Tag: latin america

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 334

a whole lot­ta mag­ic tricks at the end of this one

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. A Nation of Chris­tians Is Not Nec­es­sar­i­ly a Chris­t­ian Nation (David French, The Dis­patch): “There are influ­en­tial peo­ple and insti­tu­tions in this coun­try who’ve tak­en the posi­tion that ortho­dox expres­sions of Chris­t­ian sex­u­al moral­i­ty rep­re­sent noth­ing more than big­otry and hatred.  But as much hos­til­i­ty as I’ve seen and expe­ri­enced from some sec­u­lar left­ists in response to the pub­lic expres­sion of my Chris­t­ian val­ues, noth­ing com­pares to hos­til­i­ty I’ve seen and expe­ri­enced from self-iden­ti­fied Chris­tians when I root­ed my oppo­si­tion to Don­ald Trump in the same Chris­t­ian val­ues that some­times earned me scorn in the Ivy League.”
    • Con­tra French on Chris­tian­i­ty’s Decline (Ross Douthat, Sub­stack): “In oth­er words, in the his­to­ry of the Unit­ed States from the Amer­i­can Rev­o­lu­tion to Mar­tin Luther King Jr. you see two things hap­pen­ing togeth­er: the pri­vate prac­tice of faith becomes pret­ty steadi­ly more robust, and the gov­ern­ment becomes more com­mit­ted to what most of us, reli­gious and not, now con­sid­er basic ele­ments of jus­tice and mer­cy. Over this mul­ti-gen­er­a­tional process, you could rea­son­ably say that Amer­i­ca remained man­i­fest­ly imper­fect but came clos­er, how­ev­er lurch­ing­ly, to the com­bi­na­tion of wide­spread per­son­al faith and greater polit­i­cal jus­tice that French argues char­ac­ter­izes the Chris­t­ian soci­ety. That this hap­pened, quite often, through con­flict between Protes­tants (both read the same Bible, and pray to the same God, etc.) is unde­ni­able but not, it seems to me, a par­tic­u­lar­ly telling cri­tique: In a heav­i­ly Protes­tant soci­ety how else would change come?” A very impres­sive response.
    • America’s Chris­t­ian His­to­ry Is Broad­er Than Its White Protes­tant Past (David French, The Dis­patch): “Because Amer­i­ca is a major­i­ty Chris­t­ian nation, Amer­i­can progress has depend­ed on Chris­t­ian action. But also because Amer­i­ca is a major­i­ty Chris­t­ian nation, Amer­i­can oppres­sion has depend­ed on Chris­t­ian action as well. And a move­ment that’s dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly white and Chris­t­ian needs to remem­ber that sober­ing fact.” A sol­id sur­re­join­der, but I think I award the match point to Douthat even though I usu­al­ly agree with French more.
  2. Pan­dem­ic stuff:
    • One More Time: What Do You Want Us to Do About Covid that We Aren’t Doing Already? (Fred­die deBoer, Sub­stack): “I will not live in fear. And I sus­pect that this is at the heart of all of it — for com­plex soci­o­log­i­cal rea­sons, [our] elites are made up of peo­ple who suf­fer from anx­i­ety and inse­cu­ri­ty at vast­ly dis­pro­por­tion­ate rates, and they go through life need­ing their own feel­ings to be val­i­dat­ed by every­one else. This is very scary for them, and if it’s not scary for some of the rest of us, they expe­ri­ence that as implied judg­ment.” This is very, very good once you get past the Syr­ia stuff up top (which is help­ful as a fram­ing device, but goes on a lit­tle too long).
    • Why UCSF COVID expert Bob Wachter will soon be ‘over’ the pan­dem­ic (Eric Ting, SF Gate): “I believe it’s like­li­est that it peaks soon and comes down in Feb­ru­ary, and we’ll find our­selves in a world where the risk to ful­ly vac­ci­nat­ed indi­vid­u­als is quite low, and it gets low for a few rea­sons. For one, every­one should have some immu­ni­ty because with the unvac­ci­nat­ed, most if not all will have been infect­ed by the time this wave ends. This vari­ant of the virus, which is now dom­i­nant, is more mild on aver­age. And the risk is low­er for immuno­com­pro­mised and high-risk indi­vid­u­als because of the increas­ing avail­abil­i­ty of med­ica­tions that decrease the chance they’ll get super sick.” The inter­vie­wee is chair of the Depart­ment of Med­i­cine at UCSF.
