Tag: history

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 215

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. The 1619 Project (many authors, New York Times Mag­a­zine): “…[many believe] that 1776 is the year of our nation’s birth. What if, how­ev­er, we were to tell you that this fact, which is taught in our schools and unan­i­mous­ly cel­e­brat­ed every Fourth of July, is wrong, and that the country’s true birth date, the moment that its defin­ing con­tra­dic­tions first came into the world, was in late August of 1619? Though the exact date has been lost to his­to­ry (it has come to be observed on Aug. 20), that was when a ship arrived at Point Com­fort in the British colony of Vir­ginia, bear­ing a car­go of 20 to 30 enslaved Africans. Their arrival inau­gu­rat­ed a bar­bar­ic sys­tem of chat­tel slav­ery that would last for the next 250 years. This is some­times referred to as the country’s orig­i­nal sin, but it is more than that: It is the country’s very ori­gin.” The link is to a PDF of the entire issue.
    • A pos­i­tive lib­er­al reac­tion: A Brief His­to­ry of the His­to­ry Wars (Rebec­ca Onion, Slate): “For the sake of our col­lec­tive car­dio­vas­cu­lar health, we would do bet­ter to rec­og­nize these skir­mish­es over Amer­i­can history—in which con­ser­v­a­tives demand that a pos­i­tive vision of our nation’s past, stud­ded with suc­cess­es, inven­tions, and ‘great men,’ take pride of place in our pub­lic culture—as recur­rent episodes in a par­tic­u­lar decades-old front of the cul­ture wars. That way, we could stop wast­ing our good faith on old, dead-end con­ver­sa­tions.”
    • A neg­a­tive lib­er­al reac­tion: The New York Times sur­ren­ders to the left on race (Damon Link­er, The Week): “Through­out the issue of the NYTM, head­lines make, with just slight vari­a­tions, the same rhetor­i­cal move over and over again: ‘Here is some­thing unpleas­ant, unjust, or even down­right evil about life in the present-day Unit­ed States. Bet you did­n’t real­ize that slav­ery is ulti­mate­ly to blame.’ Lack of uni­ver­sal access to health care? High rates of sug­ar con­sump­tion? Cal­lous treat­ment of incar­cer­at­ed pris­on­ers? White record­ing artists ‘steal­ing’ black music? Harsh labor prac­tices? That’s right — all of it, and far more, fol­lows from slav­ery.”
    • A com­pli­cat­ed con­ser­v­a­tive reac­tion: How slav­ery doomed lim­it­ed gov­ern­ment in Amer­i­ca (Philip Klein, Wash­ing­ton Exam­in­er): “A num­ber of con­ser­v­a­tives react­ed to the project by brand­ing it as anti-Amer­i­can. But I don’t think that’s fair, at least based on the lead essay I read from Nikole Han­nah-Jones. In fact, her piece is quite the oppo­site. Sure, it chron­i­cles the bru­tal­i­ty of the insti­tu­tion of slav­ery and the cen­tu­ry of oppres­sion, insti­tu­tion­al­ized dis­crim­i­na­tion, and racist ter­ror­ism that fol­lowed. Yet the piece is ulti­mate­ly about how she rec­on­ciles that his­to­ry with her patri­o­tism and comes to under­stand her own father’s love of a coun­try that treat­ed him so poor­ly.”
    • A neg­a­tive con­ser­v­a­tive reac­tion: How To Dele­git­imize A Nation (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “But who we imag­ine our­selves to be today shapes who we will become tomor­row. If The 1619 Project were mere­ly about expand­ing our com­mon under­stand­ing of the Amer­i­can ori­gins, who could object? It arrives, though, in the midst of an epic cul­ture war over who we are, and who we are going to be.”
    • Relat­ed: Black Amer­i­can His­to­ry Should Give Evan­gel­i­cals a Sense of Per­spec­tive — and Hope (David French, Nation­al Review): “If men and women have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to speak and pos­sess the courage to tell the truth, they have hope that they can trans­form a nation. What was true for black Amer­i­cans (includ­ing the black Amer­i­can church) in the most dire of cir­cum­stances is still true for con­tem­po­rary Chris­tians in far less try­ing times”
    • In response: In Defense Of Evan­gel­i­cal Cul­tur­al Pes­simism (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “This, I think, is a dis­tinc­tion that makes a big dif­fer­ence re: French’s argu­ment. You can’t cease to be black; you can cease to be Chris­t­ian, or at least mean­ing­ful­ly Chris­t­ian.” This piece is way too long but makes some good points.
  2. Don’t Use These Free-Speech Argu­ments Ever Again (Ken White, The Atlantic): “If you’ve read op-eds about free speech in Amer­i­ca, or lis­tened to talk­ing heads on the news, you’ve almost cer­tain­ly encoun­tered emp­ty, mis­lead­ing, or sim­ply false tropes about the First Amend­ment. Those tired tropes are bar­ri­ers to seri­ous dis­cus­sions about free speech. Any use­ful dis­cus­sion of what the law should be must be informed by an accu­rate view of what the law is.” White is best known under his inter­net alias Pope­hat. Rec­om­mend­ed to me by a stu­dent.
  3. The Real Prob­lem at Yale Is Not Free Speech (Natalia Dashan, Pal­la­di­um): “The cam­pus ‘free speech’ debate is just a side-effect. So are debates about ‘diver­si­ty’ and ‘inclu­sion.’ The real prob­lems run much deep­er. The real prob­lems start with Mar­cus and me, and the masks we wear for each oth­er…. In a world of masks and façades, it is hard to con­vey the truth. And this is how I end­ed up offer­ing a sand­wich to a man with hun­dreds of mil­lions in a for­eign bank account.” I liked this one a lot.
    • Relat­ed: ‘Lux­u­ry beliefs’ are the lat­est sta­tus sym­bol for rich Amer­i­cans (Rob Hen­der­son, New York Post): “…as trendy clothes and oth­er prod­ucts become more acces­si­ble and afford­able, there is increas­ing­ly less sta­tus attached to lux­u­ry goods. The upper class­es have found a clever solu­tion to this prob­lem: lux­u­ry beliefs. These are ideas and opin­ions that con­fer sta­tus on the rich at very lit­tle cost, while tak­ing a toll on the low­er class.”
  4. How Life Became an End­less, Ter­ri­ble Com­pe­ti­tion (Daniel Markovits, The Atlantic): “Escap­ing the mer­i­toc­ra­cy trap will not be easy. Elites nat­u­ral­ly resist poli­cies that threat­en to under­mine their advan­tages. But it is sim­ply not pos­si­ble to get rich off your own human cap­i­tal with­out exploit­ing your­self and impov­er­ish­ing your inner life, and mer­i­to­crats who hope to have their cake and eat it too deceive them­selves.” The author is a Yale law pro­fes­sor. I found his diag­no­sis more per­sua­sive than his prog­no­sis.
  5. The Com­ing Migra­tion out of Sub-Saha­ran Africa (Christo­pher Cald­well, Nation­al Review): “The pop­u­la­tion pres­sures ema­nat­ing from the Mid­dle East in recent decades, already suf­fi­cient to dri­ve the Euro­pean polit­i­cal sys­tem into con­vul­sions, are going to pale beside those from sub-Saha­ran Africa in decades to come.” Fas­ci­nat­ing.
  6. Why Nice­ness Weak­ens Our Wit­ness (Sharon Hodde Miller, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “We exist in a world that swings between sweet­ness and out­rage, two behav­iors that seem to be at odds with one anoth­er. In real­i­ty, they are two sides of the same coin: a lack of spir­i­tu­al for­ma­tion. When our civil­i­ty isn’t root­ed in some­thing stur­dy and deep, when our good behav­ior isn’t spring­ing from the core of who we are but is instead mere­ly a mask we put on, it is only a mat­ter of time before the façade crum­bles away and our true state is revealed: an entire gen­er­a­tion of peo­ple who are real­ly good at look­ing good.” I agree with the sub­stance of this arti­cle, but the title both­ers me. 
  7. Fact-Check­ing Satire — Is Snopes Seri­ous? (Bill Zeis­er, Real­Clear­Pol­i­tics): “the Bee’s founder and minor­i­ty own­er, Adam Ford, took par­tic­u­lar excep­tion to the tone of the Snopes assess­ment. In a lengthy Twit­ter thread, he called Snopes’ han­dling of the piece on Thomas ‘par­tic­u­lar­ly egre­gious’ and ‘dis­turb­ing.’ He point­ed to a sub­ti­tle that cas­ti­gat­ed the Bee for ‘fan­ning the flames of con­tro­ver­sy’ and ‘mud­dy­ing the details of a news sto­ry’ to the point that it was unclear if the piece qual­i­fied as satire. Ford com­plained that through­out the Snopes sto­ry, sup­pos­ed­ly an ‘objec­tive fact check,’ the assess­ment ‘veered towards pro­nounc­ing a moral judg­ment,’ seem­ing­ly accus­ing the satir­i­cal site of will­ful decep­tion. It is cer­tain­ly under­stand­able how Ford could feel this way: Snopes referred to the Bee’s ‘ruse’ and offered that ‘the Baby­lon Bee has man­aged to fool read­ers with its brand of satire in the past.’”

