Tag: justice

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 45

On Fri­days I share articles/resources I have found help­ful recent­ly in think­ing about broad­er cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

This week there are a few more links than nor­mal. Enjoy!

  1. New Evi­dence On When The Bible Was Writ­ten: Ancient Shop­ping Lists (Isabel Ker­sh­n­er, New York Times): “One of the long­stand­ing argu­ments for why the main body of bib­li­cal lit­er­a­ture was not writ­ten down in any­thing like its present form until after the destruc­tion and exile of 586 B.C. is that before then there was not enough lit­er­a­cy or enough scribes to sup­port such a huge under­tak­ing. But if the lit­er­a­cy rates in the Arad fortress were repeat­ed across the king­dom of Judah, which had about 100,000 peo­ple, there would have been hun­dreds of lit­er­ate peo­ple, the Tel Aviv research team sug­gests.” — also check out the AP/Guardian on this.
  2. Is Porn Immoral? That Doesn’t Mat­ter: It’s a Pub­lic Health Cri­sis (Gaile Dines, Wash­ing­ton Post): “After 40 years of peer-reviewed research, schol­ars can say with con­fi­dence that porn is an indus­tri­al prod­uct that shapes how we think about gen­der, sex­u­al­i­ty, rela­tion­ships, inti­ma­cy, sex­u­al vio­lence and gen­der equal­i­ty — for the worse…. just as the tobac­co indus­try argued for decades that there was no proof of a con­nec­tion between smok­ing and lung can­cer, so, too, has the porn indus­try, with the help of a well-oiled pub­lic rela­tions machine, denied the exis­tence of empir­i­cal research on the impact of its prod­ucts.”
  3. Face­book Employ­ees Asked Mark Zucker­berg If They Should Try To Stop A Don­ald Trump Pres­i­den­cy (Michael Nunez, Giz­mo­do): “Face­book has toyed with skew­ing news in the past. Dur­ing the 2008 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, Face­book secret­ly tam­pered with 1.9 mil­lion user’s news feeds. An aca­d­e­m­ic paper was pub­lished about the secret exper­i­ment, claim­ing that Face­book increased vot­er turnout by more than 340,000 peo­ple. In 2010, the com­pa­ny tam­pered with news feeds again. It con­duct­ed a 61-mil­lion-per­son exper­i­ment to see how Face­book could impact the real-world vot­ing behav­ior of mil­lions of peo­ple. In 2012, Face­book delib­er­ate­ly exper­i­ment­ed on its users’ emo­tions.  The com­pa­ny, again, secret­ly tam­pered with the news feeds of 700,000 peo­ple and con­clud­ed that Face­book can basi­cal­ly make you feel what­ev­er it wants you to.”
  4. I Was A Clos­et­ed Chris­t­ian At The Pen­ta­gon (Matthew Spence, Wash­ing­ton Post): “I feared how com­ing out as a prac­tic­ing Chris­t­ian would define me. I wor­ried that my boss­es, peers and sub­or­di­nates might asso­ciate me with Amer­i­can offi­cials who have spo­ken of U.S. mil­i­tary engage­ments in the Mid­dle East as ‘cru­sades’ or with the Islam­ic State’s dec­la­ra­tion of holy war. I feared that talk­ing about my faith would detract from the log­ic of my argu­ments. And, as a rel­a­tive­ly young per­son in a senior posi­tion, I need­ed every scrap of cred­i­bil­i­ty I could claim.”
  5. Why Jesus’ Skin Col­or Mat­ters (Chris­te­na Cleve­land, Chris­tian­i­ty Today):  “While Christ the Lord tran­scends skin col­or and racial divi­sions, white Jesus has real con­se­quences.”
  6. Hous­ton police offi­cer presents a few “dou­ble-edged sword” sce­nar­ios regard­ing body cam­eras (red­dit): unin­tend­ed con­se­quences are always dif­fi­cult to pre­dict.
  7. Was It Wrong To Hack and Leak the Pana­ma Papers? (Tyler Cowen, blog): sur­pris­ing­ly stim­u­lat­ing.
  8. Onward Chris­t­ian Sol­diers: In the Era of Trump-Style Pol­i­tics, Evan­gel­i­cal Vot­ers Are Not a Mono­lith (Julie Lyons, Hous­ton Press): this is a very insight­ful and data-rich arti­cle.
  9. The Ten­sions Threat­en­ing the Future of Reli­gious Free­dom Law (Kelsey Dal­las, Deseret News): this is a very good sum­ma­ry of the cur­rent state of reli­gious free­dom leg­is­la­tion.
  10. Chris­tian­i­ty and Korea (Dave Haz­zan, The Diplo­mat): “Evan­gel­i­cal zeal to send mis­sion­ar­ies to places most oth­ers would nev­er go – includ­ing Afghanistan, Iraq, Jor­dan, and Yemen – have caused headaches for the gov­ern­ment. In 2007, after ignor­ing the government’s advice, 27 Kore­an mis­sion­ar­ies to Afghanistan were kid­napped by the Tal­iban, and two were killed. In 2009, the Kore­an for­eign min­istry warned Kore­an Chris­tians to stop mis­sion­iz­ing in Arab coun­tries, fear­ing it was mak­ing Kore­ans ter­ror­ist targets.”9
  11. Kin­da Ran­dom