    • Dear Stan­ford: don’t force boost­ers on stu­dents (Monte Fis­ch­er, Stan­ford Dai­ly): “When Paul Offit — direc­tor of the Vac­cine Edu­ca­tion Cen­ter at the Children’s Hos­pi­tal of Philadel­phia, mem­ber of the FDA’s vac­cine advi­so­ry com­mit­tee, decades-long ene­my of the anti-vax move­ment and co-inven­tor of a rotavirus vac­cine — tells his own twen­ty-some­thing son not to get boost­ed, you might start to ask some ques­tions about the wis­dom of Stanford’s lat­est man­date.” The author is a PhD can­di­date in MS&E.
  3. Is the West Becom­ing Pagan Again? (Christo­pher Cald­well, New York Times): “Ms. Delsol’s inge­nious approach is to exam­ine the civ­i­liza­tion­al change under­way in light of that last one 1,600 years ago. Chris­tians brought what she calls a ‘nor­ma­tive inver­sion’ to pagan Rome. That is, they prized much that the Romans held in con­tempt and con­demned much that the Romans prized, par­tic­u­lar­ly in mat­ters relat­ed to sex and fam­i­ly. Today the Chris­t­ian over­lay on West­ern cul­tur­al life is being removed, reveal­ing a lot of pagan urges that it cov­ered up. To state Ms. Delsol’s argu­ment crude­ly, what is hap­pen­ing today is an undo­ing, but it is also a redo­ing. We are invert­ing the nor­ma­tive inver­sion. We are repa­ganiz­ing.”
  4. New Math Research Group Reflects a Schism in the Field (Rachel Crow­ell, Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can): “A new orga­ni­za­tion called the Asso­ci­a­tion for Math­e­mat­i­cal Research (AMR) has ignit­ed fierce debates in the math research and edu­ca­tion com­mu­ni­ties since it was launched last Octo­ber.… The AMR claims to have no posi­tion on social jus­tice issues, and crit­ics see its silence on those top­ics as part of a back­lash against inclu­siv­i­ty efforts.… The con­tro­ver­sy reflects a grow­ing divi­sion between researchers who want to keep sci­en­tif­ic and math­e­mat­i­cal pur­suits sep­a­rate from social issues that they see as irrel­e­vant to research and those who say even pure math­e­mat­ics can­not be con­sid­ered sep­a­rate­ly from the racism and sex­ism in its cul­ture.”
  5. We need to be able to talk about trans ath­letes and women’s sports (Megan McAr­dle, Wash­ing­ton Post): “Male puber­ty makes you taller, con­fers greater mus­cle and bone mass, larg­er heart and lung capac­i­ty rel­a­tive to your size, and more hemo­glo­bin. For cis­gen­der men, this trans­lates to rough­ly a 6 to 10 per­cent advan­tage over bio­log­i­cal women in sports such as run­ning and swim­ming, though the gap can be larg­er in oth­er domains, and in a few sports female biol­o­gy actu­al­ly con­veys some advan­tage. That 6 to 10 per­cent might sound mod­est, but at the elite lev­el, where 1 per­cent to 2 per­cent dif­fer­ences can eas­i­ly make the mar­gin of vic­to­ry, it’s over­whelm­ing. Jamaica’s Elaine Thomp­son-Her­ah, the fastest woman in the world, would lose to America’s best high school boys, and the fastest pitch ever record­ed by a woman would be unim­pres­sive for many high school base­ball teams.”
  6. The Bad Guys Are Win­ning (Anne Apple­baum, The Atlantic): “As Vladimir Putin fig­ured out a long time ago, mass arrests are unnec­es­sary if you can jail, tor­ture, or pos­si­bly mur­der just a few key peo­ple. The rest will be fright­ened into stay­ing home. Even­tu­al­ly they will become apa­thet­ic, because they believe noth­ing can change.” Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­na.
  7. Why the Catholic Church is Los­ing Latin Amer­i­ca (Fran­cis X. Roc­ca, Luciana Mag­a­l­haes & Saman­tha Pear­son, The Wall Street Jour­nal): “The rise of lib­er­a­tion the­ol­o­gy in the 1960s and  ’70s, a time when the Catholic Church in Latin Amer­i­ca increas­ing­ly stressed its mis­sion as one of social jus­tice, in some cas­es draw­ing on Marx­ist ideas, failed to counter the appeal of Protes­tant faiths. Or, in the words of a now-leg­endary quip, var­i­ous­ly attrib­uted to Catholic and Protes­tant sources: ‘The Catholic Church opt­ed for the poor and the poor opt­ed for the Pen­te­costals.’ ” 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 A (Not So) Sec­u­lar Saint (James K.A. Smith, Los Ange­les Review of Books): “Mill’s lega­cy was effec­tive­ly ‘edit­ed’ by his philo­soph­i­cal and polit­i­cal dis­ci­ples, excis­ing any hint of reli­gious life. One would nev­er know from the canon in our phi­los­o­phy depart­ments, for exam­ple, that Mill wrote an appre­cia­tive essay on ‘The­ism.’” First shared in vol­ume 190.