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 How the State Serves Both Sal­va­tion and Reli­gious Free­dom (Jonathan Lee­man, 9 Marks): “Two basic kinds of gov­ern­ments, then, show up in the Bible: those that shel­ter God’s peo­ple, and those that destroy them. Abim­elech shel­tered; Pharoah destroyed. The Assyr­i­ans destroyed; the Baby­lo­ni­ans and Per­sians, ulti­mate­ly, shel­tered. Pilate destroyed; Fes­tus shel­tered. And depend­ing on how you read Rev­e­la­tion, the his­to­ry of gov­ern­ment will cul­mi­nate in a beast­ly slaugh­ter of saint­ly blood. Romans 13 calls gov­ern­ments ser­vants; Psalm 2 calls them imposters. Most gov­ern­ments con­tain both. But some are bet­ter than oth­ers.” First shared in vol­ume 165. 

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 211

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. Amer­i­can jour­nal­ists have duty to report on tragedies in coun­tries like Sudan. (Isa­ha Sesay, USA Today): “If the suf­fer­ing of these girls and their par­ents is not enough to make us pay atten­tion to what has hap­pened in Chi­bok, there is some­thing else to con­sid­er: the threat to glob­al secu­ri­ty. The fate of these girls is in many ways a reflec­tion of the Niger­ian fed­er­al government’s long­stand­ing inabil­i­ty to main­tain peace and sta­bil­i­ty in the north­east of the coun­try. Amer­i­cans should see the dis­ap­pear­ance of the Chi­bok girls as a flare, illu­mi­nat­ing the exis­tence of an ‘ungoverned space’ that is fer­tile ground for a pow­er­ful ter­ror­ist group.”
  2. Face­book and Google track what porn you’re watch­ing, even when you’re in incog­ni­to (Iso­bel Ash­er Hamil­ton, Busi­ness Insid­er): “Researchers from Microsoft, Carnegie Mel­lon, and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia ana­lyzed 22,484 pornog­ra­phy sites using a site called webXray to iden­ti­fy track­ing tools feed­ing data back to third par­ties. ‘Our results indi­cate track­ing is endem­ic on pornog­ra­phy web­sites: 93% of pages leak user data to a third-par­ty,’ the study con­cludes.”
    • Num­bers 32:23 comes to mind: “be sure that your sin will find you out.”
    • An unex­pect­ed con­se­quence of porn: Stream­ing online pornog­ra­phy pro­duces as much CO2 as Bel­gium (Michael Le Page, New­Sci­en­tist): “The trans­mis­sion and view­ing of online videos gen­er­ates 300 mil­lion tonnes of car­bon diox­ide a year, or near­ly 1 per cent of glob­al emis­sions. On-demand video ser­vices such as Net­flix account for a third of this, with online porno­graph­ic videos gen­er­at­ing anoth­er third.”
  3. An Epi­dem­ic of Dis­be­lief (Bar­bara Bradley Hager­ty, The Atlantic): “His­tor­i­cal­ly, inves­ti­ga­tors had assumed that some­one who assaults a stranger by the rail­road tracks is noth­ing like the man who assaults his co-work­er or his girl­friend. But it turns out that the space between acquain­tance rape and stranger rape is not a wall, but a plaza. When Cleve­land inves­ti­ga­tors uploaded the DNA from the acquain­tance-rape kits, they were sur­prised by how often the results also matched DNA from unsolved stranger rapes. The task force iden­ti­fied dozens of mys­tery rapists this way.” Infu­ri­at­ing and high­ly rec­om­mend­ed. 
  4. Oil-patch evan­gel­i­cals: How Chris­tian­i­ty and crude fueled the rise of the Amer­i­can right (Dar­ren Dochuk, Wash­ing­ton Post): “In the face of the Rock­e­fellers’ pro­gres­sive way, Tex­an oil­ers cham­pi­oned a the­ol­o­gy of per­son­al encounter with scrip­ture and an active High­er Being. They her­ald­ed church auton­o­my and gospel teach­ings about pros­per­i­ty and end times, a mes­sage that antic­i­pat­ed the vio­lent dis­rup­tions of the oil age and the need to save souls and reap God’s — and the earth’s — rich­es before the world’s end.” The author is a his­to­ry pro­fes­sor at Notre Dame and describes an aspect of mod­ern evan­gel­i­cal his­to­ry I had not heard before.
    • An inter­view with the above author: Anoint­ed with Oil: Evan­gel­i­cals and the Petro­le­um Indus­try (Thomas Kidd, The Gospel Coali­tion): “Oil his­to­ri­ans may be sur­prised to hear it, but in some instances oil’s cor­po­rate struc­tures evolved direct­ly out of the the­o­log­i­cal com­mit­ments of its lead­ers.” The first piece felt a lit­tle hos­tile to me, where­as this one did not at all. 
  5. Stan­ford oppos­es bill that would let col­lege ath­letes in Cal­i­for­nia prof­it from endorse­ments (Ian Park, Stan­ford Dai­ly): “The NCAA earns more than $1 bil­lion in annu­al rev­enue from broad­cast­ing rights and cham­pi­onships. In return, stu­dent-ath­letes receive lit­tle to no com­pen­sa­tion, oth­er than schol­ar­ships. Accord­ing to a study by Drex­el Uni­ver­si­ty and the Nation­al Col­lege Play­ers Asso­ci­a­tion, schol­ar­ships aren’t enough for many stu­dent-ath­letes, as sur­veyed ath­letes had to pay col­leges schol­ar­ship short­falls of as much as $17,000.”
    • In oth­er and com­plete­ly unre­lat­ed local news: SF does not have the high­est rents in the Bay Area (Adam Brin­klow, Curbed): “Men­lo Park, home of Face­book, has the high­est rents in the region, aver­ag­ing $4,638 per month. Palo Alto also beat out SF with a star­tling $3,857 per month price tag.” 
    • Else­where in the arti­cle we learn that Red­wood City rents aver­age $1,956. I love Men­lo Park, but there’s no way it is twice as nice as Red­wood City. Sheesh!
  6. Trump vs. Dems: ‘Racist,’ ‘social­ist’ lines drawn for 2020 (Lisa Mas­caro, AP News): “With tweets and a vote, Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump and House Democ­rats estab­lished the sharp and emo­tion­al­ly raw con­tours of the 2020 elec­tion cam­paigns. In the process, they have cre­at­ed a fraught polit­i­cal frame: ‘racists’ vs. ‘social­ists.’”
    • What Pelosi Ver­sus the Squad Real­ly Means (David Brooks, New York Times): “Lib­er­al­ism arose out of the fact that polit­i­cal rev­o­lu­tions, while excit­ing at the out­set, usu­al­ly end up in bru­tal­i­ty, dic­ta­tor­ship and blood. Work­ing with­in the sys­tem is best. Peo­ple who came of age in the past few decades did not grow up in an atmos­phere of assumed lib­er­al­ism. They often grew up in an atmos­phere that cri­tiques it.”
    • ‘It Makes Us Want to Sup­port Him More’ (Peter Nicholas, The Atlantic): “A few con­ced­ed that Trump occa­sion­al­ly fires off an inap­pro­pri­ate tweet, but said his accom­plish­ments in office over­shad­ow any offense. If any­thing, they said, his lan­guage springs from an authen­tic­i­ty they find refresh­ing. None of the peo­ple I spoke with con­sid­ered his com­ments about the con­gress­women racist.”
    • Peo­ple Who Have Screamed ‘Racism’ For Decades Won­der Why No One Is Lis­ten­ing To Them About Trump (Baby­lon Bee): this would nor­mal­ly go down in the amus­ing sec­tion because the head­line is from a satire site, but this is one of those times where the Bee’s insight is rel­e­vant: “‘I mean, we com­pared John McCain to George Wal­lace,’ stat­ed Demo­c­rat Mag­gie Wilkins, ‘and I’m not sure who to com­pare Trump to in order to show he’s an even more wors­er racist.’ Activists are con­sid­er­ing com­ing up with oth­er words to express that Trump is a worse kind of racist. They con­sid­ered ‘white suprema­cist,’ but they’ve been using that a lot late­ly, so it would only mean to most peo­ple that Trump is as bad as the Bet­sy Ross flag. So they tried to invent a new term — dou­ble plus racist — to express how extra racist Trump is, but then remem­bered they already used that on Mitt Rom­ney.”
  7. 5 Rea­sons to Dis­en­tan­gle Sex­u­al­i­ty and Race (Rebec­ca McLaugh­lin, The Gospel Coali­tion): “Chris­t­ian sex­u­al ethics were as shock­ing to their orig­i­nal first-cen­tu­ry Gre­co-Roman con­text as they are today. If Chris­tians are to learn from his­to­ry, the les­son must be this: hold fast to Scripture’s rad­i­cal demands, whether the cul­tur­al tide is com­ing in or out. You won’t know which side of his­to­ry you’re on until the last day.” Dis­claimer: I know the author and have col­lab­o­rat­ed with her on events at Stan­ford.

