Tag: LGBTQ

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 212

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. Tourist Jour­nal­ism Ver­sus the Work­ing Class (Kevin Mims, Quil­lette): “To uni­ver­si­ty-edu­cat­ed media pro­fes­sion­als like Car­ole Cad­wal­ladr, James Blood­worth, and John Oliv­er, an Ama­zon ware­house must seem like the Black Hole of Cal­cut­ta. But I’ve done low-pay­ing man­u­al labor for most of my work­ing life, and rarely have I appre­ci­at­ed a job as much as my role as an Ama­zon asso­ciate.” I learned many things from this arti­cle.
  2. Six­teen and Evan­gel­i­cal (Lau­ra Turn­er, Slate): “A world with­out God wouldn’t make sense to me. But it now makes sense to many of my friends. I final­ly under­stand that we nev­er had a shared faith struc­ture. We went to the same church, some of us for years. We heard the same ser­mons, slept in the same cab­ins at camp, read the same books of the Bible, lis­tened to the same music. But we went home to dif­fer­ent fam­i­lies.” The author is John & Nan­cy Ortberg’s daugh­ter.
  3. Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty Report­ed­ly Bans All Mar­tial Arts Groups With­out Warn­ing Over Email (Jin Hyun, NextShark): “Accord­ing to Choi, the university’s jus­ti­fi­ca­tion behind the shut­down can be sum­ma­rized in four points: ‘the groups like to unof­fi­cial­ly prac­tice dur­ing dead week, they recruit pro­fes­sion­al, inter­na­tion­al­ly renowned coach­es to run their prac­tices, they com­pete and reg­u­lar­ly win nation­al cham­pi­onships with­out Uni­ver­si­ty help, they par­tic­i­pate heav­i­ly in the local com­mu­ni­ty by teach­ing stu­dents, alum­ni, and com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers.’”
    • Stan­ford often seems con­flict­ed about whether its under­grads are future lead­ers to be empow­ered or lia­bil­i­ties to be micro­man­aged.
  4. As admin­is­tra­tors walk back ‘insuf­fi­cient’ response, police reveal noose may have been on cam­pus since March (Ele­na Shao and Daniel Mar­tinez-Krams, Stan­ford Dai­ly): “The new infor­ma­tion comes amid crit­i­cism of Uni­ver­si­ty admin­is­tra­tors’ response to the inci­dent, and one day after they held a sol­i­dar­i­ty ral­ly and town hall. A self-care event is sched­uled to take place Fri­day after­noon.” There have been a lot of arti­cles about this — but this once grabbed me with the tid­bit in the head­line. SINCE MARCH?
  5. On Court Prophets and Wilder­ness Prophets  (Tim­o­thy Dal­rym­ple, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Whether you view Trump as a David or an Antipas, whether you serve at the court of the resplen­dent king or stand over against the court from the wilder­ness, one thing Nathan and John the Bap­tist held in com­mon was that both were will­ing to con­demn unright­eous­ness in their rulers—even if it cost them every­thing.”
    • Also polit­i­cal: The Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty Is Actu­al­ly Three Par­ties (Thomas Edsall, New York Times): “What the data demon­strates is that the group con­tain­ing the largest pro­por­tion of minor­i­ty vot­ers is the most skep­ti­cal of some of the most pro­gres­sive poli­cies embraced by Demo­c­ra­t­ic can­di­dates like Eliz­a­beth War­ren, Bernie Sanders and Kamala Har­ris.” Per­haps the most inter­est­ing part of this op-ed is when he talks about the unin­tend­ed con­se­quences of favor­ing small donors over large donors.
  6. In Hong Kong Protests, Faces Become Weapons (Paul Mozur, New York Times): “The police offi­cers wres­tled with Col­in Che­ung in an unmarked car. They need­ed his face. They grabbed his jaw to force his head in front of his iPhone. They slapped his face. They shout­ed, ‘Wake up!’ They pried open his eyes. It all failed: Mr. Che­ung had dis­abled his phone’s facial-recog­ni­tion login with a quick but­ton mash as soon as they grabbed him.”
  7. Canada’s bizarre trans-wax­ing con­tro­ver­sy (Bren­dan O’Neill, Spiked): “Yaniv says if the case is lost then a dan­ger­ous prece­dent will be set for trans peo­ple. In truth, the real dan­ger is if Yaniv wins the case, because that would set a prece­dent where­by the law could require that women must touch penis­es or risk los­ing their jobs. It would be pro­found­ly misog­y­nis­tic.” The lan­guage in this piece is vul­gar at times but in my esti­ma­tion not reck­less­ly so. Rod Dreher sums things up pith­ily with the head­line: From ‘Bake My Cake’ to ‘Wax My Tes­ti­cles’ (The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive)
    • Relat­ed: Lib­er­als’ aston­ish­ing­ly rad­i­cal shift on gen­der (Damon Link­er, The Week): “Slaves every­where pre­sum­ably know that they are unfree, even if they accept the legit­i­ma­cy of the sys­tem and the mas­ter that keeps them enslaved. But what is this bondage we could­n’t even begin to per­ceive in 2009 that in under a decade has become a bur­den so oner­ous that it pro­duces a demand for the over­turn­ing of well-set­tled rules and assump­tions, some of which (‘the gen­der bina­ry’) go all the way back to the ear­li­est ori­gins of human civ­i­liza­tion?”

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 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. First shared in vol­ume 158.