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 237

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. “My Gang Is Jesus” (Alex Cuadros, Harpers Mag­a­zine): “A year ago, I flew to Rio and fol­lowed Mar­tins around for a few weeks as he preached. I hoped to rec­on­cile two com­pet­ing nar­ra­tives of the evan­gel­i­cal church’s role in the fave­las. For the country’s poor, all but neglect­ed by the state, church­es serve not only as a source of spir­i­tu­al sal­va­tion but as a haven of last resort—a place to find com­mu­ni­ty, job tips, and coun­sel­ing, or sim­ply to gath­er and sing with­out fear of vio­lence. Yet sto­ries of crooked pas­tors abound in the new Brazil; in recent years, sev­er­al have been caught trans­port­ing weapons for the drug trade. While many gang mem­bers find in Jesus the courage to quit this life, oth­ers seem to have inter­nal­ized a skewed set of bib­li­cal lessons, even com­mit­ting acts of vio­lence in Jesus’ name.”
  2. Reli­gious Lib­er­ty: Not Just for Social Con­ser­v­a­tives (David French, The Dis­patch): “The beau­ty of civ­il lib­er­ties case law is that each law­ful exer­cise of lib­er­ty rein­forces anoth­er. So it is with this case. Pro­gres­sives will like­ly cheer that these four activists will escape pun­ish­ment for sav­ing immi­grant lives. And which cas­es helped them win? One of them was Hob­by Lob­by—an asser­tion of reli­gious free­dom by Chris­t­ian con­ser­v­a­tives against the Oba­ma administration’s con­tra­cep­tion man­date, a cause that many pro­gres­sives despised.”
  3. Lov­ing to Know (N.T. Wright, First Things): “The sci­en­tist may be fas­ci­nat­ed by the way a can­cer cell grows, but that fas­ci­na­tion will increase his deter­mi­na­tion to stop it in its tracks. The his­to­ri­an may be intrigued by the caus­es of the First World War, but she may well hope that her inves­ti­ga­tion of the com­plex tan­gle of moti­va­tions will help us spot future warn­ing signs. And the par­ent who enjoys watch­ing the child climb­ing a tree will, as a mat­ter of love, simul­ta­ne­ous­ly affirm the child’s free­dom and seek to mit­i­gate any clear dan­ger. Love is always on the look­out.” This arti­cle is a lit­tle uneven but very insight­ful at places.
  4. Edu­cat­ed Fools (Thomas Geoghe­gan, The New Repub­lic): “Mer­i­toc­ra­cy has its own deep state—with secrets unknown even to those of us who are part of it. And the worst thing is the way it can taunt the work­ing class with the ideals of the Enlight­en­ment, when it is we mer­i­to­crat­ic lib­er­als who have the great­est inter­est in lim­it­ing its spread. We think we’re act­ing in such good faith in push­ing for col­lege and even com­mu­ni­ty col­lege edu­ca­tion. But real sal­va­tion can be offered only to a few, on a retail, not a whole­sale, basis: Instead of rais­ing peo­ple up col­lec­tive­ly, we’re being care­ful to do it one diplo­ma at a time.
”
