Tag: how the church is perceived

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 182

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. If They Weren’t Tak­ing Notes, How Did the Dis­ci­ples Remem­ber Jesus’s Exact Teach­ing? The 3‑Step Process for For­mu­lat­ing the 4 Gospels (Justin Tay­lor, Gospel Coali­tion): “I might not be able to tell you what I did last week, but I could give you a three-hour lec­ture about Jesus and the Jew­ish roots of the Last Sup­per with zero prepa­ra­tion because I have been talk­ing about it all the time for the last ten years. That’s one key dif­fer­ence between rehearsed mem­o­ries and inci­den­tal mem­o­ries.”
  2. What Straight‑A Stu­dents Get Wrong (Adam Grant, New York Times): “The evi­dence is clear: Aca­d­e­m­ic excel­lence is not a strong pre­dic­tor of career excel­lence. Across indus­tries, research shows that the cor­re­la­tion between grades and job per­for­mance is mod­est in the first year after col­lege and triv­ial with­in a hand­ful of years. For exam­ple, at Google, once employ­ees are two or three years out of col­lege, their grades have no bear­ing on their per­for­mance.” The author is an orga­ni­za­tion­al psy­chol­o­gist at Penn’s Whar­ton School.
    • This arti­cle was sent to me by an alum­na who said, “I some­times skipped Chi Alpha or oth­er mean­ing­ful activ­i­ties with friends for that one extra hour of study­ing, which I now regret.”
  3. Hun­dreds of sex abuse alle­ga­tions found in fun­da­men­tal Bap­tist church­es across U.S. (Sarah Smith, Star-Telegram): “One hun­dred and six­ty-eight church lead­ers were accused or con­vict­ed of com­mit­ting sex­u­al crimes against chil­dren, the inves­ti­ga­tion found. At least 45 of the alleged abusers con­tin­ued in min­istry after accu­sa­tions came to the atten­tion of church author­i­ties or law enforce­ment.… Inde­pen­dent fun­da­men­tal Bap­tist church­es preach sep­a­ra­tion: Stay sep­a­rate from the world, sep­a­rate from non-believ­ers and sep­a­rate from Chris­tians who do not believe as they do. That includes South­ern Bap­tists, who are deemed by the strict sect as too lib­er­al.” This is hor­ri­fy­ing stuff.
  4. Chi­na cracks down on Chris­tians — a new era of reli­gious per­se­cu­tion has arrived (Nina Shea and Bob Fu, Fox News): “The government’s repres­sion against the church­es is being done in the name of Pres­i­dent Xi Jinping’s ‘sini­ciza­tion’ cam­paign, osten­si­bly to strength­en Chi­nese cul­ture. How­ev­er, it increas­ing­ly appears aimed at remov­ing the Bible and its teach­ings from Chi­nese Chris­tian­i­ty.” (relat­ed cov­er­age at the New York Times)
    • My Dec­la­ra­tion of Faith­ful Dis­obe­di­ence (Wang Yi, Chris­t­ian Dai­ly Reporter): “As a pas­tor, my dis­obe­di­ence is one part of the gospel com­mis­sion. Christ’s great com­mis­sion requires of us great dis­obe­di­ence. The goal of dis­obe­di­ence is not to change the world but to tes­ti­fy about anoth­er world.” A now-impris­oned pas­tor wrote this let­ter with instruc­tions that it be pub­lished if he was detained for more than 48 hours. STRAIGHT FIRE.
  5. Mas­ter­piece Cakeshop and how “reli­gious lib­er­ty” became so tox­ic (Andrew Kop­pel­man, Vox): “Deep dis­agree­ment about moral fun­da­men­tals is noth­ing new; it is what reli­gious diver­si­ty con­sists of. That ought to include dis­agree­ment about such fraught mat­ters as sex­u­al­i­ty. Moral dis­agree­ment about things that mat­ter a lot is an inevitable con­se­quence of a free soci­ety. The best we can hope for is to live peace­ful­ly togeth­er in mutu­al con­tempt.” The author is a law pro­fes­sor at North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty.
    • Relat­ed: ‘Fair­ness For All’: Smart Pol­i­tics, Or A Sell­out? (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “…there real­ly is a ques­tion of jus­tice with­in a plu­ral­is­tic soci­ety that con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians have to face. We may sin­cere­ly believe that homo­sex­u­al­i­ty is moral­ly wrong, but at what point does the com­mon good require that we agree that gay peo­ple have a right to be wrong? Espe­cial­ly because we are ask­ing them to agree that we have a right to be wrong (in their eyes) too.”
    • Response to the above: Mis­guid­ed Pro­pos­al From Chris­t­ian Lead­ers and LGBT Activists Is Any­thing but ‘Fair­ness for All’ (Ryan T. Ander­son, The Dai­ly Sig­nal): “Estab­lish­ing bad pub­lic pol­i­cy for every­one and then exempt­ing select reli­gious insti­tu­tions is not act­ing for the com­mon good—and is cer­tain­ly not fair for all. And there are bet­ter ways for­ward for those who seek com­pro­mise.”
    • Kin­da dif­fer­ent, but kin­da relat­ed: The Cul­ture Wars Are Ancient His­to­ry (Peter Lei­thart, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “The real fight isn’t between reli­gion and sec­u­lar­ism, but between two kinds of reli­gion. His book makes the case that today’s cul­ture war shares much in com­mon with the cul­ture war that rocked ancient Rome.” Insight­ful.
  6. The Case Against Mer­i­toc­ra­cy (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “…mer­i­to­crats are often edu­cat­ed to be bad lead­ers, and bad peo­ple, in a very spe­cif­ic way — a way of arro­gant intel­li­gence unmoored from his­tor­i­cal expe­ri­ence, ambi­tion untem­pered by self-sac­ri­fice. The way of the ‘best and the bright­est’ at the dawn of the tech­no­crat­ic era and the ‘smartest guys in the room’ decades lat­er, the way of the arson­ists of late-2000s Wall Street and the ‘move fast and break things’ cul­ture of Sil­i­con Val­ley.”
  7. Is Sex Social­ly Con­struct­ed? (Alex Byrne, Arc Dig­i­tal): “Clear­ly many ani­mals have belonged to the cat­e­go­ry female (or male) with­out exist­ing with­in a soci­ety of any kind. Indeed, there would have been females and males even if life on Earth had been destroyed by an aster­oid half a bil­lion years ago and humans had nev­er evolved. Female and male are there­fore not social­ly con­struct­ed cat­e­gories; that is, sex is not social­ly con­struct­ed.” Byrne is the head of MIT’s depart­ment of lin­guis­tics and phi­los­o­phy. I shared a relat­ed arti­cle of his back in issue 177.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have On Obsti­na­cy In Belief (C.S. Lewis, The Sewa­nee Review): this is a reward­ing essay from way back in 1955. (first shared in vol­ume 6)