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 When Chil­dren Say They’re Trans (Jesse Sin­gal, The Atlantic): “ …to deny the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a con­nec­tion between social influ­ences and gender-identity explo­ration among ado­les­cents would require ignor­ing a lot of what we know about the devel­op­ing teenage brain—which is more sus­cep­ti­ble to peer influ­ence, more impul­sive, and less adept at weigh­ing long-term out­comes and con­se­quences than ful­ly devel­oped adult brains—as well as indi­vid­ual sto­ries like Delta’s.” This is a long and bal­anced piece which has gar­nered out­rage in some online cir­cles. First shared in vol­ume 157.

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 202

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. The First Rule of Social-Media Cen­sor­ship Is That There Are No Rules (David French, Nation­al Review): “The great val­ue of view­point neu­tral­i­ty is that it com­ports with our sense of fun­da­men­tal fair­ness. It hear­kens back to the image of the blind­fold­ed Lady Jus­tice, hold­ing her scales, indif­fer­ent to the pow­er or priv­i­lege of her peti­tion­ers. Twit­ter and Face­book have removed the blind­fold, thrown away the scales, and cho­sen to wield only the sword.”
    • Relat­ed but less aggres­sive: Facebook’s Unin­tend­ed Con­se­quence (Bret Stephens, New York Times): “The deep­er prob­lem is the over­whelm­ing con­cen­tra­tion of tech­ni­cal, finan­cial and moral pow­er in the hands of peo­ple who lack the train­ing, expe­ri­ence, wis­dom, trust­wor­thi­ness, humil­i­ty and incen­tives to exer­cise that pow­er respon­si­bly.”
    • Relat­ed but with a dif­fer­ent empha­sis: The Big Tech Threat (Josh Haw­ley, First Things): “My the­sis is that the evi­dence strong­ly sug­gests there is some­thing deeply trou­bling, maybe even deeply wrong, with the entire social media econ­o­my. My the­sis is that it does not rep­re­sent a source of strength for America’s tomor­row, but is rather a source of per­il.” A tran­script of a speech giv­en by a US Sen­a­tor who is a Stan­ford grad and who was speak­ing at the Hoover Insti­tu­tion.
  2. We Are Tak­ing Reli­gious Free­dom Too Far (Mar­garet Ren­kl, New York Times): “Reli­gious faith is a pri­vate mat­ter between a believ­er and God. But how a believ­er lives in com­mu­ni­ty with oth­er peo­ple is some­thing dif­fer­ent alto­geth­er. It’s time to stop giv­ing believ­ers a pass just because their beliefs hap­pen to run counter to the laws of the nation they live in.”
    • In response: A New York Times Op-Ed Is Very Wrong About Reli­gious Lib­er­ty (David French, Nation­al Review): “She for­mu­lates reli­gious lib­er­ty like this: ‘In this coun­try, cit­ing reli­gious or spir­i­tu­al con­vic­tions is often a sure­fire way to get out of doing some­thing you’re required by law to do.’ This is a com­mon fram­ing on the left. Essen­tial­ly, it’s an argu­ment that reli­gious free­dom is an intru­sion into the law and that reli­gious peo­ple are engaged in a form of spe­cial plead­ing — seek­ing rights and exemp­tions unavail­able to oth­er Amer­i­cans. In real­i­ty, the First Amend­ment is supreme, and when states seek to intrude on reli­gious lib­er­ty, they’re try­ing to get out of some­thing they’re required by law to do. Respect­ing the First Amend­ment is the default oblig­a­tion of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment and every state and local gov­ern­ment in the Unit­ed States.”
    • Relat­ed but on a dif­fer­ent top­ic: Health and Human Ser­vices and the Reli­gious-Lib­er­ty War (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “The con­flict between reli­gious lib­er­ty, LGBTQ rights, and abor­tion access is about to inten­si­fy. In the com­ing weeks or months, HHS is expect­ed to issue a revised ver­sion of Rule 1557 of the Afford­able Care Act, which extend­ed nondis­crim­i­na­tion pro­tec­tions to trans­gen­der peo­ple and women who have ter­mi­nat­ed preg­nan­cies. The Supreme Court is also slat­ed to con­sid­er civ­il-rights pro­tec­tions for LGBTQ indi­vid­u­als in sev­er­al high-pro­file upcom­ing cas­es; while those cas­es most­ly involve pro­tec­tions pro­vid­ed under employ­ment law, they sim­i­lar­ly pit reli­gious lib­er­ty against LGBTQ rights.”
  3. Agapáo and Philéo by the Sea of Tiberias (Ron Bel­gau, Spir­i­tu­al Friend­ship): “After break­fast, Peter and Jesus had a con­ver­sa­tion which rais­es an inter­est­ing ques­tion about how to under­stand the verbs for love—agapáo and philéo—used in the orig­i­nal Greek…. The pas­sage is dif­fi­cult to trans­late because although Eng­lish has always had sep­a­rate nouns for ‘love’ and ‘friend­ship,’ no Eng­lish speak­er pri­or to Mark Zucker­berg used ‘friend’ as a verb. Trans­la­tors, there­fore, must either trans­late both words as ‘love,’ which los­es a poten­tial nuance in the orig­i­nal, or else must try to some­how make the dif­fer­ence appar­ent in Eng­lish.” This is the most sat­is­fy­ing expla­na­tion of this pas­sage I have heard.
  4. Amer­i­can church­es must reject lit­er­al­ism and admit we got it wrong on gay peo­ple (Oliv­er Thomas, USA Today): “Church­es will con­tin­ue hem­or­rhag­ing mem­bers and mon­ey at an alarm­ing rate until we muster the courage to face the truth: We got it wrong on gays and les­bians. This shouldn’t alarm or sur­prise us. We have learned some things that the ancients — includ­ing Moses and Paul — sim­ply did not know. Not even Jesus…”
    • The author is a retired Amer­i­can Bap­tist min­is­ter.
    • In response: Oliv­er Thomas @USATODAY Says the Amer­i­can Church Got it Wrong on Gay People—And He’s Right (Michael Kruger, per­son­al blog): “In this way, Thomas is right. The church is killing itself, if by the ‘church’ one means the main­line denom­i­na­tions who have aban­doned bib­li­cal author­i­ty. Indeed, sta­tis­tics have shown, plain­ly and incon­tro­vert­ibly, that the main­line denom­i­na­tions are dying and the bible-believ­ing ones are grow­ing.”
    • In response: No, Chris­tian­i­ty Doesn’t Need To Endorse Homo­sex­u­al­i­ty To Grow (Glenn Stan­ton, The Fed­er­al­ist): “When same-sex-attract­ed Chris­tians go to church, they are not choos­ing the pews of church­es Thomas is call­ing us to become. Again, it’s just the oppo­site. Research con­duct­ed joint­ly at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia at Los Ange­les by schol­ars who are not shy about sup­port­ing gay pol­i­tics found that gay- and les­bian-iden­ti­fied peo­ple are 2.5 times more like­ly to attend church­es that took a more con­ser­v­a­tive view on Chris­tian­i­ty (includ­ing homo­sex­u­al­i­ty) than the so-called ‘wel­com­ing and affirm­ing’ con­gre­ga­tions that cel­e­brate it.”
  5. What’s wrong with Amer­i­ca? I debate Ben Shapiro.(Sean Illing, Vox): “There are basi­cal­ly two visions of Amer­i­can his­to­ry. One is that Amer­i­ca was found­ed on great moral prin­ci­ples that we failed to live up to his­tor­i­cal­ly and we’ve been striv­ing to ful­fill. The oth­er is that Amer­i­ca is root­ed in racism, big­otry, sex­ism, and homo­pho­bia, and that these great moral prin­ci­ples were the founders mere­ly flat­ter­ing them­selves.”
    • This is a very good exchange. Whichev­er side you’re sym­pa­thet­ic to, you’ll enjoy read­ing this inter­view.
  6. Why God Is a He (Den­nis Prager, YouTube): five min­utes. It’s an inter­est­ing way to approach the issue. As a Chris­t­ian I would make a dif­fer­ent argu­ment con­nect­ed to the incar­na­tion and res­ur­rec­tion of Jesus as a male, but Prager is an obser­vant Jew and so that line of think­ing is unavail­able to him.
  7. Are All Repub­li­cans Bib­li­cal Lit­er­al­ists? Are All Democ­rats Heretics?(Ryan Burge, Reli­gion in Pub­lic): “With the release of the 2018 wave of the Gen­er­al Social Sur­vey data, I think that it’s time to take stock of how a person’s view of the Bible is relat­ed to their polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tion. Are there bib­li­cal lit­er­al­ists who are Democ­rats? How many Repub­li­cans don’t put much stock in the Bible? And, how has the view of the Bible changed over time?”
    • tl;dr — Rough­ly ¼ of Democ­rats and â…“ of Repub­li­cans believe the Bible is the lit­er­al word of God. Rough­ly half of each par­ty think the Bible is inspired but not always to be tak­en lit­er­al­ly. The remain­der in each par­ty believe that the Bible is just ancient fables.

