Tag: how the church is perceived

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 479

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. How the Ivy League Broke America (David Brooks, The Atlantic): “Students who got into higher-ranking colleges, which demand high secondary-school GPAs, are not substantially more effective after they graduate. In one study of 28,000 young students, those attending higher-ranking universities did only slightly better on consulting projects than those attending lower-ranked universities. Grant notes that this would mean, for instance, that a Yale student would have been only about 1.9 percent more proficient than a student from Cleveland State when measured by the quality of their work. The Yale student would also have been more likely to be a jerk: The researchers found that students from higher-ranking colleges and universities, while nominally more effective than other students, were more likely to pay ‘insufficient attention to interpersonal relationships,’ and in some instances to be ‘less friendly,’ ‘more prone to conflict,’ and ‘less likely to identify with their team.’ ” 
    • Interesting throughout. I liked this line — “If we could get to the point where being snobby about going to Stanford seems as ridiculous as being snobby about your great-grandmother’s membership in the Daughters of the American Revolution, this would transform not just college admissions but American childhood.”
    • Somewhat related: We Asked for It (Michael W. Clune, The Chronicle of Higher Education): “The costs of explicitly tying the academic enterprise to partisan politics in a democracy were eminently foreseeable and are now coming into sharp focus.… In return for their tuition, students are given the faculty’s high-class political opinions as a form of cultural capital. Thus the public perceives these opinions — on defunding the police, or viewing biological sex as a social construction, or Israel as absolute evil — as markers in a status game. Far from advancing their opinions, professors in fact function to invalidate these views for the majority of Americans who never had the opportunity to attend elite institutions but who are constantly stigmatized for their low-class opinions by the lucky graduates. Far from representing a powerful avant-garde leading the way to political change, the politicized class of professors is a serious political liability to any party that it supports.” 
      • The author is an English professor at Case Western. He throws a lot of strong punches.
  2. Jordan Peterson Loves God’s Word. But What About God? (Brad East, Christianity Today): “the power of Peterson’s style is his marriage of existential urgency with hermeneutical creativity. He expects the Word to show him wonders. He wrestles with the text—a mystery and a stranger—until he secures a blessing from it. He takes for granted that its depths are bottomless. Do pastors model this posture in the pulpit? Do teachers in the classroom? Do scholars on the page?Christian readers should learn from Peterson’s boldness, his disposition of awe and docility before the sacred page. He opens the scroll with the same spirit as the psalmist: ‘Open my eyes that I may see wonderful things in your law’ (119:18).”
    • Recommended by a colleague. This is one of the best Christian engagements with Jordan Peterson I’ve seen.
  3. In the Era of the Judges (Stiven Peter, Mere Orthodoxy): “The holders of cultural capital have not simply substituted Christian values with an alternative set but promote the very loss of order itself. The only values are no values. That is, our culture promotes libertinism, everyone doing what is right in their own eyes. Sociologically, Hunter calls this the process of dissolution: ‘By dissolution, I refer to the deconstruction of the most basic assumptions about reality.’ Our culture doesn’t enforce any guide to who or what we are, nor what we should do. Instead, what is promoted is turning inside ourselves and determining our own values. This process results in the fracturing of society alongside tribes/enclaves of people with similar values.” 
    • This is a review of Aaron Renn’s book, and Renn says: “This review is a think piece in its own right. Peter takes my ideas and restates them through his own lens — improving them in the process.”
  4. Rich Inner Death (Samuel D. James, Substack): “Our mental health crisis is usually cast as either a failure of therapeutic techniques—we just haven’t unlocked our trauma well enough yet—or else an unavoidable consequence of climate anxiety, polarization, or bad media. But [perhaps the crisis stems from how we are trained to view the world]. There is a way of living your life as a kind of constant retreat into both the safety and the chaos of your own imagination, and nearly everything about how we learn, communicate, and work as modern people helps us condition for this. We are taught early and often to direct our gaze inward.” 
    • Several substantive insights in this article.
  5. Why the Federalist Society Has Been a Great Success (Ed Whelan, Substack): “The Federalist Society’s success has led many on the Left—and, more recently, some envious folks on the Right—to revile and demonize it. But its critics routinely display that they do not understand how it operates and how it has succeeded.… It does not submit amicus briefs. It does not undertake to enlist the public in political undertakings. And it has never done any of these things. And therein lies one of the great keys to its success.”
  6. AI-generated poetry is indistinguishable from human-written poetry and is rated more favorably (Brian Porter & Edouard Machery, Scientific Reports [Nature]): “We collected 5 poems each from 10 well-known English-language poets, spanning much of the history of English poetry: Geoffrey Chaucer (1340s-1400), William Shakespeare (1564–1616), Samuel Butler (1613–1680), Lord Byron (1788–1824), Walt Whitman (1819–1892), Emily Dickinson (1830–1886), T.S. Eliot (1888–1965), Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997), Sylvia Plath (1932–1963), and Dorothea Lasky (1978- ). Using ChatGPT 3.5, we generated 5 poems ‘in the style of’ each poet. We used a ‘human out of the loop’ paradigm: we used the first 5 poems generated, and did not select the ‘best’ out of a group of poems or provide any feedback or instructions to the model beyond ‘Write a short poem in the style of <poet> ‘. In the first experiment, 1,634 participants were randomly assigned to one of the 10 poets, and presented with 10 poems in random order: 5 poems written by that poet, and 5 generated by AI ‘in the style of’ that poet. For each poem, participants were asked whether they thought the poem was generated by AI or written by a human poet.… Contrary to what earlier studies reported, people now appear unable to reliably distinguish human-out-of-the-loop AI-generated poetry from human-authored poetry written by well-known poets.… Furthermore, people prefer AI-generated poetry to human-authored poetry, consistently rating AI-generated poems more highly than the poems of well-known poets across a variety of qualitative factors.” 
    • The authors are at the University of Pittsburgh.
  7. Why Progressives Should Question Their Favorite Scientific Findings (Paul Bloom, The Chronicle of Higher Education): “You may have heard of the study published in 2020 concluding that Black newborns have higher survival rates when Black doctors attend to them. It got a huge amount of coverage in the popular press. It was even cited by Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson in her dissent last year on the court’s ruling against racial preferences in college admissions. The research, Jackson claimed, shows the benefits of diversity. ‘It saves lives,’ she wrote. The same journal just published a re-analysis of the data. It turns out that the ‘effect is substantially weakened, and often becomes statistically insignificant,’ once you take into account that Black doctors are less likely to see the higher-risk population of newborns with low birth weight. I wasn’t surprised when I saw the re-analysis because I didn’t believe the original finding.… It’s like what someone once said about Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire: They’re both going through all the same moves, but Ginger Rogers is doing them backward and in high heels. A published finding that clashes with the political prejudices of reviewers and editors is a Ginger Rogers finding. It had to be twice as good.” 
    • The author is a psychology professor (emeritus at Yale, currently at U Toronto).