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 180

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 week was espe­cial­ly hard for me to put togeth­er. I stum­bled upon so much insight­ful writ­ing this week! I had to ruth­less­ly elim­i­nate some that I real­ly liked, so I hope you enjoy these gems that sur­vived my ruth­less win­now­ing process.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Slain mis­sion­ary John Chau pre­pared much more than we thought, but are mis­sion­ar­ies still fools? (Ed Stet­zer, Wash­ing­ton Post): “…Mary Ho, who leads All Nations (the agency that sent Chau on mis­sions), indi­cat­ed that he was heav­i­ly vac­ci­nat­ed and even quar­an­tined before going on the mis­sion. The Wash­ing­ton Post report­ed Tues­day night that Chau also under­took lin­guis­tic and med­ical train­ing to pre­pare for the out­reach. These new reports at a min­i­mum chal­lenge the sim­plis­tic image of an adven­ture-seek­ing zealot will­ing to reck­less­ly risk the lives of a remote group of islanders.” By far the best arti­cle I’ve read on this sub­ject.
  2. Lib­er­al Par­ents, Rad­i­cal Chil­dren (David Brooks, New York Times): “In the age of social media, virtue is not defined by how com­pas­sion­ate­ly you act. Virtue is defined by how vehe­ment­ly you react to that which you find offen­sive. Virtue involves the self-dis­play of a cer­tain indig­nant sen­si­bil­i­ty, and any­body who doesn’t dis­play that sen­si­bil­i­ty is moral­ly sus­pect.” An insight­ful col­umn — this excerpt does not do it jus­tice.
    • Relat­ed but not obvi­ous­ly: The Ques­tion With­out A Solu­tion (Alan Jacobs, The Week­ly Stan­dard): “You read all this with a feel­ing of ris­ing hor­ror, and not just because of the phys­i­cal and men­tal and spir­i­tu­al suf­fer­ing. You feel that hor­ror also because it becomes increas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult, as the sto­ry pro­gress­es, to imag­ine how the even the worst of the pain could have been avoid­ed. Not one man, or woman, knew a pru­dent rem­e­dy.” Haunt­ing and high­ly rec­om­mend­ed.
    • More clear­ly relat­ed: Debate ends when we label views we sim­ply dis­agree with as ‘hatred’ (Kenan Malik, The Guardian): “‘It is bet­ter to debate a ques­tion with­out set­tling it,’ observed the 18th-cen­tu­ry French writer Joseph Jou­bert, ‘than to set­tle a ques­tion with­out debat­ing it.’ How naive that sounds today.”
  3. My New Vagi­na Won’t Make Me Hap­py (Andrea Long Chu, New York Times): “Until the day I die, my body will regard the vagi­na as a wound;as a result, it will require reg­u­lar, painful atten­tion to main­tain. This is what I want, but there is no guar­an­tee it will make me hap­pi­er. In fact, I don’t expect it to.”
    • See also this response piece: The New York Times Reveals Painful Truths about Trans­gen­der Lives (Ryan T. Ander­son, Pub­lic Dis­course): “Why should a doc­tor per­form surgery when it won’t make the patient hap­py, it won’t accom­plish its intend­ed goal, it won’t improve the under­ly­ing con­di­tion, it might make the under­ly­ing con­di­tion worse, and it might increase the like­li­hood of sui­cide?” Ander­son was men­tioned in Chu’s op-ed.
  4. Amer­i­can Exor­cism (Mike Mar­i­ani, The Atlantic): “If nei­ther the men­tal-health eval­u­a­tion nor a sub­se­quent phys­i­cal exam turns up a stan­dard expla­na­tion for the person’s afflic­tion, the priest starts to take the case more seri­ous­ly. At this point he may begin look­ing for what the Church con­sid­ers the clas­sic signs of demon­ic pos­ses­sion: facil­i­ty in a lan­guage the per­son has nev­er learned; phys­i­cal strength beyond his or her age or con­di­tion; access to secret knowl­edge; and a vehe­ment aver­sion to God and sacred objects, includ­ing cru­ci­fix­es and holy water.”
  5. What If The Place­bo Effect Isn’t A Trick? (Gary Green­berg, New York Times Mag­a­zine): “The find­ings of the I.B.S. study were in keep­ing with a hypoth­e­sis Kaptchuk had formed over the years: that the place­bo effect is a bio­log­i­cal response to an act of car­ing; that some­how the encounter itself calls forth heal­ing and that the more intense and focused it is, the more heal­ing it evokes.”
  6. For Cal­i­for­ni­ans liv­ing in their cars, a church park­ing lot can briefly be home (Kim­ber­ly Win­ston, Wash­ing­ton Post): “As they often do in hard times, hous­es of wor­ship stepped in. In Chico, a hub for Par­adise refugees, church­es have opened their build­ings and park­ing lots as tem­po­rary shel­ters. But while those church­es have been laud­ed, con­gre­ga­tions in oth­er areas that open their park­ing lots to those they some­times refer to as ‘vehi­cle res­i­dents’ face hur­dles and hos­til­i­ty. Many Bay Area munic­i­pal­i­ties, includ­ing the tech cen­ters of San Fran­cis­co and San Jose, have out­lawed sleep­ing in a car parked on the street overnight, while neigh­bors speak out against hav­ing the home­less next door.”
  7. A Time To Fast (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “Over one hun­dred years ago researchers demon­strat­ed that calo­rie restric­tion in rats increased lifes­pan, some­times by as much as 50%. Since that time, the find­ing has been repli­cat­ed and extend­ed to pri­mates. A few humans have tak­en up the diet but for most of us easy access to deli­cious food trumps willpow­er. A new paper in Sci­ence reviews the lit­er­a­ture on calo­rie restric­tion and also offers some evi­dence that less restric­tive regimes such as inter­mit­tent fast­ing may have sim­i­lar effects.” A sec­u­lar per­spec­tive on the ben­e­fits of cer­tain types of fast­ing (this is a sum­ma­ry of an arti­cle in the jour­nal Sci­ence).

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have The Spir­i­tu­al Shape of Polit­i­cal Ideas (Joseph Bot­tum, The Week­ly Stan­dard): many mod­ern polit­i­cal ideas are derived from Chris­t­ian the­o­log­i­cal con­cepts. (first shared in vol­ume 1)

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 178

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. No — real­ly. I mean them. Also, I wel­come your sug­ges­tions. If you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Cul­tur­al win­some­ness will not be enough for Chris­tians (Andrew T Walk­er, Ethics and Reli­gious Lib­er­ty Com­mis­sion): “Chow is the very def­i­n­i­tion of class, dig­ni­ty and civil­i­ty. She’s a mod­el for what faith­ful Chris­t­ian dis­ci­ple­ship looks like in the pub­lic square. There is no foam­ing-at-the-mouth hatred for any­one. She loves every­one; she just did not want to vio­late her con­science. What’s the les­son here? There are many. But to focus on just one, this sto­ry is a reminder that no amount of cul­tur­al sophis­ti­ca­tion or intel­li­gence will absolve the Chris­t­ian from being seen as a back­ward-think­ing big­ot.” This is cor­rect.
    • Relat­ed: An inter­view with Isabel­la Chow (Allie Stuck­ey, Twit­ter) — this is a 4 minute video.
    • Kind of relat­ed: The State of Hate (David Mont­gomery, Wash­ing­ton Post): “In think­ing about my inter­view, I was struck by just how lit­tle he had dis­put­ed the SPLC’s claims about the frankly dis­qui­et­ing posi­tions he has tak­en. To some extent, it was sim­i­lar to my expe­ri­ence at the FRC and ADF. They sim­ply saw those posi­tions as admirable, or at the very least defen­si­ble, expres­sions of truth — where­as, to the SPLC, they were expres­sions of hate.”
    • Vague­ly relat­ed: David French on the price of pub­lic engage­ment (Twit­ter)
  2. What Is It Like to Be a Man? (Phil Christ­man, The Hedge­hog Review): “I live out my mas­culin­i­ty most often as a per­verse avoid­ance of com­fort: the refusal of good clothes, mois­tur­iz­er, painkillers; hard phys­i­cal train­ing, pur­sued for its own sake and not because I enjoy it; a sense that there is a set amount of phys­i­cal pain or self-imposed dis­ci­pline that I owe the uni­verse.” Very well-writ­ten. Every­one will like­ly find parts they res­onate with and parts they reject. The author is a lec­tur­er at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan and based on his CV seems to be a fair­ly devot­ed Epis­co­palian.
  3. Ask and You Shall Evan­ge­lize (Sarah Eekhoff Zyl­stra, Gospel Coali­tion): “‘Mod­ern selves are so inter­nal,’ Keller said. ‘In the old days if you were con­vinced of the truth, you changed your­self. Now we adopt the truth as acces­sories that fit in with who we want to be.’” A good arti­cle on the nature of effec­tive wit­ness in con­tem­po­rary West­ern soci­ety.
  4. Why Are Young Peo­ple Hav­ing So Lit­tle Sex? (Kate Julian, The Atlantic): “I men­tioned to sev­er­al of the peo­ple I inter­viewed for this piece that I’d met my hus­band in an ele­va­tor, in 2001. (We worked on dif­fer­ent floors of the same insti­tu­tion, and over the months that fol­lowed struck up many more conversations—in the ele­va­tor, in the break room, on the walk to the sub­way.) I was fas­ci­nat­ed by the extent to which this prompt­ed oth­er women to sigh and say that they’d just love to meet some­one that way. And yet quite a few of them sug­gest­ed that if a ran­dom guy start­ed talk­ing to them in an ele­va­tor, they would be weird­ed out. ‘Creep­er! Get away from me,’ one woman imag­ined think­ing.” The arti­cle is vul­gar in places and premised on flawed assump­tions… and still man­ages to be fas­ci­nat­ing and insight­ful.
    • Relat­ed: How the GOP Gave Up on Porn (Tim Alber­ta, Politi­co): “We know that the ubiq­ui­ty of porn is a prob­lem: Even as experts debate the sci­ence of addic­tion and the link between con­sump­tion and destruc­tive behav­ior, there is sure­fire soci­o­log­i­cal evi­dence of its exac­er­bat­ing influ­ence on those most susceptible—people pre­dis­posed to vio­lence, for instance, or misog­y­ny or child abuse. There is also con­sen­sus that it has, in plen­ty of cas­es, con­tributed to abu­sive rela­tion­ships and the frac­tur­ing of fam­i­lies. And that’s just where adults are con­cerned.”
  5. The Best Way To Save Peo­ple From Sui­cide (Jason Cherkis, Huff­in­g­ton Post High­line): “Mot­to didn’t take long to write the first let­ter a patient would receive. He knew what he want­ed to say, hit­ting upon two sentences—37 words—that felt just right: ‘It has been some time since you were here at the hos­pi­tal, and we hope things are going well for you. If you wish to drop us a note we would be glad to hear from you.’” This is an engross­ing arti­cle. Rec­om­mend­ed.
  6. Over­com­ing Bar­ri­ers to Women’s Advance­ment in Polit­i­cal Sci­ence (Amy Catalinac, PDF host­ed at Har­vard): “Of the polit­i­cal sci­en­tists of my gen­er­a­tion I know well, suc­cess­ful ones do all of these things auto­mat­i­cal­ly, and those who have been less suc­cess­ful do many few­er of them.” Very straight talk on how to get a tenure-track job. From my out­side van­tage point, this seems like excel­lent advice for social sci­en­tists of either gen­der.
  7. The dra­mat­ic implo­sion of ‘I Kissed Dat­ing Good­bye’ is a les­son — and a warn­ing (Chris­tine Emba, Wash­ing­ton Post): “The next time we’re tempt­ed toward too-for­mu­la­ic think­ing, we’ll know to take it with a grain of salt. After all, life is rarely so pure.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have an eye-open­ing (and dis­may­ing) read: What The Media Gets Wrong About Israel (Mat­tie Fried­man, The Atlantic). (first shared back in vol­ume 5): “one of the most impor­tant aspects of the media-sat­u­rat­ed con­flict between Jews and Arabs is also the least cov­ered: the press itself. The West­ern press has become less an observ­er of this con­flict than an actor in it, a role with con­se­quences for the mil­lions of peo­ple try­ing to com­pre­hend cur­rent events, includ­ing pol­i­cy­mak­ers who depend on jour­nal­is­tic accounts to under­stand a region where they con­sis­tent­ly seek, and fail, to pro­duc­tive­ly inter­vene.”