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 211

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. Amer­i­can jour­nal­ists have duty to report on tragedies in coun­tries like Sudan. (Isa­ha Sesay, USA Today): “If the suf­fer­ing of these girls and their par­ents is not enough to make us pay atten­tion to what has hap­pened in Chi­bok, there is some­thing else to con­sid­er: the threat to glob­al secu­ri­ty. The fate of these girls is in many ways a reflec­tion of the Niger­ian fed­er­al government’s long­stand­ing inabil­i­ty to main­tain peace and sta­bil­i­ty in the north­east of the coun­try. Amer­i­cans should see the dis­ap­pear­ance of the Chi­bok girls as a flare, illu­mi­nat­ing the exis­tence of an ‘ungoverned space’ that is fer­tile ground for a pow­er­ful ter­ror­ist group.”
  2. Face­book and Google track what porn you’re watch­ing, even when you’re in incog­ni­to (Iso­bel Ash­er Hamil­ton, Busi­ness Insid­er): “Researchers from Microsoft, Carnegie Mel­lon, and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia ana­lyzed 22,484 pornog­ra­phy sites using a site called webXray to iden­ti­fy track­ing tools feed­ing data back to third par­ties. ‘Our results indi­cate track­ing is endem­ic on pornog­ra­phy web­sites: 93% of pages leak user data to a third-par­ty,’ the study con­cludes.”
    • Num­bers 32:23 comes to mind: “be sure that your sin will find you out.”
    • An unex­pect­ed con­se­quence of porn: Stream­ing online pornog­ra­phy pro­duces as much CO2 as Bel­gium (Michael Le Page, New­Sci­en­tist): “The trans­mis­sion and view­ing of online videos gen­er­ates 300 mil­lion tonnes of car­bon diox­ide a year, or near­ly 1 per cent of glob­al emis­sions. On-demand video ser­vices such as Net­flix account for a third of this, with online porno­graph­ic videos gen­er­at­ing anoth­er third.”
  3. An Epi­dem­ic of Dis­be­lief (Bar­bara Bradley Hager­ty, The Atlantic): “His­tor­i­cal­ly, inves­ti­ga­tors had assumed that some­one who assaults a stranger by the rail­road tracks is noth­ing like the man who assaults his co-work­er or his girl­friend. But it turns out that the space between acquain­tance rape and stranger rape is not a wall, but a plaza. When Cleve­land inves­ti­ga­tors uploaded the DNA from the acquain­tance-rape kits, they were sur­prised by how often the results also matched DNA from unsolved stranger rapes. The task force iden­ti­fied dozens of mys­tery rapists this way.” Infu­ri­at­ing and high­ly rec­om­mend­ed. 
  4. Oil-patch evan­gel­i­cals: How Chris­tian­i­ty and crude fueled the rise of the Amer­i­can right (Dar­ren Dochuk, Wash­ing­ton Post): “In the face of the Rock­e­fellers’ pro­gres­sive way, Tex­an oil­ers cham­pi­oned a the­ol­o­gy of per­son­al encounter with scrip­ture and an active High­er Being. They her­ald­ed church auton­o­my and gospel teach­ings about pros­per­i­ty and end times, a mes­sage that antic­i­pat­ed the vio­lent dis­rup­tions of the oil age and the need to save souls and reap God’s — and the earth’s — rich­es before the world’s end.” The author is a his­to­ry pro­fes­sor at Notre Dame and describes an aspect of mod­ern evan­gel­i­cal his­to­ry I had not heard before.
    • An inter­view with the above author: Anoint­ed with Oil: Evan­gel­i­cals and the Petro­le­um Indus­try (Thomas Kidd, The Gospel Coali­tion): “Oil his­to­ri­ans may be sur­prised to hear it, but in some instances oil’s cor­po­rate struc­tures evolved direct­ly out of the the­o­log­i­cal com­mit­ments of its lead­ers.” The first piece felt a lit­tle hos­tile to me, where­as this one did not at all. 
  5. Stan­ford oppos­es bill that would let col­lege ath­letes in Cal­i­for­nia prof­it from endorse­ments (Ian Park, Stan­ford Dai­ly): “The NCAA earns more than $1 bil­lion in annu­al rev­enue from broad­cast­ing rights and cham­pi­onships. In return, stu­dent-ath­letes receive lit­tle to no com­pen­sa­tion, oth­er than schol­ar­ships. Accord­ing to a study by Drex­el Uni­ver­si­ty and the Nation­al Col­lege Play­ers Asso­ci­a­tion, schol­ar­ships aren’t enough for many stu­dent-ath­letes, as sur­veyed ath­letes had to pay col­leges schol­ar­ship short­falls of as much as $17,000.”
    • In oth­er and com­plete­ly unre­lat­ed local news: SF does not have the high­est rents in the Bay Area (Adam Brin­klow, Curbed): “Men­lo Park, home of Face­book, has the high­est rents in the region, aver­ag­ing $4,638 per month. Palo Alto also beat out SF with a star­tling $3,857 per month price tag.” 
    • Else­where in the arti­cle we learn that Red­wood City rents aver­age $1,956. I love Men­lo Park, but there’s no way it is twice as nice as Red­wood City. Sheesh!
  6. Trump vs. Dems: ‘Racist,’ ‘social­ist’ lines drawn for 2020 (Lisa Mas­caro, AP News): “With tweets and a vote, Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump and House Democ­rats estab­lished the sharp and emo­tion­al­ly raw con­tours of the 2020 elec­tion cam­paigns. In the process, they have cre­at­ed a fraught polit­i­cal frame: ‘racists’ vs. ‘social­ists.’”
    • What Pelosi Ver­sus the Squad Real­ly Means (David Brooks, New York Times): “Lib­er­al­ism arose out of the fact that polit­i­cal rev­o­lu­tions, while excit­ing at the out­set, usu­al­ly end up in bru­tal­i­ty, dic­ta­tor­ship and blood. Work­ing with­in the sys­tem is best. Peo­ple who came of age in the past few decades did not grow up in an atmos­phere of assumed lib­er­al­ism. They often grew up in an atmos­phere that cri­tiques it.”
    • ‘It Makes Us Want to Sup­port Him More’ (Peter Nicholas, The Atlantic): “A few con­ced­ed that Trump occa­sion­al­ly fires off an inap­pro­pri­ate tweet, but said his accom­plish­ments in office over­shad­ow any offense. If any­thing, they said, his lan­guage springs from an authen­tic­i­ty they find refresh­ing. None of the peo­ple I spoke with con­sid­ered his com­ments about the con­gress­women racist.”
    • Peo­ple Who Have Screamed ‘Racism’ For Decades Won­der Why No One Is Lis­ten­ing To Them About Trump (Baby­lon Bee): this would nor­mal­ly go down in the amus­ing sec­tion because the head­line is from a satire site, but this is one of those times where the Bee’s insight is rel­e­vant: “‘I mean, we com­pared John McCain to George Wal­lace,’ stat­ed Demo­c­rat Mag­gie Wilkins, ‘and I’m not sure who to com­pare Trump to in order to show he’s an even more wors­er racist.’ Activists are con­sid­er­ing com­ing up with oth­er words to express that Trump is a worse kind of racist. They con­sid­ered ‘white suprema­cist,’ but they’ve been using that a lot late­ly, so it would only mean to most peo­ple that Trump is as bad as the Bet­sy Ross flag. So they tried to invent a new term — dou­ble plus racist — to express how extra racist Trump is, but then remem­bered they already used that on Mitt Rom­ney.”
  7. 5 Rea­sons to Dis­en­tan­gle Sex­u­al­i­ty and Race (Rebec­ca McLaugh­lin, The Gospel Coali­tion): “Chris­t­ian sex­u­al ethics were as shock­ing to their orig­i­nal first-cen­tu­ry Gre­co-Roman con­text as they are today. If Chris­tians are to learn from his­to­ry, the les­son must be this: hold fast to Scripture’s rad­i­cal demands, whether the cul­tur­al tide is com­ing in or out. You won’t know which side of his­to­ry you’re on until the last day.” Dis­claimer: I know the author and have col­lab­o­rat­ed with her on events at Stan­ford.

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 When Chil­dren Say They’re Trans (Jesse Sin­gal, The Atlantic): “ …to deny the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a con­nec­tion between social influ­ences and gender-identity explo­ration among ado­les­cents would require ignor­ing a lot of what we know about the devel­op­ing teenage brain—which is more sus­cep­ti­ble to peer influ­ence, more impul­sive, and less adept at weigh­ing long-term out­comes and con­se­quences than ful­ly devel­oped adult brains—as well as indi­vid­ual sto­ries like Delta’s.” This is a long and bal­anced piece which has gar­nered out­rage in some online cir­cles. First shared in vol­ume 157.

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 210

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.

It’s good to be back after last week’s hia­tus.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. AI Trained on Old Sci­en­tif­ic Papers Makes Dis­cov­er­ies Humans Missed (Madeleine Gre­go­ry, Moth­er­board): “In a study pub­lished in Nature on July 3, researchers from the Lawrence Berke­ley Nation­al Lab­o­ra­to­ry used an algo­rithm called Word2Vec sift through sci­en­tif­ic papers for con­nec­tions humans had missed. Their algo­rithm then spit out pre­dic­tions for pos­si­ble ther­mo­elec­tric mate­ri­als, which con­vert heat to ener­gy and are used in many heat­ing and cool­ing appli­ca­tions.”
  2. Can Chris­t­ian Com­pas­sion Influ­ence How We Treat Migrants? (Alan Cross, The Bul­wark): “Com­pas­sion is not inher­it­ed, either in indi­vid­u­als nor in nations. It must be cul­ti­vat­ed and that cul­ti­va­tion often hap­pens in tri­al when we are test­ed. Amer­i­ca is being test­ed right now. How will we respond to the migrants com­ing to us des­per­ate for help and refuge? How will we respond to the sight of Oscar and Vale­ria drown­ing and being found face down on the banks of Rio Grande in each other’s arms?”
    • Relat­ed: In the ‘bat­tle at the bor­der,’ evan­gel­i­cal lead­ers jos­tle for Trump-era media rel­e­van­cy (Julia Duin, GetRe­li­gion): “Unless you’ve been under a rock recent­ly, you know much of the coun­try is fix­at­ed on the mess at our bor­der. What’s not as vis­i­ble is how evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians are fight­ing among them­selves over all of this.”
    • And yet: Repub­li­cans turn more neg­a­tive toward refugees as num­ber admit­ted to U.S. plum­mets (Han­nah Har­tig, Pew Research): “By more than two-to-one (68% to 25%), white evan­gel­i­cal Protes­tants say the U.S. does not have a respon­si­bil­i­ty to accept refugees. Oth­er reli­gious groups are more like­ly to say the U.S. does have this respon­si­bil­i­ty. And opin­ions among reli­gious­ly unaf­fil­i­at­ed adults are near­ly the reverse of those of white evan­gel­i­cal Protes­tants: 65% say the U.S. has a respon­si­bil­i­ty to accept refugees into the coun­try, while just 31% say it does not.”
  3. Man­ly wed­ding rings for tough guys who are dudes (Dan Brooks, The Out­line): “I don’t hunt, but I briefly con­sid­ered buy­ing a cam­ou­flage ring, part­ly to sig­nal my deep com­mit­ment to irony and part­ly to get bet­ter ser­vice at the auto parts store.” I real­ly enjoyed this essay, and I hope that many of you have need of wed­ding bands in the not-too-dis­tant future.
  4. Evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians Face A Deep­en­ing Cri­sis (Peter Wehn­er, The Atlantic): “Cop­pock men­tioned to me the pow­er­ful exam­ple of St. Ambrose, the bish­op of Milan, who was will­ing to rebuke the Roman Emper­or Theo­do­sius for the latter’s role in mas­sacring civil­ians as pun­ish­ment for the mur­der of one of his gen­er­als. Ambrose refused to allow the Church to become a polit­i­cal prop, despite con­cerns that doing so might endan­ger him. Ambrose spoke truth to pow­er. (Theo­do­sius end­ed up seek­ing penance, and Ambrose went on to teach, con­vert, and bap­tize St. Augus­tine.) Prox­im­i­ty to pow­er is fine for Chris­tians, Cop­pock told me, but only so long as it does not cor­rupt their moral sense, only so long as they don’t allow their faith to become polit­i­cal­ly weaponized. Yet that is pre­cise­ly what’s hap­pen­ing today.”
    • Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus. I wish that the Amer­i­can church was more vis­i­bly dis­mayed at some of Trump’s obvi­ous sins. I remind peo­ple of all polit­i­cal incli­na­tions that you can sup­port someone’s over­all agen­da and still rebuke them for acts of wicked­ness. In fact, being will­ing to do so makes your sup­port more mean­ing­ful. So vote for who­ev­er you want, and hold the lead­ers you sup­port to a high stan­dard.
  5. Taiwan’s Sta­tus is a Geopo­lit­i­cal Absur­di­ty (Chris Hor­ton, The Atlantic): “’Taiwan’s gov­ern­ment is demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly elected—we have a pres­i­dent, we have a par­lia­ment,’ For­eign Min­is­ter Joseph Wu said plain­tive­ly at a brief­ing for for­eign media ear­li­er this year. At the time, his gov­ern­ment was try­ing to be includ­ed in the World Health Assem­bly. (It was ulti­mate­ly blocked by Chi­na.) ‘We issue visas, we issue pass­ports,’ he said, prac­ti­cal­ly plead­ing. ‘We have a mil­i­tary and a cur­ren­cy … Tai­wan exists by itself; Tai­wan is not a part of any oth­er coun­try.’”
  6. Robespierre’s Amer­i­ca (Bret Stephens, New York Times): “The data con­firm what one hears and expe­ri­ences anec­do­tal­ly all the time: In the prover­bial land of the free, peo­ple live in mor­tal fear of a moral faux pas. Opin­ions that were con­sid­ered rea­son­able and nor­mal a few years ago are increas­ing­ly deliv­ered in whis­pers. Pro­fes­sors fear their stu­dents. Pub­lish­ers drop books at the slight­est whiff of social-media con­tro­ver­sy.”
  7. Gay Rites Are Civ­il Rites (Scott Alexan­der, Slate Star Codex): “‘Civ­il reli­gion’ is a sur­pris­ing place for social jus­tice to end up. Gay pride start­ed at Stonewall as a giant ****-you to civ­il soci­ety. Home­less peo­ple, addicts, and sex work­ers told the police where they could shove their respectable val­ues. But there was anoth­er major world reli­gion that start­ed with beg­gars, lep­ers, and pros­ti­tutes, wasn’t there? One that told the Phar­isees where to shove their respectable val­ues.”

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 com­pelling series of arti­cles on Chi­na by a his­to­ry pro­fes­sor at Johns Hop­kins (who also hap­pens to be a Stan­ford grad): China’s Mas­ter Plan: A Glob­al Mil­i­tary Threat, China’s Mas­ter Plan: Export­ing an Ide­ol­o­gy, China’s Mas­ter Plan: A World­wide Web of Insti­tu­tions and China’s Mas­ter Plan: How The West Can Fight Back (Hal Brand, Bloomberg). The mon­ey quote from the sec­ond arti­cle: “If the U.S. has long sought to make the world safe for democ­ra­cy, China’s lead­ers crave a world that is safe for author­i­tar­i­an­ism.” First shared in vol­ume 156.

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 209

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.

FYI: there’s an excel­lent chance I won’t be send­ing my Fri­day roundup next week.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Christ in the Camps (Caitlin Flana­gan, The Atlantic): “I humbly reach out to the only fac­tion of Amer­i­cans I know of who have the ear of the admin­is­tra­tion and who care about chil­dren: my broth­ers and sis­ters in Christ who attend evan­gel­i­cal church­es. It seems clear that we are in the midst of a pro­found human­i­tar­i­an cri­sis and that chil­dren are being forced to suf­fer in ter­ri­ble ways. Maybe it was nev­er sup­posed to be this way; maybe the sys­tem just got over­whelmed. But this is a dis­as­ter.” Sear­ing. Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus. 
    • The hor­ri­fy­ing con­di­tions fac­ing kids in bor­der deten­tion, explained (Dara Lind, Vox): “It is appar­ent that even an admin­is­tra­tion act­ing with the best inter­ests of chil­dren in mind at every turn would be scram­bling right now. But pol­i­cy­mak­ers are split on how much of the cur­rent cri­sis is sim­ply a resource prob­lem — one Con­gress could help by send­ing more resources — and how much is delib­er­ate mis­treat­ment or neglect from an admin­is­tra­tion that doesn’t deserve any more mon­ey or trust.
    • Why a Gov­ern­ment Lawyer Argued Against Giv­ing Immi­grant Kids Tooth­brush­es (Ken White, The Atlantic): “This admin­is­tra­tion is mere­ly the lat­est one to sub­ject immi­grant chil­dren to abu­sive con­di­tions. It’s been 35 years since Jen­ny Flo­res was strip-searched in an adult facil­i­ty. Before Sarah Fabi­an defend­ed con­crete floors and bright lights for Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump, she defend­ed putting kids in soli­tary con­fine­ment for Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma. The fault lies not with any one admin­is­tra­tion or politi­cian, but with the cul­ture: the ICE and CBP cul­ture that encour­ages the abuse, the cul­ture of the legal apol­o­gists who defend it, and our culture—a large­ly indif­fer­ent Amer­i­ca that hasn’t done a damn thing about it.”
    • Indi­rect­ly relat­ed: I’m a Jour­nal­ist but I Didn’t Ful­ly Real­ize the Ter­ri­ble Pow­er of U.S. Bor­der Offi­cials Until They Vio­lat­ed My Rights and Pri­va­cy (Seth Harp, The Inter­cept): “As I was walk­ing out, I said to Mon­civias and Vil­lar­real, ‘It’s fun­ny, of all the coun­tries I’ve been to, the bor­der guards have nev­er treat­ed me worse than here, in the one coun­try I’m a cit­i­zen of, in the town where I was born.’” This is unset­tling. 
  2. Peo­ple Who Pay Peo­ple to Kill Peo­ple (Rene Chun, The Atlantic): “The authors deter­mined that 2 per­cent of all mur­ders in Aus­tralia were con­tract killings and that con­tracts were, in some cas­es, sur­pris­ing­ly afford­able. One unful­filled con­tract was for 500 Aus­tralian dol­lars; anoth­er job was com­plet­ed for just $2,000.” This is wild to me because those are close to the amounts that a min­is­ter might get paid for preach­ing at a retreat or offi­ci­at­ing a wed­ding. Who knew assas­sins and min­is­ters had sim­i­lar pay scales? Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
  3. Some LGBT links (large­ly occa­sioned by Pride Month).
    • A Match Made In Heav­en (Nathaniel Frank, Wash­ing­ton Post): “What may seem like a straight­for­ward chance to cel­e­brate progress actu­al­ly masks a fault line that has divid­ed our move­ment since its start: whether our goal is equal­i­ty or lib­er­a­tion, a fight for the right to be treat­ed like every­one else or the free­dom to be authen­ti­cal­ly our­selves. Do we seek belong­ing in the world as it is (includ­ing the mil­i­tary, mar­riage and par­ent­ing) or the chance to trans­form the world, by throw­ing off repres­sive norms, into a place where all of us — queer and non-queer alike — can be more free?”
    • Response: Stonewall’s ‘Gift’ (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “To an old-school Cas­san­dra like me — one of the Cas­san­dras who was mocked in the 2000s as a para­noid — this entire col­umn reads like an I told you so, and a vin­di­ca­tion of the Law of Mer­it­ed Impos­si­bil­i­ty (‘It will nev­er hap­pen, and when it does, you big­ots will deserve it’). Not that it does a bit of good now.”
    • Rug­by Australia’s “Own Goal” (Peter Singer, Project Syn­di­cate): “Rug­by Aus­tralia would have a stronger basis for its deci­sion if Folau’s post had expressed hatred toward homo­sex­u­als and could have been inter­pret­ed as an incite­ment to vio­lence against them. But the post no more express­es hatred toward homo­sex­u­als than cig­a­rette warn­ings express hatred toward smok­ers.” Yes, this is the famous philoso­pher Peter Singer. I rarely agree with him, but in this case I strong­ly do.
    • The Reli­gious Roots of Pride (Brett Krutzsch, The Advo­cate): “What most Amer­i­cans do not know when they gaze on the parade’s near­ly-naked dancers, ‘dykes on bikes,’ and trans­gen­der teenagers is that Pride parades exist because of a devout Pen­te­costal min­is­ter.” The author is a pro­fes­sor of reli­gion at Haver­ford Col­lege. One quib­ble: describ­ing Troy Per­ry as a “devout Pen­te­costal” is not accu­rate. He said, “
I knew that I was not start­ing anoth­er Pen­te­costal church. I was start­ing a church that would be tru­ly ecu­meni­cal.” (source: the his­to­ry of the Met­ro­pol­i­tan Com­mu­ni­ty Church­es). It would be fair to say “ex-Pen­te­costal min­is­ter Troy Per­ry”, though. His back­ground was news to me.
  4. The Chris­t­ian Case for Mar­i­jua­na (Jonathan Mer­ritt, New York Times): “Amer­i­ca is sick, and the Chris­t­ian call to com­pas­sion oblig­ates the faith­ful to act. Chron­ic pain and ill­ness now affect tens of mil­lions of Amer­i­cans, and in many cas­es the cause eludes the bright­est med­ical minds. To fight these ail­ments, Amer­i­cans have been pre­scribed mind-alter­ing anti-depres­sants, high­ly addic­tive pain reliev­ers and opi­oids, and all man­ner of legal sub­stances with a list of side effects so long that drug com­mer­cials feel like ‘Sat­ur­day Night Live’ shorts.”
  5. The Per­cep­tion Gap: How False Impres­sions are Pulling Amer­i­cans Apart (Sean Stevens, Het­ero­dox Acad­e­my): Democ­rats and Repub­li­cans sig­nif­i­cant­ly over­es­ti­mate how many peo­ple on the ‘oth­er side’ hold extreme views. Typ­i­cal­ly, their esti­mates are rough­ly dou­ble the actu­al num­bers for a giv­en issue…. Edu­ca­tion seems to increase, rather than mit­i­gate, the Per­cep­tion Gap (just as increased edu­ca­tion has found to track with increased ide­o­log­i­cal prej­u­dice). Col­lege edu­ca­tion results in an espe­cial­ly dis­tort­ed view of Repub­li­cans among lib­er­als in par­tic­u­lar.” The orig­i­nal research is at https://perceptiongap.us/ (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 The Prob­lem with Dull Knives: What’s the Defense Depart­ment got to do with Code for Amer­i­ca? (Jen­nifer Pahlka, Medi­um): “I have a dis­tinct mem­o­ry of being a kid in the kitchen with my mom, awk­ward­ly and prob­a­bly dan­ger­ous­ly wield­ing a knife, try­ing to cut some tough veg­etable, and defend­ing my actions by say­ing the knife was dull any­way. My mom stopped me and said firm­ly, ‘Jen­ny, a dull knife is much more dan­ger­ous than a sharp knife. You’re strug­gling and using much more force than you should, and that knife is going to end up God Knows Where.’ She was right, of course…. But hav­ing poor tools [for the mil­i­tary] doesn’t make us fight less; it makes us fight bad­ly.” (some empha­sis in the orig­i­nal removed). High­ly rec­om­mend­ed. First shared in vol­ume 155.

