Tag: history

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 63

1 Chronicles 12:32 - they "understood the times"
1 Chron­i­cles 12:32 — they “under­stood the times”

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

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. How Can I Learn To Receive — And Give — Crit­i­cism In Light Of The Cross? (Justin Tay­lor, Gospel Coali­tion): “A believ­er is one who iden­ti­fies with all that God affirms and con­demns in Christ’s cru­ci­fix­ion. In oth­er words, in Christ’s cross I agree with God’s judg­ment of me; and in Christ’s cross I agree with God’s jus­ti­fi­ca­tion of me. Both have a rad­i­cal impact on how we take and give crit­i­cism.” This is based on a longer arti­cle (4 page PDF).
  2. The Watch­men (Alan Jacobs, Harpers): this essay takes a while to get going, but once it does it is quite good. And this response piece by Jake Meador is even bet­ter: Fran­cis Scha­ef­fer and Chris­t­ian Intel­lec­tu­al­ism.
  3. Report: Aver­age Christian’s Strat­e­gy To Fight Sin Com­prised Of Binge-Watch­ing Net­flix Shows (Baby­lon Bee): Baby­lon Bee is, of course, humor. This one was so real I decid­ed to put it under the news sec­tion. On a relat­ed note, see America’s Lost Boys.
  4. The End of the Lib­er­al Tra­di­tion? (Mark L. Movs­esian, First Things) and Trump’s Good Polit­i­cal Tim­ing: Younger Amer­i­cans Are Shun­ning Democ­ra­cy (Cather­ine Ramp­bell, Wash­ing­ton Post): this is, frankly, ter­ri­fy­ing. Prob­a­bly also an inevitable con­se­quence of our cul­ture aban­don­ing the Chris­t­ian belief in deprav­i­ty.
  5. What The Hell Is Wrong With The Nation­al Media? (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): I was in Louisiana when the rains came. It was shock­ing how much water fell in a short time. The scope of the dis­as­ter is stag­ger­ing, and it is sur­pris­ing that it took media orga­ni­za­tions so long to notice it. Sean Illing at Salon has a sim­i­lar arti­cle up: Louisiana’s Qui­et Cri­sis: Cable News and the Fol­ly of Dis­as­ter Porn Cov­er­age. Arti­cles like this are begin­ning to mul­ti­ply, but atten­tion is still scant (although it seems to be slow­ly turn­ing around). For an even salti­er read, con­sid­er Dreher’s more recent col­umn. I include these links in part because they are a use­ful reminder that what appears in the media is not what is hap­pen­ing, but rather what media per­son­nel are (a) aware is hap­pen­ing and (b) deem impor­tant.
  6. Pros­ti­tu­tion Is Not Sex Work (Kat Ban­yard, Aeon): “Men who pay for sex are not help­less­ly react­ing to uncon­tain­able sex­u­al urges. Nor does the pros­ti­tu­tion trade rep­re­sent ‘a place of last resort’ for them. A study of 6,000 UK men by Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege Lon­don in 2014 revealed that those most like­ly to have paid for sex were young pro­fes­sion­als with high num­bers of sex­u­al part­ners.”
  7. In defense of Rud­yard Kipling and ‘The Jun­gle Books’ (Michael Dir­da, Wash­ing­ton Post): this is a good piece.

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.

If you have a non-Stan­ford friend who might be inter­est­ed in these emails, they can sign up at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/subscribe, and if you want to view the archives they are at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 47

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. Chi­na Reveals What It Wants To Do With Chris­tian­i­ty (Brent Ful­ton, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “how China’s athe­is­tic regime plans to deal with the country’s grow­ing Chris­t­ian pop­u­la­tion, pro­ject­ed to become the world’s largest with­in the next cou­ple decades.”
  2. After Pas­tor’s Wife Buried Alive, Chi­nese Church Wins Land Bat­tle (Sarah Zyl­stra, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): use­ful to read in con­junc­tion with the pre­ced­ing arti­cle.
  3. Radi­ant Zinc Fire­works Reveal Qual­i­ty of Human Egg (Mar­la Paul, North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty News): you were formed in a burst of light. For real. “I praise you because I am fear­ful­ly and won­der­ful­ly made” (Psalm 139:14)
  4. You’re More Like­ly To Die In A Human Extinc­tion Event Than A Car Crash (Robin­son Mey­er, The Atlantic): but did they fac­tor in the return of Christ?
  5. Relat­ing To The Skep­tics (Robert Mims, PE News): short and encour­ag­ing.
  6. Are History’s “Great­est Philoso­phers” All That Great? (Gre­go­ry Lewis, Dai­ly Nous): inter­est­ing but miss­es a huge point. Socrates is not famous mere­ly for the words he used — he is famous for the life he lived. Great­ness is not a mat­ter of clev­er­ness alone. 
  7. Things that tick­led 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 41