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 44

On Fri­days I share articles/resources I have found help­ful recent­ly in think­ing about broad­er cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

  1. How Covenants Make Us (David Brooks, NYT): “A con­tract pro­tects inter­ests, Pal­ly notes, but a covenant pro­tects rela­tion­ships. A covenant exists between peo­ple who under­stand they are part of one anoth­er. It involves a vow to serve the rela­tion­ship that is sealed by love: Where you go, I will go. Where you stay, I will stay. Your peo­ple shall be my peo­ple. Peo­ple in a con­tract pro­vide one anoth­er ser­vices, but peo­ple in a covenant delight in offer­ing gifts.”
  2. When Reli­gious Groups Do What the Gov­ern­ment Won’t (Alana Semuels, The Atlantic): inter­est­ing through­out.
  3. Let’s Make Foot­ball A Col­lege Major (David John­son, Aeon): I am large­ly per­suad­ed. If a per­for­mance art can be a major, then why not a sport such as foot­ball? At least give ath­letes aca­d­e­m­ic cred­it for the work they put in.
  4. Is It Time for Amer­i­can Chris­tians to Dis­obey the Gov­ern­ment? (David Koyzis, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): the piece is much less alarmist than the title sug­gests. Worth read­ing.
  5. PIN Analy­sis (Nick Berry, blog): this is a pret­ty cool analy­sis of the dis­tri­b­u­tion of four dig­it PIN codes.
  6. Final­ly, some arti­cles by stu­dents in or alum­ni from our min­istry. If you get some­thing pub­lished, be sure to let me know!

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. Your sug­ges­tions are wel­come.

 

 

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 42

On Fri­days I share articles/resources I have found help­ful recent­ly in think­ing about broad­er cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

  1. Jesus of Nazareth, Whose Mes­sian­ic Mes­sage Cap­ti­vat­ed Thou­sands, Dies at About 33 (Sam Roberts, Van­i­ty Fair): What would Jesus’ New York Times obit­u­ary have looked like? Clever, well-done, and Good Fri­day appro­pri­ate.
  2. Anato­my of Doubt (Ira Glass, This Amer­i­can Life): this is an amaz­ing, dis­turb­ing sto­ry. There are com­pan­ion print pieces as well, but lis­ten to the pod­cast. 
  3. Do We Still Need Pris­ons? (Paul Kir­by, Volte­face): this arti­cle by David Cameron’s for­mer direc­tor of pub­lic pol­i­cy is full of cre­ative ideas. Two relat­ed thoughts worth pon­der­ing: the Bible nev­er com­mands a gov­ern­ment to build pris­ons, and Jesus said He came to set the pris­on­ers free.
  4. How well online dat­ing works, accord­ing to some­one who has been study­ing it for years (Rober­to Fer­d­man, Wonkblog): this an inter­view with a Stan­ford prof.  “It’s kind of super­fi­cial. But it’s super­fi­cial because we’re kind of super­fi­cial; it’s like that because humans are like that. Judg­ing what some­one else looks like first is not an attribute of tech­nol­o­gy, it’s an attribute of how we look at peo­ple. Dat­ing, both mod­ern and not, is a fair­ly super­fi­cial endeav­or.”
  5. A Dia­log On Race and Speech at Yale (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): the colum­nist has a very insight­ful email inter­change with a Yale under­grad.
  6. Ban­ning Cred­it Checks Harms African-Amer­i­cans (Tyler Cowen): “In states that passed cred­it-check bans, it  became eas­i­er for peo­ple with bad cred­it his­to­ries to com­pete for employ­ment. But dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly, they seem to have elbowed aside black job-seek­ers.” — read a more thor­ough sum­ma­ry at Wonkblog.
  7. A clus­ter of voic­es speak­ing about the reli­gious free­dom case recent­ly argued before the Supreme Court:
    • Stan­ford pro­fes­sor Michael McConnell’s take on the oral argu­ments: “At a time of ris­ing divi­sive­ness and polar­iza­tion, it would be great­ly calm­ing if the Court could unite in this case to pro­tect the rights of many with absolute­ly no injury to any­one else, or to the pub­lic good.”
    • Reli­gious Free­dom Deserves Def­er­ence: Our View Edi­to­r­i­al Board, USA Today): “To imag­ine that non-prof­its whose very exis­tence is tied to reli­gion do not deserve more def­er­ence than for-prof­it busi­ness­es is quite a stretch.”
    • Lit­tle Sis­ters, Big Case (Rus­sell Moore, The Hill): “Over 100 mil­lion Amer­i­cans don’t have health plans that must offer the government’s drugs. The gov­ern­ment exempts big busi­ness­es such as Exxon and big munic­i­pal­i­ties such as New York City, and does so just to reduce admin­is­tra­tive incon­ve­nience for these enti­ties. The gov­ern­ment even exempts itself, refus­ing to require the U.S. military—the nation’s largest employer—to pro­vide the same drugs they want to force the Lit­tle Sis­ters of the Poor to pro­vide.”
  8. Quick Links