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 20 Argu­ments For God’s Exis­tence (Peter Kreeft, per­son­al web­site): “You may be blessed with a vivid sense of God’s pres­ence; and that is some­thing for which to be pro­found­ly grate­ful. But that does not mean you have no oblig­a­tion to pon­der these argu­ments. For many have not been blessed in that way. And the proofs are designed for them—or some of them at least—to give a kind of help they real­ly need. You may even be asked to pro­vide help.” I was remind­ed of this by a con­ver­sa­tion with an alum­nus. The author is a phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor at Boston Col­lege. (first shared in vol­ume 116)

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 160

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. Democ­rats Are Wrong About Repub­li­cans. Repub­li­cans Are Wrong About Democ­rats. (Per­ry Bacon Jr., FiveThir­tyEight): “Blacks made up about a quar­ter of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty, but Repub­li­cans esti­mat­ed the share at 46 per­cent. Repub­li­cans thought 38 per­cent of Democ­rats were gay, les­bian or bisex­u­al, while the actu­al num­ber was about 6 per­cent. Democ­rats esti­mat­ed that 44 per­cent of Repub­li­cans make more than $250,000 a year. The actu­al share was 2 per­cent. Peo­ple also over­stat­ed the num­bers of these stereo­typ­i­cal groups with­in their own par­ty — Democ­rats thought 29 per­cent of their fel­low Democ­rats were gay, les­bian or bisex­u­al — but they weren’t off by as much as mem­bers of the oth­er par­ty.”
  2. The Social­ist Net­work (Gilad Edel­man, Wash­ing­ton Month­ly): “At the heart of the split between lib­er­als and social­ists, at least in the­o­ry, is the ques­tion of what to do about cap­i­tal­ism. Lib­er­als tend to see it as some­thing that needs to be fixed. Social­ists see it as some­thing to be defeat­ed. They say they do, any­way. As we’ve seen, the Mil­len­ni­al social­ist intel­lec­tu­als aren’t real­ly call­ing for gov­ern­ment takeover of indus­try.”
  3. Affirm­ing Dis­ad­van­tage (John McWhort­er, The Amer­i­can Inter­est): “Do I oppose affir­ma­tive action? Not at all. But I sug­gest that what we now ‘affirm’ is dis­ad­van­tage suf­fered by all kinds of peo­ple.” The author is a lin­guis­tics pro­fes­sor at Colum­bia. He earned his Ph.D. at Stan­ford, btw.
  4. Cul­ture War As Class War: How Gay Rights Rein­force Elite Pow­er (Darel E. Paul, First Things): “Priv­i­leg­ing the nor­mal­iza­tion of homo­sex­u­al­i­ty rather than, say, racial inte­gra­tion allows elites to have their diver­si­ty cake and eat it, too.” The author is a pro­fes­sor of polit­i­cal sci­ence at Williams Col­lege.
  5. If You Care About NATO You Should Care About Ger­man Mil­i­tary Readi­ness (David French, Nation­al Review): “…Germany’s mil­i­tary made head­lines when it used broom­sticks instead of machine guns dur­ing a NATO exer­cise because of a short­age of equip­ment. The lack of real weapons in the Euro­pean Union’s most pop­u­lous nation was seen as symp­to­matic of how under­fund­ed its mil­i­tary has long been.” This is scary.
  6. Learn­ing From ‘The Final Pagan Gen­er­a­tion’ (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): this is a long and illu­mi­nat­ing post. “Under­stand that we, like the final pagan gen­er­a­tion [in ancient Rome], might think we are fight­ing for tol­er­ance, but our oppo­nents are fight­ing for vic­to­ry. We have to change our tac­tics.” (empha­sis removed)
  7. Pres­i­dent Trump has nom­i­nat­ed Brett Kavanaugh to be a Supreme Court Jus­tice. I’ve got a lot of links here — just pick one or two.
    • It Took a Vil­lage to Raise Kavanaugh (David Brooks, New York Times): “Kavanaugh is the prod­uct of a com­mu­ni­ty. He is the prod­uct of a con­ser­v­a­tive legal infra­struc­ture that devel­ops ideas, recruits tal­ent, links ris­ing stars, nur­tures genius, molds and launch­es judi­cial nom­i­nees…. If you empha­size pro­fes­sion­al excel­lence first, if you gain a foothold in society’s main­stream insti­tu­tions, if you build a cohe­sive band of broth­ers and sis­ters, you can trans­form the land­scape of your field.”
    • As Trump picks Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court, evan­gel­i­cals rejoice: ‘I will vote for him again’ (Julie Zauzmer, Wash­ing­ton Post): “Many evan­gel­i­cal pas­tors and activists said they would have been pleased with any of the names report­ed to be on Trump’s short­list for the nom­i­na­tion. After all, that was the gam­bit that won Trump so many evan­gel­i­cal votes in 2016: He made the unusu­al move of releas­ing, before he was even pres­i­dent, a list of judges he would con­sid­er for the Supreme Court if elect­ed. And evan­gel­i­cals liked what they saw.”
    • Brett Kavanaugh, Don­ald Trump’s Supreme Court pick, explained (Dylan Matthews, Vox): “Kavanaugh con­tin­ued to com­pile a legal record that would lead to Durbin’s descrip­tion of him as ‘the Zelig or For­rest Gump of Repub­li­can pol­i­tics. You show up at every scene of the crime … whether it is Elián González or the Starr Report, you are there.’”
    • Will Brett Kavanaugh Pass the Reli­gious Right’s New Lit­mus Test? (Sarah Pos­ner, The Nation): “Even with­out the Trump-appoint­ed Kennedy suc­ces­sor, the Court had already expand­ed ‘reli­gious free­dom’ to include pre­vi­ous­ly unimag­ined reli­gious rights.” This is an extreme­ly mis­lead­ing arti­cle, but inter­est­ing in the mis­un­der­stand­ings it reveals.
    • You’ll Hate This Post On Brett Kavanaugh And Free Speech (Ken White, Pope­hat): “Kavanaugh has been an appel­late judge for 12 years and has writ­ten many opin­ions on free speech issues. They trend very pro­tec­tive of free speech, both in sub­stance and in rhetoric.”
    • Judge Kavanaugh and the Sec­ond Amend­ment (David Kopel, Volokh Con­spir­a­cy): “Judge Kavanaugh­’s text, his­to­ry, and tra­di­tion method­ol­o­gy for Sec­ond Amend­ment cas­es will not please peo­ple who believe that all gun con­trol is imper­mis­si­ble, nor will it please advo­cates who want to make the Sec­ond Amend­ment a sec­ond-class right.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

I thought the Baby­lon Bee was excep­tion­al­ly fun­ny this week. Maybe I was just feel­ing gig­gly.