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 202

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. The First Rule of Social-Media Cen­sor­ship Is That There Are No Rules (David French, Nation­al Review): “The great val­ue of view­point neu­tral­i­ty is that it com­ports with our sense of fun­da­men­tal fair­ness. It hear­kens back to the image of the blind­fold­ed Lady Jus­tice, hold­ing her scales, indif­fer­ent to the pow­er or priv­i­lege of her peti­tion­ers. Twit­ter and Face­book have removed the blind­fold, thrown away the scales, and cho­sen to wield only the sword.”
    • Relat­ed but less aggres­sive: Facebook’s Unin­tend­ed Con­se­quence (Bret Stephens, New York Times): “The deep­er prob­lem is the over­whelm­ing con­cen­tra­tion of tech­ni­cal, finan­cial and moral pow­er in the hands of peo­ple who lack the train­ing, expe­ri­ence, wis­dom, trust­wor­thi­ness, humil­i­ty and incen­tives to exer­cise that pow­er respon­si­bly.”
    • Relat­ed but with a dif­fer­ent empha­sis: The Big Tech Threat (Josh Haw­ley, First Things): “My the­sis is that the evi­dence strong­ly sug­gests there is some­thing deeply trou­bling, maybe even deeply wrong, with the entire social media econ­o­my. My the­sis is that it does not rep­re­sent a source of strength for America’s tomor­row, but is rather a source of per­il.” A tran­script of a speech giv­en by a US Sen­a­tor who is a Stan­ford grad and who was speak­ing at the Hoover Insti­tu­tion.
  2. We Are Tak­ing Reli­gious Free­dom Too Far (Mar­garet Ren­kl, New York Times): “Reli­gious faith is a pri­vate mat­ter between a believ­er and God. But how a believ­er lives in com­mu­ni­ty with oth­er peo­ple is some­thing dif­fer­ent alto­geth­er. It’s time to stop giv­ing believ­ers a pass just because their beliefs hap­pen to run counter to the laws of the nation they live in.”
    • In response: A New York Times Op-Ed Is Very Wrong About Reli­gious Lib­er­ty (David French, Nation­al Review): “She for­mu­lates reli­gious lib­er­ty like this: ‘In this coun­try, cit­ing reli­gious or spir­i­tu­al con­vic­tions is often a sure­fire way to get out of doing some­thing you’re required by law to do.’ This is a com­mon fram­ing on the left. Essen­tial­ly, it’s an argu­ment that reli­gious free­dom is an intru­sion into the law and that reli­gious peo­ple are engaged in a form of spe­cial plead­ing — seek­ing rights and exemp­tions unavail­able to oth­er Amer­i­cans. In real­i­ty, the First Amend­ment is supreme, and when states seek to intrude on reli­gious lib­er­ty, they’re try­ing to get out of some­thing they’re required by law to do. Respect­ing the First Amend­ment is the default oblig­a­tion of the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment and every state and local gov­ern­ment in the Unit­ed States.”
    • Relat­ed but on a dif­fer­ent top­ic: Health and Human Ser­vices and the Reli­gious-Lib­er­ty War (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “The con­flict between reli­gious lib­er­ty, LGBTQ rights, and abor­tion access is about to inten­si­fy. In the com­ing weeks or months, HHS is expect­ed to issue a revised ver­sion of Rule 1557 of the Afford­able Care Act, which extend­ed nondis­crim­i­na­tion pro­tec­tions to trans­gen­der peo­ple and women who have ter­mi­nat­ed preg­nan­cies. The Supreme Court is also slat­ed to con­sid­er civ­il-rights pro­tec­tions for LGBTQ indi­vid­u­als in sev­er­al high-pro­file upcom­ing cas­es; while those cas­es most­ly involve pro­tec­tions pro­vid­ed under employ­ment law, they sim­i­lar­ly pit reli­gious lib­er­ty against LGBTQ rights.”
  3. Agapáo and Philéo by the Sea of Tiberias (Ron Bel­gau, Spir­i­tu­al Friend­ship): “After break­fast, Peter and Jesus had a con­ver­sa­tion which rais­es an inter­est­ing ques­tion about how to under­stand the verbs for love—agapáo and philéo—used in the orig­i­nal Greek…. The pas­sage is dif­fi­cult to trans­late because although Eng­lish has always had sep­a­rate nouns for ‘love’ and ‘friend­ship,’ no Eng­lish speak­er pri­or to Mark Zucker­berg used ‘friend’ as a verb. Trans­la­tors, there­fore, must either trans­late both words as ‘love,’ which los­es a poten­tial nuance in the orig­i­nal, or else must try to some­how make the dif­fer­ence appar­ent in Eng­lish.” This is the most sat­is­fy­ing expla­na­tion of this pas­sage I have heard.
  4. Amer­i­can church­es must reject lit­er­al­ism and admit we got it wrong on gay peo­ple (Oliv­er Thomas, USA Today): “Church­es will con­tin­ue hem­or­rhag­ing mem­bers and mon­ey at an alarm­ing rate until we muster the courage to face the truth: We got it wrong on gays and les­bians. This shouldn’t alarm or sur­prise us. We have learned some things that the ancients — includ­ing Moses and Paul — sim­ply did not know. Not even Jesus…”
    • The author is a retired Amer­i­can Bap­tist min­is­ter.
    • In response: Oliv­er Thomas @USATODAY Says the Amer­i­can Church Got it Wrong on Gay People—And He’s Right (Michael Kruger, per­son­al blog): “In this way, Thomas is right. The church is killing itself, if by the ‘church’ one means the main­line denom­i­na­tions who have aban­doned bib­li­cal author­i­ty. Indeed, sta­tis­tics have shown, plain­ly and incon­tro­vert­ibly, that the main­line denom­i­na­tions are dying and the bible-believ­ing ones are grow­ing.”
    • In response: No, Chris­tian­i­ty Doesn’t Need To Endorse Homo­sex­u­al­i­ty To Grow (Glenn Stan­ton, The Fed­er­al­ist): “When same-sex-attract­ed Chris­tians go to church, they are not choos­ing the pews of church­es Thomas is call­ing us to become. Again, it’s just the oppo­site. Research con­duct­ed joint­ly at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia at Los Ange­les by schol­ars who are not shy about sup­port­ing gay pol­i­tics found that gay- and les­bian-iden­ti­fied peo­ple are 2.5 times more like­ly to attend church­es that took a more con­ser­v­a­tive view on Chris­tian­i­ty (includ­ing homo­sex­u­al­i­ty) than the so-called ‘wel­com­ing and affirm­ing’ con­gre­ga­tions that cel­e­brate it.”
  5. What’s wrong with Amer­i­ca? I debate Ben Shapiro.(Sean Illing, Vox): “There are basi­cal­ly two visions of Amer­i­can his­to­ry. One is that Amer­i­ca was found­ed on great moral prin­ci­ples that we failed to live up to his­tor­i­cal­ly and we’ve been striv­ing to ful­fill. The oth­er is that Amer­i­ca is root­ed in racism, big­otry, sex­ism, and homo­pho­bia, and that these great moral prin­ci­ples were the founders mere­ly flat­ter­ing them­selves.”
    • This is a very good exchange. Whichev­er side you’re sym­pa­thet­ic to, you’ll enjoy read­ing this inter­view.
  6. Why God Is a He (Den­nis Prager, YouTube): five min­utes. It’s an inter­est­ing way to approach the issue. As a Chris­t­ian I would make a dif­fer­ent argu­ment con­nect­ed to the incar­na­tion and res­ur­rec­tion of Jesus as a male, but Prager is an obser­vant Jew and so that line of think­ing is unavail­able to him.
  7. Are All Repub­li­cans Bib­li­cal Lit­er­al­ists? Are All Democ­rats Heretics?(Ryan Burge, Reli­gion in Pub­lic): “With the release of the 2018 wave of the Gen­er­al Social Sur­vey data, I think that it’s time to take stock of how a person’s view of the Bible is relat­ed to their polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tion. Are there bib­li­cal lit­er­al­ists who are Democ­rats? How many Repub­li­cans don’t put much stock in the Bible? And, how has the view of the Bible changed over time?”
    • tl;dr — Rough­ly ¼ of Democ­rats and â…“ of Repub­li­cans believe the Bible is the lit­er­al word of God. Rough­ly half of each par­ty think the Bible is inspired but not always to be tak­en lit­er­al­ly. The remain­der in each par­ty believe that the Bible is just ancient fables.

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 20 Argu­ments For God’s Exis­tence (Peter Kreeft, per­son­al web­site): “You may be blessed with a vivid sense of God’s pres­ence; and that is some­thing for which to be pro­found­ly grate­ful. But that does not mean you have no oblig­a­tion to pon­der these argu­ments. For many have not been blessed in that way. And the proofs are designed for them—or some of them at least—to give a kind of help they real­ly need. You may even be asked to pro­vide help.” I was remind­ed of this by a con­ver­sa­tion with an alum­nus. The author is a phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor at Boston Col­lege. (first shared in vol­ume 116)

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 196

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 one is com­ing out ear­ly in the morn­ing because I’m dri­ving back from a mis­sion trip and will be on the road the entire day. When I’m on a mis­sion trip I usu­al­ly do very brief video blogs (under a minute each) — you can see the ones for this trip here.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Chi­na Shuts Down Anoth­er Big Bei­jing Church (Kate Shell­nut, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Through­out its 26-year his­to­ry, Shouwang mem­bers have refused to come under Com­mu­nist author­i­ty and per­se­vered despite per­se­cu­tion, with their ‘under­ground’ ser­vices forced out­side when evict­ed from their build­ings in 2009 and with their found­ing pas­tor Jin Tian­ming under house arrest since 2011.”
    • Relat­ed: Chi­na’s Mus­lim gulag is tough to cov­er, but a few reporters aren’t giv­ing up (Julia Duin, GetRe­li­gion): “One of the mosques in Kash­gar, it added, has been trans­formed into a hookah lounge. A city that was once a world cen­ter for tra­di­tion­al Islam­ic and Cen­tral Asian archi­tec­ture is now Dis­ney­land meets Aladdin, (a fairy­tale that orig­i­nal­ly was set in Chi­na, by the way). It’s tough cov­er­ing Chi­na and the jour­nal­ists who try to do it well inevitably end up expelled.” This is a good sum­ma­ry of report­ing on one of the most wicked gov­ern­ment pro­grams in the world right now. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed.
  2. A Case for the Elec­toral Col­lege (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “Is there a case for a sys­tem that some­times pro­duces unde­mo­c­ra­t­ic out­comes? I think so, on two grounds. First, it cre­ates incen­tives for polit­i­cal par­ties and can­di­dates to seek super­ma­jori­ties rather than just play­ing for 50.1 per­cent, because the lat­ter play is a los­ing one more often than in a pop­u­lar-vote pres­i­den­tial sys­tem. Sec­ond, it cre­ates incen­tives for polit­i­cal par­ties to try to break region­al blocs con­trolled by the oppo­si­tion, rather than just max­i­miz­ing turnout in their own areas, because you win the pres­i­den­cy con­sis­tent­ly only as a par­ty of mul­ti­ple regions and you can crack a rival party’s nar­row major­i­ty by flip­ping a few states.”
  3. An Inter­view With Lisa Littman, Who Coined the Term ‘Rapid Onset Gen­der Dys­pho­ria’ (Jonathan Kay, Quil­lette): “Although there have been spec­u­la­tions about my affil­i­a­tions, I am not a reli­gious or polit­i­cal con­ser­v­a­tive and I am not a rad­i­cal fem­i­nist. No orga­ni­za­tions fund­ed my study. That means that I pay out-of-pock­et for research-relat­ed costs like print­ing, trav­el­ing to aca­d­e­m­ic con­fer­ences, pub­li­ca­tion fees, etc. And because I do not earn my liveli­hood pro­vid­ing tran­si­tion ser­vices or refer­rals for tran­si­tion, and I have not per­son­al­ly (nor has my spouse or chil­dren) expe­ri­enced gen­der dys­pho­ria or tran­si­tion, I have far few­er con­flicts of inter­est than many of the cur­rent researchers in this field.” Fas­ci­nat­ing inter­view.
  4. How the West Changed The World For the Bet­ter (Ben Shapiro, Nation­al Review): “Thanks to the West, bil­lions of human beings no longer suf­fer in abject pover­ty; thanks to the West, democ­ra­cy is seen as both the moral and the prac­ti­cal default posi­tion for aspir­ing gov­ern­ments; thanks to the West, indi­vid­u­al­ism has been able to gain ground against the nat­ur­al trib­al­ism endem­ic to human beings. The his­to­ry of the West isn’t a his­to­ry of unal­loyed great­ness: It is replete with suf­fer­ing and tyran­ny and slav­ery and mis­ery. But all of those evils are present in every civ­i­liza­tion his­tor­i­cal­ly. The ques­tion is why the West changed the world.”
    • A most­ly-neg­a­tive review of a relat­ed book Shapiro just pub­lished: The Right Side of History—A Review (Jared Mar­cel Pollen, Quil­lette): “…Shapiro’s attempt to demon­strate that sec­u­lar civ­i­liza­tion needs to rekin­dle the Judeo-Chris­t­ian teach­ings upon which it is based, inad­ver­tent­ly shows us why we were right to leave them behind in the first place.” I have not read Shapiro’s book, but many of the spe­cif­ic crit­i­cisms Pollen makes are not very per­sua­sive. For exam­ple, it is a con­ven­tion­al enough posi­tion among experts that mod­ern sci­ence arose due to Chris­tian­i­ty that I have had stu­dents tell me that they were taught it in his­to­ry cours­es at Stan­ford.
  5. The Real Rea­sons Amer­i­can Evan­gel­i­cals Sup­port Israel (David French, Nation­al Review): “The [com­mon media] expla­na­tion goes some­thing like this — Evan­gel­i­cals believe that the rebirth of Israel is has­ten­ing not just the sec­ond com­ing of Christ, but a par­tic­u­lar kind of sec­ond com­ing, one that includes fire, fury, and war that will con­sume the Jew­ish peo­ple.… But the true nar­ra­tive of Amer­i­can Chris­t­ian sup­port for Israel is sub­stan­tial­ly dif­fer­ent. The intel­lec­tu­al and the­o­log­i­cal roots of Chris­t­ian Zion­ism do not rest in end-times proph­e­sies but rather in Old Tes­ta­ment promis­es.”
    • One exam­ple of a much broad­er phe­nom­e­non. I very rarely rec­og­nize myself or my peers in media expla­na­tions of “why evan­gel­i­cals believe ______ about _______.” Or even just “evan­gel­i­cals believe ______”. I find this puz­zling because it’s not as though we don’t have reg­u­lar gath­er­ings where we explain what we believe to any­one who will lis­ten.
  6. Open­ly Gay, Open­ly Chris­t­ian Buttigieg Chal­lenges the Reli­gious Right (Ed Kil­go­re, New York Mag­a­zine): “As Barack Oba­ma once con­vinc­ing­ly argued, doubt about what God wants peo­ple to do polit­i­cal­ly is an impor­tant part of an atti­tude of humil­i­ty which used to be called ‘the fear of God.’” It is inter­est­ing how many of the Democ­rats seek­ing nom­i­na­tion are out­spo­ken about their faith.
  7. Black and Evan­gel­i­cal: Why I Keep The Label (Bran­don Wash­ing­ton, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “I too have been wound­ed by evangelicalism’s pos­ture toward social ethics. But I have con­clud­ed that an exo­dus of eth­nic minori­ties amounts to seg­re­ga­tion of the move­ment and only con­tributes to the prob­lem. So I remain.”

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 Deal­ing With Nui­sance Lust (Dou­glas Wil­son, per­son­al blog): “Min­i­mize the seri­ous­ness of this, but not so that you can feel good about indulging your­self. Min­i­mize the seri­ous­ness of it so that you can walk away from a cou­ple of big boobs with­out feel­ing like you have just fought a cos­mic bat­tle with prin­ci­pal­i­ties and pow­ers in the heav­en­ly places, for cry­ing out loud. Or, if you like, in anoth­er strat­e­gy of see­ing things right­ly, you could nick­name these breasts of oth­er woman as the ‘prin­ci­pal­i­ties and pow­ers.’ What­ev­er you do, take this part of life in stride like a grown-up. Stop react­ing like a horny and con­flict­ed twelve-year-old boy.” (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 193

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. The Gen­e­sis of the Tech Indus­try, and Vice Ver­sa (Tyler Cowen, Bloomberg Opin­ion): “In the Book of Gen­e­sis, the under­ly­ing mod­el of eco­nom­ics is a pret­ty opti­mistic one, and that is anoth­er way in which West­ern his­to­ry draws upon its Judeo-Chris­t­ian roots.” Fas­ci­nat­ing.
  2. Marc Edwards Is a Sad Vic­tim of Our Mod­ern Polit­i­cal Era (Kevin Drum, Moth­er Jones): “…just as he had hon­est­ly exposed Flint’s prob­lems in the first place, he also con­tin­ued to hon­est­ly report the results of the inter­ven­tion. When the water was once again safe, he said so—and that turned him from a hero into a pari­ah.” How have I not heard this? I was talk­ing with a friend last week about how shock­ing it is that the water in Flint is still unsafe.
  3. Why Did Evan­gel­i­cals Flock to Trump? Exis­ten­tial Fear. (AJ Nolte, The Bul­wark): “Don­ald Trump appeared at a time dur­ing which many evan­gel­i­cals’ ris­ing expec­ta­tions had turned, rather rapid­ly, into exis­ten­tial fear. Trump was unique­ly posi­tioned to exploit that moment and win over evan­gel­i­cals. Yet while that sup­port is very real, I also think it is shal­low­er and more con­di­tion­al than it appears.” Dr. Nolte is a polit­i­cal sci­ence pro­fes­sor at Regent Uni­ver­si­ty.
    • Very much relat­ed: The Inde­cent-Amer­i­can Com­mu­ni­ty (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “Remind me again why Chris­tians vote for Trump, despite his per­son­al cor­rup­tion? You think it might have some­thing to do with the fact that we know what the Democ­rats have planned for us?”
    • Relat­ed to the above, but not so much to the ini­tial link: When being a Chris­t­ian isn’t “decent” any­more (Den­ny Burk, per­son­al blog): “…it appears as a mat­ter of course that it is open sea­son on Chris­tians who dare to affirm what the Bible teach­es about sex­u­al ethics. This is the new real­i­ty for Chris­tians who hold the line on bib­li­cal sex­u­al ethics, and I don’t see any signs of things let­ting up. On the con­trary, this kind of open ani­mus only seems to be spread­ing.”
  4. “Gay” vs “Same-Sex Attrac­tion”: A Dia­logue (Greg Coles & Rachel Gilson, The Cen­ter For Faith, Sex­u­al­i­ty, and Gen­der): “Both Greg and Rachel believe in a his­tor­i­cal­ly Chris­t­ian view of mar­riage and sex­u­al rela­tion­ships. Rachel does not iden­ti­fy as gay or les­bian, even though she expe­ri­ences same-sex attrac­tion. Greg does iden­ti­fy as gay, pre­fer­ring the term over ‘same-sex attract­ed.’” This is an intro­duc­to­ry arti­cle that links to a sev­en-part series. It is short­er than it sounds (the sec­ond-to-last arti­cle is fair­ly long, how­ev­er). Rec­om­mend­ed.
    • Relat­ed: The Chris­t­ian Debate Over Sex­u­al Iden­ti­ty (Sam All­ber­ry, Desir­ing God): “As a Chris­t­ian, one of the key things for me is real­iz­ing that iden­ti­ty as Chris­tians is not some­thing that we dis­cov­er in our­selves, nor is it some­thing we cre­ate. It’s some­thing we receive and are giv­en by the only per­son who can know our actu­al iden­ti­ty, which is the God who made us. So my iden­ti­ty as a Chris­t­ian comes from the fact that I’ve been cre­at­ed by God and redeemed by him through the sav­ing work of Jesus.” This is a bit old­er.
  5. I’m a Jour­nal­ist. Appar­ent­ly, I’m Also One of America’s “Top Doc­tors.” (Mar­shall Allen, ProP­ub­li­ca): “I don’t have a med­ical degree, and I’m not a physi­cian. But I am an inves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ist who spe­cial­izes in health care. So I leaned for­ward in my seat with some antic­i­pa­tion when I returned the call last year. I spoke to a cheer­ful sales­woman named Anne at a com­pa­ny on New York’s Long Island that hands out the Top Doc­tor Awards. For some rea­son, she believed I was a physi­cian and, even bet­ter, wor­thy of one of their awards. Puz­zled and amused, I took notes.”
  6. Trans Men Erase Women (Char­lotte Allen, First Things): “Male-to-female trans­gen­der ath­letes are van­ish­ing­ly few in num­ber (like male-to-female trans peo­ple in gen­er­al), but as the above exam­ples indi­cate, when they com­pete, they pose a crush­ing exis­ten­tial threat to women’s sports. That is because the very exis­tence of women’s sports is pred­i­cat­ed, as Mar­ti­na Navratilo­va rec­og­nized, on the now-high­ly polit­i­cal­ly incor­rect obser­va­tion that the two sex­es are rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent phys­i­cal­ly.”
  7. The Pell Affair: Aus­tralia Is Now On Tri­al (George Weigel, First Things): “If it is not reversed on appeal, that false ver­dict will con­sti­tute a new indict­ment: the indict­ment of a legal sys­tem that could not bring itself to ren­der jus­tice in the face of pub­lic hys­te­ria, polit­i­cal vendet­ta, and media aggres­sion.”