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 34

Here are some things I found inter­est­ing this week. See the bot­tom for con­text.

  1. On The Via­bil­i­ty of Con­spir­a­to­r­i­al Beliefs (David Robert Grimes, PLOS One): Oxford physi­cist Grimes came up with an equa­tion that shows how like­ly a con­spir­a­cy will be to suc­ceed under ide­al con­di­tions. Of par­tic­u­lar inter­est is the chart on the bot­tom of page 11, show­ing that a con­spir­a­cy with more than 502 peo­ple has a 95% like­li­hood of expo­sure after just 25 years. Read­ing that puts 1 Corinthi­ans 15:3–6 in a new light: “For what I received I passed on to you as of first impor­tance: that Christ died for our sins accord­ing to the Scrip­tures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day accord­ing to the Scrip­tures, and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hun­dred of the broth­ers and sis­ters at the same time, most of whom are still liv­ing, though some have fall­en asleep.” Please note that there are all kinds of assump­tions in the paper that are sub­ject to chal­lenge… but if one of your friends brings this study up you should men­tion this pas­sage to them. 🙂
  2. Cer­ti­tude And Seek­ing The Truth (Peter Wehn­er, Com­men­tary). Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus (the rec­om­men­da­tion was actu­al­ly for a blog post excerpt­ing this arti­cle, but I thought the whole thing was worth read­ing — it aligns nice­ly with my dis­claimer at the bot­tom).
  3. My Major, Myself: (Olga Khaz­an, The Atlantic). What does your major reveal (prob­a­bilis­ti­cal­ly) about your per­son­al­i­ty?
  4. Why Humans Find It Hard To Do Away With Reli­gion (John Gray, The New States­man): Gray is him­self an athe­ist. My favorite line: “The invet­er­ate human incli­na­tion to reli­gion is, in effect, the athe­ist prob­lem of evil.” This isn’t quite right but it is amus­ing.
  5. Peo­ple Can Be Con­vinced They Com­mit­ted A Non-Exis­tant Crime In Just Three Hours (Bec Crew, Sci­ence Alert). Dis­turb­ing. This is a sum­ma­ry of the find­ings of an aca­d­e­m­ic paper: Con­struct­ing Rich False Mem­o­ries of Com­mit­ting Crime (Shaw & Porter, Psy­cho­log­i­cal Sci­ence).
  6. How Reli­gion Is Shap­ing the 2016 Pres­i­den­tial Race (Pew Research). If pol­i­tics is your thing, this arti­cle will be inter­est­ing.
  7. Are Aca­d­e­mics Dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly Gay? (Colleen Fla­her­ty, Inside High­er Edu­ca­tion). The tl;dr ver­sion is yes.

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.

To that end, on Fri­days I’ve been shar­ing articles/resources I have found help­ful recent­ly in think­ing about broad­er cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues (be sure to see the dis­claimer at the bot­tom). I pray this email gives you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar.

Disclaimer

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

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

Past emails are archived at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 32

In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world.

