou­sands of edu­cat­ed young Chi­nese are exposed to dif­fer­ent reli­gious ideas, and invit­ed to con­sid­er them freely. Sens­ing an oppor­tu­ni­ty, on-cam­pus Chris­t­ian fel­low­ships and church­es have gone out of their col­lec­tive way to help those fresh from Chi­na.”
  3. Uncov­er­ing the Assem­blies of God’s Black Her­itage (Dar­rin Rodgers, Vital Mag­a­zine): the Assem­blies of God is Chi Alpha’s spon­sor­ing denom­i­na­tion and the group with which I am ordained. Some neat anec­dotes here.
  4. Why Nepal Has One of the World’s Fastest Grow­ing Chris­t­ian Pop­u­la­tions (Danielle Preiss, NPR): my favorite bit, “a team were also in Nepal in Octo­ber help­ing rebuild the earth­quake-dam­aged house that belongs to the fam­i­ly of Sum­i­tra Pari­yar, a young woman who believes she was healed from paral­y­sis and seizures by her accep­tance of Christ.” I find the choice of words fun­ny: she “believes” she was healed from paral­y­sis by Christ. I’m pret­ty sure she knows whether she was par­a­lyzed or not. How about “a young woman who says she was healed from paral­y­sis and seizures by her accep­tance of Christ.” That’s just bet­ter jour­nal­ism.
  5. Reli­gious Free­dom Keeps Us Strong (Barack Oba­ma, Reli­gion News Ser­vice): yes, this is by Pres­i­dent Oba­ma. The thing I am most pleased about is his use of the phrase “free­dom of reli­gion” as opposed to the much less expan­sive “free­dom of wor­ship.”
  6. What A Super Bowl Ad Reveals About Our Abor­tion Cul­ture (Rus­sell Moore, per­son­al blog): this went in a dif­fer­ent direc­tion than I assumed it would. Rec­om­mend­ed.
  7. Some humor:

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.

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

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 32

In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world.

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

With­out fur­ther ado, I give you the inter­est­ing things:

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

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles.

Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 30

In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world.

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

With­out fur­ther ado, I give you the inter­est­ing things:

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

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles.

Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 29

In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world.

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

With­out fur­ther ado, I give you the inter­est­ing things:

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

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles.

Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 26

In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world.

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

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

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

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles.