Tag: how the church is perceived

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 500: faith, China, and Trump

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 500th time I’ve composed this email. I thought I might do something special this week to commemorate that milestone, but there are too many interesting articles I’ve run across — this will a regular installment. Enjoy!

Maybe when we get to volume 520 — that will signify ten years of emails.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Americans Haven’t Found a Satisfying Alternative to Religion (Lauren Jackson, New York Times): “America’s secularization was an immense social transformation. Has it left us better off? People are unhappier than they’ve ever been and the country is in an epidemic of loneliness. It’s not just secularism that’s to blame, but those without religious affiliation in particular rank lower on key metrics of well-being. They feel less connected to others, less spiritually at peace and they experience less awe and gratitude regularly.” 
    • Unlocked. Note that this is not in the opinion section (somewhat surprisingly, it is in the style section). The author is an ex-Mormon.
  2. Ross Douthat: Why It’s Logical to Believe in God (Bari Weiss interviewing Ross Douthat, The Free Press): “The book of Genesis begins with an admonition: Fill the Earth, and subdue it. We’ve done that. We have reached an interesting point in history from a religious point of view. And there’s a really open question—where do we go next? Do we collapse? Do we go to the stars? Do we become transhuman? Do we merge with the machines and so on? So, it’s a high-stakes moment. And if God exists and he has intentions for us, it’s really important at a high-stakes moment to take those intentions into account. I think of people like Musk and Altman. The contest for their literal souls is really important to the whole future of the human race. If God exists, it’s a big moment. You want belief to win out over the alternatives.”
  3. The Conventional Wisdom Is That China Is Beating Us. Nonsense. (Tyler Cowen, The Free Press): “The bottom line is that the smartest entities in the world—the top AI programs—will not just be Western but likely even American in their intellectual and ideological orientations for some while to come.… Moving to a world where the AIs are the smartest entities in China, rather than the CCP, is for China a radical change—and one the CCP is probably very afraid of. Much of the legitimacy of the CCP sprang from its claim to be a wise manager of the Chinese legacy. But now it will be outsourcing that management to Western-based AI models. From a Western geopolitical point of view, that could end up a lot better, and more effective, than planting a bunch of spies in the Chinese government.”
  4. Chris Tomlin’s New Song Resurrects The World’s Oldest Known Hymn (Bob Smietana, The Roys Report): “A new version of the Oxyrhynchus Hymn debuted last week, courtesy of a new translation from Dickson and help from Chris Tomlin and Ben Fielding, two of the most popular modern worship songwriters.… ‘I think the most theologically significant thing is that it’s a hymn to the Trinity — Father, Son and Holy Spirit, the century before the Nicene Creed,’ he said.” 
  5. Belief in an Afterlife is Increasing in the United States (Ryan Burge, Substack): “In that first data collection in 1973, about 76% of folks believed in something beyond this life. But by 1990, that figure had crept up to just about 80% and it continued to rise very slowly from there. Really, from 2000 all the way through 2022, the estimates are all basically the same. Even today, the share of Americans who believe in life after death is 82%. When people ask me, “Is the United States a religious country?” This is the stat that I’m going to trot out.’ ” 
    • Emphasis removed for readability.
  6. The Rotten Fruit of Obergefell: On the Kelly Loving Act (Jake Meador, Mere Orthodoxy): “For the past ten years we have already held, as a nation, that the state defines marriage. Why then should the state not also get to define what a parent is or what good parenting is? The Kelly Loving Act, in other words, is an obvious outworking of the logic of Obergefell, the Supreme Court ruling that redefined marriage.”
  7. Trump is all over the news. Here are some things that caught my interest. Remember that my sharing an article is not a sign that I agree with it completely, it is a merely a sign that I think it makes points or tells a story worth considering. See the disclaimers at the bottom: I assure you they are heartfelt. 
    • Get Out by Good Friday, Feds Say to Afghan Christians (John McCormack, The Dispatch): “Ahmad’s conversion to Christianity after attending a university in Afghanistan led to his imprisonment by the Taliban—where he said he was beaten and tortured via electric shock—before fellow Christians were able to ransom him from Taliban captivity. The same Christians who got Ahmad out of prison then got him out of Afghanistan by helping him travel to Brazil. Ahmad traversed on foot the Darién Gap that connects Central and South America for three days and ultimately—after presenting himself at the southern U.S. border seeking asylum—made a home for himself in Raleigh.…  Ahmad, like some other Afghans legally living in the United States, received a letter from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) telling him he must leave the country by Good Friday.”
    • Precedent Trump (Jonah Goldberg, The Dispatch): “It has been a dream of the left for ages to get rid of the tax-exempt status and relative autonomy of religious institutions—Christian universities, charities, hospitals, etc. If Trump succeeds in making the IRS revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt status, based in no small part on personal opposition to what Harvard teaches, what will be the principled objection to a President Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez or Elizabeth Warren when the Eye of Mordor swings rightward?”
    • No, the President Has Not Defied a Supreme Court Ruling (Jeb Rubenfeld, The Free Press): “Due process is a bulwark of the Constitution and the rule of law, and the courts must not allow its violation. But Trump opponents, like Professor Snyder, are making a mistake when they try to paint this case as a massive assault on due process. For now at least, this case is another example of the hyperbole over a Trump run-in with the courts outrunning the facts of the case.” 
      • The author is a professor of constitutional law at Yale. I found this article reassuring in the abstract, while still being displeased over the particulars of this case. There’s a significant difference between deporting someone from the country and deporting them into a foreign prison.
    • Inside the ‘Tropical Gulag’ in El Salvador Where U.S. Detainees Are Being Held (Annie Correal, New York Times): “Deaths and physical abuse in CECOT remain undocumented because of a lack of access to inmates or anyone who has been released, said Juanita Goebertus, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. But, she added, ‘Based on the torture and mistreatment we have documented in other prisons in El Salvador, we have every reason to believe that people sent to CECOT are at high risk of abuse.’ The U.S. government itself spotlighted atrocities in El Salvador’s prisons in 2023. At El Salvador’s two dozen other jails, rights groups have documented systematic torture, forced confessions and what Noah Bullock, the executive director of the Salvadoran human rights group Cristosal, calls ‘the intentional denial of access to basic necessities like food, water, health care, hygiene.’” 
      • I find these allegations plausible because of my belief in depravity. Humans do bad things when they have people completely under their control, especially when there is little external oversight or accountability. We may learn in time that the details are off, but the essential complaint is almost certainly correct.
    • White House of Worship: Christian Prayer Rings Out Under Trump (Elizabeth Dias & Ruth Graham, New York Times): “Routinely, and often at Mr. Trump’s enthusiastic direction, senior administration officials and allied pastors are infusing their brand of Christian worship into the workings of the White House itself, suggesting that his campaign promise to ‘bring back Christianity’ is taking tangible root.… Mr. Trump’s team has hosted briefings and listening sessions billed as opportunities for the leaders to share their particular concerns, which have ranged widely: religious liberty, adoption and foster care, the breakdown of the nuclear family, human trafficking, urban poverty and antisemitism, among others.”
    • All the President’s Pastors: Who’s Advising Trump? (Harvest Prude, Christianity Today): “The president hasn’t publicly attended a church service since his inauguration day, he doesn’t hold membership in a particular congregation or denomination, he’s gone back and forth over whether he needs to ask for God’s forgiveness, and he avoids speaking in detail about his personal devotional life, so what we know about Trump’s faith comes largely from the pastors around him at the White House—starting with Paula White-Cain.”

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 #496: Christianity in Silicon Valley, Bogus World Happiness, and Smut

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. Christianity Was “Borderline Illegal” in Silicon Valley. Now It’s the New Religion (Zoë Bernard, Vanity Fair): “It used to be that the 20-something whiz kid who coded a viral game and dropped out of Stanford was a venture capitalist darling. ‘VCs used to throw money at that guy,’ said a woman who manages communications at a top-tier venture firm. ‘Now if someone comes in and says, ‘I love my parents so much, I grew up going to church, and then I joined the Army and that’s what gives me my work ethic,’ VCs will be like, ’Oh my God, that guy. Let’s fund that guy.’’ ”
  2. Sex Without Women (Caitlin Flanagan, The Atlantic): “…the force that through the green fuse drives the flower (and the money) is heterosexual male desire for women. And here was porn so good, so varied, so ready to please, so instantly—insistently—available, that it led to a generation of men who think of porn not as a backup to having sex, but as an improvement on it. They prefer it.”
  3. The World Happiness Report Is a Sham (Yascha Mounk, Substack): “When you walk around the—admittedly beautiful—centers of Copenhagen or Stockholm, you rarely see anybody smile. Could these really be the happiest places in the whole wide world? So, to honor World Happiness Day, I finally decided to follow my hunch, and look into the research on this topic more deeply. What I found was worse than I’d imagined. To put it politely, the World Happiness Report is beset with methodological problems. To put it bluntly, it is a sham.” 
    • The author is a political science professor at Johns Hopkins.
  4. We Were Badly Misled About the Event That Changed Our Lives (Zeynep Tufekci, New York Times): “If anyone needs convincing that the next pandemic is only an accident away, check out a recent paper in Cell, a prestigious scientific journal. Researchers, many of whom work or have worked at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (yes, the same institution), describe taking samples of viruses found in bats (yes, the same animal) and experimenting to see if they could infect human cells and pose a pandemic risk.… Why haven’t we learned our lesson? Maybe because it’s hard to admit this research is risky now, and to take the requisite steps to keep us safe, without also admitting it was always risky. And that perhaps we were misled on purpose.” 
  5. The reality of prostitution is not complex. It is simple (Rachel Moran, Psyche): “So many of these women’s stories stay with me: the 19-year-old French girl who got into prostitution as a direct result of watching a TV series that depicted prostitution as glamorous and empowering; the mid-20s Australian woman who believed – because well-funded NGOs told her to believe – that ‘sex work’ was legitimate employment; or the early 20s German woman who told me that, because pimping had been decriminalised in her country, she’d got the message that what was legally sanctioned surely had to be OK. Just about every man in Germany seemed to have got the same message, and the result was social carnage.” 
    • The author was a prostitute from the ages of 15 to 22.
  6. As Trump Attacks Elite Colleges, Their Usual Allies Are Nowhere in Sight (Ginia Bellafante, New York Times): “Prestigious universities have come to find adversaries in many worlds, among the working class, among rich alumni, among highly educated progressives who find them self-regarding.”
  7. Power of Babel: Real-Time AI Translation May Be Coming to Church Near You (Aleja Hertzler-McCain, The Roys Report): “John Mehl, a teaching pastor at Colorado’s Timberline Church, and Miguel Flores Robles, the drummer in the worship band at Timberline’s Windsor campus, get along well, even though they don’t understand each other’s language. Flores, who is only fluent in Spanish, also is unable to communicate directly with the leader of the worship band he plays for, even as he enjoys Mehl’s sermons, which are in English. The answer to this riddle is artificial-intelligence real-time translation, a technology that has yet to become widespread in houses of worship but is already providing a way for congregations to welcome members who don’t speak their language.” 
    • I find it amusing that in the article Timberline is described as “nondenominational” although it is an Assemblies of God congregation.

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 494: Religion at Elite Schools, Why Shrimp Must Die, and Funny Videos

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. What Does Religion Look Like At Elite Universities? (Ryan Burge, Substack): “Yeah, again, I am not bowled over by any huge differences in the religious attendance of students at Ivy league schools versus non-selective institutions. 49% of students who attend prestigious schools attend church less than once a year compared to 46% of students who go to a non-selective school. So, those at the top end are slightly less religiously active, but three points is certainly not a chasm. That’s the general trend here when comparing across all types of attendance levels. For students at non-selective schools, 19% say they attend religious services about weekly or more. It’s 14% of those at selective schools. Again, a gap, but a relatively small one.”
  2. Did God create logic? (J. Budziszewski, blog): “To say that He created logic would be to suggest that He could have done differently and created illogic – that He could have allowed contradictions such as a man who is a donkey, or a two which is a three. But if I make a sentence by placing the words ‘God can’ before a string of nonsense, that doesn’t make the sentence true, would it? Sentences like ‘Can God make a man who is not a man but a donkey?’ or ‘Can God make a two which is a three?’ wouldn’t even rise to the level of being meaningful questions. They would be like asking ‘Can God moongoggle tweedledee?’ So we shouldn’t say that God cannot do these things, but that they cannot be done. A lot of things are excluded from divine omnipotence not because God doesn’t have the power to do them, but because in their very nature they are not ‘doable’ or possible.” 
    • The author is a professor of philosophy at UT Austin.
  3. Three More Reasons Shrimp Must Die (Lyman Stone, Substack): “All that to say, I am not insensitive to the intuition many of us have that animal torturing really is bad for some reason we struggle to articulate. I think it’s because we all intuit that animal-torturers are usually people okay with torturing humans too. But this leads to the wrong intuition that animal pain per se is the yardstick here, when really virtue is the yardstick: in fact people who are unusually empathetic to animals are probably also people unusually willing to torture humans.”
  4. The Government Knows A.G.I. is Coming (Ezra Klein, New York Times): “And while there is so much else going on in the world to cover, I do think there’s a good chance that, when we look back on this era in human history, A.I. will have been the thing that matters.” 
    • A very long interview with the Biden admin’s special adviser on AI which I found worthwhile.
    • This part in particular I’ll be thinking about: “Samuel Hammond, who’s an economist at the Foundation for American Innovation, had this piece months back called ‘Ninety-Five Theses on A.I.’ One point he makes that I think about a lot is: If we had the capacity for perfect enforcement, a lot of our current laws would be constricting. Laws are written with the knowledge that human labor is scarce. And there’s this question of what happens when the surveillance state gets really good. What happens when A.I. makes the police state a very different kind of thing than it is? What happens when we have warfare of endless drones?”
  5. He Gave a Name to What Many Christians Feel (Ruth Graham, New York Times): “Mr. Renn has an unusual profile for someone who has captured the attention of American evangelicalism. He is not a pastor, an academic or a politician. He has no institutional affiliations with high-profile evangelical organizations. He is a mild-mannered former consultant with a wide-ranging Substack whose topics include urban policy, self-improvement and masculinity.” 
    • Aaron Renn is a name familiar to readers of this email. This is a pretty good profile. Unlocked.
  6. How to Think About Using Government Funds for Christian Charity (Matthew Loftus, Mere Orthodoxy): “As long as we live in biological bodies, ‘biopolitics’ are unavoidable and a natural law perspective does not distinguish between the government’s role in preventing a malicious human actor that threatens your life or a nonhuman virus, fire, or cancer cell. In either case, the government has a responsibility to prevent deaths that it is capable of preventing.” 
    • A thoughtful piece; I found it helpful.
  7. Roman Catholic Apologetics Is Surging Online. Intended Audience? Protestants. (Andrew Voigt, The Gospel Coalition): “Where Protestant apologetics is more focused on winning the secular world to Christ, Roman Catholic apologetics often has a different audience in mind: their ‘separated brethren.’ Targeting Protestants is explicitly encouraged.”

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 493: Christianity stabilizes in America, the truth about a spying monk, & why denominations struggle

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. Christianity’s Decline in U.S. Appears to Have Halted, Major Study Shows (Ruth Graham, New York Times): “After years of decline, the Christian population in the United States has been stable for several years, a shift fueled in part by young adults, according to a major new survey from the Pew Research Center. And the number of religiously unaffiliated Americans, which had grown steadily for years, has also leveled off.… The survey finds that 62 percent of adults in the United States describe themselves as Christians, including 40 percent who identify as Protestant and 19 percent who are Catholic.”
  2. No Longer I Who Live (Anthony David, Comment): “Two years ago, I was ready to abandon a biography I’d spent years trying to write when a fellow historian threw me a lifeline. The book was about the triple agent Hermann Keller (1905–1970), a Benedictine mole embedded by conspirators against Hitler into the upper echelons of the SS. Keller reported not only to the German resistance but also to the Vatican and the British MI6. In the history of espionage, few spies penetrated deeper into enemy ranks.” 
    • The article is absolutely fascinating, especially for the detail that before her research Keller was widely regarded as a villain and not a hero. “By early 2011, I had finished the book on [another guy], which was set to be published in Austria. A few weeks before I was due to return the galleys, I shared them with a monk at the Dormition who had asked to review the manuscript before publication. When he saw what I wrote about Keller, he cautioned me against taking historians at their word. I should talk to someone who knew him before passing judgment.” She did primary research and realized the existing consensus was very wrong. Her discovery resonated with me. The more I read the more skeptical I become of extreme allegations against dead Christians. Virtually every time I dig into something in detail (the history of missions, the Crusades, the Inquisition, the church in Prohibition, etc) I discover that the default understanding of educated people is wrong and predictably so. This isn’t to say all of church history is exemplary — some events deserve condemnation. But even the bad events usually weren’t as bad as commonly imagined. I find that most Stanford students’ assumptions about the history of the church and of Christians is WAY more negative than justified by the historical record.
  3. what if its just life (Kristen Sanders, Substack): “Discernment is something many Christians unconsciously despise. Many would rather have the rules given to them, without deviation, than choose for themselves. No one wants to be left holding the bag of their own life.”
  4. How Universities Get Away With Hiring Radicals (John D. Sailer, City Journal): “Usually, a postdoctoral fellowship is just a small step in a scholar’s career. After a fellowship ends, former postdocs apply to competitive positions on the open market. The diversity-focused fellow-to-faculty model modifies this pathway. First, the programs’ administrators select fellows with special attention to how they contribute to diversity. Fellows are then heavily favored for—often guaranteed—tenure-track positions, bypassing a competitive search. It’s a side-door into the faculty lounge.… Over the last five years, one in 20 tenure-track hires in the UC System were former president’s or chancellor’s postdoctoral fellows.”
  5. Is Distrust Driving the Rise in Non-Denominationalism? (Ryan Burge, Substack): “Non-denominationalism is predicated on the collapse of institutional trust. Americans, for myriad reasons, do not trust major institutions. Banks, unions, big business, media and government are all viewed with deep skepticism. Nameless and faceless CEOs and bureaucrats are wasting your money and taking your freedom. In religion, there’s a simple solution to this. Kill the denominations. Voila. No more unaccountable head office that wastes your money on projects to spruce up the national headquarters. In a non-denominational church, all the people who decide where the money goes are sitting right next to you in the pew. That’s a whole lot more accountability.”
  6. Would You Rather Have Married Young? (Lillian Fishman, Metropolitan Review): “This was the first time it crossed my mind that a young woman like us — a knowledge worker, a writer, a leftist — might regret her independent youth and wish she had married a loving person at a young age. I’d associated this idea with a type of womanhood we considered totally outside of our zone of interest: anti-intellectualism, a belief in the primacy of motherhood. I was blindsided by the suggestion that we might be better people if we were recused from formative independence and struggle. I looked around at my friends and acquaintances, especially the married ones, and wondered if there was any truth in the idea that the years they spent as poor captains of their own ships, unmoored and often lonely, were in fact not remotely necessary or enlightening.”
  7. Some Miracles Happen Supernaturally. Others Happen ‘Hypernaturally.’ (John Van Sloten, Christianity Today): “Keathley defines hypernaturalism as the ‘extraordinary use of natural law by the God described in the Bible. When God acts hypernaturally, He employs natural law and natural phenomena in an extraordinary way to bring about His will.’… Perhaps this category helps people hold two opposites together: that the world operates in an empirically explainable way (a more basic definition of providence) and that God occasionally intervenes to accomplish his will (through an exercise of special providence). Hypernaturalism describes one facet of how providence and miracle overlap.”

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.

Volume 491: a philosopher converts, a Christian cyborg, and a comedian riffs on pastors who scam

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 a Skeptical Philosopher Becomes a Christian (Larry Sanger, personal blog): “When I really sought to understand it, I found the Bible far more interesting and—to my shock and consternation—coherent than I was expecting. I looked up answers to all my critical questions, thinking that perhaps others had not thought of issues I saw. I was wrong. Not only had they thought of all the issues, and more that I had not thought of, they had well-worked-out positions about them. I did not believe their answers, which sometimes struck me as contrived or unlikely. But often, they were shockingly plausible. The Bible could sustain interrogation; who knew? It slowly dawned on me that I was acquainting myself with the two-thousand-year-old tradition of theology. I found myself positively ashamed to realize that, despite having a Ph.D. in philosophy, I had never really understood what theology even is. Theology is, I found, an attempt to systematize, harmonize, explicate, and to a certain extent justify the many, many ideas contained in the Bible. It is what rational people do when they try to come to grips with the Bible in all its richness. The notion that the Bible might actually be able to interestingly and plausibly sustain such treatment is a proposition that had never entered my head.” 
    • Sanger, of course, is the co-founder of Wikipedia. He has a Ph.D. in philosophy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Sanger
    • Vaguely related with a wonderful title is this review of Douthat’s new book Believe: The Erotic Case for God (Audrey Pollnow, Compact Magazine): “If you are being chased by a tiger down a corridor, and reach a T, one side of which you believe leads to more tigers and the other leads to safety (but you don’t know which is which), you had better guess and run. The alternative is to stay still and get eaten by the first tiger. I’m not suggesting that we should choose a love, faith, career or anything else on the basis of frantic anxiety, just that the promise of ‘safety’ offered by disbelief, by staying aloof, by refusing to act, is illusory. Psychologically comforting, perhaps, but not a real form of safety in any sense.”
  2. Meet the Christian Cyborg Who Named His Brain Chip Eve (Maaike E. Harmsen interviewing Noland Arbaugh, Christianity Today): “In this field, I don’t expect to see a lot of religious people—in the tech field, the medical side of things. But then we started meeting people face-to-face, and they met with me and my mom. My mom is very open with everyone about her faith, so it very quickly became known who we were. And I was blown away by the number of people who shared our beliefs. I think about everyone that I met on the medical side; the vast majority of them were Christians. We very quickly connected with all of them on a very personal level. And it became more of an open discussion. When I went in to do my surgery, the last thing I did before they put me under anesthesia was ask if I could pray over the room. And so I prayed over all the surgeons and the nurses and everyone that was a part of this. My prayer was put on the hospital intercom, and even Elon was listening in by phone.” 
    • Extremely interesting. Unlocked.
  3. The Assemblies of God: A Denomination That May Be Growing (Ryan Burge, Substack): “I wanted to end this by pointing to a reason that I believe that the AG has recorded long term growth while most other larger denominations have been going the other direction — the AG has continued to move in the direction of racial diversification. In 2001, the Assemblies of God’s records indicate that 71% of their rank and file membership was white and another 16% were Hispanic. African Americans were just 6% of members and Asians were only 3%. For reference, the Southern Baptist Convention is currently 71% white, 3% Hispanic, and 20% Black. However, the pews of the average AG church today look a whole lot different. Now, only 55% of those members are white, down 16 points in just 22 years. Meanwhile, the Black share has nearly doubled to 11% and the Hispanic portion has risen to 23%. That’s pretty impressive given the inability of many other denominations to become less white to reflect the changing demographics of the country.” 
    • Being an Assemblies of God minister I liked this article a lot, and I even commented on it to help explain some of the stats. Click through for details.
  4. Are Atheists Right? Is “Free Will” An Unnecessary, Unimportant Illusion? (J. Werner Wallace, blog): “In 2008, researchers from the University of Minnesota and the University of British Columbia conducted experiments highlighting the relationship between a belief in Determinism and immoral behavior. They found students who were exposed to deterministic literature prior to taking a test were more likely to cheat on the test than students who were not exposed to literature advocating Determinism. The researchers concluded those who deny free will are more inclined to believe their efforts to act morally are futile and are, therefore, less likely to do so. In addition, a study conducted by researchers from Florida State University and Kentucky University found participants who were exposed to deterministic literature were more likely to act aggressively and less likely to be helpful toward others. Even determinist Michael Gazzaniga concedes: ‘It seems that not only do we believe we control our actions, but it is good for everyone to believe it.’ The existence of free will is a common characteristic of our experience, and when we deny we have this sort of free agency, there are detrimental consequences.” 
  5. Don’t waste a perfectly good decade (Suzanne Venker, Substack): “The message these sons and daughters receive is simple: Do not prioritize love. Get your career in order, and do not make sacrifices for anyone. Life (i.e. marriage and family) will fall into place later. And if you have to go into debt to achieve this goal, have at it. You can easily pay it off later.  This is spectacularly bad advice.” 
    • Shared with me by a friend of the ministry (I think in response to the article I shared last week).
    • Related in a nonobvious way: Why So Blue: Liberal Women are Less Happy, More Lonely. But Why? (Grant Bailey & Brad Wilcox, Institute for Family Studies): “Taken together, our analysis leads us to three conclusions. First, the ideological divide in emotional well-being between young liberal and conservative women endures. Second, this ideological divide does not appear to be just a consequence of negative thinking; it also seems to flow from the fact that liberal young women are less likely to be integrated into core American institutions—specifically marriage and religion—that lend meaning, direction, and a sense of solidarity to women’s lives. Third, lower levels of marriage and churchgoing among liberal women may also have a hand in their elevated reports of loneliness, which, in turn, diminishes their odds of being happy.”
  6. The paradox of Trump’s first weeks (Matt Yglesias, Substack): “I think there’s a sense in some quarters that Trump has accomplished more in three weeks than Biden did in three years, but this is just not true. I do think it’s true that Biden achieved less durable policy change than you’d expect relative to the sums of money appropriated due to Democrats’ over-reliance on temporary programs. But they still made substantive changes in absolute terms on the areas they prioritized, including prescription drug affordability for senior citizens and clean energy deployment. Much of that seems likely to be kept in place by the new GOP trifecta.  Republicans, meanwhile, are making very little forward progress on their legislative agenda.” 
    • A fair analysis of the last few weeks. Pay less attention to people claiming triumph or proclaiming doom — politics is complicated and few moments have as much long-term significance as they seem to while they are dominating the headlines.
    • Related: The Strategy Behind Trump’s Defiance of the Law (Jeannie Suk Gersen, The New Yorker): “…what is playing out through a veneer of chaos is a deliberate and organized tactical program to undertake actions that provoke a raft of lawsuits, some of which could become good vehicles for establishing a constitutional vision in which the President has sole authority over the entire executive branch. That vision is not new: it’s known as the unitary executive theory and has a long pedigree, dating back to the founding. Based on where the Supreme Court has been heading in its executive-power cases for some time—even before Trump appointed three Justices—it is likely that the Court will, to some extent, affirm that vision. Trump has a pretty good track record of judicial vindication after engaging in conduct alleged to be unlawful.”
    • Non-alarmist takes like this are much more persuasive than the freakouts I see online. As Gersen notes later, “The first Trump Administration did not flout judicial orders, though some people worried about it.”
  7. Marketing Jesus: The Promise and Peril of ‘He Gets Us’ (Samuel D. James, The Gospel Coalition): “There’s a danger here of context collapse, where an idea that’s true and correct in one particular context loses its truthfulness by being broadcast in a way that disregards that context. For example, ‘Jesus gets us’ is a message best used for people who have already accepted their need for a Savior and desire assurance that nothing they’ve done can cause Jesus to cast them out (John 6:37). In terms of a mass audience whose cultural religion is most likely expressive individualism, however, ‘he gets us’ sounds like a mantra that reinforces the primacy of the self. This mentality keeps my personal psychology at the center, so the question that matters isn’t ‘What must I do to be saved’ but ‘What must you do to affirm me?’ ” 
    • Recommended by an alumnus.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

  • Atheist Accepts Multiverse Theory Of Every Possible Universe Except Biblical One (Babylon Bee) — an oldie but a goodie. 
  • Pastors are Scamming Believers out of Millions (Josh Johnson, YouTube): seventeen minutes, mostly respectful and insightfully humorous. The final story doesn’t feel like it’s going anywhere but it actually is and is worth the payoff.
  • Argentina canal turns bright red, alarming residents (Nathan Williams, BBC): “A canal in a suburb of Argentina’s capital Buenos Aires turned bright red on Thursday, alarming local residents. Pictures and videos show the intensely coloured water flowing into an estuary, the Rio de la Plata, which borders an ecological reserve.” 
    • Want to envision one of the ten plagues? Check this out.
  • Possibly Kaitlyn Schiess’ spiciest take yet. — I don’t know a lot about the Bachelor/Bachelorette shows, but assuming this description is accurate you can put me on team Kaitlyn.
  • A Genesis Series Inspired By Anime (J. D. Peabody interviewing Jason Moody, Christianity Today): “It’s for both Christians and general audiences. Think about the painting The Last Supper. Lots of people are moved by it. It has caused millions of people to reflect on their faith. But da Vinci wasn’t necessarily a ‘Christian painter’—he was just a painter. And you don’t have to have faith to appreciate his work. The Last Supper isn’t ‘Christian’ art—it’s just art. We want what we’re creating to prompt questions, because that’s what good art does.” 

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 485



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.

In this first email of 2025, I’d like to pass along an alumnus’s observation that 2025 is equal to 13 + 23 + 33 + 43 + 53 + 63 + 73 + 83 + 93 which is also equal to (1+2+3+4+5+6+7+8+9)2.