    • The author’s blind­ness to the con­tin­ued exis­tence of church­es stood out to me. “There is no foothold left in big cities, or any­place else where the glob­al win­ners live, for high school grad­u­ates to exer­cise even a tiny bit of pow­er. There’s no church to slot into as a dea­con…” (empha­sis added) Fact check: church­es are flour­ish­ing in big cities.
  5. Nige­ria is a killing field of defense­less Chris­tians (Reli­gion Unplugged): “The list of Niger­ian Chris­tians slaugh­tered, shot dead, hacked to death, stran­gled and tor­tured to death, grows by the day. From vil­lages in the arid North­ern Nige­ria to ham­lets in the lush Savan­nah South, wail­ing, mourn­ing, and curs­es pierce the air, while tears fall from tired eyes.”
    • Relat­ed: All Across Nige­ria, Chris­tians Marched Sun­day to Protest Per­se­cu­tion (Jayson Casper, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Ade­boye and his con­gre­ga­tion, one of the largest in the world, answered the call issued by the Chris­t­ian Asso­ci­a­tion of Nige­ria (CAN) for a three-day fast this past week­end, con­clud­ing in a prayer walk. Based on reports from its state chap­ters and local media, CAN esti­mates 5 mil­lion peo­ple marched in 28 of Nigeria’s 36 states on Sun­day.”
  6. The Ene­mies of Writ­ing (George Pack­er, The Atlantic): “Fear breeds self-cen­sor­ship, and self-cen­sor­ship is more insid­i­ous than the state-imposed kind, because it’s a sur­er way of killing the impulse to think, which requires an unfet­tered mind. A writer can still write while hid­ing from the thought police. But a writer who car­ries the thought police around in his head, who always feels com­pelled to ask: Can I say this? Do I have a right? Is my ter­mi­nol­o­gy cor­rect? Will my allies get angry? Will it help my ene­mies? Could it get me ratioed on Twit­ter?—that writer’s words will soon become life­less.”
  7. 11 Rea­sons Not to Become Famous (or “A Few Lessons Learned Since 2007”) (Tim Fer­riss, per­son­al blog): “In that short span of time, my month­ly blog audi­ence had explod­ed from a small group of friends (20–30?) to the cur­rent size of Prov­i­dence, Rhode Island (180,–200,000 peo­ple). Well, let’s dig into that. What do we know of Prov­i­dence? Here’s one snip­pet from Wikipedia, and bold­ing is mine: ‘Com­pared to the nation­al aver­age, Prov­i­dence has an aver­age rate of vio­lent crime and a high­er rate of prop­er­ty crime per 100,000 inhab­i­tants. In 2010, there were 15 mur­ders, down from 24 in 2009. In 2010, Prov­i­dence fared bet­ter regard­ing vio­lent crime than most of its peer cities. Spring­field, Mass­a­chu­setts, has approx­i­mate­ly 20,000 few­er res­i­dents than Prov­i­dence but report­ed 15 mur­ders in 2009, the same num­ber of homi­cides as Prov­i­dence but a slight­ly high­er rate per capi­ta.’ The point is this: you don’t need to do any­thing wrong to get death threats, rape threats, etc. You just need a big enough audi­ence. Think of your­self as the leader of a tribe or the may­or of a city. The aver­ages will dic­tate that you get a cer­tain num­ber of cra­zies, con artists, extor­tion­ists, pos­si­ble (or actu­al) mur­der­ers, and so on.”