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have 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. (first shared in vol­ume 32)

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

If 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 158

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.

Before I share this week’s links: yes, I am aware that Antho­ny Kennedy retired from the Supreme Court and think it is like­ly to be one of the most sig­nif­i­cant polit­i­cal devel­op­ments of my life­time. I don’t have any links about it because not much inter­est­ing has been writ­ten about it yet sim­ply because Trump has not nom­i­nat­ed a suc­ces­sor yet. Once he does, please let me know if you find any­thing fas­ci­nat­ing about either his nom­i­nee or the process.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Sus­pect in Stan­ford church mur­der kills self (Palo Alto Dai­ly News): this is a trag­ic and freaky sto­ry. A less hor­rif­ic detail which amused me: “Craw­ford stayed on at Stan­ford until 1976, but he found ways to exact revenge against the uni­ver­si­ty, Her­hold said. ‘He began steal­ing stuff from offices,’ said Her­hold, who added exam­ples, includ­ing a human skull, a walk­ing cane giv­en to uni­ver­si­ty founder Leland Stan­ford and rare books. ‘The kick­er was he went down to a print shop and got a degree from Stan­ford,’ he said, using a blank Stan­ford diplo­ma.”
  2. Ebo­la Deaths Rise As Patients Turn to Mir­a­cles Over Med­i­cine (Grif­fin Paul Jack­son, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Two Ebo­la patients died last month after flee­ing a hos­pi­tal iso­la­tion ward so they could be tak­en to a prayer meet­ing, where they exposed up to 50 oth­ers.” Wow. Bad the­ol­o­gy leads to tragedy. Some­body nev­er taught them Leviti­cus 13:46. If you’re infec­tious, pay atten­tion to the phrase “call for” in James 5:14–16 and ask the elders to come to you. Quar­an­tine Laws and the Bible (Lar­ry Ball, The Aquila Report) is worth read­ing in this regard.
  3. The Span­ish Inqui­si­tion Was a Mod­er­ate Court by the Stan­dard of Its Time (Ed Con­don, Nation­al Review): “Because it was a seri­ous court, metic­u­lous case files and court records were kept. Libraries in Tole­do, Sala­man­ca, and oth­er cities are home to thou­sands of such case files. In the sec­ond half of the 20th cen­tu­ry, Hen­ry Kamen and oth­er his­to­ri­ans were giv­en access to them. What they dis­cov­ered changed the schol­ar­ly under­stand­ing of the Inqui­si­tion. So, what of those dank dun­geons and hot pok­ers? Well, for a start, the jails of the Inqui­si­tion were uni­ver­sal­ly known to be hygien­ic and well main­tained. They were nei­ther built nor run as places of pun­ish­ment. The stan­dard of care that inmates received was high enough that pris­on­ers held by the Crown would often peti­tion to be moved to Inqui­si­tion jails. There are record­ed cas­es of crim­i­nals com­mit­ting pub­lic heresy with the express pur­pose of being held and tried by the Inqui­si­tion, rather than the sec­u­lar courts.” This is not a fringe view among schol­ars, but is def­i­nite­ly con­trary to the pop­u­lar under­stand­ing of the Span­ish Inqui­si­tion.
  4. Alexan­dria Oca­sio-Cortez on her Catholic faith and the urgency of a crim­i­nal jus­tice reform (Alexan­dria Oca­sio-Cortez, Amer­i­ca): “By nature, a soci­ety that for­gives and reha­bil­i­tates its peo­ple is a soci­ety that for­gives and trans­forms itself. That takes a rad­i­cal kind of love, a secret of which is giv­en in the Lord’s Prayer: For­give us our tres­pass­es, as we for­give those who tres­pass against us. And let us not for­get the guid­ing prin­ci­ple of “the least among us” found in Matthew: that we are com­pelled to care for the hun­gry, thirsty, home­less, naked, sick and, yes—the impris­oned.” This, of course, is the social­ist can­di­date who unseat­ed pow­er­ful incum­bent Joe Crow­ley in the Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­ma­ry. She is almost cer­tain to become the youngest woman ever elect­ed to Con­gress.
    • Relat­ed: Demo­c­ra­t­ic Social­ists of Amer­i­ca Mem­ber­ship Surges After Alexan­dria Ocasio-Cortez’s Stun­ning Vic­to­ry (Gideon Resnick, The Dai­ly Beast): “Accord­ing to Lawrence Drey­fuss, a pro­gram asso­ciate for DSA, the orga­ni­za­tion saw a surge of 1,152 new mem­ber­ships on Wednesday—about 35 times more sign-ups than on an aver­age day. The last major mem­ber­ship bump DSA expe­ri­enced was in the month fol­low­ing Pres­i­dent Trump’s elec­tion, dur­ing which time they had about six times more sign-ups than in the pre­vi­ous month.” Note that the orga­ni­za­tion itself is still rel­a­tive­ly small (40,000 mem­bers).
    • Pos­si­bly relat­ed: Democ­rats are los­ing the mil­len­ni­al vote and need to change mes­sage (Cas Mud­de, The Guardian): “a recent Reuters/Ipsos mega poll of 16,000 respon­dents, found that the Democ­rats are los­ing ground with mil­len­ni­als. While mil­len­ni­als still pre­fer the Demo­c­ra­t­ic par­ty over the Repub­li­cans, that sup­port is tank­ing. In just two years, it dropped sharply from 55% to 46%. Mean­while, their sup­port for Repub­li­cans has remained rough­ly sta­ble in the past two years, falling from 28% to 27%.… their dis­like of the Repub­li­cans should not be inter­pret­ed as a like of Democ­rats.” Caveats apply: this is based on the results of one poll.
    • Def­i­nite­ly relat­ed: Dear Demo­c­ra­t­ic Social­ists Who Think You’re Hav­ing a Moment: It’s Me, a Lib­er­tar­i­an, Who’s Been Through This. (Rob­by Soave, Rea­son): “Demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ism, the ide­ol­o­gy with which Oca­sio-Cortez iden­ti­fies, appears to be hav­ing a polit­i­cal moment. To which I say, as a lib­er­tar­i­an who has been through the whole an-idea-whose-time-has-final­ly-come expe­ri­ence: good luck with that, com­rades. The signs are easy to mis­read.”
  5. Right-to-work laws make unions work hard­er for their mem­bers (Chris­tos Makridis, The Hill): “RTW [Right To Work] laws force unions to become more com­pet­i­tive. When unions are guar­an­teed a per­ma­nent income stream, they don’t need to work as hard to win the hearts and minds of their employ­ees; that is, they face weak­er incen­tives to pro­vide valu­able ser­vices. The adop­tion of RTW laws changes that by mak­ing union dues a vol­un­tary con­tri­bu­tion.” Yes, this is our very own recent­ly-grad­u­at­ed Chris­tos.
  6. 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.
  7. How The Democ­rats Lost Their Way On Immi­gra­tion (Peter Bein­ert, The Atlantic): “Lib­er­als must take seri­ous­ly Amer­i­cans’ yearn­ing for social cohe­sion. To pro­mote both mass immi­gra­tion and greater eco­nom­ic redis­tri­b­u­tion, they must con­vince more native-born white Amer­i­cans that immi­grants will not weak­en the bonds of nation­al iden­ti­ty. This means dust­ing off a con­cept many on the left cur­rent­ly hate: assim­i­la­tion.” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.