To that end, on Fri­days I’ve been shar­ing articles/resources I have found help­ful recent­ly in think­ing about broad­er cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues (be sure to see the dis­claimer at the bot­tom). May these give you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar. Past emails are archived at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links

With­out fur­ther ado, I give you the inter­est­ing things:

  1. This Is What Makes Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats So Dif­fer­ent (Vox, Ezra Klein): I was skep­ti­cal of this piece, but it’s insight­ful.
  2. Recog­ni­tion: How A Trav­es­ty Led to Crim­i­nal-Jus­tice Inno­va­tion In Texas  (New York­er, Paul Kix): this is a pow­er­ful arti­cle with a heart­break­ing sto­ry at its cen­ter.
  3. North Korea Gets Com­pe­ti­tion: The Top 50 Coun­tries Where It’s Now Hard­est To Be A Chris­t­ian (Chris­tian­i­ty Today, Sarah Zyl­stra). Sober­ing and sad­ly unsur­pris­ing. “2014 was the world’s worst year for the per­se­cu­tion of Chris­tians in the mod­ern era. Until 2015 sur­passed it.”
  4. Col­lege Par­ty Cul­ture and Sex­u­al Assault (NBER, Lin­do, Siminksi, Swensen): “We find sig­nif­i­cant and robust evi­dence that foot­ball game days increase reports of rape vic­tim­iza­tion among 17–24 year old women by 28 per­cent. Home games increase reports by 41 per­cent on the day of the game and away games increase reports by 15 per­cent.” They pro­pose par­ties asso­ci­at­ed with the game as a causal mech­a­nism.
  5. Inside Grad­u­ate Admis­sions (Inside High­er Ed, Scott Jaschick): if you plan to apply to grad school, read this. There is one reveal­ing anec­dote about how an admis­sions com­mit­tee treat­ed an appli­ca­tion from a Chris­t­ian col­lege stu­dent. My take­away: the pro­fes­sors tried to be fair but found it hard to do, and their stat­ed con­cerns were most­ly about the qual­i­ty of the insti­tu­tion rather than the faith of the appli­cant. Trou­bling nonethe­less.
  6. Short­er Pieces:

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.

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 24

News News News 98/365In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world.

To that end, on Fri­days I’ve been shar­ing articles/resources I have found help­ful recent­ly in think­ing about broad­er cul­tur­al and soci­etal issues (be sure to see the dis­claimer at the bot­tom). May these give you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar. Past emails are archived at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links

With­out fur­ther ado, I give you the inter­est­ing things:

  1. I heard a mov­ing Radi­o­lab episode: Gray’s Dona­tion. If you’ve nev­er lis­tened to Radi­o­lab before, I high­ly rec­om­mend the episodes Col­ors and Oops. If you’re into pod­casts, check out a list of thought­ful Chris­t­ian pod­casts I com­piled a while back.
  2. ’A Tour of Burned Church­es’ Explores Race, Resilience, and Reli­gion in Amer­i­ca (Huff­in­g­ton Post, Christo­pher Math­ias): an inter­view with a pod­cast­er about a series he did on the burn­ing of black church­es in Amer­i­ca. I have not lis­tened to the series, but the inter­view was good.
  3. Data about Adults Who Do Not Believe In God (Pew Forum) — one of the charts makes me think of a fun­ny clip about athe­ism as white priv­i­lege [the whole thing is worth watch­ing, but you can jump to the sound bite at 5:45]. There is a good sum­ma­ry of some of the take­aways at GetRe­li­gion. On a relat­ed note, there is a study in Cur­rent Biol­o­gy: The Neg­a­tive Asso­ci­a­tion Between Reli­gious­ness and Children’s Altru­ism Across The World. The com­ments on red­dit are inter­est­ing (more inter­est­ing to me than the study itself).
  4. A some­what con­trar­i­an piece: Lib­er­als Are Los­ing The Cul­ture War (Mol­ly Ball, The Atlantic). A semi-response piece: This Isn’t A Cul­ture War, It’s A War On Cul­ture (The Fed­er­al­ist, David Harsanyi).
  5. File under sad: The State Depart­ment Turns Its Back on Syr­i­an Chris­tians and Oth­er Non-Mus­lim Refugees (Nation­al Review, Nina Shea)
  6. The sto­ry I allud­ed to in my ser­mon: How Prop 47 Helped One Man Keep His Job (KQED,  Sara Hos­sai­ni). This is an illus­tra­tion of what jus­ti­fi­ca­tion involves — a legal decree that exempts you from penal­ties the law would oth­er­wise apply (when I quote stuff in my ser­mon I try to remem­ber to share it here).
  7. Quick Links:

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.