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 How Can I Learn To Receive – And Give – Crit­i­cism In Light Of The Cross? (Justin Tay­lor, Gospel Coali­tion): “A believ­er is one who iden­ti­fies with all that God affirms and con­demns in Christ’s cru­ci­fix­ion. In oth­er words, in Christ’s cross I agree with God’s judg­ment of me; and in Christ’s cross I agree with God’s jus­ti­fi­ca­tion of me. Both have a rad­i­cal impact on how we take and give crit­i­cism.” This is based on a longer arti­cle (4 page PDF). (first shared in vol­ume 63)

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 189

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. Bio­hack­ers Encod­ed Mal­ware In A Strand Of DNA (Andy Green­berg, Wired): “…a group of researchers from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Wash­ing­ton has shown for the first time that it’s pos­si­ble to encode mali­cious soft­ware into phys­i­cal strands of DNA, so that when a gene sequencer ana­lyzes it the result­ing data becomes a pro­gram that cor­rupts gene-sequenc­ing soft­ware and takes con­trol of the under­ly­ing com­put­er.”
    • WHOA. Also, the term “bio­hack­er” is much cool­er than “hack­er.”
  2. The Nature of Sex (Andrew Sul­li­van, NY Mag­a­zine): “It’s no acci­dent that some of the most homo­pho­bic soci­eties, like Iran, for exam­ple, are big pro­po­nents of sex-reas­sign­ment surgery for gen­der-non­con­form­ing kids and adults (the gov­ern­ment even pays for it) while being homo­sex­u­al war­rants the death penal­ty…. If you aban­don biol­o­gy in the mat­ter of sex and gen­der alto­geth­er, you may help trans peo­ple live fuller, less con­flict­ed lives; but you also under­mine the very mean­ing of homo­sex­u­al­i­ty.”
  3. How A Demon-Slay­ing Pen­te­costal Bil­lion­aire Is Ush­er­ing In A Post-Catholic Brazil (Alexan­der Zaitchik and Christo­pher Lord, The New Repub­lic): “When Mace­do com­plet­ed his $249 mil­lion head­quar­ters in 2014, his point of com­par­i­son wasn’t John Hagee’s megachurch or Pat Robertson’s TV stu­dio. It was the Christ the Redeemer stat­ue atop Mount Cor­co­v­a­do, over­look­ing Rio de Janeiro, the sym­bol of Catholic dom­i­nance since 1921. In inter­views, Mace­do made sure to note that his Solomon­ic church was near­ly twice as tall.”
  4. E Pluribus Unum? (Stacey Abrams, For­eign Pol­i­cy): “…minori­ties and the mar­gin­al­ized have lit­tle choice but to fight against the par­tic­u­lar meth­ods of dis­crim­i­na­tion employed against them. The mar­gin­al­ized did not cre­ate iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics: their iden­ti­ties have been forced on them by dom­i­nant groups, and pol­i­tics is the most effec­tive method of revolt.”
    • I don’t see many straight­for­ward defens­es of iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics. Worth read­ing.  This is a rebut­tal to an arti­cle by Fran­cis Fukuya­ma. Fur­ther down the page a few oth­ers respond as well, and then he offers a rejoin­der.