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. Since yes­ter­day was St. Patrick’s Day, here are his Con­fes­sion (of faith) and his Let­ter To The Sol­diers of Coroti­cus. The open­ing lines of his con­fes­sion, “My name is Patrick. I am a sin­ner, a sim­ple coun­try per­son, and the least of all believ­ers. I am looked down upon by many.” Skip down to verse 16 for some of the wild stuff.
  2. The Shame Cul­ture (David Brooks, BYT): “The guilt cul­ture could be harsh, but at least you could hate the sin and still love the sin­ner. The mod­ern shame cul­ture alleged­ly val­ues inclu­sion and tol­er­ance, but it can be strange­ly unmer­ci­ful to those who dis­agree and to those who don’t fit in.” See also Scape­goats in the Cul­ture War (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic).
  3. OKC Thun­der Coach’s Words Res­onate With Many (Jen­ni Carl­son, The Okla­homan): this is a bit late, but I final­ly watched the eulo­gy that recent­ly gripped the sports world’s inter­est. Wow. Watch the YouTube video first (7 min­utes) and then read the arti­cle.
  4. Three Num­bers That Explain The Mod­ern Polit­i­cal Ecosys­tem (Kevin Drum, Moth­er Jones): how media and pol­i­tics inter­sect.
  5. The Glar­ing Evi­dence That Free Speech Is Threat­ened On Cam­pus (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): “To sum up: free speech on cam­pus is threat­ened from a dozen direc­tions. It is threat­ened by police spies, overzeal­ous admin­is­tra­tors, and stu­dents who are intol­er­ant of dis­sent.”
  6. Now that you’re on break, please reg­is­ter to vote if you have not already done so. If you are reg­is­ter­ing in Cal­i­for­nia, 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. 🙂
  7. Quick Reads:

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 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 37

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.

Also, I nor­mal­ly include arti­cles from a vari­ety of sources, but this week I noticed that I’m includ­ing a bunch from GetRe­li­gion. I guess they’ve been on fire late­ly. 

  1. Death, The Pros­per­i­ty Gospel, and Me (Kate Bowler, NY Times): This piece is mov­ing and fun­ny and also not quite right… despite her study she still mis­un­der­stands some aspects of the Charis­mat­ic and Pen­te­costal world. All in all well worth read­ing. “No word of a lie: I once saw a megachurch pas­tor almost choke to death on his own fog machine. Some­one had cranked it up to the Holy Spir­it max­i­mum.”
  2. Think Pieces on Jus­tice Scalia, Funer­al Ser­mons, Humil­i­ty, and the First Amend­ment (Ter­ry Mat­ting­ly, GetRe­li­gion): Scalia was such a fas­ci­nat­ing man.I like what one of our lawyer alum­ni post­ed on Face­book: “Jus­tice Scalia! You wrote your opin­ions with so much life, I guess I thought you’d nev­er die. The world has lost a great grumpy con­ser­v­a­tive. Rest easy.”
  3. Why Is The Atlantic Sur­prised That Ear­ly Pro-Lif­ers Were, Uh, Lib­er­als? (Julia Dulin, GetRe­li­gion): This is an arti­cle about some arti­cles about a book. Meta but fas­ci­nat­ing.
  4. Lit­tle Sis­ters of the Poor on Supreme Court case: Why we can’t “just sign the form” (Con­stance Veit, Catholic Review): Moth­er Theresa’s com­pa­tri­ots explain their con­sci­en­tious objec­tion in their own words.
  5. Vote For Trump! Vote For Hilary! Vote For Jesus At This Racial­ly Diverse S.C. Megachurch! (Bob­by Ross, GetRe­li­gion): Inter­est­ing. Also, a reminder that reporters’ per­spec­tives on church­es often miss signif­i­cant details.  “None of the rough­ly 1,300 words in the Times report is ‘Jesus.’”
  6. Caus­es and Con­se­quences of the Protes­tant Ref­or­ma­tion (Beck­er, Pfaff & Rubin, a work­ing paper): There’s a lot here. Rec­om­mend­ed for social sci­en­tists. One cool bit: “They argue that the spread of uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents from Protes­tant strong­holds (Wit­ten­berg and Basel, the intel­lec­tu­al homes of Luther and Zwingli) and ortho­dox Catholic strong­holds (Cologne and Lou­vain) had a sig­nif­i­cant impact on whether a town ulti­mate­ly adopt­ed the Ref­or­ma­tion.” Which is a very fan­cy way of say­ing God uses uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents.
  7. On the ran­dom side:

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 27

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

To be frank, most of what I found inter­est­ing this week was turkey. The pick­ings are lit­tle slim­mer than oth­er weeks:

  1. The Chris­t­ian Cen­tu­ry No One Pre­dict­ed (Justin Tay­lor, per­son­al blog): “it was also a rever­sal in that Chris­tian­i­ty moved from being cen­tered in Chris­t­ian nations to being cen­tered in non-Chris­t­ian nations. Chris­ten­dom, that remark­able con­di­tion of church­es sup­port­ing states and states sup­port­ing Chris­tian­i­ty, died. The idea of Chris­t­ian priv­i­lege in soci­ety was all but killed. And yet the reli­gion seemed stronger than ever at the end of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry.”
  2. Ross Douthat on The Joy of ISIS (NY Times): “But if the West’s offi­cial alter­na­tive to ISIS is the full Bel­gium (basi­cal­ly good food + bureau­cra­cy + euthana­sia), if West­ern soci­ety seems like it’s closed most of the paths that human beings have tra­di­tion­al­ly fol­lowed to find tran­scen­dence, if West­ern cul­ture los­es the abil­i­ty to even imag­ine the joy that comes with full com­mit­ment, and not just the remis­sive joy of slough­ing com­mit­ments off — well, then we’re going to be sup­ply­ing at least some recruits to groups like ISIS for a very long to come.”
  3. Why Tol­er­ate Reli­gion? (First Things, Rafael Domin­go):  “The right to reli­gion is dif­fer­ent from free­dom of con­science. Con­science is a sort of pro­tec­tive shell around people’s pri­va­cy: it safe­guards them from abu­sive intru­sions by the law. Con­science marks a pri­vate lim­it of the legal sys­tem, not a pub­lic one.… The right to reli­gion demands tol­er­a­tion; free­dom of con­science demands accom­mo­da­tion.”
  4. Fear and Vot­ing on the Chris­t­ian Right (CNN, Thomas Lake). “They called her a big­ot, a homo­phobe, even a racist, which was strange, because the two gay men were white and so was Bet­ty Odgaard. The angry peo­ple on the Inter­net told Bet­ty she would die soon, that her death would be good for Amer­i­ca, and then she would prob­a­bly go to hell. Bet­ty had oth­er ideas about her final des­ti­na­tion, but she agreed it was time to go.”
  5. There’s an Awful Cost To Get­ting a Ph.D. That No One Talks About (Quartz). Also of inter­est to Chris­tians con­sid­er­ing a doc­tor­al pro­gram, The Illu­sion of Respectabil­i­ty (Chris­tian­i­ty Today, Allen Guel­zo).
  6. Chica­go School of Free Speech (Wall Street Jour­nal, L. Gor­don Crovitz): one school’s response to the tumult sweep­ing col­lege cam­pus­es. (may be behind a pay­wall)

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 9

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, I share 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

