Tag: LGBTQ

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.

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Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 187

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. Emo­tions Make Ter­ri­ble Gods (Greg Morse, Desir­ing God): “We live in an emo­ji world where self-expres­sion and ‘being the true you’ hold high­est pri­or­i­ty — no one can tell us how to feel…. In all, the assump­tion stands: you are your emo­tions — for bet­ter or worse. To repress them is to repress your­self.”
  2. ‘I Was a TSA Agent, and You Fed Me’ (Kate Shell­nut, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “But church­es, as they join in prayer for a leg­isla­tive solu­tion, have also stepped up to sup­port com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers affect­ed by the bud­get­ing stale­mate. Here are 10 places where Chris­tians are reach­ing out to love their fur­loughed and unpaid neigh­bors…” This is an inspir­ing list. I am struck by both the geo­graph­ic and the denom­i­na­tion­al diver­si­ty. The extent to which church­es bless their com­mu­ni­ties is dif­fi­cult to over­state.
  3. Is Big Tech Merg­ing With Big Broth­er? Kin­da Looks Like It (David Samuels, Wired): “A nation­al or glob­al sur­veil­lance net­work that uses benef­i­cent algo­rithms to reshape human thoughts and actions in ways that elites believe to be just or ben­e­fi­cial to all mankind is hard­ly the road to a new Eden. It’s the road to a prison camp.”
  4. Death on demand: has euthana­sia gone too far? (Christo­pher de Bel­laigue, Guardian): “Alto­geth­er, well over a quar­ter of all deaths in 2017 in the Nether­lands were induced.… sui­cide leaves scars on friends and fam­i­ly that may nev­er heal. But sui­cide is an indi­vid­ual act, self-moti­vat­ed and self-admin­is­tered, and its force field is con­tained. Euthana­sia, by con­trast, is the prod­uct of soci­ety. When it goes wrong, it goes wrong for every­one.” In case you’re read­ing quick­ly, read that first sen­tence again. Over 25%!
  5. The Gay Church (Andrew Sul­li­van, New York Mag­a­zine): “A church that, since 2005, bans priests with ‘deep-seat­ed homo­sex­u­al ten­den­cies’ and offi­cial­ly teach­es that gay men are ‘objec­tive­ly dis­or­dered’ and inher­ent­ly dis­posed toward ‘intrin­sic moral evil’ is actu­al­ly com­posed, in ways very few oth­er insti­tu­tions are, of gay men.” I find his lack of engage­ment with Scrip­ture and focus on church his­to­ry strik­ing and very Catholic.
  6. A lot of arti­cles about the dust­up at the March for Life. I find polar­iz­ing sit­u­a­tions like this fas­ci­nat­ing and fre­quent­ly reveal­ing.
    • The Media Botched the Cov­ing­ton Catholic Sto­ry (Caitlin Flana­gan, The Atlantic): “Among oth­er things, jour­nal­is­tic ethics held that if you didn’t have the report­ing to sup­port a sto­ry, and if that sto­ry had the poten­tial to hurt its sub­jects, and if those sub­jects were pri­vate cit­i­zens, and if they were more­over minors, you didn’t run the sto­ry. You kept report­ing it; you let your­self get scooped; and you accept­ed that speed is not the high­est val­ue. Oth­er­wise, you were the trash press.” This piece is bru­tal. If you only read one of the arti­cles in this sec­tion, make it this one.
    • For an exam­ple of a harsh­er per­spec­tive: Why do the Cov­ing­ton Catholic kids get the ben­e­fit of the doubt? (Lau­ra Turn­er, Reli­gion News Ser­vice): “There’s no virtue in rush­ing to get in a hot take! But nei­ther is there in ignor­ing clear evi­dence of racism and cru­el­ty. As new accounts and new videos of the inci­dent emerged, more stayed the same than changed: Sandmann’s sim­per­ing expres­sion remained, as did his immov­able oppo­si­tion to Phillips. (In his ‘Today’ show inter­view, Sand­mann says he now wish­es he ‘could’ve walked away and avoid­ed the whole thing.’ The use of ‘could’ve’ is doing a lot of work there — he always could have cho­sen to walk away. He chose not to.)”
    • The Cov­ing­ton Scis­sor (Ross Douthat, NY Times): “To under­stand what makes this inci­dent so bril­liant in its divi­sive­ness, you need to see the tapes­try in full, how each con­stituent ele­ment (abor­tion, race, MAGA, white boys, Catholi­cism, Native Amer­i­can rit­u­al) auto­mat­i­cal­ly con­firms pri­ors on both sides of our divide. And you also need to see how the video itself, far from being a means to achiev­ing con­sen­sus, is an amaz­ing accel­er­ant of con­tro­ver­sy…” Douthat’s op-ed is inspired by the short sto­ry Sort By Con­tro­ver­sial (Scott Alexan­der, Slate Star Codex). It’s an easy read and I rec­om­mend it.
    • Anoth­er per­spec­tive less sym­pa­thet­ic to the boys: The real pol­i­tics behind the Cov­ing­ton Catholic con­tro­ver­sy, explained (Zack Beauchamp, Vox): “The argu­ment here is not that it’s wrong to care about the Cov­ing­ton stu­dents per se. Rather, it’s a kind of dis­gust at the hypocrisy on dis­play: Con­ser­v­a­tives and the main­stream media don’t, in the left-lib­er­al view, ever dis­play the same lev­els of con­cern for minor­i­ty kids accused of actu­al crimes. All the sym­pa­thy being extend­ed to these kids, all the ben­e­fit of the doubt, reflects the abil­i­ty of the priv­i­leged to com­mand a lev­el of sym­pa­thy that the less priv­i­leged lack.”
    • Cov­ing­ton isn’t about facts, but about iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics. Nick Sand­mann com­mit­ted ‘face­crime’ (Tuck­er Carl­son, Fox News): “People’s views evolve over time. Polit­i­cal divi­sions can heal and often do. But fights over iden­ti­ty do not; they are dif­fer­ent. Iden­ti­ty does not change. It can’t be mod­er­at­ed or con­trolled. It’s inher­ent. We’re born that way. When we go to war over who we are, it’s a per­ma­nent bat­tle. It is a dis­as­ter that lasts for gen­er­a­tions. Iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics will destroy this coun­try faster than a for­eign inva­sion.”
    • The Abyss of Hate Ver­sus Hate (Andrew Sul­li­van, NY Mag­a­zine): “To put it blunt­ly: They were 16-year-olds sub­ject­ed to ver­bal racist assault by grown men; and then the kids were accused of being big­ots. It just beg­gars belief that the same lib­er­als who fret about ‘micro-aggres­sions’ for 20-some­things were able to see 16-year-olds absorb­ing the worst racist garbage from reli­gious big­ots … and then express the desire to punch the kids in the face…. this is what will inevitably hap­pen once you’ve rede­fined racism or sex­ism to mean prej­u­dice plus pow­er. ”
  7. US mis­sion­ary who engaged with reclu­sive Brazil­ian tribe could be charged with geno­cide (Phoebe Loomes, NZ Her­ald): “Camp­bell has claimed that he made the expe­di­tion to the remote region at the request of the Jama­ma­di peo­ple, who he is in con­tact with, as they want­ed to learn to use GPS nav­i­ga­tors. Dur­ing this expe­di­tion he encoun­tered the iso­lat­ed Hi-Mer­imã tribe. For this, Brazil­ian offi­cials say Camp­bell could be charged with a slew of offences, includ­ing geno­cide.“
    • Geno­cide seems much too strong a term for a sit­u­a­tion in which no one is known to have died or even so much as sneezed. Maybe the word trans­lat­ed as geno­cide is broad­er in Por­tuguese?
    • Help­ful con­text: Brazil Inves­ti­gates If US Mis­sion­ary Encroached on Iso­lat­ed Ama­zon Tribe (Kate Shell­nut, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Ribeiro shared con­cerns about indige­nous peo­ple receiv­ing assis­tance from groups appoint­ed by the gov­ern­ment, since they rarely stay in a com­mu­ni­ty long enough to build rela­tion­ships and learn the lan­guage. Mean­while, she says field mis­sion­ar­ies often bring high lev­els of tech­ni­cal training—from anthro­pol­o­gy to nursing—while com­mit­ting to serve for an extend­ed amount of time.”

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 This Is What Makes Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats So Dif­fer­ent (Vox, Ezra Klein): the title made me skep­ti­cal, but there are some good insights in this arti­cle (first shared in vol­ume 32 back in 2016).

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 182

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

Things Glen Found Interesting

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

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

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

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 180

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting

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

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

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

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 177

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 Two Dif­fer­ent Temp­ta­tions Fac­ing Young Evan­gel­i­cals (David French, Nation­al Review): “So, young Chris­tians, hold your faith tight­ly and your pol­i­tics loose­ly. You will not find a home here. As Peter says, you are a ‘for­eign­er and exile.’ It’s best to get used to it ear­ly on. Trust me, it can be a gut-wrench­ing dis­cov­ery to make when you’re old.”
  2. STEP Bible Data (Tyn­dale House, Github)This is the under­ly­ing data set for STEP Bible (Scrip­ture Tools for Every Per­son). If you’re a coder look­ing for a neat project, play around with this! Read the announce­ment here.
  3. Sev­er­al inter­est­ing LGBT-relat­ed pieces came across my path this week:
    • Is Sex Bina­ry?(Alex Byrne, Arc Dig­i­tal): “As Simone de Beau­voir puts it in The Sec­ond Sex (the found­ing text of mod­ern fem­i­nism), the sex­es ‘are basi­cal­ly defined by the gametes they pro­duce.’ Specif­i­cal­ly, females pro­duce large gametes (repro­duc­tive cells), and males pro­duce small ones. (Since there are no species with a third inter­me­di­ate gamete size, there are only two sex­es.) A glance at the huge vari­ety of females and males across the ani­mal and veg­etable king­doms will con­firm that there is noth­ing else the sex­es can be.” The author is a pro-trans pro­fes­sor of phi­los­o­phy at MIT.
    • Queer­ing Sci­ence (Mark Reg­nerus, First Things): “Any study that comes to con­clu­sions or even rais­es evi­dence con­trary to the taboos that have formed in recent years is tak­en hostage—first by pseu­do­ny­mous strangers at key­boards; then by the oppor­tunis­tic fac­ul­ty who jump on the band­wag­on dis­play­ing a method­olog­i­cal purism hereto­fore unknown in sex­u­al sci­ence; and then by the uni­ver­si­ties them­selves, whose inter­est has shift­ed from the pur­suit of truth to the pur­suit of virtue (sig­nal­ing).” I shared some arti­cles about the Littman brouha­ha at Brown short­ly after it hap­pened, and I’ve also shared Mark Regnerus’s research before. He is a pro­fes­sor of soci­ol­o­gy at UT Austin.
    • Bartle­by The Big­ot (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “This young Chris­t­ian, Isabel­la Chow, is now thought to be so dan­ger­ous that stu­dents (and oth­ers?) at Berke­ley believe she should be dri­ven from pub­lic life, and can­not be allowed to say what she believes on the pages of the cam­pus news­pa­per.” This is no doubt eas­i­er for many of you to imag­ine than think­ing about some­one bak­ing a cake for a gay wed­ding.
  4. Reli­gion and Depres­sion in Ado­les­cence (Frue­hwirth, Iyer, and Zhang, Jour­nal of Polit­i­cal Econ­o­my): “Many stud­ies show a cor­re­la­tion between reli­gios­i­ty and men­tal health, yet the ques­tion remains whether the rela­tion­ship is causal…. Explo­ration of mech­a­nisms sug­gests that reli­gios­i­ty buffers against stres­sors in ways that school activ­i­ties and friend­ships do not.” If you can’t access the ver­sion accept­ed for pub­li­ca­tion you can see an ear­li­er ver­sion at SSRN. Found via Tyler Cowen — see his com­men­tary.
  5. Why Do Women Earn Less Than Men? Evi­dence from Bus and Train Oper­a­tors (Emanuel Bolot­nyy, job mar­ket paper from Har­vard): “Even in a union­ized envi­ron­ment, where work tasks are sim­i­lar, hourly wages are iden­ti­cal, and tenure dic­tates pro­mo­tions, female work­ers earn $0.89 on the male-work­er dol­lar (week­ly earn­ings). We use con­fi­den­tial admin­is­tra­tive data on bus and train oper­a­tors from the Mass­a­chu­setts Bay Trans­porta­tion Author­i­ty (MBTA) to show that the week­ly earn­ings gap can be explained entire­ly by the work­place choic­es that women and men make. Women val­ue time and flex­i­bil­i­ty more than men.”