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 world will only get weird­er (Steven Coast, per­son­al blog): “We fixed all the main rea­sons air­craft crash a long time ago. Some­times a long, long time ago. So, we are left with the less and less prob­a­ble events.” The piece is a few years old so the exam­ples are dat­ed, but it remains very intrigu­ing. (first shared in vol­ume 67)

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 191

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. Why Hol­ly­wood megachurch­es like Hill­song hide their true teach­ings (Drew Goins, Wash­ing­ton Post): “Celebri­ty megachurch­es have every incen­tive to obscure where they stand on LGBTQ peo­ple. One of the con­tem­po­rary enter­tain­ment industry’s strongest claims to social rel­e­vance is stars’ par­tic­i­pa­tion in the fight for LGBT equal­i­ty.”
    • David French fired back: Will Woke Pro­gres­sives Allow Celebri­ties to Be Chris­t­ian? (David French, Nation­al Review): “Here is the dis­tinc­tion that makes no sense. An ortho­dox Chris­t­ian and (to take an exam­ple) a mar­ried sec­u­lar gay employ­ee work side by side. They dis­agree with each oth­er about mat­ters absolute­ly fun­da­men­tal to their lives and iden­ti­ties. The sec­u­lar gay employ­ee believes the Christian’s world­view is false. The Chris­t­ian employ­ee believes the sec­u­lar gay employee’s world­view is false. Why is it unique­ly intol­er­a­ble or even inju­ri­ous for the gay employ­ee to have to share the work­place (much less the indus­try) with the Chris­t­ian? Do they not have the same oblig­a­tions to set aside their dif­fer­ences and treat each oth­er with dig­ni­ty and respect?”
    • A Stan­ford illus­tra­tion: Stan­ford Live part­ners with alleged anti-LGBTQ pro­mot­er for Frost (Car­o­line Ghisolfi, Stan­ford Dai­ly)- “The report alleged that the Anschutz Foun­da­tion fund­ed sev­er­al con­ser­v­a­tive anti-LGBTQ orga­ni­za­tions between 2011 and 2013, includ­ing the Alliance Defend­ing Free­dom (ADF), a con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian activist group which has ‘repeat­ed­ly advo­cat­ed for the crim­i­nal­iza­tion of homo­sex­u­al­i­ty, both in the U.S. and inter­na­tion­al­ly.’ ” This is an unusu­al way to describe ADF, which is a promi­nent legal orga­ni­za­tion with an envi­able 9–0 record at the Supreme Court. David French, who wrote the arti­cle in the pre­vi­ous bul­let point, is for­mer senior coun­sel for ADF.
  2. Regard­ing Jussie Smol­lett:
    • What The Jussie Smol­lett Sto­ry Reveals (John McWhort­er, The Atlantic(: “Smol­lett doesn’t need the mon­ey he would get from a court set­tle­ment, and he isn’t try­ing to deny some­one high­er office. So why in the world would he fake some­thing like that attack—if he did indeed fake it? The rea­son might be that he has come of age in an era when noth­ing he could have done or said would have made him look more inter­est­ing than being attacked on the basis of his col­or and sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion.” — the most insight­ful take I’ve seen
    • This is fas­ci­nat­ing: Fake Hate Crimes Data­base — the quan­ti­ty of these hoax­es strength­en’s McWhort­er’s point in the pre­vi­ous arti­cle
    • Politi­cians use Jussie Smol­lett, while a 1‑year-old boy shot in the head is set aside (John Cass, Chica­go Tri­bune):- “A few weeks ago, after Smol­lett began telling his tale — in which he’s the hero fight­ing oppres­sion and hatred — a 1‑year-old child was shot in the head.It looked like a street gang may have been tar­get­ing his moth­er. She’s been shot before. The child, Dejon Irv­ing, is on life support.I don’t think there were two dozen detec­tives assigned to Dejon Irving’s case. But he’s not a star to be used by politi­cians in pur­suit of pow­er. He’s not a symbol.Politicians don’t tweet his name. He’s just a lit­tle boy from Chica­go, shot in the head.” Ouch.
    • Peo­ple Fake Can­cer, Too (Fred­die deBoer, per­son­al blog): “I don’t with­hold sym­pa­thy until I ‘get all the facts’ and I don’t begin from a posi­tion of total neu­tral­i­ty. I begin from a posi­tion of sym­pa­thy and lis­ten­ing regard­less of the fact that some peo­ple fake can­cer.”
  3. The Risk Of Pro­gres­sives Talk­ing Over Mar­gin­al­ized Com­mu­ni­ties (Jesse Sin­gal, per­son­al blog): “…if you’re a pro­gres­sive who is call­ing for the Wash­ing­ton foot­ball team to change its name, or for Ralph Northam to resign, because of the harm that foot­ball team name and that gov­er­nor did to mar­gin­al­ized peo­ple, it should feel very weird that the actu­al groups most affect­ed most­ly dis­agree with you, no? Or if it doesn’t feel weird, why doesn’t it feel weird?” — this is an impor­tant point I rarely see dis­cussed.
  4. White suprema­cist Coast Guard offi­cer stock­piled firearms and hit list of Democ­rats for mass ter­ror attack (Haley Britzky, Task & Purpose):“A search of Has­son’s home revealed 15 firearms and over 1,000 rounds of ammo along with a hit list of tar­gets that includ­ed includ­ing promi­nent Demo­c­ra­t­ic politi­cians — includ­ing Sen­ate Minor­i­ty Leader Chuck Schumer, House Speak­er Nan­cy Pel­soi [sic], Demo­c­ra­t­ic new­com­er Rep. Alexan­dria Oca­sio-Cortez — and media per­son­al­i­ties like MSNBC’s Joe Scar­bor­ough and Chris Hayes.” 👀
  5. Why Join A Fra­ter­ni­ty (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): rec­om­mend­ing this one for the update at the bot­tom of the post: “There is so much wrong­head­ed­ness in the way uni­ver­si­ties attempt to reg­u­late fra­ter­ni­ties, which has led to dire out­comes, and it is only going to get worse.”
  6. Dear Gay Catholic Priests (Jen­nifer Fitz, Patheos): “I’ve been read­ing about your plight in the New York Times. So let’s go ahead and clear some­thing up right now: Most Catholics don’t give a rip who it is you’re not hav­ing sex with. We know that absti­nence is hard.”
  7. Chris­tian­i­ty Today Appoints Tim­o­thy Dal­rym­ple as New Pres­i­dent and CEO (Mark Gal­li, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “He took his pas­sions for min­istry, learn­ing, and ath­let­ic achieve­ment with him to Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty. When his gym­nas­tics career end­ed in a bro­ken neck, he plunged into cam­pus min­istry and over­seas mis­sions trips. He became pres­i­dent of Stanford’s Cam­pus Cru­sade (Cru) chap­ter. It was also at Stan­ford where he met his wife, Joyce. Both helped to lead a Chris­t­ian uni­ty move­ment on cam­pus that brought togeth­er stu­dents from all the university’s Chris­t­ian fel­low­ships to wor­ship God with one anoth­er.” #nerd­na­tion