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

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 464



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.

This is volume 464, which only has two prime factors: 2 and 29.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Stanford in Paris 2024 (Stanford News): “A school-record 60 Stanford-affiliated athletes have qualified to compete at the Olympic Games Paris 2024.… Nations represented include the United States (38), Canada (5), Australia (3), Israel (2), Switzerland (2), Egypt (1), France (1), Germany (1), Greece (1), Hong Kong (1), Nigeria (1), Philippines (1), Singapore (1), Spain (1) and Venezuela (1).”
  2. Teachers and the Transmission of Excellence (Matt Clancy, New Things Under The Sun): “Here’s a striking fact: through 2022, one in two Nobel prize winners in physics, chemistry, and medicine also had a Nobel prize winner as their academic advisor.” 
    • Mentorship matters, and not just in academia. I have a friend who once told me, “You always need to learn up. Look above you and find people who have already achieved what you hope to achieve and spend as much time around them as you can.”
  3. There Is Almost No ‘Liberalizing Religion’ in the United States (Ryan Burge, Substack): “The more people go to church, the less liberal they are. That’s true across racial lines. That’s also true in a lot of major Protestant traditions including a few mainline stalwarts like the United Methodist Church and the PCUSA.” 
    • Emphasis removed for readability.
  4. The Most Revealing Moment of a Trump Rally (McKay Coppins, The Atlantic): “To understand the evolving psychology and beliefs of Trump’s religious supporters, I attempted to review every prayer offered at his campaign events since he announced in November 2022 that he would run again. Working with a researcher, I compiled 58 in total, the most recent from June 2024. The resulting document—at just over 17,000 words—makes for a strange, revealing religious text: benign in some places, blasphemous in others; contradictory and poignant and frightening and sad and, perhaps most of all, begging for exegesis.” 
    • Interesting concept for an article. Note that the author is Mormon, so factor that in when evaluating his religious commentary. 
  5. People Say Queer People Are Born That Way. It’s More Complicated. (Charles M. Blow, New York Times): “ ‘Born this way’ may, unfortunately, have been an oversimplification. It’s probably closer to the truth to say that people are ‘formed this way.’ As the complexity of human sexuality has become clearer, scientists and writers have attempted to add necessary nuance to the subject. But the slogan remains entrenched in the culture.… It is not only unsupportable by science but also does not capture the full reality of queer experience and is unjust to some members of the queer community itself.” 
    • I am old enough to remember when the “born this way” argument was the dominant reason homosexuality gained widestream acceptance in America. Unlocked.
  6. Should Pornography Be Completely Banned? (Ryan Burge, Substack): “The share of Americans who want no restrictions on porn has never been that high. It was 10% of the sample back in the early 1970s and today it’s dropped to a very small fraction — just 4% of those who took the survey in 2022. So, there’s little appetite for a laissez-faire approach to pornography.”
  7. Couples, Stop Writing Your Own Wedding Vows (Cheryl Mendelson, The Atlantic): “Traditional vows create an intense moment of quiet speech that heightens the exuberance of the toasts, drinking, and dancing that follow. Replacing them with sentimental or jokey words turns the vow-taking into an ironic performance of something the couple is implicitly disavowing. One of my friends regards taking vows other than the traditional ones as ‘like being on the witness stand and answering the questions you wish you had been asked.’ He and his wife wanted ‘no irony’ or attempts at wit in their vows, and ‘redacted’ theirs from a church rite.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

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 463



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.

This is volume 463, a prime number.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Why your smartphone might be stopping you from following Jesus (Martin Saunders, Premiere Christianity): “[Haidt] argues that smartphones actually drive spiritual degradation: ‘[social media] trains people to think in ways that are exactly contrary to the world’s wisdom traditions: Think about yourselves first; be materialistic, judgemental, boastful, and petty; seek glory as quantified by likes and followers.’… our digital culture isn’t neutral; it’s offering a kind of anti-discipleship.”
  2. Move Over, Mathematicians, Here Comes AlphaProof (Siobhan Roberts, New York Times): “A pair of Google DeepMind models tried their luck with the problem set in the 2024 International Mathematical Olympiad, or I.M.O., held from July 11 to July 22 about 100 miles west of London at the University of Bath. The event is said to be the premier math competition for the world’s ‘brightest mathletes,’ according to a promotional post on social media. The human problem-solvers — 609 high school students from 108 countries — won 58 gold medals, 123 silver and 145 bronze. The A.I. performed at the level of a silver medalist, solving four out of six problems for a total of 28 points. It was the first time that A.I. has achieved a medal-worthy performance on an Olympiad’s problems.”
  3. Standing Out, Crafting Hooks, and Accidentally Revealing Everything That’s Wrong With You (Max Nussenbaum, Substack): “You wouldn’t think that people’s natural instinct would be to reveal their full litany of psychological issues in their profiles, but it actually is. They just don’t realize that’s what they’re doing.” About a year old.
  4. Online opt-in polls can produce misleading results, especially for young people and Hispanic adults (Andrew Mercer, Courtney Kennedy & Scott Keeter, Pew Research): “…several recent studies have documented large errors in online opt-in surveys due to the presence of so-called ‘bogus respondents.’ These respondents do not answer questions sincerely; instead, they attempt to complete surveys with as little effort as possible to earn money or other rewards. Studies have shown that bogus respondents can cause opt-in surveys to overestimate rare attitudes and behaviors, such as ingesting bleach to protect against COVID-19, belief in conspiracies like Pizzagate or support for political violence.”
  5. Patronage vs. Constituent Parties (Or Why Republican Party Leaders Matter More Than Democratic Ones) (Tanner Greer, personal blog): “…many discussions of American politics assume that that the structures and operational norms of the two parties are the same. If these party differences were more widely recognized, I suspect we would see fewer evangelicals frustrated with their limited influence over the GOP party platform, fewer journalists shocked with J.D. Vance’s journey from never-Trump land to MAGA-maximalism, and greater alarm among centrist Democrats about the longer-term influence that the Palestine protests will have on the contours of their coalition.”
  6. Evangelicals Must Stop Their Preferential Treatment of the Left (James R. Wood, First Things): “Today, centrists and those on the right are more fertile soil, I believe, because they are more open to reality. They recognize that the cultural revolutionaries’ projects to rewrite reality are destroying civilization. These refugees crave clarity about basic moral realities because of how much confusion the negative world has produced. They are looking for voices who stand up to the civilizational destroyers—maybe even voices who boldly proclaim supernatural truths.Like the ‘god-fearers’ that early church missionaries often targeted, we today need to consider the ‘reality-respecters’ in our mission.” 
    • Recommended by a student.
  7. Stanford’s biggest star lured to Texas Tech with $1 million deal (Alex Simon, SF Gate): “Canady announced her transfer to Texas Tech on Wednesday, with multiple reports quickly coming out that the Red Raiders’ name, image and likeness (NIL) collective Matador Club, the group of boosters supporting Texas Tech by signing the school’s athletes to endorsement deals, signed the pitcher to a one-year deal for over $1 million.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

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 462



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.

This is volume 462, which my simple math brain likes because 4, 6, and 2 are related numbers.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Sebastian Junger was a skeptic of the afterlife. Then he nearly died. (Steven Petrow, Washington Post): “Junger, a confirmed atheist and an adherent of the scientific method, had been raised by a physicist (his father) and a painter (his mother). His upbringing had left little room for a spiritual experience like this one, which turns out to be the central conundrum of this book and, I’d venture, his life. The meeting with his father was understandably unnerving. ‘He was dead, I was alive, and I wanted nothing to do with him.’ But, it’s hard to unsee what you’ve seen: His father had not only visited him but opened the door to the idea that an afterlife might actually exist.… Ever the reporter, Junger is unwilling to write off these experiences as hallucinations (or any of the other medical explanations). He admits he was hoping for evidence of an afterlife, finding hints of it in the universality of NDEs that feature seeing the dead. After all, he writes, ‘there are neurochemical explanations for why people hallucinate, but not for why they keep hallucinating the same thing.’ ” 
    • Unlocked.
  2. Why Is the U.S. Still Pretending We Know Gender-Affirming Care Works? (Pamela Paul, New York Times): “Imagine a comprehensive review of research on a treatment for children found ‘remarkably weak evidence’ that it was effective. Now imagine the medical establishment shrugged off the conclusions and continued providing the same unproven and life-altering treatment to its young patients. This is where we are with gender medicine in the United States.” 
    • Unlocked.
  3. We Asked the Nones a Bunch of Questions About Leaving Religion (Ryan Burge, Substack): “The most popular reason [for leaving religion] by a significant margin was ‘religious hypocrisy.’ About 42% of the sample chose that reason for leaving. That was seven points higher than the second most popular — ‘religion doesn’t make sense.’ That was chosen by 35% of the sample. The only other response that scored above 30% was religious bigotry (31%).”
  4. Various pieces about the assassination attempt on Trump: 
    • Photo Appears to Capture Path of Bullet Used in Assassination Attempt (John Ismay, New York Times): “In documenting the Pennsylvania campaign rally on Saturday afternoon that turned into an attempt on a former president’s life, Doug Mills, a veteran New York Times photographer, appeared to capture the image of a bullet streaking past former President Donald J. Trump’s head.”
    • It’s 1968 All Over Again (Eli Lake, The Free Press): “The near assassination of Trump is an echo of the violence of 1968, when both Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy were gunned down in a two-month span in the spring of that year. Both were the victims of lone gunmen, James Earl Ray and Sirhan Sirhan, respectively. The murders threw America into a cycle of riots and crackdowns that culminated with the Democratic convention in Chicago at the end of August.”
    • Why Are There So Few Assassinations? (Richard Hanania, Substack): “Consider that there are a lot of crazy people out there who get agitated about politics. There is also an endless number of nihilists with nothing to live for, but who would probably like to see their names in the history books. Powerful firearms are widely available in many advanced nations, particularly the United States. In this country, it is common for malls or schools to get shot up by disturbed young men who expect to get nothing out of the act except that they might end up being part of a news story for a few days. Why don’t more of these types go after major politicians?” 
    • Video Shows Crowd Warning Law Enforcement About Gunman Before He Fired at Trump (David Botti, Haley Willis and Malachy Browne, New York Times): “Video taken by a bystander shows people pointing to the man suspected of shooting at former President Donald J. Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania and frantically warning law enforcement, just two minutes before the first burst of gunfire rang out, according to an analysis of the footage by The New York Times.”
  5. Why slavery is not America’s original sin (Wilfred Reilly, Spiked): “Modern Americans tend to project our positive values back into the past while thinking that our sins are uniquely bad. What we don’t understand is that contemporary Western beliefs about human dignity, inalienable rights, a right to freedom, etc, are the exception, not the norm.… Even a few open slave societies continue to exist today. In the Islamic republic of Mauritania, ‘the very structure of society reinforces slavery’.… CNN reporters and analysts claimed that between ’10 per cent to 20 per cent of the [Mauritanian] population lives in slavery’.” 
    • The author is a political scientist at Kentucky State. The article is an excerpt from his new book, which I have not read.
  6. The Hidden Marriage Market (Rob K. Henderson, Substack): “Today, colleges and universities function as arranged matchmaking services. Charles Murray’s term of art in Coming Apart is ‘the college sorting machine.’ The mechanism whereby people with distinctive tastes and preferences are brought together into educational institutions and the labor force.… It’s true that most college graduates don’t meet their spouse in college. But by graduating, you then, as Caplan notes, enter a refined dating pool for the rest of your life.”
  7. Some stuff from the election and election-adjacent realm, focused on the Republican side because they just had their convention and Trump put forth Vance as his VP: 
    • The changes in vibes — why did they happen? (Tyler Cowen, Marginal Revolution): “Another way to put it is that Trump was a highly vulnerable, defeated President, facing numerous legal charges and indeed an actual felony conviction. Yet he now stands as a clear favorite in the next election. In conceptual terms, how exactly did that happen? I had been thinking it would be a good cognitive test to ask people why they think the vibes have changed, and then to grade their answers for intelligence, insight, and intellectual honesty.” 
      • Cowen offers interesting hypotheses.
    • How J.D. Vance Rejected Evangelicalism (Aaron Renn, Substack): “He explicitly sees religion through the lens of socio-economic status. Once he saw that it was possible to be Christian in the world of the elites, it became interesting and credible to him again. Note again that it’s Catholics and Mormons who are key to this, not any sort of Protestants. At the time of this interview, Vance was still exploring Catholicism, to which he later converted.… There’s also something in evangelicalism that’s just off-putting to a lot of people like Vance. It’s not just the working class Pentecostal congregations like the one I was raised in (which was very similar to Vance’s experience). The average suburban megachurch is also incredibly cringe. I like to distinguish between middle class and striver class. Evangelicalism appeals to the middle class, but much less so to the striver class.” 
      • Renn is not wrong about the dynamics at play, but he is overlooking the presence of ministries like Chi Alpha on these elite campuses which are usually larger (in terms of weekly attendance) and perceived to be more vibrant than the Catholic ministries. 
      • A foll0w-up Catholic Conversionism (Aaron Renn, Substack): “It’s worth noting that although intellectuals often convert from evangelicalism to Catholicism, a lot more people over all convert the other direction, from Catholicism to evangelicalism.”
      • If anyone thinks Catholicism is correct on the merits, then become a Catholic. I strongly disagree with you, but follow your convictions. But to anyone tempted to convert to Catholicism or anything else primarily because it makes your social life / career prospects better, I urge you to reconsider.
    • How Yale Propelled J.D. Vance’s Career (Stephanie Saul, New York Times): “Sofia Nelson, a former classmate who is transgender and was once a close friend of both Mr. Vance and his wife, recalled that Mr. Vance delivered home-baked treats when they underwent top surgery. But years of friendship ended in 2021 over his support for an Arkansas bill opposing transgender care for minors.” 
      • Interesting when you ignore the partisan dynamic and instead focus on the cultural collision at Yale.
    • The Populist GOP and its Yale Law and Harvard Law Leaders (Orin S. Kerr, The Volokh Conspiracy): “…populist conservative voters are fine with voting for conservative graduates of elite law schools because having attended those school affords conservative politicians a sort of veteran status of its own. The politicians running for GOP office don’t speak fondly of their time at these schools. Instead, they present their time at Harvard Law or Yale Law as a difficult test of strength that they passed. They spent three years in the trenches of liberalism and they emerged victorious. They are now battle-hardened and ready to fight the liberals while in political office. From that perspective, graduating from these schools isn’t a problem. Instead, like a medal on a military uniform, it’s a credential.” 
      • This piece is pretty good, but it overlooks the deliberate pipeline that both sides have set up to scout and route promising young candidates from elite universities into political tracks. There are all kinds of conferences and grants and internships to facilitate this.
    • Is the Republican Party Becoming Pro-Choice? (Jonathon Van Maren, First Things): “The Republican National Committee proposed its 2024 GOP party platform in Milwaukee on July 8, and for the first time in forty years, this platform does not include support for a national abortion ban. Instead, the GOP’s anti-abortion positions are softened and many of the party’s previous pro-life commitments have been removed.… the GOP appears to be pivoting. Trump claims to hold a federalist position on abortion, but in practice he condemns only states that pass pro-life protections—such as Florida—while saying nothing about states with permissive abortion regimes.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

  • She Didn’t Like His Song, So She Tried to Eat Him (Joshua Rapp Learn, New York Times): “Dr. Gould believes that a female may be able to tell whether a male is better for mating or eating based on the strength of his calls. This means males take a huge risk when trying to attract mates. ‘You’ve really got to give props to the male frogs out there, that they are putting their lives on the line to reproduce,’ Dr. Gould said.”
  • Denominations Host Game Night (Keith Foskey, YouTube): two minutes of funny with some talkey-talkey at the end
  • The Death of Hobbies (Sherry Ning, Substack): “Scrolling through an endless trail of short videos and watching cooking shows is pleasurable because it feels good, but it would be wrong to say you actually enjoy it. It would be much more enjoyable to learn how to cook and roll up your sleeves in the kitchen. When we participate in the motion, we turn from a consumer into a creator. And the act of creation is vital to us because we all unconsciously strive to seek meaning beyond the material world: There is something divine about creating. To bring forth something out of nothing, to have something exist because of you, to leave your mark on the world. Every creative act—from developing a software to writing a book to making a large bowl of salad—is a miniature Genesis.” 
    • This one really belongs above, but I didn’t have space for it with my self-imposed limit of 7 big bullet points. I convinced myself it belongs here since it has to do with recreation.

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 460



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.

This is volume 460, a largely uninteresting number. It’s a multiple of 23, so I guess that’s kinda cool (for a certain definition of cool).

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Your Constitutional Right to Be a Pirate (A.J. Jacobs, The Free Press): “It may not get much publicity, but there it is, smack-dab in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution: Congress has the power to grant citizens ‘letters of marque and reprisal.’ Meaning that, with Congress’s permission, private citizens can load weapons onto their fishing boats, head out to the high seas, capture enemy vessels, and keep the booty. Back in the day, these patriotic pirates were known as ‘privateers.’ ”
  2. the Pentateuch in brief outline (Alan Jacobs, personal blog): “As Robert Alter has pointed out, the long-time obsession with sources among scholars of the Hebrew Bible — their slightly mad-eyed teasing out of the contributions of their posited authors J, E, D, and P — led them to the assumption that ‘the redactors were in the grip of a kind of manic tribal compulsion, driven again and again to include units of traditional material … for reasons they themselves could not have explained.’ Yet if that were true, why does an outline of the Pentateuch look so orderly — indeed, almost excessively so?”
  3. The Codger-in-Chief (Dan Drezner, Substack): “[We are seeing] coverage that bears more of a passing resemblance to what I saw during the Toddler-in-Chief days. In other words, there are some disturbing parallels in how Biden’s staffers are talking about him to the press when compared to Trump’s White House staffers. Furthermore, I strongly suspect the staffers now talking to the press are higher-ranking than, say, the deputy director of photography.” 
    • I read a lot of post-debate articles, most of them strongly partisan one way or the other. This one summarizes a lot of threads well. The author is a political science professor at Tufts.
    • Not directly related, but also related to the upcoming presidential election — My Unsettling Interview With Steve Bannon (David Brooks, New York Times): “I should emphasize that I wasn’t trying to debate Bannon or rebut his beliefs; I wanted to understand how he sees the current moment. I wanted to understand the global populist surge from the inside.”
    • Fascinating. Unlocked.
  4. Notes From a Formerly Unpromising Young Person (Rebecca Snyder, New York Times): “My situation was this: I was finishing my sophomore year of high school and had probably attended fewer days than I’d missed. I’d failed nearly all my classes, and my transcript boasted a 0.47. (I say ‘boasted’ because you really do have to miss quite a lot of school to fail so spectacularly.) Then there were the fistfights. The weed. The acid.… [Yet] someone had taken the time to meet me, to listen and to ultimately believe I had potential. When Mr. Spencer sat in the admissions office of North Central College and said, ‘I’m going to take a chance on you, Rachel Snyder,’ those were probably the most important words of my life.”
  5. Why a New Conservative Brain Trust Is Resettling Across America (Ruth Graham, New York Times): “The idea was a ‘fraternal community,’ as one leader put it, that prioritized in-person meetings. The result was the all-male Society for American Civic Renewal, an invitation-only social organization reserved for Christians.… Members must be male, belong to a ‘Trinitarian Christian’ church, a broad category that includes Catholics and Protestants, but not members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Members must also describe themselves as ‘unhyphenated Americans,’ a reference to Theodore Roosevelt’s speech urging the full assimilation of immigrants.” 
    • Both the existence of this movement and the way it is reported on are interesting. Unlocked.
  6. Loving America Means Expecting More From It (Esau McCaulley, New York Times): “Too often we worry that if we tell our children about our complex and sometimes dark history, their response will be debilitating shame. But instead of lying to our youth, we can give them a task that demands the best of them. We can call upon them to close the often-gaping chasm between our ideals and practices. This is the gift the past offers us, a chance to flee old evils and pursue new goods.”
  7. Revival and Revolution (John Fea, Commonweal): “Since Evangelicalism is an inherently populist and anti-intellectual movement, most born-again Christians do not trust academics and rely instead on such ‘experts.’ When they need to know something about science, they turn to Ken Ham, host of the popular radio show Answers in Genesis and founder of the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky. They get their psychology and social philosophy from James Dobson, the longtime culture warrior and founder of the lobbying organization Focus on the Family. Their political philosophy comes from sources like Fox News’s Sean Hannity, the Liberty University Standing for Freedom Center, or the Robertson School of Government at Pat Robertson’s Regent University. And for American history, conservative Evangelicals turn to David Barton, the founder and CEO of WallBuilders, an Evangelical organization in Aledo, Texas.” 
    • The author is a history prof at Messiah University, an evangelical school.

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 459



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.

This is the 459th installation, a number I find interesting simply because 4 + 5 = 9.

I should probably mention that I’m not sharing any articles about last night’s presidential debate today because I want to wait and see how people are thinking about the race after a few days. The reactions right now are too raw.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. A slap in the face for psychobabble (Janan Ganesh, Financial Times): “I can’t be the only foreigner in the US who has been chided for not having a therapist by someone who — choosing my words carefully here — seems to be getting uneven results from theirs. If psychobabble were confined to actors going up to collect their big certificates, I’d leave it alone. But, like sand, it gets everywhere.” 
    • Older but gold.
  2. Rebels with a religious cause: Meet New York’s avant-garde conservatives (Leonardo Bevilacqua, Christian Science Monitor): “Originally from Philadelphia, Salomé has been a devout Catholic since she was young. She wears a ‘Make America Great Again’ hat around town sometimes as an act of ironic defiance. And even though she’s a transgender woman, she prefers the term of an earlier age: castrato.  But first and foremost, she says, she’s a child of God.” 
    • Interesting and full of surprises.
  3. A Partial Explanation of Zoomer Girl Derangement (Zinnia, Substack): “Why are young women today so deranged? Because no one is honest with them and they cannot be honest with themselves. Parents lie to you, teachers lie to you, friends lie to you, everyone lies to you. If anyone dares tell you the truth, they are ostracized. My teenage self could only find truth smuggled away in the dark recesses of obscure online communities; usually couched in layers of ironic (and sincere) bigotry. And while I did not enjoy the bigotry (at the time), I found value in engaging with the transgressive material I came across because I felt that it expressed truths otherwise unavailable to me. Today, truth lies within the domain of internet ghettos, siloed away from the rest of polite society. At best, what society tells you is entirely unhelpful: ‘You’re beautiful just the way you are.’ At worst, what society tells you is entirely destructive: ‘If you feel alienated by your body, you should maybe consider a mastectomy.’ ” 
    • A bit vulgar in places, but interesting. Kinda long.
  4. Elite misinformation is an underrated problem (Matt Yglesias, Substack): “…all this sloppy work and misleading rhetoric is both more impactful than a lot of people realize, and also a lot less tactically savvy than those doing it think. The problem is that it’s about a million times easier to persuade a highly engaged member of your team of something than it is to persuade a swing voter (who is probably skeptical, cynical, and not that engaged with politics) or a member of the opposition (who instinctively assumes you’re lying about everything). So when you put something out there that’s false or misleading, you’re about a million times more likely to confuse people who are friendly to your cause than to actually persuade anyone worth persuading.”
  5. It Is Time for Radical Candor (Kevin D. Williamson, The Dispatch): “It’s another little Battle of Stalingrad: It’s a pity somebody has to win; all a decent person can do is pray for casualties.… Because we are governed by imbeciles and thieves and miscreants and degenerates and people who are willing to put up with all that imbecility and thievery and miscreance and degeneracy if it gets them even such a pathetic prize as a temporary seat in the U.S. House of Representatives…”
  6. How (and How Not) to Wait (Mark Vroegop, Crossway): “Focus. Adore. Seek. Trust. That’s how you wait on the Lord. It’s how you live on what’s true about God when you don’t know what’s true about your life.… Rather than allowing strong emotions to hold you hostage, you can embrace a strategy (FAST) that welcomes God’s grace into your uncertainty.” 
    • Recommended by a student.
  7. I feel awkward sharing this, but I was interviewed for a podcast. I did not choose the title (nor even the topic): Why I am NOT a Calvinist: Breaking Down Everything from Calvinism, to Can We Lose Our Salvation (Kingdom Come Podcast, YouTube): one hour long.

Less Serious Things Which Interested Glen

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 457



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.

This is volume 457, the sum of three consecutive primes (149 + 151 + 157) and also apparently the index of a prime Euclid number, but I would be lying if I said I knew what that is.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The case for showing up to church—even if you don’t believe in God (Emma Camp, America): “But despite my regular church attendance for almost two years now, I still haven’t developed a rock-solid faith. I’ve joked—and said as much on Twitter—that I only believe in God about 30 percent of the time on a good day. My ambivalence does set me apart from most of my friends from church, a group that includes a few seminarians. But it doesn’t keep me from coming back.”
  2. The Weird Nerd comes with trade-offs (Ruxandra Teslo, Substack): “To formalize this: ‘Any system that is not explicitly pro-Weird Nerd will turn anti-Weird Nerd pretty quickly.’ That is because most people, while liking non-conformism in the abstract and post-facto, are not very willing to actually put up with the personality trade-offs of Weird Nerds in practice. There is an increasing number of people right now who are thinking about how to build better intellectual institutions… it’s worth thinking about what kind of people one wants to attract in these institutions and how to keep them there. And I believe the conversation here starts with accepting a simple truth, which is that Weird Nerds will have certain traits that might be less than ideal, that these traits come ‘in a package’ with other, very good traits, and if one makes filtering or promotion based on the absence of those traits a priority, they will miss out on the positives.”
  3. An Object Lesson From Covid on How to Destroy Public Trust (Zeynep Tufekci, New York Times): “If the government misled people about how Covid is transmitted, why would Americans believe what it says about vaccines or bird flu or H.I.V.? How should people distinguish between wild conspiracy theories and actual conspiracies?… As the expression goes, trust is built in drops and lost in buckets, and this bucket is going to take a very long time to refill.” 
    • Unlocked.
  4. ‘Sham’ Surgery Can Actually Fix Our Bodies. So Why Are Some Against It? (Jeremy Howick, Science Alert): “More broadly, a review of 53 placebo-controlled surgery trials found that sham surgery was as good as the real thing in over half of the studies. Sham knee and back surgery works as well as real surgery for pain. Pretending to put brain implants works as well as real implants for reducing migraine attacks. Fake laser surgery works as well as real laser surgery to stop gastrointestinal bleeding. And fake surgery works as well as real surgery for making sphincters function more efficiently.” 
  5. The Day My Old Church Canceled Me Was a Very Sad Day (David French, New York Times): “When I left the Republican Party, I thought a shared faith would preserve my denominational home. But I was wrong. Race and politics trumped truth and grace, and now I’m no longer welcome in the church I loved.” 
    • Unlocked.
  6. Alito’s ‘Godliness’ Comment Echoes a Broader Christian Movement (Elizabeth Dias and Lisa Lerer, New York Times): “It’s a phrase not commonly associated with legal doctrine: returning America to ‘a place of godliness.’ And yet when asked by a woman posing as a Catholic conservative at a dinner last week, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. appeared to endorse the idea.… Now, Supreme Court justices have become caught up in the debate over whether America is a Christian nation. While Justice Alito is hardly openly championing these views, he is embracing language and symbolism that line up with a much broader movement pushing back against the declining power of Christianity as a majority religion in America.” 
    • This caveat is significant and should perhaps be higher placed in the story: “The Times has not heard the full unedited recording and has reviewed only the edited recording posted online, after the woman who recorded them, a liberal activist, declined to send the Times the full recording.” 
    • Related: What Exactly Did Justice Alito Say That Was Wrong? (Marc O. DeGirolami, New York Times): “Where was the justice’s error? He did not mention any pending case or litigation. He did not name any person or party. He did not discuss any specific political or moral matter. Most of the exchange consists of the filmmaker’s own goading remarks, followed by the justice’s vague and anodyne affirmations and replies. About what you might expect when cornered at a boring cocktail party.”
    • Related: Wild Distortions of ‘Secret Recording’ of Alito (Ed Whelan, National Review): “You are welcome of course to disagree with Alito.… But it’s beyond bizarre to find it newsworthy that Alito made a private comment that mirrors public speeches he has been giving.”
  7. Against Ambition (Grace Carroll, Stanford Daily): “Wineburg walked into his classroom intending to make a brief opening comment about the scene outside. What followed — a tirade against a culture of careerism so blatantly profit-motivated that students were being lured, literally, to flashing salaries like moths to flame — ‘sort of took on a life of its own,’ he recalled recently. It’s known colloquially among some students as ‘the rant.’ I was one of the frosh sitting in Wineburg’s class that fall. I remember the rant.… mostly I remember feeling like someone was lifting something very heavy off of me, a weight I hadn’t realized I was carrying until it was gone.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

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 453

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. Reconciling Christianity with intellectual curiosity (Nadia Jo, Stanford Daily): “One of the values Jesus emphasized most is humility, and I strive to implement that value in my intellectual life in addition to my personal life. My ethos of intellectual curiosity involves curiosity, challenging and wrestling with claims and lines of reasoning, flexible thinking and respect for people who put in the same effort. I hope that my nonreligious peers can come to understand and appreciate Christianity’s deep intellectual tradition, even if they don’t agree with its conclusions. And, I encourage more Christians to live up to that tradition and examine their own belief. You’ll probably find it more rewarding than you expect.” 
    • Nadia is a student in Chi Alpha.
  2. Homeless man is brought to church and starts CURSING right in the middle of the sermon while the pastor is preaching on the parable of the lost sheep. (Twitter): the link title is clickbaity, but the video is really good. 17 minutes but 100% worth your time.
  3. The Single Christian (Alexandra DeSanctis Marr, Religion & Liberty Online): “Rather than offering sympathy to those who are single for reasons outside their control, Broadway argues, Christians often send the message that singleness is an affliction endured by those who simply aren’t trying hard enough to find a spouse. But, as she explains, there isn’t an easy answer to what is ultimately a problem of numbers: ‘When women outnumber men in the church, that leaves three options: polygamy, marrying a non-Christian or staying single. Which would you like us to choose?’” 
    • That’s a great line by Broadway.
  4. The Scholar of Comedy (David Remnick interviewing Jerry Seinfeld, The New Yorker): “Every artist is only showing you his best. When you watch a movie, every scene—they only show you the one take that worked. Seventeen times, they missed it. You’re only seeing the peak of it. But in standup you gotta make it happen every night. That’s the difference. That’s why actors, I think, like to do the theatre. They want to be honest. They want to be held to account. And only a live audience holds you to account.”
  5. Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker says Pride Month is example of ‘deadly sin’ during commencement speech (Lukas Weese, New York Times): “Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker, speaking during a commencement speech at Benedictine College, referred to Pride Month, the events in June demonstrating inclusivity and support for the LGBTQ+ community, as an example of the ‘deadly sins’ as he advocated for a more conservative brand of Catholicism.” 
    • I am always surprised when people seem surprised when religious people say religious things. 
    • Related: Harrison Butker jersey sales increase in aftermath of Benedictine College address (Greg Dailey and Ryan Hennessy, KCTV 5): “Amid reaction to Harrison Butker’s now-viral commencement speech at Benedictine College on Saturday, the placekicker seems to have gained several new fans in the process. According to NFL.com, Butker’s jersey sales are among the most popular online. Only Travis Kelce rated higher than Butker, with Mahomes coming in right behind the star from Georgia Tech.”
    • This is common enough that there is probably a term for it: high-status people denounce something and or pretend it doesn’t exist, whereas many lower-status people really like it. This is a good example of this, as is the New York Times bestseller list compared to actual sales numbers.
  6. Campus protest-related:
    • Seeing the University More Clearly (David Pozen, blog): “To simplify somewhat, we might say that professors are granted a number of basic rights within the university, including rights to free speech and due process and quasi-property rights in the job itself. Students and staff are granted a partially overlapping, though weaker, bundle of rights. What none of us have are governance rights against the trustees who really run the place. We enjoy various individual privileges and protections, but not the franchise. Legal scholars and political scientists have a term for this sort of arrangement, too: liberal autocracy.” 
      • The author is a law prof at Columbia and has some insightful thoughts about how shifts in university governance in recent years have provided the context for how campuses are responding to protests.
    • Modern Protest Culture is Crippled by Internet-Brain (Samuel D. James, Substack): “A transformational protest is one that bears the brunt of reality and, in so doing, convinces others to join in changing it. The inability to bear this reality is not just fragility, it is precisely the way computer systems work; when the autonomous system fails to yield a pleasant or smooth solution, it must be fixed, not endured. Contemporary student activism reflects the assumptions and habits of the digital era.” 
      • Emphasis in original.
  7. Belgian Government Will Intervene In Cases Where Prostitutes Refuse Sexual Acts Too Often (Amy Hamm, ProPublica): “Prostitutes are to be granted ‘rights’ to refuse sexual acts, stop sexual acts, perform sexual acts in the manner they prefer, and refuse to sit behind Amsterdam-style windows (public facing windows where prostitutes are on display). However, should a prostitute use these ‘rights’ 10 times within six months, their pimp can then call on a government mediator to intervene.” 
    • Pimps used to have to beat their prostitutes. Now they can have the government use force on their behalf. #progress
    • This is the logic of “bake the cake, bigot” taken to its ultimate conclusion — conscience is nothing and the market is everything and personal convictions are inconveniences to be trampled upon.
    • If, as some feminists tell us, sex work is real work then you can’t be shocked at stuff like this. If, on the other hand, prostitution is both a tragedy and a vice you can get outraged. 

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

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 449

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.

This is volume 449, which is not a super interesting number. It has this going for it: its base 3 representation (121122) begins with the same digits as its base 7 representation (1211).