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).

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 145

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’ve been trav­el­ing a lot this week, so I haven’t done as much online read­ing as nor­mal. A few of these links are actu­al­ly left­overs from pre­vi­ous weeks that did­n’t quite make the orig­i­nal cut. Let me know if I over­looked some­thing you think I’d find inter­est­ing!

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Why I’m Hap­py My Son Mar­ried at 20 (Rebec­ca Brew­ster Steven­son, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “The preva­lent mes­sage in our cul­ture is that young adult­hood is the time to build a foun­da­tion for a healthy life. Those in their ear­ly 20s are encour­aged to pur­sue edu­ca­tion, trav­el, and gain life expe­ri­ence, all unhin­dered by wed­lock. Mar­riage is viewed by many as some­thing that comes only after ade­quate time to devel­op per­son­al iden­ti­ty and estab­lish a strong finan­cial foot­ing. But inher­ent in this delay is a real­i­ty we as par­ents are very cog­nizant of: Young adults, like all of us, are sex­u­al beings. When mar­riage is delayed, so is the oppor­tu­ni­ty to expe­ri­ence sex­u­al inti­ma­cy with­in God’s para­me­ters of a mar­riage covenant.”
  2. Stan­ford’s Pro­posed Renam­ing Prin­ci­ples: when I read the prin­ci­ples, my ini­tial thought was that Serra’s name was secure on cam­pus. But at least one stu­dent strong­ly dis­agrees.  
  3. The Per­ils of Paid Con­tent (Andrew Pot­ter, In Due Course): “When I was a stu­dent jour­nal­ist, it was axiomat­ic that adver­tis­ing was the biggest threat to inde­pen­dent media. Putting your liveli­hood in the hands of cap­i­tal­ists meant, ipso fac­to, doing their bid­ding. Expe­ri­ence is a great teacher though, and when I start­ed work­ing as an edi­tor at a news­pa­per, I was pleas­ant­ly sur­prised to dis­cov­er that you didn’t wake up every day to a swarm of calls from out­raged adver­tis­ers threat­en­ing to pull their cam­paigns if we didn’t smarten up….  But you know who does com­plain a lot? Sub­scribers do, end­less­ly.”
  4. Last Fall This Schol­ar Defend­ed Colo­nial­ism. Now He’s Defend­ing Him­self. (Vimal Patel, Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion): “There are two sep­a­rate issues. One is the sub­stan­tive issue of colo­nial­ism. I think the acad­e­my remains high­ly illib­er­al and intol­er­ant of my view­point. It remains the case that most of the peo­ple who sup­port­ed me didn’t sup­port me because they agreed with my argu­ment. I think my sup­port­ers came in two types: those who agreed with my argu­ment, and oth­ers who said that even bad argu­ments that have gone through the process of being pub­lished should be respond­ed to, not silenced.”
  5. Empire State Of Mind (Doug Mack, Slate): “If you can find Iowa on the map and rat­tle off a few facts about the state (corn, cau­cus­es, Field of Dreams, a real­ly big state fair), you should be able to do the same for Puer­to Rico, which has a larg­er pop­u­la­tion. That’s espe­cial­ly impor­tant for lead­ers in Wash­ing­ton, giv­en that the ter­ri­to­ries have no full-fledged con­gres­sion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion of their own, and giv­en that a cer­tain base­line lev­el of knowl­edge is a pre­req­ui­site for sound pol­i­cy­mak­ing.”
  6. The Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca Scan­dal, in 3 Para­graphs (Robin­son Mey­er, The Atlantic): “About 270,000 peo­ple installed Kogan’s app on their Face­book account. But as with any Face­book devel­op­er at the time, Kogan could access data about those users or their friends. And when Kogan’s app asked for that data, it saved that infor­ma­tion into a pri­vate data­base instead of imme­di­ate­ly delet­ing it. Kogan pro­vid­ed that pri­vate data­base, con­tain­ing infor­ma­tion about 50 mil­lion Face­book users, to the vot­er-pro­fil­ing com­pa­ny Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca. Cam­bridge Ana­lyt­i­ca used it to make 30 mil­lion ‘psy­cho­graph­ic’ pro­files about vot­ers.
  7. John Bolton Is Right About the U.N. (Bret Stephens, New York Times): “The U.N. is a nev­er-end­ing scan­dal dis­guised as an ever­last­ing hope. The hope is that dia­logue can over­come dis­trust and col­lec­tive secu­ri­ty can be made to work in the inter­ests of human­i­ty. Real­i­ty says oth­er­wise. Trust is estab­lished by deeds, not words. Col­lec­tive secu­ri­ty is a recipe for inter­na­tion­al paral­y­sis or worse. Just ask the peo­ple of Alep­po.”

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have The world will only get weird­er (Steven Coast, per­son­al blog): “We fixed all the main rea­sons air­craft crash a long time ago. Some­times a long, long time ago. So, we are left with the less and less prob­a­ble events.” The piece is a few years old so the exam­ples are dat­ed, but it remains very intrigu­ing. (first shared in vol­ume 67)