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 174

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

Things Glen Found Interesting

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

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

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

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

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

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 173

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. Nobel Peace Prize Goes to Chris­t­ian Doc­tor Who Heals Rape Vic­tims (Kate Shell­nutt, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “[Dr. Denis] Muk­wege is the son of a Pen­te­costal min­is­ter and was inspired to pur­sue med­i­cine after trav­el­ing with his father to pray for the sick. Panzi Hos­pi­tal, which he found­ed in 1999, is man­aged by the Pen­te­costal Church­es in Cen­tral Africa (CEPAC).”
  2. Turk­ish court orders release of U.S. pas­tor Andrew Brun­son (Erin Cun­ning­ham, Wash­ing­ton Post): “In his final state­ment to the court just before the ver­dict was issued, Brun­son said: ‘I’m an inno­cent man. I love Jesus. I love this coun­try,’ and broke down in tears.”
  3. So many peo­ple have had their DNA sequenced that they’ve put oth­er peo­ple’s pri­va­cy in jeop­ardy (Deb­o­rah Net­burn, Los Ange­les Times): “…once 3 mil­lion Amer­i­cans have uploaded their genomes to pub­lic geneal­o­gy web­sites, near­ly every­one in the U.S. would be iden­ti­fi­able by their DNA alone and just a few addi­tion­al clues. More than 1 mil­lion Amer­i­cans have already pub­lished their genet­ic infor­ma­tion, and dozens more do so every day.” The under­ly­ing research: Iden­ti­ty infer­ence of genom­ic data using long-range famil­ial search­es (Erlich, Shor, Pe’er, and Car­mi, Sci­ence)
  4. Pol­i­tics as the New Reli­gion for Pro­gres­sive Democ­rats (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “Reli­gious­ly unaf­fil­i­at­ed vot­ers, who may or may not be asso­ci­at­ed with oth­er civic insti­tu­tions, seem most excit­ed about sup­port­ing or donat­ing to caus­es, going to ral­lies, and express­ing opin­ions online, among oth­er activ­i­ties. Polit­i­cal engage­ment may be pro­vid­ing these Amer­i­cans with a new form of iden­ti­ty.”
  5. I Left Same-Sex Romance for Love (Rachel Gilson, Gospel Coali­tion): “If giv­ing free rein to my desires was the key to life, why had it only some­times brought me hap­pi­ness? Just as often, I reaped medi­oc­rity or pain. Con­trary to what I believed, pur­su­ing my nat­ur­al desires did not cre­ate ful­fill­ment, nor were my desires ful­ly trust­wor­thy just because they were, and are, ‘real.’ An itch can be very real, yelling out to be scratched. But for some ail­ments, scratch­ing just deep­ens the wound. A dif­fer­ent cure must be found.” The author is a cam­pus min­is­ter and a Yale grad. If you find this arti­cle intrigu­ing, she also has a per­son­al web­site: https://rachelgilson.com/
  6. Amer­i­cans Strong­ly Dis­like PC Cul­ture (Yascha Mounk, The Atlantic): “Among the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion, a full 80 per­cent believe that “polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness is a prob­lem in our coun­try.” Even young peo­ple are uncom­fort­able with it, includ­ing 74 per­cent ages 24 to 29, and 79 per­cent under age 24. On this par­tic­u­lar issue, the woke are in a clear minor­i­ty across all ages. Youth isn’t a good proxy for sup­port of polit­i­cal correctness—and it turns out race isn’t, either. Whites are ever so slight­ly less like­ly than aver­age to believe that polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness is a prob­lem in the coun­try: 79 per­cent of them share this sen­ti­ment. Instead, it is Asians (82 per­cent), His­pan­ics (87 per­cent), and Amer­i­can Indi­ans (88 per­cent) who are most like­ly to oppose polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness…. Three quar­ters of African Amer­i­cans oppose polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness.” The author is a lec­tur­er on gov­ern­ment at Har­vard.
  7. Mak­ing What Har­vard Is About Trans­par­ent (Raz­ib Khan, per­son­al blog): “…a few years ago the pres­i­dent of Har­vard declared that the insti­tu­tion was all about inclu­sion. On the face of it that is just a bald-faced lie, and every­one knows it. Har­vard is about exclu­sion, selec­tion, and cura­tion. ‘Inclu­sion’ actu­al­ly meant that there are cer­tain views and back­grounds that Har­vard is going to curate and encour­age. Which is fine. But an insti­tu­tion which excludes >95% of those who apply for admis­sion is by def­i­n­i­tion not inclu­sive and open.” The essay is about Har­vard but also applies to schools like it (look­ing at you, Stan­ford). You won’t agree with every­thing, but a lot will ring true.

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 Every­thing That’s Wrong Of Rac­coons (Mal­lo­ry Ort­berg, The Toast): “Once when my dog died a pas­sel of rac­coons showed up in the back­yard as if to say ‘Now that he’s gone, we own the night,’ and they didn’t flinch when I yelled at them, and I found it dis­re­spect­ful to 1) me per­son­al­ly and 2) the entire flow of the food chain. Don’t dis­re­spect me if you can’t eat me, you false-night-dogs.” (first shared in vol­ume 97)

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 170

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

Things Glen Found Interesting

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

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

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

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 169

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

This one is com­ing to you from Seoul. I’ve been super busy on this mis­sion trip, so these are select­ed from a less wide range than nor­mal.

  1. The Ide­o­log­i­cal Blind­ness at the Heart of Media Bias (David French, Nation­al Review): “It is con­sis­tent­ly inter­est­ing to me that main­stream media out­lets have some­how con­vinced them­selves of two con­tra­dic­to­ry things at once: 1) They can­not fair­ly cov­er Amer­i­ca with­out a news­room that more or less looks like Amer­i­ca, but 2) they can cov­er Amer­i­can with­out a news­room that thinks like Amer­i­ca.”
  2. God Doesn’t Turn A Blind Eye To Abuse, Nei­ther Should The Church (Rus­sell Moore, Gospel Coali­tion): “Many through­out the cen­turies have sought to pro­tect the rep­u­ta­tion of God by down­play­ing his wrath. To some degree, the impulse here is good, because many have a false view of God as an angry, sullen, puni­tive deity, not as the God of over­flow­ing love Jesus revealed to us. God’s wrath isn’t a tem­per tantrum. On the oth­er hand, those who point us away from the wrath of God do so at the per­il of eclips­ing God’s own rev­e­la­tion of him­self as holy and just, the One who ‘does not leave the guilty unpun­ished’ (Ex. 34:7). At the cross, the apos­tle Paul wrote, God ‘con­demned sin in the flesh’ (Rom. 8:3). This is impor­tant for us to know, espe­cial­ly those who have sur­vived awful things…. At the cross, God’s wrath and God’s love come togeth­er. They don’t can­cel one anoth­er out.”
  3. Remem­ber those arti­cles I shared about the hor­rif­ic Chi­na crack­down on Mus­lims? Now they are turn­ing their atten­tion to Chris­tians (although much less intense­ly — the sit­u­a­tion with the Mus­lims has echoes of con­cen­tra­tion camps).
    • Chi­na Bans Zion, Beijing’s Biggest House Church (Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Bei­jing author­i­ties threat­ened to close Zion Church last month after the 1,500-member con­gre­ga­tion, one of the Chi­nese capital’s largest house church­es, refused to install sur­veil­lance cam­eras in its sanc­tu­ary. After ser­vices on Sun­day, offi­cials deliv­ered on their threat to the unof­fi­cial Protes­tant con­gre­ga­tion, which meets in a ren­o­vat­ed hall in north­ern Bei­jing. Zion is now banned and its mate­ri­als con­fis­cat­ed.…”
    • Group: Offi­cials destroy­ing cross­es, burn­ing bibles in Chi­na (AP News): “China’s gov­ern­ment is ratch­et­ing up a crack­down on Chris­t­ian con­gre­ga­tions in Bei­jing and sev­er­al provinces, destroy­ing cross­es, burn­ing bibles, shut­ting church­es and order­ing fol­low­ers to sign papers renounc­ing their faith, accord­ing to pas­tors and a group that mon­i­tors reli­gion in Chi­na.”