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Religious Worship Attendance in America: Evidence from Cellphone Data (Devin G. Pope, NBER): “I establish several key findings. First, 73% of people step into a religious place of worship at least once during the year on the primary day of worship (e.g. Sundays for most Christian churches). However, only 5% of Americans attend services ‘weekly’, far fewer than the ~22% who report to do so in surveys. The number of occasional vs. frequent attenders varies substantially by religion. I estimate that approximately 45M Americans attend worship services in a typical week of the year, but with large changes around Holidays (e.g. Easter).” 
    • Excerpt is from the abstract. Author is a prof of behavioral science and economics at U Chicago.
    • See also this (somewhat harsh) critique by Lyman Stone: https://twitter.com/lymanstoneky/status/1779889740260499820 (read the whole thread for the critique)
    • Response from Devin Pope, on religious attendance (Devin Pope, Marginal Revolution): “There are definitely limitations with the cellphone data (I’ve had about 100 people tell me that I’m not doing a good job tracking Orthodox Jews!). I know that these issues exist. But survey data has its own issues. Social desirability bias and other issues could lead to widely incorrect estimates of the number of people who frequently attend services (and surveys are going to have a hard time sampling Orthodox Jews too!). Given the difficulty of measuring some of these questions, I think that a new method – even with limitations – is useful.”
    • Lyman Stone helpfully replies to Devin Pope (Twitter thread)
    • Extremely interesting throughout. If you don’t have time to dive in then just read the abstract of the initial article and the Stone’s final Twitter thread.
  2. Americans are still not worried enough about the risk of world war (Noah Smith, Substack): “So if you were living at any point in 1931 through 1940, you would already be witnessing conflicts that would eventually turn into the bloodiest, most cataclysmic war that humanity has yet known — but you might not realize it. You would be standing in the foothills of the Second World War, but unless you were able to make far-sighted predictions, you wouldn’t know what horrors lurked in the near future. In case the parallel isn’t blindingly obvious, we might be standing in the foothills of World War 3 right now. If WW3 happens, future bloggers might list the wars in Ukraine and Gaza in a timeline like the one I just gave.” 
    • This was published before Iran attacked Israel. btw.
  3. How to Stop Losing 17,500 Kidneys (Santi Ruiz, Substack): “Greg and the researchers that he worked with showed that there are 17,500 kidneys, 7,500 livers, 1,500 hearts, and 1,500 lungs that go untransplanted every year from potential American organ donors. For scale, that means the United States does not need to have a waiting list for livers, hearts, or lungs within three years, and the kidney waiting list should come way down. That data convinced not only the Obama administration, but also the Trump administration. This reform movement has now crossed three administrations, and that almost never happens.”
  4. Should We Change Species to Save Them? (Emily Anthes, New York Times): “In some ways, assisted evolution is an argument — or, perhaps, an acknowledgment — that there is no stepping back, no future in which humans do not profoundly shape the lives and fates of wild creatures. To Dr. Harley, it has become clear that preventing more extinctions will require human intervention, innovation and effort.” 
    • Including partly for the amazing header art. Unlocked.
  5. Abolish Grades (Bethany Lorden, Stanford Review): “I have earned an ‘A’ on architecture drawings which were not my most careful, on physics problem sets that I did not fully understand, on stories which were not my most creative. Something is broken in the grading system. Feedback on work ought to be in words, not letters, and it should be relative to a student’s best work, not to the performance of the class.” 
    • Bethany is a student in Chi Alpha.
  6. Mate Poaching: Social Taboo or Healthy Way to Find Love? (Kevin Bennett, Psychology Today): “Psychological research suggests that 10 to 20 percent of new relationships among heterosexual couples are formed directly from mate poaching. One study found that 10 to 15 percent of participants’ current relationships were the result of successful mate poaching. Another study surveyed undergraduate students and found that 20 percent were currently involved in a relationship that began this way.… Research suggests that mate poachers—and those most susceptible to poaching—share some characteristics. There is a link between narcissism, infidelity, uncommitted sex, and mate poaching, and these findings are not limited to modern industrialized countries.” 
    • That’s a lot of relationships begun on the shady side! A bit of advice from a longtime observer of college romances: if they cheat with you they are likely to cheat on you.
  7. Switch to Web-Based Surveys During COVID-19 Pandemic Left Out the Most Religious, Creating a False Impression of Rapid Religious Decline (Schnabel et al, Sociology of Religion):  “Although at first glance it appears that intense religion declined dramatically during the pandemic, further investigation reveals how this shift is a function of changes in how the survey was fielded rather than Americans turning away from religion during a time of crisis.… religion is more persistent than it appears, intensely religious people are less likely to agree to participate in surveys, and data collection efforts like the typical in-person GSS are invaluable for accurately estimating religion and other ideological factors in the United States associated with the likelihood of participating in surveys.” 
    • The authors are sociologists at Cornell, Harvard, and NYU. Fascinating.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

  • Sticky Situation (Loading Artist) — there are two kinds of people 
  • A Dungeons & Dragons actual play show is going to sell out Madison Square Garden (Amanda Silberling, Tech Crunch): “Dropout’s Dungeons & Dragons actual play show, Dimension 20, is getting pretty close to selling out a 19,000-seat venue just hours after ticket sales opened to the general public. To the uninitiated, it may seem absurd to go to a massive sports arena and watch people play D&D. As one Redditor commented, ‘This boggles my mind. When I was playing D&D in the early eighties, I would have never believed that there was a future where people would watch live D&D at Madison Square Garden. It’s incomprehensible to 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). 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 445

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.

This is volume 445, which feels like it ought to have many factors. But it’s just 89 * 5.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Harvard, M.I.T. and Systemic Antisemitism (David French, New York Times): “…what’s happening to Jewish students and faculty at several elite campuses is so comprehensive and all-consuming that it can only be described as systemic antisemitism.” 
    • Recommended by a student. Worth reading. Unlocked.
  2. How To Save a Democracy (Quico Toro, Substack): “Watching videos of the protest now, what strikes you is that Bernardo Arévalo is seldom mentioned. K’iche’ leaders were at pains to emphasize they were not there to favor one politician or another. They were there to defend their votes. If Arévalo’s name was seldom uttered, the name of Jesus Christ was constantly invoked.” 
    • A remarkable story. 
  3. Piety and Profanity: The Raunchy Christians Are Here (Ruth Graham, New York Times): “The partial embrace of vulgarity, Dr. Kobes Du Mez pointed out, is happening in a moment of deep conservative outrage, an often visceral disgust, at rising rates of nontraditional gender and sexual identities, particularly among young people. In that context, an indulgence in heterosexual lust, even if in poor taste, is becoming seen as not just benign, but maybe even healthy and noble. Part of the reason transgender identities are considered a threat is that they blur gender difference, Dr. Kobes Du Mez said. ‘Against that backdrop, it’s a wholesome thing for a boy to be lusting after a very sexy woman.’” 
    • Unlocked.
  4. Steven D. Levitt (Freakonomics co-author and University of Chicago Economics Professor) on His Career And Decision To Retire From Academic Economics (Jon Hartley, Capitalism and Freedom): “I had always been the smartest kid or close to the smartest kid, but then I got to MIT and I realized my God these people are incredible. Not just what they know but how they think. So, I knew from day one I was the odd man out. I mean I’m not even exaggerating when I say that there was a group of people in the in-crowd. Austan Goolsbee, my good friend Austan Goolsbee was one of the in-crowds. And Austan told me that maybe a month into our first year at MIT, the in-crowd sat down and they made a list of the five people most likely to fail out. And I was on that list of five.” 
    • An absolutely delightful interview. The above link is to the transcript, but I recommend the audio version.
  5. The Policy Stakes in this Election Are High (Josh Barro, Substack): “This presidential election is not very interesting, but it is important. And some of the reasons it’s important are the banal reasons that every presidential election is important: You get different policy outcomes depending on who gets elected.” 
    • Written from a center-left perspective. Even if you disagree with Barro on your preferred policy outcomes, I think he does a nice job of summarizing some of the most important differences (although he leaves off a few big ones about which the two administrations have different track records such as religious freedom, DEI issues, etc).
  6. Are Drunk People in New Orleans More Sensible Than Congress? (Ben Meets America, YouTube): four minutes. If the quality continues, I will probably be sharing most installments of this series.
  7. Which Cities are the Least Religious? (Ryan Burge, Substack): “The least religious cities are at the top and there are two clear winners here: San Francisco and Seattle. In both cases, about seven in ten adults are attending religious services less than once a year. But I think that San Francisco make take the crown for most secular — just 12% of folks in that city are attending church at least once a month.” 
    • Emphasis removed for readability

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

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.