    • Abrams is a Demo­c­ra­t­ic politi­cian, cur­rent­ly out of office. She was the one cho­sen to give the Demo­c­ra­t­ic response to Trump’s State of the Union address.
    • A  vague­ly relat­ed arti­cle by one of my stu­dents: Failed and Racist: Why Stan­ford Should Ditch Affir­ma­tive Action (Anni­ka Nordquist and Jose Anto­nio Ava­l­os, Stan­ford Review): “African Amer­i­can and His­pan­ic rep­re­sen­ta­tion at elite uni­ver­si­ties is actu­al­ly low­er than it was 35 years ago, and the minor­i­ty stu­dents who attend appear to be pri­mar­i­ly upper class…. Elite uni­ver­si­ties are able to pat them­selves on the back and pad their pro­mo­tion­al mate­ri­als with pic­tures of a diverse stu­dent body, while leav­ing minor­i­ty stu­dents gen­uine­ly trapped in cycles of pover­ty almost untouched.”
    • Con­fes­sion: it’s not real­ly all that relat­ed, but I try to lim­it myself to 7 main bul­let points. I also have a com­mit­ment to post­ing stuff that my stu­dents get pub­lished. This is my best com­pro­mise. 🙂  Also, if you’re in Chi Alpha and get some­thing pub­lished be sure that I know about it.
  5. The Philoso­pher Redefin­ing Equal­i­ty (Nathan Heller, New York­er): “When she was three, her moth­er asked, ‘Why do you allow your broth­er to talk for you?’—why didn’t she speak for her­self? ‘Until now, it sim­ply was not nec­es­sary,’ Eliz­a­beth said. It was the first full sen­tence that she had ever uttered.” I think that’s the best first sen­tence I’ve ever heard of. A tad long, but rec­om­mend­ed.
  6. This Black His­to­ry Month, don’t pre­tend racism has dis­ap­peared from the church (Jemar Tis­by, Wash­ing­ton Post): “Many peo­ple, includ­ing Chris­tians, like to believe that if they were alive dur­ing the 1960s, they would have par­tic­i­pat­ed in the civ­il rights move­ment. If Chris­tians refuse to acknowl­edge racism and fight against it today, then it is clear where they would have stood half a cen­tu­ry ago, too.”
    • Tis­by is a Ph.D. can­di­date in his­to­ry and grad­u­at­ed from Reformed The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary.
    • Relat­ed: a thought­ful review of Tisby’s book by George P. Wood, an acquain­tance of mine.
    • Relat­ed: To All The White Friends I Could­n’t Keep (Andre Hen­ry, per­son­al blog): “I thought that if you heard from a black per­son you trusted—me—that racism is alive and well in our times, that you would come to under­stand that what hap­pened to Mr. Castile, to Mr. Mar­tin, Ms. Bland, Ms. Boyd, Mr. Ster­ling, Mr. Brown, Mr. Gar­ner, Mr Grey, Ms. Shirley, Ms. Gaines, and so many oth­ers were not unique, iso­lat­ed inci­dents but parts of a pat­tern.”
  7. The State of Amer­i­can Fact-Check­ing Is Com­plete­ly Use­less (David Harsanyi, The Fed­er­al­ist): “There are plen­ty of legit­i­mate­ly mis­lead­ing state­ments wor­thy of fact-check­ers’ atten­tion. Yet, with a veneer of impar­tial­i­ty, fact-check­ers often engage in a unique­ly dis­hon­est style of par­ti­san­ship.”