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 176

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. Mass Shoot­ings at Hous­es of Wor­ship: Pitts­burgh Attack Was Among the Dead­liest (Sarah Mer­vosh, NY Times): “Mass shoot­ings have become a recur­ring part of Amer­i­can life, and reli­gious insti­tu­tions a recur­ring set­ting. In each case, the shock is com­pound­ed by the vio­lence at what is sup­posed to be a safe space for peace and heal­ing.”
    • Relat­ed: If You Hate Jews, You Hate Jesus (Rus­sell Moore, per­son­al blog): “I will often hear Chris­tians say, ‘Remem­ber that Jesus was Jew­ish.’ That’s true enough, but the past tense makes it sound as though Jesus’ Jew­ish­ness were some­thing he sloughed off at the res­ur­rec­tion. Jesus is alive now, enthroned in heav­en…. When Jesus appeared before Saul of Tar­sus on the Road to Dam­as­cus, the res­ur­rect­ed Christ intro­duced him­self as ‘Jesus of Nazareth’ (Acts 22:8). Jesus is Jew­ish, present tense.”
    • Relat­ed: Holi­ness & Dr. Cohen (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “What Dr. Cohen — who is a mem­ber of Tree of Life syn­a­gogue — and his Jew­ish staff showed is moral courage, but more than that, it is holi­ness.”
    • Relat­ed: The Jews of Pitts­burgh Bury Their Dead (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “‘We, the Jews, are good at death,’ says Rab­bi Seth Adel­son, whose syn­a­gogue, Beth Shalom, is less than a mile from Tree of Life. ‘The cus­toms that we ful­fill at this time are real­ly help­ful for those who have suf­fered a loss.’ In the face of extra­or­di­nary tragedy—the dead­liest attack on Jews in Amer­i­can his­to­ry, accord­ing to the Anti-Defama­tion League—ordinary rit­u­als help Jews grieve.”
  2. ‘God Is Going to Have to For­give Me’: Young Evan­gel­i­cals Speak Out (Eliz­a­beth Dias, New York Times): “With just days left before the midterm elec­tions — two years after Pres­i­dent Trump won the White House with a record share of white, evan­gel­i­cal sup­port — we asked young evan­gel­i­cals to tell The Times about the rela­tion­ship between their faith and their pol­i­tics.” These are inter­est­ing inter­views, although I sus­pect a skew in the sam­ple.
  3. The Big and Small World of Bible Geog­ra­phy (David Bar­rett, The Gospel Coali­tion): “As I have stud­ied and mapped the events of Scrip­ture over the years, I have been struck by an intrigu­ing para­dox: The world of the Bible was at the same time very small and very large.” Rec­om­mend­ed for the pic­tures even more than the text.
  4. What Pro­gres­sives Can Learn From Michael Avenatti’s Mis­take (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): “Inso­far as Democ­rats are con­vinced that Amer­i­ca is a white-suprema­cist patri­archy, that racism and sex­ism were the deci­sive fac­tors cost­ing Democ­rats the 2016 elec­tion, and that fas­cism is nigh, you can see how they would con­clude that a Cory Book­er or an Eliz­a­beth War­ren can’t real­ly best Trump, or would face much longer odds than a white man, and that win­ning should be the pri­or­i­ty. Con­jure in your mind an insti­tu­tion­al­ly racist, white-suprema­cist patri­archy. Does its pop­u­lar­ly elect­ed pres­i­dent look like Kamala Har­ris?” This is the most provoca­tive­ly insight­ful thing I read this week.
    • Not real­ly relat­ed, just sim­i­lar­ly provoca­tive: The Real Rea­son They Hate Trump (David Gel­ern­ter, Wall Street Jour­nal): “The dif­fer­ence between cit­i­zens who hate Mr. Trump and those who can live with him—whether they love or mere­ly tol­er­ate him—comes down to their views of the typ­i­cal Amer­i­can: the farmer, fac­to­ry hand, auto mechan­ic, machin­ist, team­ster, shop own­er, clerk, soft­ware engi­neer, infantry­man, truck dri­ver, house­wife.” The author is a pro­fes­sor of com­put­er sci­ence at Yale..
  5. Free rent in Seat­tle, no catch: Land­lords’ faith inspired a gift for ten­ants (Mike Rosen­berg, Seat­tle Times): “They’re also devout Pen­te­costal Chris­tians. When Slaatthaug, a 74-year-old retired car­pen­ter, does repairs at the build­ing, he dri­ves there in a Jeep with a 4‑foot-tall Bible on top. The Old Tes­ta­ment has a pas­sage about the year of jubilee — every 50 years, debts are to be for­giv­en. So Slaatthaug and Bam­brick are cel­e­brat­ing the family’s 50 years as prop­er­ty own­ers by doing some­thing unheard of for a land­lord: For the month of Novem­ber, every­one in the 11-unit build­ing goes rent-free.”
  6. Kiss­ing Puri­ty Cul­ture Good­bye (Abi­gail Rine Favale, First Things): “Chris­tian­i­ty does not offer mere pre­scrip­tions; it offers a world­view, one cen­tered on a God who descend­ed into our bod­i­ly nature and there­by viv­i­fied it. With­in the con­text of this world­view, the sex­u­al mores of Chris­tian­i­ty become com­pelling, con­nect­ed as they are to the cos­mos as a whole. Removed from this con­text, they enslave.”
  7. Lack Of Atten­tion To Chi­nese Inter­pol Chief’s Dis­ap­pear­ance Shows The Khashog­gi Furor’s Fak­ery (Ben Wein­garten, The Fed­er­al­ist): “Why do cer­tain indi­vid­ual vic­tims of tyran­ni­cal regimes become cause célèbres, wor­thy of dra­mat­i­cal­ly alter­ing U.S. for­eign pol­i­cy, while oth­ers dis­ap­pear into the ether? …con­cur­rent with the Khashog­gi affair, Meng, the pres­i­dent of Inter­pol, also dis­ap­peared, and may have suc­cumbed to a sim­i­lar­ly grim fate at the hands of Chi­nese hench­men. Let me repeat that: The pres­i­dent of Inter­pol, the world’s largest inter­na­tion­al police orga­ni­za­tion, dis­ap­peared.” I dis­like the title of this piece and the way it frames a few things, but it rais­es a very impor­tant point.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Sis­ter… Show Mer­cy! (Dan Phillips, Team Pyro): “Sis­ter, if there’s one thing you and I can cer­tain­ly agree on, it’s this: I don’t know what it’s like to be a woman, and you don’t know what it’s like to be a man. We’re both prob­a­bly wrong where we’re sure we’re right, try as we might. So let me try to dart a telegram from my camp over to the distaff side.” (first shared in vol­ume 148)

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 174

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. Your Real Bio­log­i­cal Clock Is You’re Going to Die (Tom Scoc­ca, Hmm Dai­ly): “If you intend to have chil­dren, but you don’t intend to have them just yet, you are not bank­ing extra years as a per­son who is still too young to have chil­dren. You are sub­tract­ing years from the time you will share the world with your chil­dren.” Straight talk young peo­ple need to hear. Make the choic­es you want, but be sure you under­stand their con­se­quences. Read it and then think about it.
  2. Half of Pas­tors Approve of Trump’s Job Per­for­mance (Aaron Earls, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Despite 52 per­cent of Protes­tant pas­tors iden­ti­fy­ing as a Repub­li­can and only 18 per­cent call­ing them­selves a Demo­c­rat in a Life­Way Research sur­vey pri­or to the Novem­ber 2016 elec­tion, only 32 per­cent said they planned to vote for Trump. A full 40 per­cent said they were unde­cid­ed, with 19 per­cent plan­ning to vote for Hillary Clin­ton…. [Now after the elec­tion] there is no lack of data on Pres­i­dent Trump, but many were still hes­i­tant to give an opin­ion.” From an alum­nus who was quite dis­turbed by these num­bers.
    • Relat­ed: Why Evan­gel­i­cals Vot­ed Trump: Debunk­ing the 81% (Ed Stet­zer & Andrew McDon­ald, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “The data tells us that most Amer­i­can evan­gel­i­cals are not look­ing to their pas­tors for polit­i­cal guid­ance, and most pas­tors are not will­ing to touch the sub­ject lest they get burned. Only 4 in 10 respon­dents told us they want­ed advice from their pas­tor on polit­i­cal issues. And only 4 in 10 told us their pas­tor uses Scrip­ture to address polit­i­cal top­ics at least once a month or more. Put anoth­er way, many evan­gel­i­cals are like­ly turn­ing to culture—and often the most out­raged voices—rather than the church for polit­i­cal dis­ci­ple­ship.”
  3. I sup­port affir­ma­tive action. But Har­vard real­ly is hurt­ing Asian Amer­i­cans. (Michael Li, Vox): “As the Har­vard case per­co­lat­ed through the courts this sum­mer, I spoke to a num­ber of Asian-Amer­i­can adults, includ­ing some who are on the fac­ul­ties of elite uni­ver­si­ties. These con­ver­sa­tions took place in hushed tones — one per­son lit­er­al­ly looked over his shoul­der to make sure no one could hear. Invari­ably, peo­ple thought affir­ma­tive action was essen­tial. Just as invari­ably, peo­ple thought maybe, just maybe, Har­vard and oth­er elite schools are long over­due for a hard look in the mir­ror.” The author is senior coun­sel at NYU’s Bren­nan Cen­ter for Jus­tice.
  4. A Reac­tionary Renam­ing: Stan­ford and Eng­lish Lan­guage Pol­i­tics (Hol­lis Rob­bins, LA Review of Books): “Span­ish sol­diers preyed on Native women and Ser­ra endeav­ored — but reg­u­lar­ly failed — to pro­tect them. But on the Atlantic coast, what found­ing Amer­i­can fig­ure isn’t equal­ly impli­cat­ed in the destruc­tion of native cul­ture even if most lived and wrote long after native pop­u­la­tions on the Atlantic coast were dec­i­mat­ed, destroyed, and dri­ven west?” An inter­est­ing cri­tique of Stanford’s deci­sion to move away from Serra’s name. The author is a human­i­ties schol­ar at Sono­ma State Uni­ver­si­ty.
  5. Jim Jones & Har­vey Milk: The Secret His­to­ry (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “Milk and Jones were friends and allies.” If you know about either of these men and how they are gen­er­al­ly per­ceived, pre­pare to be sur­prised.
  6. More on Kavanaugh because more has been writ­ten (and I’ve run across some good stuff I missed pre­vi­ous­ly)
    • Does Any­one Still Take Both Sex­u­al Assault and Due Process Seri­ous­ly? (Emi­ly Yoffe, The Atlantic): “Sex­u­al vio­lence is a seri­ous nation­al prob­lem. But in the wake of the Kavanaugh hear­ing, it has joined the list of explo­sive­ly par­ti­san issues. Republicans—adopting the rhetor­i­cal style of the president—dismiss accusers. Democ­rats mock the idea that fair­ness and due process are nec­es­sary for the accused. These atti­tudes will be detri­men­tal to the coun­try and are per­ilous for each par­ty.”
    • The media mis­han­dled Kavanaugh — and made Trump a win­ner (Michael Ger­son, Wash­ing­ton Post): “Some argue that all jour­nal­ism involves bias, either hid­den or revealed. But it is one thing to say that objec­tiv­i­ty and fair­ness are ulti­mate­ly unreach­able. It is anoth­er to cease grasp­ing for them. That would be a world of pure­ly pri­vate truths, in which the bold­est liars and dem­a­gogues would thrive.” Ger­son is an evan­gel­i­cal who was a speech­writer in the Bush admin­is­tra­tion.
    • Every­one Lost at the Ford-Kavanaugh Hear­ings (Andrew Sul­li­van, New York Mag­a­zine): “When pub­lic life means the ran­sack­ing of people’s pri­vate lives even when they were in high school, we are cir­cling a deeply illib­er­al drain. A civ­i­lized soci­ety observes a dis­tinc­tion between pub­lic and pri­vate, and this dis­tinc­tion is inte­gral to indi­vid­ual free­dom. Such a dis­tinc­tion was anath­e­ma in old-school monar­chies when the king could arbi­trar­i­ly arrest, jail, or exe­cute you at will, for pri­vate behav­ior or thoughts. These lines are also blurred in author­i­tar­i­an regimes, where the pow­er of the gov­ern­ment knows few lim­its in mon­i­tor­ing a person’s home or pri­vate affairs or cor­re­spon­dence or tax returns or texts. These bound­aries def­i­n­i­tion­al­ly can’t exist in theoc­ra­cies, where the state is inter­est­ed as much in pun­ish­ing and expos­ing sin, as in pre­vent­ing crime. The Iran­ian and Sau­di gov­ern­ments — like the ear­ly mod­ern monar­chies — seek not only to con­trol your body, but also to look into your soul. They know that every­one has a dark side, and this dark side can be exposed in order to destroy peo­ple. All you need is an accu­sa­tion.” This piece is a few weeks old but I missed it. Sul­li­van, if you don’t rec­og­nize the name, is the intel­lec­tu­al father of gay mar­riage. He’s an inter­est­ing chap — he self-iden­ti­fies as a con­ser­v­a­tive and yet sup­port­ed Barack Oba­ma, and he calls him­self a faith­ful Roman Catholic yet had a wed­ding cer­e­mo­ny with his male part­ner. He’s one of the most idio­syn­crat­ic intel­lec­tu­als out there.
    • Why Women Can (and Should) Sup­port Brett Kavanaugh (Anni­ka Nordquist, Stan­ford Dai­ly): “As a stu­dent at Stan­ford, where Dr. Blasey Ford stud­ied and taught, as a grad­u­ate of Holton-Arms, the high school she attend­ed at the time of the alleged assault, and, rar­er still, as a vocal female con­ser­v­a­tive on cam­pus, I too have been think­ing with about this episode and what it means for women, for men, and for our soci­ety as a whole.” This is our Anni­ka.
  7. The Audac­i­ty of Gen­der-Reveal Par­ties: Anoth­er Step Towards Cul­tur­al Insan­i­ty (Al Mohler, per­son­al blog): “Chris­tians think­ing about this moral con­fu­sion must first stop at the vocab­u­lary used in this article—particularly the word, ‘cis­gen­der.’ Using that term plays into the entire gen­der rev­o­lu­tion. The term indi­cates that some­one born a male is quite com­fort­able with being male. Even adopt­ing the vocab­u­lary, there­fore, becomes an enor­mous prob­lem because the vocab­u­lary assumes that you accept the ide­ol­o­gy of the trans­gen­der revolutionaries—that gen­der flu­id­i­ty exists and that the gen­der assigned at one’s birth may or may not be fac­tu­al.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

I feel as though the last few issues have had a drought of amus­ing things. I think this week makes up for it.

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have The Preach­er And Pol­i­tics: Sev­en Thoughts (Kevin DeY­oung, Gospel Coali­tion): “I have plen­ty of opin­ions and con­vic­tions. But that’s not what I want my min­istry to be about. That’s not to say I don’t com­ment on abor­tion or gay mar­riage or racism or oth­er issues about the which the Bible speaks clear­ly. And yet, I’m always mind­ful that I can’t sep­a­rate Blog­ger Kevin or Twit­ter Kevin or Pro­fes­sor Kevin from Pas­tor Kevin. As such, my com­ments reflect on my church, whether I intend them to or not. That means I keep more polit­i­cal con­vic­tions to myself than I oth­er­wise would. First shared in vol­ume 150.

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 170

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. So I was most­ly ignor­ing the Kavanaugh nom­i­na­tion, but this week things turned way up. Wow. Here are the arti­cles that have helped to shape my think­ing.
    • What Would a Seri­ous Inves­ti­ga­tion of Brett Kavanaugh Look Like? (Jean­nie Suk Ger­son, New York­er): “…Kavanaugh does not stand to lose some­thing that he already has. He is peti­tion­ing the pub­lic for the priv­i­lege of hold­ing one of the high­est pub­lic offices in the coun­try, and he should have to per­suade us that he didn’t do what he is accused of doing. ”
    • The Kavanaugh Deba­cle (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “I am glad that Ford will have a chance to speak her mind, and that Kavanaugh will have the oppor­tu­ni­ty to defend him­self. But I think this will only make things worse for all of us. If Kavanaugh gets a Sen­ate vote, and pre­vails, he will for­ev­er be taint­ed as a Supreme Court jus­tice. If he is forced to with­draw (that is, with­out fur­ther evi­dence against him emerg­ing), or is vot­ed down, he will become a mar­tyr to many, and will, as the Wall Street Jour­nal edi­to­r­i­al page said, legit­imize ‘weaponiz­ing every sex­u­al assault alle­ga­tion no mat­ter the evi­dence.’”
    • I Believe Her (Caitlin Flana­gan, The Atlantic): “I have been entire­ly agnos­tic about Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nom­i­na­tion. Repub­li­can pres­i­dents nom­i­nate con­ser­v­a­tive judges, and Demo­c­ra­t­ic pres­i­dents nom­i­nate lib­er­al judges. This guy sound­ed like he was entire­ly qual­i­fied for the job. When Dianne Fein­stein made her announce­ment about the super-secret mys­tery let­ter by the anony­mous woman that she had sent to the FBI, I thought it was a Hail Mary pass aimed at scotch­ing the nom­i­na­tion, the kind of dis­taste­ful tac­tic that makes peo­ple hate pol­i­tics.”
    • In Eval­u­at­ing Cred­i­bil­i­ty, the Signs Point in Brett Kavanaugh’s Favor (Dan McLaugh­lin, Nation­al Review): “It’s always a good idea, in pol­i­tics, to eval­u­ate accu­sa­tions against your friends as if they were made against your ene­mies, and to eval­u­ate accu­sa­tions against your ene­mies as if they were made against your friends.” This is a very thor­ough argu­ment.
  2. The Unlike­ly Endurance of Chris­t­ian Rock (Kele­fah San­neh, The New York­er): “On Billboard’s list of the twen­ty most pop­u­lar rock songs of 2017, ful­ly half of them were by bands whose mem­bers have espoused the Chris­t­ian faith.” A strik­ing claim, but you have to count Mor­mons as Chris­tians for the math to work. A fas­ci­nat­ing and well-researched arti­cle nonethe­less.
  3. The Tiny Blond Bible Teacher Tak­ing on the Evan­gel­i­cal Polit­i­cal Machine (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “Where­as her crit­i­cisms of church lead­ers were once veiled, she now speaks her mind freely. She blogged ici­ly about meet­ing a promi­nent male the­olo­gian who looked her up and down and told her she was pret­ti­er than anoth­er famous female Bible teacher. She has cas­ti­gat­ed the evan­gel­i­cal move­ment for sell­ing its soul to buy polit­i­cal wins. “
  4. The Oth­er Polit­i­cal Cor­rect­ness (Isaac Stone Fish, The New Repub­lic): “There is an epi­dem­ic of self-cen­sor­ship at U.S. uni­ver­si­ties on the sub­ject of Chi­na, one that lim­its debate and fun­nels stu­dents and aca­d­e­mics away from top­ics like­ly to offend the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty.”
    • From some­one not wor­ried about offend­ing Chi­na: The People’s Repub­lic of Cru­el­ty (Bret Stephens, New York Times): “In the list of what ails Chi­na — slow­ing growth; cor­rupt offi­cial­dom; a declin­ing birth rate; a trade war with the U.S.; Xi Jinping’s cult of per­son­al­i­ty; the inher­ent dis­con­nect between a pol­i­tics of repres­sion and the spir­it of inno­va­tion — the regime’s war on the soul doesn’t usu­al­ly rank high. But it mat­ters most. It means the regime has made an ene­my of the one thing it can­not kill, cap­ture, erad­i­cate or cure. At some point it will either have to aban­don the strug­gle or destroy itself in the effort, much as the Sovi­et Union did.”
  5. So a Chica­go priest who was once abused burns a rain­bow-cross flag: All heck breaks out (Ter­ry Mat­ting­ly, GetRe­li­gion): the title is click­baity, but the arti­cle deliv­ers. “Well, here is a hot-but­ton sto­ry if I’ve ever seen one.”
  6. The Lib­er­al­ism of the Reli­gious Right (Emi­ly Ekins, New York Times): “Reli­gion appears to actu­al­ly be mod­er­at­ing con­ser­v­a­tive atti­tudes, par­tic­u­lar­ly on some of the most polar­iz­ing issues of our time: race, immi­gra­tion and iden­ti­ty. Church­go­ing Trump vot­ers have more favor­able feel­ings toward African-Amer­i­cans, His­pan­ics, Asians, Jews, Mus­lims and immi­grants com­pared with non­re­li­gious Trump vot­ers. This holds up even while account­ing for demo­graph­ic fac­tors like edu­ca­tion and race.“ Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus.
  7. What Do We Owe Her Now? (Eliz­a­beth Bru­enig, Wash­ing­ton Post): “‘The exam­i­na­tion that I did was con­sis­tent with what [Wyatt] said,’ [Nurse] Schi­a­vo told me when I con­tact­ed her this May to dis­cuss her find­ing. ‘That girl was raped.’ As I read her exam notes aloud to her over the phone, Schi­a­vo began to fill in details on her own. She remem­bered Wyatt’s case all these years lat­er, right down to the fact that she was nev­er called to court to tes­ti­fy about it.” This is a depress­ing sto­ry, well-researched.
    • The fol­low-up is more encour­ag­ing: Amber Wyatt told her sto­ry of rape. This is how the world respond­ed. (Eliz­a­beth Bru­enig, Wash­ing­ton Post): “The day after her 29th birth­day, which was also the day after her sto­ry first appeared online, Amber Wyatt, now Wil­son, stood in the show­er in her San Mar­cos home and sobbed — hard, wrench­ing, wrung-out tears. They had been a long time in com­ing.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have On Polit­i­cal Cor­rect­ness (William Dere­siewicz, The Amer­i­can Schol­ar): a long and thought­ful arti­cle. “Selec­tive pri­vate col­leges have become reli­gious schools. The reli­gion in ques­tion is not Method­ism or Catholi­cism but an extreme ver­sion of the belief sys­tem of the lib­er­al elite: the lib­er­al pro­fes­sion­al, man­age­r­i­al, and cre­ative class­es, which pro­vide a large major­i­ty of stu­dents enrolled at such places and an even larg­er major­i­ty of fac­ul­ty and admin­is­tra­tors who work at them. To attend those insti­tu­tions is to be social­ized, and not infre­quent­ly, indoc­tri­nat­ed into that reli­gion…. I say this, by the way, as an athe­ist, a demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ist, a native north­east­ern­er, a per­son who believes that col­leges should not have sports teams in the first place—and in case it isn’t obvi­ous by now, a card-car­ry­ing mem­ber of the lib­er­al elite.” (first shared in vol­ume 92)

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 165

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. Our Hope Is Com­ing (Steven Lon­go­ria, Deni­son Forum): “The world we live in would tell us that hope is close­ly tied to doubt. To say ‘I hope it doesn’t rain tomor­row’ car­ries with it a fear that it will like­ly rain…. Bib­li­cal hope is some­thing entire­ly dif­fer­ent. It con­veys a state of con­fi­dence, secu­ri­ty, and lack of wor­ry.” Steven is an alum­nus of our min­istry who is cur­rent­ly study­ing at Dal­las The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary. Go, Steven!
  2. How the State Serves Both Sal­va­tion and Reli­gious Free­dom (Jonathan Lee­man, 9 Marks): “Two basic kinds of gov­ern­ments, then, show up in the Bible: those that shel­ter God’s peo­ple, and those that destroy them. Abim­elech shel­tered; Pharoah destroyed. The Assyr­i­ans destroyed; the Baby­lo­ni­ans and Per­sians, ulti­mate­ly, shel­tered. Pilate destroyed; Fes­tus shel­tered. And depend­ing on how you read Rev­e­la­tion, the his­to­ry of gov­ern­ment will cul­mi­nate in a beast­ly slaugh­ter of saint­ly blood. Romans 13 calls gov­ern­ments ser­vants; Psalm 2 calls them imposters. Most gov­ern­ments con­tain both. But some are bet­ter than oth­ers.” Rec­om­mend­ed.
  3. #Church­Too
    • What Would Jesus Do? Clean House In The Catholic Church. (Megan McAr­dle, Wash­ing­ton Post): “[Con­gre­gants] do not expect the church to be per­fect; even St. Peter, after all, denied Christ three times. But they do expect to find the reflec­tion of Christ there. Accord­ing to news reports, the church hier­ar­chy in Penn­syl­va­nia and beyond has already denied Christ’s gospel three times: once when it shel­tered preda­tors in silence; once when it failed to remove every­one who was involved in cov­er­ing up any crime; and again when two of the six dio­ce­ses involved tried to shut down the grand jury inves­ti­ga­tion that pro­duced the report. Now they face the same choice Peter did.” Straight fire.
    • Why Men Like Me Should Not Be Priests (Daniel Matt­son, First Things): “Most of the hor­rif­ic abuse detailed in the Penn­syl­va­nia Grand Jury report involved ado­les­cent boys and young men. This isn’t pedophil­ia…. If the Church wants to avoid sex scan­dals, it must stop ordain­ing the sorts of men who have the hard­est time remain­ing chaste.” This arti­cle is full of details I did not know. Fas­ci­nat­ing and no doubt a light­ning rod for con­tro­very.
    • How the Wil­low Creek Church Scan­dal Has Stunned the Evan­gel­i­cal World (Lau­rie Good­stein, New York Times): “The sud­den res­ig­na­tion of Wil­low Creek Com­mu­ni­ty Church’s top lead­ers fol­low­ing sex­u­al harass­ment alle­ga­tions against Rev. Bill Hybels, their found­ing pas­tor, has shak­en evan­gel­i­cals far from the church’s base in the Chica­go sub­urbs. There are few big­ger names in the evan­gel­i­cal world than Mr. Hybels, and few church­es more influ­en­tial than Wil­low Creek. Chris­tians world­wide looked to it as a mod­el of smart lead­er­ship.”
    • These two scan­dals are espe­cial­ly inter­est­ing when jux­ta­posed. The Roman Catholic Church is the most hier­ar­chi­cal of denom­i­na­tions with author­i­ty flow­ing down from the Pope. Wil­low Creek is a non­de­nom­i­na­tion­al con­gre­ga­tion and is com­plete­ly inde­pen­dent of exter­nal author­i­ty. They rep­re­sent two extremes of church gov­er­nance and the rev­e­la­tion of their moral fail­ures demon­strate that the prob­lem of sin is not solved by rules. See Colos­sians 2:20–23.
    • Relat­ed: Evan­gel­i­cal Puri­ty Cul­ture Taught Me to Ratio­nal­ize My Sex­u­al Assault (Bec­ca Andrews, Moth­er Jones): “I under­stood my role: I was a sex­u­al gate­keep­er. Men, we were taught, are bur­dened by God with insa­tiable lust. Women, of course, are not, so it makes sense that we are expect­ed to cre­ate the bound­aries. We are respon­si­ble for what we wear, but more broad­ly, we are tasked with defin­ing con­sent, as thorny as that may seem…. The stakes are high in puri­ty cul­ture. Every slipup is a strike against any hope of a suc­cess­ful mar­riage.” Although inter­est­ing, the arti­cle doesn’t quite make the case that the title implies.
    • For the record: nev­er keep a crim­i­nal mat­ter pri­vate because you fear your report will hurt the pub­lic per­cep­tion of a reli­gious body, polit­i­cal enti­ty, or any oth­er insti­tu­tion. Souls are eter­nal, orga­ni­za­tions are not. Indi­vid­u­als are more impor­tant than insti­tu­tions. This is true even of denom­i­na­tions and indi­vid­ual con­gre­ga­tions — Jesus died for the Church and not for a brand. 1 Corinthi­ans 6:1–7 tells us to for­bear in civ­il mat­ters, but when it comes to crim­i­nal mat­ters Romans 13:1–7 is the rel­e­vant pas­sage.
  4. Social Injus­tice and the Gospel (John MacArthur, Grace To You): “I am con­vinced the only long-term solu­tion to every brand of eth­nic ani­mus is the gospel of Jesus Christ. In Christ alone are the bar­ri­ers and divid­ing walls between peo­ple groups bro­ken down, the enmi­ty abol­ished, and dif­fer­ing cul­tures and eth­nic groups bound togeth­er in one new peo­ple (Eph­esians 2:14–15). The black lead­ers with whom I min­is­tered dur­ing the civ­il rights move­ment shared that con­vic­tion. The evan­gel­i­cals who are say­ing the most and talk­ing the loud­est these days about what’s referred to as ‘social jus­tice’ seem to have a very dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive.” This is appar­ent­ly the first in a series.
  5. “Let The Whore­house Burn!” (Christo­pher Cald­well, The Week­ly Stan­dard): “‘As of this evening,’ said Pierre Moscovi­ci in Lux­em­bourg in June, ‘the Greek cri­sis is over.’ Moscovi­ci, a French Social­ist politi­cian who serves as the eco­nom­ics com­mis­sion­er of the Euro­pean Union, was mak­ing quite a claim…. Today, despite what Pierre Moscovi­ci and his col­leagues said in Lux­em­bourg, Greek debt, at 179 per­cent, is high­er still. The lat­est E.U. deal requires Greece to run large bud­get sur­plus­es until the year 2060 to repay the debts brought on by the E.U.’s own mis­man­age­ment. The coun­try is in some respects worse off than it was when Greek pro­test­ers mobbed the par­lia­ment in May 2010, howl­ing, ‘Let the whore­house burn!’”
  6. Norway’s hid­den scan­dal (Tim Whewell, BBC): “His con­vic­tion puts the spot­light back on a sys­tem which has been heav­i­ly crit­i­cised by some par­ents – and by lead­ing Nor­we­gian pro­fes­sion­als in the child­care field – for being too quick to put chil­dren into care, split­ting fam­i­lies unnec­es­sar­i­ly. The dis­graced psy­chi­a­trist has had his pro­fes­sion­al licence revoked, mean­ing he can­not work in the same field again. But par­ents who’ve lost cus­tody of chil­dren in cas­es he was involved in believe all his pre­vi­ous deci­sions should be reviewed.” This is out­ra­geous.
  7. Col­orado Defies the Supreme Court, Renews Per­se­cu­tion of a Chris­t­ian Bak­er (David French, Nation­al Review): “On the very day that Phillips won his case at the Supreme Court, a per­son emailed with yet anoth­er delib­er­ate­ly offen­sive design request: “I’m think­ing a three-tiered white cake. Cheese­cake frost­ing. And the top­per should be a large fig­ure of Satan, lick­ing a 9″ black Dil­do. I would like the dil­do to be an actu­al work­ing mod­el, that can be turned on before we unveil the cake. I can pro­vide it for you if you don’t have the means to pro­cure one your­self.” And final­ly, two days lat­er, a per­son iden­ti­fy­ing as ‘Autumn Marie’ vis­it­ed Phillips’s shop and request­ed a cake fea­tur­ing a pen­ta­gram. Accord­ing to ADF, ‘Phillips believes that per­son was Autumn Scar­di­na.’ Rather than rec­og­niz­ing Scardina’s con­duct as noth­ing more than a bad-faith cam­paign of harass­ment, Aubrey Ele­nis, the direc­tor of the Col­orado Civ­il Rights Divi­sion, found on June 28 ‘prob­a­ble cause’ to believe that Phillips vio­lat­ed Scardina’s civ­il rights….”
    • Relat­ed: When oppo­si­tion to reli­gious lib­er­ty becomes sil­ly, pet­ty, and vin­dic­tive (Andrew T. Walk­er. Ethics and Reli­gious Lib­er­ty Com­mis­sion): “When our cre­ative direc­tor walked into my office to noti­fy me [that our min­istry was being dis­crim­i­nat­ed against by a com­pa­ny], my first response was to smile. Why? Because the ERLC had been the vic­tim of dis­crim­i­na­tion, and I knew an oppor­tu­ni­ty like this meant the ERLC could pur­sue the moral high ground. What pro­gres­sivism does to dis­senters, we would not do to them…. No law­suit was nec­es­sary. No media storm was called for. We have zero desire to force the dis­crim­i­nat­ing com­pa­ny to agree with us or com­ply with our demands. No one was hold­ing the oth­er hostage to their ide­o­log­i­cal expec­ta­tions. The pow­er of choice and the free­dom of view­point diver­si­ty allowed two actors to pur­sue a path­way of plu­ral­ism.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Every Place Has Detrac­tors. Con­sid­er Where They’re Com­ing From.(Megan McAr­dle, Bloomberg View): “There is grave dan­ger in judg­ing a neigh­bor­hood, or a cul­ture, by the accounts of those who chose to leave it. Those peo­ple are least like­ly to appre­ci­ate the good things about where they came from, and the most like­ly to dwell on its less attrac­tive qual­i­ties.” Bear this in mind when lis­ten­ing to con­ver­sion tes­ti­monies (both sec­u­lar and reli­gious). This serendip­i­tous­ly hap­pened to be next in the sequence of old­er links. It fits very well with the above arti­cle about evan­gel­i­cal puri­ty cul­ture. (first shared in vol­ume 62)