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

If 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 129

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. The home­less who help them­selves get a need­ed lift (Kevin Kel­ly, San Jose Mer­cury News): “LifeMoves, for­mer­ly known as InnVi­sion Shel­ter Net­work, is a 44-year-old [Bay Area] non­prof­it that spe­cial­izes in get­ting indi­vid­u­als into tem­po­rary hous­ing and on a path to per­ma­nent hous­ing. It claims a 93 per­cent suc­cess rate of get­ting home­less fam­i­lies housed and self-suf­fi­cient, and a 72 per­cent suc­cess rate with indi­vid­u­als. There is just one caveat: Peo­ple who receive assis­tance — referred to as clients — must demon­strate a will­ing­ness to bet­ter them­selves.”
    • Relat­ed: 5 Harsh Real­i­ties Of Home­less Camps Nobody Talks About (Evan Symon, Cracked): “If you live in a major Amer­i­can city, you’ve prob­a­bly seen your fair share of home­less camps. They usu­al­ly crop up in emp­ty lots, parks, and Big Rock Can­dy Moun­tains. City gov­ern­ments gen­er­al­ly have them torn down and cleaned up when­ev­er they can. Leav­ing aside whether or not that’s the right way to address home­less­ness, some­body has to do the work of clean­ing those places up. Our source, Car­ol, did just that.”
  2. Peo­ple for sale: Where lives are auc­tioned for $400 (Nima Elba­gir, Raja Razek, Alex Platt and Bry­ony Jones, CNN). There is a text sto­ry at the link, but the embed­ded sev­en minute video is worth watch­ing, espe­cial­ly the first four min­utes. This is a hor­ri­fy­ing devel­op­ment in the migrant cri­sis — slave auc­tions.
  3. How To Think About Vladimir Putin (Christo­pher Cald­well, Imprim­is): “When Putin took pow­er in the win­ter of 1999–2000, his coun­try was defense­less. It was bank­rupt. It was being carved up by its new klep­to­crat­ic elites, in col­lu­sion with its old impe­r­i­al rivals, the Amer­i­cans. Putin changed that…. Russ­ian peo­ple not only tol­er­ate him, they revere him. You can get a bet­ter idea of why he has ruled for 17 years if you remem­ber that, with­in a few years of Communism’s fall, aver­age life expectan­cy in Rus­sia had fall­en below that of Bangladesh. ” This is a slight­ly old­er arti­cle, and so his com­ments about Russia’s role in the U.S. elec­tion aren’t very cur­rent. His broad­er obser­va­tions are worth pon­der­ing.
  4. The Supreme Court hears argu­ments about the Chris­t­ian bak­er who refused to bake a cake for a gay wed­ding on Tues­day. Lots of peo­ple are writ­ing about it.
      • Against the bak­er: The Chris­t­ian Legal Army Behind ‘Mas­ter­piece Cakeshop’ (Sarah Pos­ner, The Nation): “On Decem­ber 5, with the full force of the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment behind it, ADF will be ask­ing the Supreme Court to carve out yawn­ing exemp­tions from civ­il-rights laws for con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians.” (this is less about the case and more about the firm rep­re­sent­ing the bak­er — it’s a hit piece but is full of inter­est­ing info)
      • Against the bak­er: The Mas­ter­piece Cakeshop Case Is Not About Reli­gious Free­dom (Jen­nifer Finney Boy­lan, New York Times): “But Mas­ter­piece has noth­ing to do with reli­gious free­dom. It’s about enshrin­ing a free­dom to dis­crim­i­nate. His­tor­i­cal­ly, reli­gious exemp­tions from the law have occa­sion­al­ly been grant­ed to pro­tect the per­son who holds the belief. But this case is dif­fer­ent, in that it gives an indi­vid­ual the right to harm some­one else. And that’s what the Mas­ter­piece case is about: It would give indi­vid­u­als the right to dis­crim­i­nate.” The author is an Eng­lish pro­fes­sor at Barnard Col­lege.
      • Against the bak­er: The Gay Wed­ding Cake Case Isn’t About Free Speech (Andrew Kop­pel­man, The Amer­i­can Prospect).”It is mere­ly telling him that if he sells any prod­ucts to het­ero­sex­u­al cou­ples, he must sell the same prod­ucts to same-sex cou­ples. He is free to refuse to write ‘Sup­port Gay Mar­riage’ on any cakes that he sells, so long as he refus­es that to both gay and het­ero­sex­u­al cus­tomers. So this is an easy case. Phillips should lose.“ The author is a law pro­fes­sor at North­west­ern. This is the strongest argu­ment I have read against the Chris­t­ian bak­er.
      • For the bak­er: Stop Mis­rep­re­sent­ing Mas­ter­piece Cakeshop (David French, Nation­al Review): “Phillips isn’t dis­crim­i­nat­ing against a pro­tect­ed class. I’ll repeat this until I’m blue in the face. He serves gay cus­tomers.”
      • For the bak­er: The Chris­t­ian Baker’s Unan­swered Legal Argu­ment: Why the Strongest Objec­tions Fail (Sherif Gir­gis, Pub­lic Dis­course): “Should an Islam­o­pho­bic sect get to force Mus­lim car­i­ca­tur­ists to sketch mock­ing images of the Prophet? Clear­ly not.” Dis­claimer: Sherif was a room­mate of one of our alum­ni and is an acquain­tance of mine.
  5. Duel­ing per­spec­tives on the fam­i­ly lives of blue state and red state Amer­i­cans:
    • Blue States Prac­tice the Fam­i­ly Val­ues Red States Preach (Nicholas Kristof, New York Times): “The lib­er­al impulse may be to gloat: Those con­ser­v­a­tives thun­der about ‘fam­i­ly val­ues’ but don’t prac­tice them. But there’s also per­haps a mea­sure of hypocrisy in the blue states. As Cahn and Car­bone put it: ‘Blue fam­i­ly val­ues bris­tle at restric­tions on sex­u­al­i­ty, insis­tence on mar­riage or the stigma­ti­za­tion of sin­gle par­ents. Their secret, how­ev­er, is that they encour­age their chil­dren to simul­ta­ne­ous­ly com­bine pub­lic tol­er­ance with pri­vate dis­ci­pline, and their chil­dren then over­whelm­ing­ly choose to raise their own chil­dren with­in two-par­ent fam­i­lies.’” Kristof is a Pulitzer prize-win­ning jour­nal­ist who was a Rhodes Schol­ar and is on the Board of Over­seers for Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty.
    • No, Repub­li­cans Aren’t Hyp­ocrites on Fam­i­ly Val­ues W. Brad­ford Wilcox and Vijay Menon, Politi­co): “In oth­er words, even though South­ern­ers in gen­er­al are at greater risk of fam­i­ly insta­bil­i­ty than North­ern­ers, Repub­li­cans in the South enjoy marked­ly high­er lev­els of fam­i­ly sta­bil­i­ty than their fel­low citizens—a fam­i­ly sta­bil­i­ty advan­tage that puts them above Democ­rats and inde­pen­dents in the North. Anoth­er way to put this: It’s blue and pur­ple Amer­i­cans in the South who are real­ly pulling down fam­i­ly sta­bil­i­ty in the South, not red Amer­i­cans.” Wilcox is a soci­ol­o­gy prof at UVA, where Minon is also a grad stu­dent.
  6. We Did­n’t Become Chris­tians Because Of The Huck­sters (Michael Wear, Fath­om): “If the world crit­i­cizes the pride of some­one who claims the name of Christ—or who won the votes of those who do—point them to Jesus, who was born into pover­ty, who instruct­ed his fol­low­ers to take the low posi­tion, and hum­bled him­self on the way to the cross…. There is noth­ing so wrong with the poor exam­ple of Chris­tians that can’t be solved by pro­claim­ing the per­fect exam­ple of Christ.”
  7.  Stan­ford can take Junipero Ser­ra’s name off its build­ings, but it can’t purge him from its his­to­ry (Char­lotte Allen, LA Times): “The Main Quad, part of a mas­ter plan designed by land­scape archi­tect Fred­er­ick Law Olm­stead, imi­tates Serra’s mis­sions (with some Romanesque touch­es). Besides the Mall and the boule­vard, oth­er cam­pus streets are named after his fri­ar-dis­ci­ples (Lasuén and Fran­cis­co Palóu), as well as José de Gálvez, the inspec­tor gen­er­al for New Spain who facil­i­tat­ed Serra’s mis­sion­ary work in Alta Cal­i­for­nia. If the Stan­ford activists aim to oblit­er­ate Serra’s pres­ence from their cam­pus, they’ve got their work cut out for them.” I didn’t know Ser­ra’s influ­ence was so per­va­sive at Stan­ford.

Things Glen Found Amusing

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Let­ter To My Younger Self (Ryan Leaf, The Player’s Tri­bune): “Con­grat­u­la­tions. You offi­cial­ly have it all — mon­ey, pow­er and pres­tige. All the things that are impor­tant, right?… That’s you, young Ryan Leaf, at his absolute finest: arro­gant, boor­ish and nar­cis­sis­tic. You think you’re on top of the world and that you’ve got all the answers. Well I’m sor­ry to have to tell you this, but the truth is….” Such a grip­ping let­ter. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed. (first shared in vol­ume 99)

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 115

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. The Most Short­sight­ed Attack on Free Speech in Mod­ern U.S. His­to­ry (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): “Under a legal regime where hate speech was not con­sid­ered free speech, Trump and Ses­sions could like­ly pun­ish words used by mem­bers of Antifa and Black Lives Mat­ter. Do you think he’d police their speech more or less vig­or­ous­ly than white suprema­cists?”
  2. Everyone’s Sus­pi­cious of Athe­ists — Even Oth­er Athe­ists (Thomas MacMil­lan, NY Mag): “Accord­ing to a new study pub­lished last week in Nature, peo­ple all over the world con­nect immoral­i­ty with athe­ism. In fact, the moral prej­u­dice against athe­ists is so strong that it holds even in coun­tries like the Nether­lands, where most peo­ple aren’t reli­gious. Even athe­ists them­selves, accord­ing to the study, are inclined to see non­be­liev­ers as more wicked than the faith­ful.” The Nature paper is Glob­al evi­dence of extreme intu­itive moral prej­u­dice against athe­ists.
  3. I Won’t Make Jesus Bow Down to Xi Jin­ping (Derek Lam, New York Times): “Of Hong Kong’s six major reli­gions, five are already firm­ly under the con­trol of the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty. Judg­ing by recent events, the par­ty is very close to com­plet­ing its mis­sion of bring­ing Chris­tian­i­ty under its thumb.”
  4. The Dri­ve For Per­fect Chil­dren Gets A Lit­tle Scary (Tyler Cowen, Bloomberg View): “If you could direct­ly alter your kids’ genet­ic pro­file, what would you want? It’s hard to know how the social debate would turn out after years of back and forth, but I was dis­mayed to read one recent research paper by psy­chol­o­gists Rachel M. Lath­am and Sophie von Stumm. The descrip­tive title of that work, based on sur­vey evi­dence, is ‘Moth­ers want extra­ver­sion over con­sci­en­tious­ness or intel­li­gence for their chil­dren.’ Upon reflec­tion, maybe that isn’t so sur­pris­ing, because par­ents pre­sum­ably want chil­dren who are fun to spend time with.”
  5. Math­e­mat­i­cal mys­tery of ancient Baby­lon­ian clay tablet solved (Phys.org): “Plimp­ton 322 pre­dates Hip­parchus by more than 1000 years,” says Dr Wild­berg­er. “It opens up new pos­si­bil­i­ties not just for mod­ern math­e­mat­ics research, but also for math­e­mat­ics edu­ca­tion. With Plimp­ton 322 we see a sim­pler, more accu­rate trigonom­e­try that has clear advan­tages over our own.” The aca­d­e­m­ic paper is Plimp­ton 322 is Baby­lon­ian exact sex­a­ges­i­mal trigonom­e­try (His­to­ria Math­e­mat­i­ca). Anoth­er reminder that our ances­tors were pret­ty clever.
  6. Robert E. Lee opposed Con­fed­er­ate mon­u­ments (Lisa Des­jardins, PBS New­sHour):  “But while he was alive, Lee stressed his belief that the coun­try should move past the war. He swore alle­giance to the Union and pub­licly decried south­ern sep­a­ratism, whether mil­i­tant or sym­bol­ic.”
  7. This Is How Sex­ism Works in Sil­i­con Val­ley  My law­suit failed. Oth­ers won’t. (Ellan Pao, The Cut): “Before suing, I’d con­sult­ed oth­er women who had sued big, pow­er­ful com­pa­nies over harass­ment and dis­crim­i­na­tion, and they all gave me pret­ty much the same advice: ‘Don’t do it.’ One woman told me, ‘It’s a com­plete mis­match of resources. They don’t fight fair. Even if you win, it will destroy your rep­u­ta­tion.’”
  8. James Kennedy Min­istries Sues SPLC over Hate Map (Kate Shell­nut, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): see also Politico’s June arti­cle Has a Civ­il Rights Stal­wart Lost Its Way? (short answer: yes, yes it has)