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). (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). 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 190

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. Inside the Secret Face­book War For Mor­mon Hearts and Minds (Kevin Poul­son, The Dai­ly Beast): “We may be resigned to face­less cor­po­ra­tions buy­ing their way into our thoughts, but are we ready for a world where our neigh­bors and in-laws can do the same?” Genius and super-inter­est­ing.
  2. The scan­dal of sex­u­al abuse in South­ern Bap­tist church­es:
    • Part One: Abuse of Faith (Robert Dow­nen, Lise Olsen, and John Tedesco, Hous­ton Chron­i­cle): “In all, since 1998, rough­ly 380 South­ern Bap­tist church lead­ers and vol­un­teers have faced alle­ga­tions of sex­u­al mis­con­duct, the news­pa­pers found. That includes those who were con­vict­ed, cred­i­bly accused and suc­cess­ful­ly sued, and those who con­fessed or resigned. More of them worked in Texas than in any oth­er state. They left behind more than 700 vic­tims, many of them shunned by their church­es, left to them­selves to rebuild their lives. Some were urged to for­give their abusers or to get abor­tions. About 220 offend­ers have been con­vict­ed or took plea deals, and dozens of cas­es are pend­ing.”
    • Part Two: Offend, then repeat (Robert Dow­nen, Lise Olsen, and John Tedesco, Hous­ton Chron­i­cle): ”No reli­gion is immune to sex­u­al mis­con­duct in its ranks. But unlike the Roman Catholic Church, which is wrestling with its own sex-abuse scan­dal, Bap­tists don’t answer to a pope or bish­op. Local church auton­o­my is a bedrock foun­da­tion of Bap­tist faith. There’s no dio­cese that assigns priests to a parish. Instead, each church is respon­si­ble for ordain­ing and hir­ing its own min­is­ters.”
    • Part Three: Prey­ing On Teens (Robert Dow­nen, Lise Olsen, and John Tedesco, Hous­ton Chron­i­cle): “More than 100 South­ern Bap­tists described as for­mer youth pas­tors or youth min­is­ters are now in prison, are reg­is­tered as sex offend­ers or have been charged with sex crimes, the news­pa­pers found. Their most com­mon tar­gets were teenage girls and boys, though small­er chil­dren also were molest­ed, some­times in pas­tors’ stud­ies and Sun­day school rooms.”
    • South­ern Bap­tists and the Scan­dal of Church Sex­u­al Abuse (Rus­sell Moore, per­son­al blog): “Jesus does not cov­er up sin with­in the tem­ple of his pres­ence. He brings every­thing hid­den to light. We should too. When we down­play or cov­er over what has hap­pened in the name of Jesus to those he loves we are not “pro­tect­ing” Jesus’ rep­u­ta­tion. We are instead fight­ing Jesus him­self. No church should be frus­trat­ed by the Hous­ton Chronicle’s report­ing, but should thank God for it. The Judg­ment Seat of Christ will be far less ret­i­cent than a news­pa­per series to uncov­er what should nev­er have been hid­den.” — he also wrote an op-ed for the New York Times a few days after this: South­ern Bap­tists Face Their #MeToo Moment (Rus­sell Moore, New York Times).
    • The Real­i­ty of Sex­u­al Abuse Hits Home: What Hap­pened? What Do We Do Now? (Al Mohler, per­son­al blog): “South­ern Bap­tists, by instinct, have prac­ticed a form of moral­ism that views sex­u­al mis­be­hav­ior as an iso­lat­ed event—deal with it and move on. This sim­plis­tic moral­ism reduces sex­u­al abuse and gloss­es over the sever­i­ty of the crime. Sex­u­al abuse is not an iso­lat­ed act of mis­be­hav­ior; it leaves in its wake scarred vic­tims as well as mali­cious vic­tim­iz­ers. Abuse of this nature snow­balls.” This arti­cle has some insight­ful com­men­tary on the unique chal­lenges fac­ing the South­ern Bap­tists because of their struc­ture.
    • Evan­gel­i­cal Apoc­a­lypse (Dale M. Coul­ter, First Things): “As one denom­i­na­tion­al leader point­ed out to me, min­is­ters brought up on charges and dis­missed from one denom­i­na­tion have sim­ply gone to anoth­er for cre­den­tials. It’s not just laity who take advan­tage of evan­gel­i­cal­is­m’s big tent to move around. These open net­works for min­is­te­r­i­al move­ment from one part of evan­gel­i­cal­ism to anoth­er allow sex­u­al abusers to escape judg­ment and start over. We don’t need a data­base of sex­u­al abusers for the South­ern Bap­tist Con­ven­tion, we need it for evan­gel­i­cal­ism as a whole.” I don’t know how fea­si­ble that spe­cif­ic sug­ges­tion is, but I do know Coul­ter is point­ing out a real and very hard-to-address prob­lem.
    • In a dif­fer­ent neck of the woods: Why Does the Catholic Church Keep Fail­ing on Sex­u­al Abuse? (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “O’Malley’s career, with all of its suc­cess­es and frus­tra­tions, illu­mi­nates why the sex-abuse cri­sis has once again sub­sumed the Catholic Church—and why this insti­tu­tion, one of the world’s great moral author­i­ties, has been inca­pable of solv­ing one of the most moral­ly straight­for­ward prob­lems of our time.”
  3. Bill Gates tweet­ed out a chart and sparked a huge debate about glob­al pover­ty (Dylan Matthews, Vox): “Hick­el argues that focus­ing on data show­ing declines in glob­al pover­ty does polit­i­cal work on behalf of glob­al cap­i­tal­ism, defend­ing an inher­ent­ly unjust glob­al sys­tem that has failed res­i­dents of rich and poor nations alike. Pinker agrees that the data sup­ports the idea that cap­i­tal­ism is work­ing for the world’s poor­est, and says that’s a deci­sive rebut­tal of Hickel’s nar­ra­tive of endur­ing per­se­cu­tion.”
  4. An African-Amer­i­can Woman Reflects on the Trans­gen­der Move­ment (Nurid­deen Knight, Pub­lic Dis­course): “Para­dox­i­cal­ly, the more our soci­ety tries to free itself from gen­der stereo­types, the more it becomes enslaved to them. By say­ing that peo­ple can be born in a body of the wrong gen­der, trans­gen­der activists are say­ing there is a set of feel­ings that are only allo­cat­ed to women and anoth­er set for men. There­fore, they believe, those who feel things that do not con­form to their sex’s accept­able set of feel­ings must out­ward­ly change their gen­der to match their mind.”
  5. Trevor Noah on Liam Neeson’s Racist Con­fes­sion (YouTube): much more thought­ful than any­thing else I have come across.
  6. 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.’”
    • I am pret­ty sure I shared a sim­i­lar link before, but I can’t find it search­ing my archives. Maybe I cut it at the last minute one week. Fas­ci­nat­ing regard­less.
  7. Sci­ence Is The Evan­gel­i­cal Tro­phy Wife (David Hed­dle, per­son­al blog): “In many evan­gel­i­cal cir­cles, sci­ence has become a tro­phy wife. Put her front and cen­ter, and show her beau­ty in, say, the form of Hub­ble neb­u­lae pho­tographs, with the req­ui­site Psalm 19:1 cap­tion, but do not ever let her speak, for she is like­ly to embar­rass you. Her the­o­log­i­cal util­i­ty is only in the pleas­ant optics, not in the sub­stance.” Beau­ti­ful title.

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). 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.