    • Church raid­ed amid esca­lat­ing crack­down (Chi­naAid): “All across Chi­na, church­es are fac­ing pres­sures unprece­dent­ed since the reign of dic­ta­tor Mao Zedong. In Henan, where a con­cen­trat­ed crack­down is occur­ring, sev­en min­is­ters were arrest­ed and then lat­er released that evening…. Addi­tion­al­ly, local offi­cials in Wen­zhou, Zhe­jiang dis­trib­uted a form col­lect­ing infor­ma­tion on the reli­gious beliefs of mid­dle school stu­dents and their par­ents. This could have dan­ger­ous reper­cus­sions, as Chi­nese reg­u­la­tions for­bid par­ents from teach­ing reli­gion to their chil­dren.”
    • Chi­na Mulls Major Restric­tions on Online Min­istries (Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Chi­nese Chris­tians have one month to tell their gov­ern­ment what they think of pro­posed new rules that ban the shar­ing of prayer, Bible read­ing, bap­tism, com­mu­nion, and oth­er forms of reli­gious activ­i­ty online.“
  4. Vice And Fire (Peter Hitchens, First Things): “As far as I can find out, ­Mar­tin is a lapsed Roman Catholic and has quite banal views about how reli­gion caus­es wars and God is a ‘giant invis­i­ble guy in the sky.’ I do not think he has set out to make an attack on Chris­tian­i­ty. I do not think he espe­cial­ly likes it, but I sus­pect he has dis­card­ed it, and so he has writ­ten an account of a world in which it sim­ply does not exist. His fan­ta­sy great­ly dis­turbs me, because it helps to nor­mal­ize the indif­fer­ence to Chris­tian­i­ty which is a far greater threat to it than active athe­ism.” This is an excel­lent cri­tique of the huge­ly over­rat­ed Game Of Thrones.
  5. After Both­am Jean’s shoot­ing death, his Dal­las church intent on seek­ing jus­tice (Bob­by Ross, Jr., The Chris­t­ian Chron­i­cle): “By all accounts, Both­am Jean was a devot­ed man of faith with a ‘beau­ti­ful’ and ‘pow­er­ful’ singing voice. He was bap­tized at age 10 in his native St. Lucia and moved to the U.S. at age 19 to attend Hard­ing Uni­ver­si­ty in Searcy, Ark., where he often led wor­ship in chapel and served as a min­istry intern with the Col­lege Church of Christ.”
    • Relat­ed: The Worst Police Shoot­ing Yet (David French, Nation­al Review): “We ask police offi­cers to be brave. We ask offi­cers to face a much high­er degree of dan­ger than civil­ians. We ask them to show restraint even in the face of provo­ca­tions and tense con­fronta­tions. There are count­less among them who do all we ask, and more. But we also ask some­thing else: that police offi­cers be sub­ject to the very laws they’re sworn to enforce.”
    • Relat­ed: End Qual­i­fied Immu­ni­ty (David French, Nation­al Review): “A police offi­cer killed a com­plete­ly inno­cent man because of the officer’s inex­cus­able mis­take. He escaped crim­i­nal pros­e­cu­tion. And then he even escaped civ­il lia­bil­i­ty — because of a lit­tle-known, judge-made legal doc­trine called qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty.” Note that French is writ­ing about a dif­fer­ent case in this arti­cle.
    • Relat­ed: Should Cops Be Immune From Law­suits? (Matt Ford, The New Repub­lic): “The prob­lems with qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty mir­ror a deep­er and more dis­turb­ing trend in the law. Courts, which are sup­posed to be the great vin­di­ca­tors of Amer­i­cans’ rights and lib­er­ties, are increas­ing­ly closed off to them.”
  6. Cal­i­for­nia leg­is­la­tor shelves bill to ban paid ‘gay con­ver­sion ther­a­py’ for adults (Melanie Mason, LA TImes): “The news of Low’s deci­sion was laud­ed by oppo­nents to the mea­sure. Jonathan Keller, pres­i­dent of the social­ly con­ser­v­a­tive orga­ni­za­tion Cal­i­for­nia Fam­i­ly Coun­cil, said his group was ‘inex­press­ibly grate­ful’ to Low for lis­ten­ing to reli­gious com­mu­ni­ties.”
  7. Does Our Cul­tur­al Obses­sion With Safe­ty Spell the Down­fall of Democ­ra­cy? (Thomas Chat­ter­ton Williams, New York Times): These are “‘the three Great Untruths’ of the cur­rent moment: ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you weak­er’; ‘always trust your feel­ings’; ‘life is a bat­tle between good peo­ple and evil peo­ple.’” This is a review of two books and is quite insight­ful.