Even cooler, he pointed out that 2025 equals (20+25)(20/(2*5)) or just (20+25)2

Numbers do fun things.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. How Intellectuals Found God (Peter Savodnik, The Free Press): “Instead of smirking at religion, some of our most important philosophers, novelists, and public intellectuals are now reassessing their contempt for it. They are wondering if they might have missed something.”
  2. H5N1: Much More Than You Wanted To Know (Scott Alexander, Astral Codex Ten): “I conclude that the most plausible estimate for the chance of an H5N1 pandemic in the next year is 5%.”
    • Pretty much exactly how much I wanted to know and explained well. Reassuring.
  3. How to like everything more (Sasha Chapin, Substack): “In my experience, high-level enjoyment, like a sport, is composed of many interlocking micro-skills that must be trained individually, but which reinforce each other.”
  4. America, the beautiful (Chris Arnade, Substack): “We are an ideal for a large portion of the world, and while that ideal isn’t always a reality that we live up to, very few people come here, then turn around and go back, because with enough dedication, you can create your own form of fulfillment here. The US is a vast federation of micro communities and micro cultures, all bound together by the belief, however tentative and nebulous, in the American Dream.” 
    • A frequent critic of America explains why he loves it nonetheless.
  5. Africa Has Entered a New Era of War (Gabriele Steinhauser, Andrew Barnett and Emma Brown, Wall Street Journal): “Africa is now experiencing more conflicts than at any point since at least 1946, according to data collected by Uppsala University in Sweden and analyzed by Norway’s Peace Research Institute Oslo. This year alone, experts at the two institutes have identified 28 state-based conflicts across 16 of the continent’s 54 countries, more than in any other region in the world and double the count just a decade and a half ago. That tally doesn’t include conflicts that don’t involve government forces, for instance between different communities, and whose number has also doubled since 2010.” 
    • Vastly underreported in America. If you ask most Americans what wars are raging right now they’d be able to identify Russia/Ukraine and Israel/Hamas and not much else. But there’s a lot else. Wikipedia’s summary puts the current tally at 19 full-blown wars, 20 significant conflicts and 15 skirmishes.
  6. Can You Cancel a Country? (Russ Roberts, Substack): “The fans of settler colonialism love hating Israel because Israel is so young. You can’t return America to 1619, say. In America, there are over 325 million settlers and only 7 million Native Americans. Decolonizing the United States is unimaginable. So is decolonizing Israel, really. But it’s more imaginable than the United States. The defenders of Israel see Israel as the tip of the sword fighting against terrorism and Jihadism. For the those who use the settler colonialism lens, Hamas is the tip of the sword against settler colonialism.” 
    • Roberts is an economist, a fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution, and the president of Shalem College in Jerusalem.
  7. A Century of Human Detritus, Visualized (Dennis Overbye, New York Times): “ ‘The website enables many comparisons that, once seen, can no longer be unseen,’ he said. For instance, humans outweigh wild animals 10 to 1, a fact that surprised Dr. Ménard. (‘In my experience, most people expect the opposite.’) But we weigh only half as much as the livestock herds we maintain to eat. Perhaps more ominously, humans use 100 times their own mass in plastic.” 

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 484



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.

As the year comes to a close, remember that this post is the overflow of a nonprofit ministry. Compiling these links is something I do for the students I minister to at Stanford University, sharing it here is just me making it available more broadly. You can donate to support the ministry if you are ever so inclined (you can even make gifts via a DAF or with stock). Don’t give to pay for the content — it only takes me five minutes a week to take the email I send to the Chi Alpha students and reformat it for this platform. If you choose to give, give because you believe in the mission of reaching Stanford students with a thoughtful gospel message.

And that’s the last time I’ll share about that until next December. 