Things Glen Found Amusing

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).

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

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 93

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. Yes, You Can Please Your Heav­en­ly Father (Kevin DeY­oung, Gospel Coali­tion): “Over and over, more than a dozen times in the New Tes­ta­ment, we [are clear­ly taught that our actions can please God]. We ought to be gen­er­ous. We ought to be god­ly. We ought to love and live a cer­tain way because it pleas­es God.”
  2. Break­ing Faith (Peter Beinart, The Atlantic): “As Amer­i­cans have left orga­nized reli­gion, they haven’t stopped view­ing pol­i­tics as a strug­gle between ‘us’ and ‘them.’ Many have come to define us and them in even more pri­mal and irrec­on­cil­able ways.”
  3. Sor­ry, But The Irish Were Always ‘White’ (And So Were Ital­ians, Jews, and So On): (David Bern­stein, Wash­ing­ton Post): The author makes intu­itive and com­pelling argu­ments. He is a law pro­fes­sor at George Mason Uni­ver­si­ty. 
  4. The Expe­ri­ence of Dis­crim­i­na­tion in Con­tem­po­rary Amer­i­ca: Results from a Nation­al­ly Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Sam­ple of Adults (SocArX­iv): note that this has not yet under­gone peer review and that the dataset has some lim­i­ta­tions. Hav­ing said that, I don’t think I’ve ever seen such research about how fre­quent­ly peo­ple feel dis­crim­i­nat­ed against. Table 2 on page 11 is where the most inter­est­ing infor­ma­tion can be found. Dif­fi­cult to sum­ma­rize but provoca­tive. 
  5. Relat­ed: White Evan­gel­i­cals Believe They Face More Dis­crim­i­na­tion Than Mus­lims (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “White evan­gel­i­cals per­ceive dis­crim­i­na­tion in Amer­i­ca in vast­ly dif­fer­ent terms than all oth­er reli­gious groups, includ­ing their minor­i­ty peers.”
  6. The recent nation­wide threats against the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty seem to have been per­pe­trat­ed large­ly by a 19 year-old dual-cit­i­zen­ship Amer­i­can-Israeli Jew (Yon­ah Jere­my Bob, Jerusalem Post) with a small sub­set stem­ming from a reporter stalk­ing an ex-girl­friend (Eric Lev­en­son and AnneClaire Sta­ple­ton, CNN). A use­ful reminder that our assump­tions are often wrong. 
  7. The Fake Kid­nap­ping Scan­dal That Almost Destroyed A Megachurch Pio­neer (Luke Har­ring­ton, Christ and Pop Cul­ture): “…it turns out the cul­ture wars weren’t invent­ed last week. The U.S.’s reli­gious and cul­tur­al land­scape of the 1920s was rocked by no short­age of its own con­flict, with fac­tions of evan­gel­i­cals, fun­da­men­tal­ists, main­line Chris­tians, and sec­u­lar­ists all vying for pow­er, and McPher­son had man­aged to make ene­mies of most of them.”

Things Glen Found 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.

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 89

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. Are Gen­der Fem­i­nists and Trans­gen­der Activists Under­min­ing Sci­ence? (Debra Soh, LA Times): “Dis­tor­tion of sci­ence hin­ders progress. When gen­der fem­i­nists start refut­ing basic biol­o­gy, peo­ple stop lis­ten­ing, and the larg­er point about equal­i­ty is lost.” The author has a Ph.D. in neu­ro­science and con­sid­ered her­self trans­gen­der as a child.
  2. The Masa­da Mys­tery (Eric Cline, Aeon): some fas­ci­nat­ing insights on one of the most famous tragedies that occurred short­ly after the events described in the New Tes­ta­ment. The author is a pro­fes­sor of clas­sics and anthro­pol­o­gy.
  3. Use Of Weaponized Drones By ISIS Spurs Ter­ror­ism Fears (Joby War­rick, Wash­ing­ton Post): “They’re now show­ing that these devices can be effec­tive on the bat­tle­field,” said Steven Stal­in­sky.… “With the way these groups use social media, my wor­ry is that they’re also putting the idea into people’s heads that this is some­thing you can now do.”
  4. 4 Recent Exam­ples Show Why Nobody Trusts Media ‘Fact Checks’ (Mol­lie Hem­ing­way, The Fed­er­al­ist): “The upshot is that the arti­cle does a nice job of prov­ing Mark Twain’s point that the three types of lies are lies, damn lies and sta­tis­tics, as it uses a sta­tis­ti­cal analy­sis of ques­tion­able mer­it to ‘dis­prove’ a state­ment that was lit­er­al­ly true.”
  5. I Ignored Trump News For A Week. Here’s What I Learned. (Farhad Man­joo, NY Times): “On most days, Mr. Trump is 90 per­cent of the news on my Twit­ter and Face­book feeds, and prob­a­bly yours, too. But he’s not 90 per­cent of what’s impor­tant in the world.”
  6. 4 Ways To Make Sure Your Protest Real­ly Makes A Dif­fer­ence (David Christo­pher Bell, Cracked): “But what if I told you that if you fol­low the rules his­to­ry has laid out, protests and boy­cotts absolute­ly can work? For when you look down the annals of suc­cess­ful civ­il dis­obe­di­ence, a clear pat­tern emerges.” This being Cracked, lan­guage warn­ing. Also, the URL is fun­ny: the slug is a‑be­gin­ners-guide-to-over­throw­ing-gov­ern­ment
  7. Two arti­cles that I did not expect to find fas­ci­nat­ing but did: Sports­writ­ing Has Become A Lib­er­al Pro­fes­sion: Here’s How It Hap­pened (Bryan Cur­tis, The Ringer): “I’m a lib­er­al sports­writer myself. The new world suits me just fine. Would it be nice to have a David Frum or Ross Douthat of sports­writ­ing, mak­ing wrong­head­ed-but-inter­est­ing argu­ments about NCAA ama­teurism? Sure. As long as nobody believed them.” This arti­cle led to the con­ser­v­a­tive fol­lowup The Arro­gant Think­ing Of Lib­er­al Sports Writ­ers (Michael Bren­dan Dougher­ty, The Week): “Has no one stopped to notice there is some­thing odd about an anti-racism that will cause an ever­more diverse coun­try to declare root­ing for white-faced mas­cots the only safe thing to do? How will this dele­tion of all non-white faces look in 50 years?”

Things Glen Found 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.

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.