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 164

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. Two con­trast­ing per­spec­tives on who is real­ly win­ning in Amer­i­ca, both inde­pen­dent­ly pub­lished by smart peo­ple in the same high-pro­file mag­a­zine:
    • Why the Left Is So Afraid of Jor­dan Peter­son (Caitlin Flana­gan, The Atlantic): “There are many legit­i­mate rea­sons to dis­agree with him on a num­ber of sub­jects, and many peo­ple of good will do. But there is no coher­ent rea­son for the left’s oblit­er­at­ing and irra­tional hatred of Jor­dan Peter­son. What, then, accounts for it? It is because the left, while it cur­rent­ly seems ascen­dant in our hous­es of cul­ture and art, has in fact entered its deca­dent late phase, and it is deeply vul­ner­a­ble.”
    • Con­ser­v­a­tives Are Scared, Even Under Trump (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “While lib­er­al activist groups paint Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s Wash­ing­ton as an unmit­i­gat­ed for­ward march of con­ser­v­a­tive vic­to­ries, con­ser­v­a­tive activist groups—including Weber’s—don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly per­ceive things the same way. Rather, some of these groups see the next few years under Trump as a brief win­dow of oppor­tu­ni­ty to cre­ate defens­es against a cul­ture that is mov­ing away from them. In parts of the con­ser­v­a­tive move­ment, the long-game strat­e­gy is to defend their posi­tion by devolv­ing pow­er away from the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment and the Supreme Court, using the momen­tum of the Trump years to bat­ten down the hatch­es against the inevitable cul­tur­al storms ahead.”
  2. Final text of Jew­ish nation-state law, approved by the Knes­set ear­ly on July 19 (Raoul Wootliff, Times of Israel): “The law for the first time enshrines Israel as ‘the nation­al home of the Jew­ish peo­ple.’ The law becomes one of the so-called Basic Laws, which, like a con­sti­tu­tion, guide Israel’s legal sys­tem and are usu­al­ly more dif­fi­cult to repeal than reg­u­lar laws.” Unlike most arti­cles, this includes the full (trans­lat­ed) text of the law, and it is worth read­ing if you’ve only seen it excerpt­ed. It’s not long.
    • I believe this is the Israeli law that infu­ri­at­ed Stan­ford stu­dent Hamzeh Daoud (see last week’s install­ment for details).
    • Israel’s New Law: A Tale of Two Nation-States (Robert Nichol­son, Prov­i­dence): “The Pales­tine Basic Law (2003) defines Pales­tine as part of the Arab world and Arab uni­ty as a sin­gu­lar goal of the Pales­tin­ian peo­ple. The law also defines Ara­bic as Palestine’s offi­cial lan­guage, Jerusalem as its offi­cial cap­i­tal, and Islam as its offi­cial reli­gion. This basic law serves as a tem­po­rary con­sti­tu­tion for the Pales­tin­ian Author­i­ty until a sov­er­eign State of Pales­tine is estab­lished. In the mean­time, the law gov­erns dai­ly life inside the West Bank and to some extent Gaza. On July 19 the Israeli Knes­set passed a sim­i­lar basic law.” This was incred­i­bly help­ful con­text to me.
    • Under the Law: Israeli Chris­tians Wor­ry About Sec­ondary Sta­tus in Jew­ish Nation-State (Jayson Casper, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “‘This law out­lines that Israel’s demo­c­ra­t­ic val­ues are sec­ondary for non-Jews,’ said Sha­dia Qubti, a Pales­tin­ian evan­gel­i­cal liv­ing in Nazareth. ‘It sends a clear mes­sage that my lan­guage is not wel­come and con­se­quent­ly, nei­ther is my cul­tur­al and eth­nic iden­ti­ty.’”
  3. A Bet­ter Way to Ban Alex Jones (David French, New York Times): “The good news is that tech com­pa­nies don’t have to rely on vague, mal­leable and hot­ly con­test­ed def­i­n­i­tions of hate speech to deal with con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists like Mr. Jones. The far bet­ter option would be to pro­hib­it libel or slan­der on their plat­forms…. Pri­vate cor­po­ra­tions can ban who­ev­er they like. But if com­pa­nies like Face­book are eager to nav­i­gate speech con­tro­ver­sies in good faith, they would do well to learn from the cen­turies of legal devel­op­ments in Amer­i­can law. When cre­at­ing a true mar­ket­place of ideas, why not let the First Amend­ment be your guide?”
    • His fol­low-up: A First Amend­ment Peace Plan for the Twit­ter Wars (David French, Nation­al Review): “As I dug down into objec­tions to my pro­posed First Amend­ment frame­work, I often found that the objec­tions were ulti­mate­ly based on a desire to dis­crim­i­nate on the basis of view­point, on a desire to use the pow­er of the plat­form to priv­i­lege some voic­es and sup­press oth­ers.”
  4. A Kind of Home­less­ness: Evan­gel­i­cals of Col­or in the Trump Era (Melani McAl­is­ter, Reli­gion & Pol­i­tics): “Yet the head­lines about ‘evan­gel­i­cal’ sup­port for the pres­i­dent and his agen­da mean that evan­gel­i­cals of col­or can seem to be an invis­i­ble community—rarely acknowl­edged by jour­nal­ists even when they go to the same church­es or claim a sim­i­lar the­ol­o­gy. White evan­gel­i­cals are numer­i­cal­ly dominant—although declining—but their opin­ions dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly dom­i­nate U.S. media report­ing on how the­o­log­i­cal­ly con­ser­v­a­tive Protes­tants think, vote, and believe. At one lev­el, the racial dif­fer­ence is emi­nent­ly pre­dictable. Sure­ly the white­ness of white evan­gel­i­cals is cru­cial to under­stand­ing their polit­i­cal beliefs and their vot­ing pat­terns. As Janelle Wong shows in her new book, Immi­grants, Evan­gel­i­cals, and Pol­i­tics in an Era of Demo­graph­ic Change, although evan­gel­i­cals of any giv­en race are more con­ser­v­a­tive than the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion of that race, evan­gel­i­cals of col­or over­all are far less con­ser­v­a­tive than white evan­gel­i­cals. Indeed, they are less con­ser­v­a­tive than white peo­ple over­all.” The author is a pro­fes­sor of Amer­i­can Stud­ies and Inter­na­tion­al Affairs at George Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty.
  5. How Trump Rad­i­cal­ized ICE (Franklin Foer, The Atlantic): “By the begin­ning of Barack Obama’s sec­ond term, immi­gra­tion had become one of the high­est pri­or­i­ties of fed­er­al law enforce­ment: Half of all fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tions were for immi­gra­tion-relat­ed crimes. In 2012, Con­gress appro­pri­at­ed $18 bil­lion for immi­gra­tion enforce­ment. It spent $14 bil­lion for all the oth­er major crim­i­nal law-enforce­ment agen­cies com­bined: the FBI; the Drug Enforce­ment Admin­is­tra­tion; the Secret Ser­vice; the Bureau of Alco­hol, Tobac­co, Firearms, and Explo­sives; and the U.S. Mar­shals Ser­vice.” ICE is much, much big­ger than I real­ized. This is a real­ly impor­tant arti­cle.
  6. Oh, The Human­i­ties! (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “…the years since the Great Reces­sion have been ‘bru­tal for almost every major in the human­i­ties.’ They’ve also been bad for ‘social sci­ence fields that most close­ly resem­ble human­is­tic ones — soci­ol­o­gy, anthro­pol­o­gy, inter­na­tion­al rela­tions and polit­i­cal sci­ence.’ Mean­while the sci­ences and engi­neer­ing have gained at the expense of human­ism…”
  7. Bethel Church Sur­vives Red­ding Carr Fire, But Still Faces Heat (Grif­fin Paul Jack­son, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “For Bethel’s part, staff said the church could not act as an evac­u­a­tion zone because of its prox­im­i­ty to the blaze and because there is a sin­gle entry and exit point to the cam­pus, which is itself sur­round­ed by brush. The Red Cross said Bethel offered to be an evac­u­a­tion site, but was turned down because of the campus’s near­ness to the fire…. The church has, how­ev­er, flexed its con­sid­er­able min­istry mus­cle and finan­cial resources, encour­ag­ing dona­tions to aid relief efforts. Bethel is also part­ner­ing with the Red Cross and the Sal­va­tion Army in response to the Carr fire, Far­rel­ly said.”
    • Relat­ed: Osteen’s church was sim­i­lar­ly crit­i­cized after Hur­ri­cane Har­vey, also with what seem to me to be scant fac­tu­al grounds. Dis­cussed back in vol­ume 116.
    • Also (ten­u­ous­ly) relat­ed: Cal­i­for­ni­a’s Dev­as­tat­ing Fires Are Man-Caused — But Not In The Way They Tell Us (Chuck DeVore, Forbes): “ In the 1850s and 1860s, the typ­i­cal Sier­ra land­scape was of open fields of grass punc­tu­at­ed by iso­lat­ed pine stands and a few scat­tered oak trees. The first branch­es on the pine trees start­ed about 20 feet up—lower branch­es hav­ing been burned off by low-inten­si­ty grass­fires. California’s Native Amer­i­can pop­u­la­tion had for years shaped this land­scape with fire to encour­age the grass­lands and boost the game ani­mal pop­u­la­tion. As the Gold Rush remade mod­ern Cal­i­for­nia, tim­ber was har­vest­ed and replant­ed. Fires were sup­pressed because they threat­ened homes as well as burned up a valu­able resource. The land­scape filled in with trees, but the trees were har­vest­ed every 30 to 50 years. In the 1990s, how­ev­er, that cycle began to be dis­rupt­ed with increas­ing­ly bur­den­some reg­u­la­tions. The tim­ber har­vest cycle slowed, and, in some areas, stopped com­plete­ly, espe­cial­ly on the almost 60% of Cal­i­for­nia for­est land owned by the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Mak­ing Sense of the Num­bers of Gen­e­sis [pdf link] (Car­ol Hill, Per­spec­tives on Sci­ence and the Chris­t­ian Faith): “Joseph and Joshua were each record­ed as dying at age 110—a num­ber con­sid­ered ‘per­fect’ by the Egyp­tians. In ancient Egypt­ian doc­trine, the phrase ‘he died aged 110’ was actu­al­ly an epi­taph com­mem­o­rat­ing a life that had been lived self­less­ly and had result­ed in out­stand­ing social and moral ben­e­fit for oth­ers. And so for both Joseph and Joshua, who came out of the Egypt­ian cul­ture, quot­ing this age was actu­al­ly a trib­ute to their char­ac­ter. But, to be described as ‘dying at age 110’ bore no nec­es­sary rela­tion­ship to the actu­al time of an individual’s life span.” You will not agree with every­thing in this arti­cle, but it is full of fas­ci­nat­ing insights. (first shared in vol­ume 51)