Whether you choose to give or not, I hope this email blesses you and helps you think about God and our world more clearly.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Tom Holland on How Christianity Remade the World (Bari Weiss, The Free Press): “It is very difficult to overemphasize how completely mad it was for everybody in the ancient world that someone who suffers crucifixion could in any way be the Messiah, let alone part of the one God.… The fact that such a person could conceivably be raised up by citizens of the Roman Empire as someone greater than Caesar himself, greater than Augustus, is a completely shocking maneuver. Judeans, Greeks, Romans—it’s shocking to them all. The radical message of the crucifixion is that, in Christ’s own words, the last shall be first, and the first shall be last.”
  2. How historian Niall Ferguson became a religious believer (Greg Sheridan, The Weekend Australian): “I have embraced Christianity,” he tells me. “We were all baptised, Ayaan and our two sons, together in September (2023). It was the culmination of a quite protracted process. My journey was from atheism. My parents had left the Church of Scotland, I think even before I was born. I grew up in a household of science-minded religious sceptics. I didn’t go to church and felt quite sure of the wisdom of that when I was young. However, in two phases, I lost my faith in atheism.… The first phase was that as a historian I realised no society had been successfully organised on the basis of atheism. All attempts to do that have been catastrophic. That was an insight that came from studying 18th, 19th and 20th-century history. But then the next stage was realising that no individual can in fact be fully formed or ethically secure without religious faith. That insight has come more recently and has been born of our experience as a family.” 
    • Ferguson is a fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. 
    • I heard this article was paywalled but I was able to access it with no problem. If it is paywalled, you can see Ferguson talking about his conversion on Twitter.
  3. Why Giving Matters (Arthur C. Brooks, Brigham Young University): “Specifically, here’s what I found. If you have two families that are exactly identical—in other words, same religion, same race, same number of kids, same town, same level of education, and everything’s the same—except that one family gives a hundred dollars more to charity than the second family, then the giving family will earn on average $375 more in income than the nongiving family—and that’s statistically attributable to the gift.… I finally went to a colleague who specialized in the psychology of charitable giving, and I said, ‘I’m getting this result I can’t understand. It doesn’t make sense. It’s like the hand of God or something on the economy, and I can’t believe it’s true.’ And the first thing he asked was, ‘Why don’t you believe it’s true? You’re a Christian, aren’t you?’” 
    • This is a few years old (2009), and features a Catholic speaking to Mormons. At the time of the speech Brooks was president of the American Enterprise Institute and currently teaches at Harvard.
    • Towards the end he suggests some causal mechanisms, one of which is that people perceive generosity to be a leadership quality.
  4. How Hallucinatory A.I. Helps Science Dream Up Big Breakthroughs (William J. Broad, New York Times): “In October, David Baker of the University of Washington shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his pioneering research on proteins — the knotty molecules that empower life. The Nobel committee praised him for discovering how to rapidly build completely new kinds of proteins not found in nature, calling his feat ‘almost impossible.’ In an interview before the prize announcement, Dr. Baker cited bursts of A.I. imaginings as central to ‘making proteins from scratch.’ The new technology, he added, has helped his lab obtain roughly 100 patents, many for medical care.”
  5. Bringing Elon to a knife fight (Jennifer Pahlka, Substack): “A lot of the [left-leaning] government tech community is skipping the hand wringing; they’ve basically just grabbed a bag of popcorn and are watching in real time as Elon and Vivek learn all the things they’ve known, lived, and absolutely hated for their entire time in public service. They don’t see DOGE as their savior, but they are feeling vindicated after years of shouting into the void. I am struck by how different the tone of the DOGE conversation is between political leaders on the left and the people who’ve been fighting in the implementation trenches. One group is terrified they’ll succeed. The other is starting to ask a surprising question (or at least I am): What if even billionaires can’t disrupt the system we have built?” 
    • The first comment is a necessary complement to this essay.
  6. House Member in Senior Living Facility Draws Fresh Scrutiny to Aging Congress (Catie Edmondson, New York Times): “Senator Charles E. Grassley, Republican of Iowa, is Congress’s eldest member at 91 years old. In 2023, The New York Times tallied 20 lawmakers who were at least 80 years old. While the Constitution lays out a floor for age requirements for those running for Congress, it does not mandate a ceiling. That has created a bevy of awkward situations for leaders in both parties, who have been thrust into the delicate position of trying to nudge out aging lawmakers who refuse to release their grip on power.”
  7. Engage Bespoke Spirituality: Reflections from Conversations on Campus (Mark Legg, The Gospel Coalition): “I often encountered the view of faith sometimes called ‘bespoke spirituality,’ a way of engaging with religion by picking and choosing beliefs and practices that ‘vibe’ with you personally. The students I met were authentically open-minded to Christianity. However, they resisted (or often struggled to understand) the claim that Jesus is the only ‘way,’ ‘truth,’ and ‘life,’ and that ‘no one comes to the Father except through [him]’ (John 14:6).”
    • I didn’t know it had a label, but it’s everywhere at Stanford. 

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

  • Little Drummer Boy Finally Leaves The Stable And Oh No! Here Comes Little Bagpipe Boy! (Babylon Bee)
  • Big Jack — a great short story told in comic form. I really enjoyed it. I may have shared it before — I know I’ve read it before.
  • It Pays to Have Long Hair and a Beard in Utah—Jesus Models Are in Demand (Bradley Olson, Wall Street Journal): “Models who look like Jesus are in high demand in Utah. That’s because for a growing number of people in the state, a picture isn’t complete without Him. They are hiring Jesus look-alikes for family portraits and wedding announcements. Models are showing up to walk with a newly engaged couple through a field, play with young children in the Bonneville Salt Flats, and cram in with the family for the annual Christmas card.” 
    • Recommended by a friend of the ministry.
    • This bit made me laugh: “Finding a model can be difficult. Areas of Utah with high concentrations of Mormons—who also call themselves Latter-day Saints or LDS—tend to lack potential Jesus doppelgängers. Some men who work or volunteer for the church, one of the state’s largest employers, are required to shave every day and keep their hair short.”
  • My Neighbor Won’t Stop Praying for Me. What Should I Do? (Kwame Anthony Appiah, New York Times): “The only reason you give for objecting to her prayers is that she has failed to comply with your wishes. Yet I don’t find that she has thereby treated you with disrespect, because I don’t see that you have the right to have those wishes complied with. You seem to be asking her not to do something she thinks there are compelling reasons to do. I’d have thought that this was disrespectful.”
    • This also made me laugh. Chortle, even.
  • A 1,000-Year-Old Seed Grows in Israel (Franz Lidz, New York Times): “In 2010, Dr. Sallon obtained a mysterious seed from the archaeological archives of Hebrew University, hoping that it could germinate. The seed had been discovered in a cave during a 1980s excavation at Wadi el-Makkuk, a winter water channel in the northern Judean desert, and was languishing in storage. After determining that the seed was still viable, Dr. Sallon’s research team planted, sprouted and carefully tended it. When the husk was carbon-dated to between A.D. 993 and A.D. 1202, a thought occurred to Dr. Sallon. ‘I wondered if what germinated could be the sourceof the balm of Gilead,’ she said. On the hunch that it was, she named the specimen Sheba. Since then, the 1,000-year-old seedling has grown into a sturdy 12-foot-tall tree with no modern counterpart. Sheba’s painstaking revival — kept secret from the public for 14 years — is detailed in a study that was published in September in the journal Communications Biology.” 

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 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.