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 Weight of Glo­ry (C.S. Lewis): It was orig­i­nal­ly preached as a ser­mon and then print­ed in a the­ol­o­gy mag­a­zine. Relat­ed: see the C. S. Lewis Doo­dle YouTube chan­nel – it’s real­ly good! (first shared in vol­ume 36)

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 166

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. God’s May­or in Guatemala (Dale Han­son Bourke, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “In the so-called North­ern Tri­an­gle of Cen­tral Amer­i­ca, the coun­tries of Hon­duras, El Sal­vador, and Guatemala form a vio­lent tri­ad. The mur­der rate is high­er in this region than in most active war zones. Gangs, car­tels, and vig­i­lantes impose their will, tak­ing over or co-opt­ing legit­i­mate police forces and rou­tine­ly ter­ror­iz­ing aver­age cit­i­zens…. In the mid­dle of this vio­lence sits the town of San Cristóbal Acasaguastlán, a pic­turesque oasis of calm with a pop­u­la­tion of about 6,000 peo­ple. What sets this place apart are the efforts of Jeaneth Ordoñez, the Chris­t­ian may­or who has unit­ed the towns­peo­ple in their quest to keep the munic­i­pal­i­ty free of the vio­lence and upheaval that sur­rounds them.”
  2. No alco­hol safe to drink, glob­al study con­firms (Lau­rel Ives, BBC): “A large new glob­al study pub­lished in the Lancet has con­firmed pre­vi­ous research which has shown that there is no safe lev­el of alco­hol con­sump­tion. The researchers admit mod­er­ate drink­ing may pro­tect against heart dis­ease but found that the risk of can­cer and oth­er dis­eases out­weighs these pro­tec­tions.” The under­ly­ing research: Alco­hol use and bur­den for 195 coun­tries and ter­ri­to­ries, 1990–2016: a sys­tem­at­ic analy­sis for the Glob­al Bur­den of Dis­ease Study 2016 (The Lancet. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0140-6736(18)31310–2)
  3. Chris­tians to Sci­ence: Leave Ani­mals the Way God Designed Them—Except Mos­qui­toes (Rebec­ca Ran­dall, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Mess­ing with nature or God’s plan was a top con­cern for those opposed to engi­neer­ing ani­mal meat to be more nutri­tious (22%), bring­ing back an extinct species (23%), or mak­ing aquar­i­um fish glow (18%). The rea­son cit­ed most often to oppose cre­at­ing glow­ing fish was sim­ply that it is unnec­es­sary and friv­o­lous (48%).” Appar­ent­ly I am an out­lier. Make the fish glow, make meat more nutri­tious, and deal with mos­qui­to-borne dis­ease. I real­ly like the way the Kenyan researcher quot­ed in the arti­cle encour­ages us to tar­get the par­a­site and not the car­ri­er. We are made in the image of God so that we can exer­cise domin­ion over Cre­ation!
  4. The Peter Prin­ci­ple is a joke tak­en seri­ous­ly. Is it true? (Tim Har­ford, Finan­cial Times): “The authors of the paper dis­cov­ered that the best sales­peo­ple were more like­ly to be pro­mot­ed, and that they were then ter­ri­ble man­agers. The bet­ter they had been in sales, the worse their teams per­formed once they arrived in a man­age­r­i­al role. What’s more, peo­ple were not pro­mot­ed for behav­iour that might seem cor­re­lat­ed with man­age­r­i­al abil­i­ty — in par­tic­u­lar, those who col­lab­o­rat­ed with oth­ers were not reward­ed for doing so. What mat­tered were sales, pure and sim­ple.” It may be the case that you should dress for the job you want, but if you want to get pro­mot­ed you had bet­ter rock the job you have.
  5. Gay Men Are Dif­fer­ent, Says Gay Male Read­er (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “Well-mean­ing straight lib­er­als just do not get it, and lots of gay men will not crit­i­cize any­thing gay men col­lec­tive­ly do because they think it will result in both lots of anger from oth­er gay men as well as the empow­er­ment of ide­o­log­i­cal ene­mies who want to, say, ban gay mar­riage. Men and women are fun­da­men­tal­ly dif­fer­ent and a male-female sex­u­al cul­ture is not going to be the same as a male-male sex­u­al cul­ture.” I sus­pect this will con­sid­ered con­tro­ver­sial by one set of read­ers and com­mon sense by anoth­er, and that the groups will not break down along pre­dictable lines.
  6. How the inter­net has changed dat­ing (The Econ­o­mist): “…a 2013 study researchers from Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go showed that mar­riages that start­ed online were less like­ly to end in break-up and were asso­ci­at­ed with high­er lev­els of sat­is­fac­tion than mar­riages of the same vin­tage between sim­i­lar cou­ples who had met offline: the dif­fer­ence was not huge, but it was sta­tis­ti­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant.”
  7. What Trump Knew and Vot­ers Did­n’t (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): “…Trump vot­ers went to the polls unaware that a sum exceed­ing most of their annu­al salaries was expend­ed to keep that [Trump paid off a porn star] from them. Even if the pay­ment had been total­ly legal, it would’ve con­sti­tut­ed a delib­er­ate, immoral, clas­si­cal­ly politi­cian-like effort to mis­lead vot­ers about the choice before them. But the pay­ment was not legal. It vio­lat­ed cam­paign-finance laws—and it was not a mere­ly acci­den­tal and tech­ni­cal vio­la­tion of an over­ly com­pli­cat­ed or con­tro­ver­sial pro­vi­sion.” This arti­cle is a pret­ty good and suc­cinct sum­ma­ry of the cur­rent debate about Trump.

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 How Can I Learn To Receive – And Give – Crit­i­cism In Light Of The Cross?(Justin Tay­lor, Gospel Coali­tion): “A believ­er is one who iden­ti­fies with all that God affirms and con­demns in Christ’s cru­ci­fix­ion. In oth­er words, in Christ’s cross I agree with God’s judg­ment of me; and in Christ’s cross I agree with God’s jus­ti­fi­ca­tion of me. Both have a rad­i­cal impact on how we take and give crit­i­cism.” This is based on a longer arti­cle (4 page PDF). (first shared in vol­ume 63)

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.