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 158

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions. If you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

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

Things Glen Found Interesting

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

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Chris­t­ian Mis­sions and the Spread of Democ­ra­cy (Greg Scan­dlen, The Fed­er­al­ist): This is a sum­ma­ry of some rather won­der­ful research Robert Wood­ber­ry pub­lished in The Amer­i­can Polit­i­cal Sci­ence Review back in 2012: The Mis­sion­ary Roots of Lib­er­al Democ­ra­cy. If it looks famil­iar it’s because I allude to it from time to time in my ser­mons and con­ver­sa­tions. (first shared in vol­ume 14)

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 153

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. Fed­er­al Agen­cies Lost Track of Near­ly 1,500 Migrant Chil­dren Placed With Spon­sors (Ron Nixon, New York Times): “…the agency had lost track of near­ly 1,500 migrant chil­dren it placed with spon­sors in the Unit­ed States, rais­ing con­cerns they could end up in the hands of human traf­fick­ers or be used as labor­ers by peo­ple pos­ing as rel­a­tives.” This is an arti­cle from April about kids who arrive alone at the bor­der, but I can’t help but think of it when I hear sto­ries about new poli­cies sep­a­rat­ing kids from their fam­i­lies at the bor­der. If I am read­ing this cor­rect­ly, they lost track of 20% of the minors they placed. Out­ra­geous­ly unac­cept­able. 
  2. The Wrath of God Poured Out — The Humil­i­a­tion of the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion (Albert Mohler, per­son­al blog): this is pure fire. I pray lead­ers in the Assem­blies of God will act with sim­i­lar courage should it become nec­es­sary.  
  3. What Our Iden­ti­ty Search­es Real­ly Reveal (Eric Park­er, Gospel Coali­tion): “the most sig­nif­i­cant ques­tion in under­stand­ing per­son­al iden­ti­ty is not ‘Who am I?’ but ‘Whose am I?’… This one turn of phrase might be the most sig­nif­i­cant turn of thought we could ever make. But since many of us haven’t made that turn of thought, we inhab­it con­struct­ed iden­ti­ties rather than received iden­ti­ties.”
  4. Chi­na’s social cred­it sys­tem has blocked peo­ple from tak­ing 11 mil­lion flights and 4 mil­lion train trips (Tara Fran­cis Chan, Busi­ness Insid­er): “a for­mer offi­cial, Hou Yunchun, is quot­ed as say­ing the sys­tem needs to be improved so ‘dis­cred­it­ed peo­ple become bank­rupt.’”
  5. Why Being a Fos­ter Child Made Me a Con­ser­v­a­tive (Rob Hen­der­son, New York Times): “Indi­vid­u­als have rights. But they also have respon­si­bil­i­ties. For instance, when I say par­ents should pri­or­i­tize their chil­dren over their careers, there is a sense of unease among my peers. They think I want to blame indi­vid­u­als rather than a neb­u­lous foe like pover­ty. They are most­ly right.” The author just grad­u­at­ed from Yale. Worth read­ing regard­less of your polit­i­cal alle­giances.
  6. Mar­riage name game: What kind of guy would take his wife’s last name? (Phys.org): “[The study] found that among men with less than a high school degree, 10.3 per­cent report­ed chang­ing their sur­name. Among men with a high school degree but no col­lege, it was 3.6 per­cent, and among men with any col­lege, only 2 per­cent. None of the men sur­veyed who had an advanced degree changed their name.”
  7. The Racism Tread­mill (Cole­man Hugh­es, Quil­lette): “In an econ­o­my increas­ing­ly based on cog­ni­tive labor, it’s hard to imag­ine a cul­tur­al fea­ture more harm­ful than a social­ly-enforced taboo on aca­d­e­m­ic striv­ing. But wor­ries about the harm caused by the ‘act­ing white’ epi­thet have been met with skep­ti­cism by pro­gres­sives.” The author is an under­grad at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty. 

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have a provoca­tive read, In Defense of Flog­ging (Peter Moskos, Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion) — the author is a for­mer police offi­cer and now a crim­i­nol­o­gist at the City Uni­ver­si­ty of New York. This one was shared back before I start­ed send­ing these emails in a blog post called Pun­ish­ment.

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.