  1. From the par­ty-with-puri­tans depart­ment: Our Puri­tan Her­itage (Democ­ra­cy, Jim Sleep­er): the author, a polit­i­cal sci­ence lec­tur­er at Yale, is not a Chris­t­ian. I think parts of his argu­ment are wrong, but I found the whole thing stim­u­lat­ing (the com­ments are worth read­ing as well). For some­thing more prac­ti­cal­ly help­ful, see Puri­tan Resources For Bib­li­cal Coun­sel­ing (Jour­nal of Bib­li­cal Coun­sel­ing, Tim Keller): good stuff about how to grow spir­i­tu­al­ly.
  2. From the sis­ter-in-Christ-doing-good depart­ment: Griev­ing Gov. Nik­ki Haley For­ev­er Changed By Church Mas­sacre (Post and Couri­er, Jen­nifer Berry Hawes): Nik­ki Haley, the gov­er­nor of South Car­oli­na, is an adult con­vert to Chris­tian­i­ty. There’s a 2012 inter­view about her faith at Chris­tian­i­ty Today.
  3. From the still-work­ing-to-show-the-world-that-we-are-one depart­ment: Dear Pas­tor, Can I Come To Your Church? (Chris­tian­i­ty Today, Bradley Wright): an inter­est­ing study on implic­it racial bias in wel­com­ing new­com­ers to church. It may be behind a pay­wall — I was able to access the whole thing but some­one else told me they only got a snip­pet. The author, a soci­ol­o­gist at U Conn, gives ref­er­ences on his web­site (the Chris­tian­i­ty Today arti­cle is a pop­u­lar­iza­tion of a forth­com­ing aca­d­e­m­ic arti­cle).
  4. From the it-sounds-clever-the-first-time-you-hear-it-depart­ment: Why Pri­va­tiz­ing Mar­riage Would Be A Dis­as­ter (The Week, Shikha Dalmia): I’ve heard some Chris­tians sug­gest that we erect a wall of sep­a­ra­tion between mar­riage and state. This arti­cle sug­gests that is a fool­ish idea. For a Chris­t­ian take (the author of the pre­vi­ous arti­cle is agnos­tic) that comes to sim­i­lar con­clu­sion, read Dou­glas Wilson’s In Which First Things Does Some Fourth Things (Doug Wil­son is a fas­ci­nat­ing and polar­iz­ing fig­ure: read The Con­tro­ver­sial­ist from Chris­tian­i­ty Today to learn more about him).
  5. From the mak­ing-a-dif­fer­ence-is-hard depart­ment: The Myth of the Eth­i­cal Shop­per (Huff­in­g­ton Post, Michael Hobbes): I post­ed a sim­i­lar piece a few weeks ago. You have less con­trol as a con­sumer than you think because com­pa­nies have less con­trol than you think.
  6. From the in-our-back­yard depart­ment: Spir­i­tu­al Oppor­tu­ni­ty in Sil­i­con Val­ley (Lead­er­ship Jour­nal, Daniel Dar­ling): an inter­view with the author of a forth­com­ing book about Chris­tian­i­ty in Sil­i­con Val­ley. The book looks inter­est­ing. The author blogs at http://findinggodinsiliconvalley.com/

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 1

[this was an email I sent to the stu­dents in Chi Alpha @ Stan­ford]

In the time of King David, the Bible says that the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). That’s a wor­thy goal — to under­stand our times and know how to live wise­ly in them. We need to learn how our faith inter­acts with the world.

To that end, I’m going to try some­thing: for the next few weeks I’ll send out three to five articles/resources I have found help­ful in think­ing about nation­al, glob­al and the­o­log­i­cal issues (be sure to see the dis­claimer at the bot­tom). My hope is these read­ings nudge you into con­tin­u­ing the tra­di­tion of Issachar. If these emails are well-received then they may become an ongo­ing thing.

So here’s the first batch:

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

  2. What ISIS Real­ly Wants (Graeme Wood, The Atlantic): the key to under­stand­ing ISIS is under­stand­ing their faith, par­tic­u­lar­ly their escha­tol­ogy. A take­away for Chris­tians — your escha­tol­ogy mat­ters (so get it right).

  3. Evan­gel­i­cal Protes­tants Are The Biggest Win­ners When­ev­er Peo­ple Change Faiths (Leah Libresco, FiveThir­tyEight): this is the most inter­est­ing take I’ve seen on the Pew Forum study that filled the news recent­ly. If cur­rent trends con­tin­ue until they reach an equi­lib­ri­um point, then evan­gel­i­cal­ism will become the largest reli­gious iden­ti­ty in Amer­i­ca (fol­lowed by either the reli­gious­ly unaf­fil­i­at­ed or the Mor­mons depend­ing on whether fer­til­i­ty is fac­tored in).

  4. God’s For­ev­er Fam­i­ly: The Jesus Peo­ple Move­ment in Amer­i­ca (Lar­ry Eskridge, Oxford Uni­ver­si­ty Press): a schol­ar­ly his­to­ry of an oft-over­looked Great Awak­en­ing — the Jesus Peo­ple revival among the hip­pies. It is full of delight­ful anec­dotes, includ­ing this charmer: one cou­ple “began to talk to their friends about Jesus and even went so far as to name their dog ‘Repent’ so they could stand in the city’s parks and shout the canine’s name and their mes­sage at the top of their lungs.”  (p 148). The book is avail­able online through Stan­ford’s library sys­tem — the link will take you right there.

Sug­ges­tions for a bet­ter title / arti­cles to con­sid­er / best day to send the email on / etc. are wel­come, as is feed­back on the idea as a whole.

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read stuff (and may there­fore share stuff) from all over the ide­o­log­i­cal map. I read wide­ly in part because I aspire to pass an ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and more gen­er­al­ly because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand.” I encour­age you to adopt a sim­i­lar per­spec­tive.

Also, for the first few install­ments I’ll prob­a­bly reach far­ther back than nor­mal for some arti­cles that stand out in my mem­o­ry. As time goes on I imag­ine the links will become more and more recent.