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 some thoughts about slav­ery and the Bible – Does The Bible Sup­port Slav­ery? (a lec­ture giv­en by the war­den of Tyn­dale House at Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty, the link is to the video with notes) and Does God Con­done Slav­ery In The Bible? (Part One – Old Tes­ta­ment) and also Part Two – New Tes­ta­ment (longer pieces from Glenn Miller at Chris­t­ian Think­tank). All three are quite help­ful. (first shared in vol­ume 76)

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 168

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 Most Momen­tous Place? (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “The old city of Jerusalem is aston­ish­ing­ly small for a city with so many momen­tous places. One can walk from Christianity’s holi­est site to the holi­est site of Judaism, paus­ing to look at one of the holi­est sites of Islam, in less time than it takes to walk from my office on the cam­pus of George Mason Uni­ver­si­ty to the cam­pus Star­bucks.” Short and provoca­tive.
  2. Aus­trali­a’s new Pen­te­costal prime min­is­ter: Try to guess how the press is receiv­ing him (Ira Rifkin, GetRe­li­gion): “…the new prime min­is­ter, Scott Mor­ri­son, is an out­spo­ken, polit­i­cal­ly con­ser­v­a­tive Pen­te­costal Chris­t­ian. This mix­ing of reli­gion and pol­i­tics may be old-hat at this point for Amer­i­cans. But it’s an entire­ly new expe­ri­ence for Aus­tralians.”
  3. My nephew tried to school me on cul­tur­al appro­pri­a­tion. It did­n’t end well.(Jack Van­No­ord, Chica­go Tri­bune): fic­tion­al, amus­ing, and makes a seri­ous point about glob­al cul­tur­al exchange. “Most weeks, his less-woke friends go out for Taco Tues­days, but not Kyle. No more hum­mus. No more bagels. No mo’ pho. Poor Kyle. Liv­ing the unap­pro­pri­at­ed life is tough busi­ness. When­ev­er it rains, Kyle gets soaked. No more umbrel­las for him. Chi­nese. Kyle has stopped binge watch­ing ‘The Walk­ing Dead’ once I men­tioned the word for, and the con­cept of, zom­bies were appro­pri­at­ed from West Africa. Kyle was tak­ing a sum­mer math course at the com­mu­ni­ty col­lege. But he dropped out. It was just too hard. His home­work was tak­ing all evening. He was doing all his assign­ments using Roman numer­als since Ara­bic numer­als are … well, Ara­bic.”
  4. The Reli­gious Typol­o­gy (Pew Research Cen­ter): “ a new Pew Research Cen­ter analy­sis looks at beliefs and behav­iors that cut across many denom­i­na­tions – impor­tant traits that unite peo­ple of dif­fer­ent faiths, or that divide peo­ple who have the same reli­gious affil­i­a­tion – pro­duc­ing a new and reveal­ing clas­si­fi­ca­tion, or typol­o­gy, of reli­gion in Amer­i­ca.”
  5. A Prison That’s Also a Loony Bin (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “A trans­gen­der pris­on­er has admit­ted sex­u­al­ly assault­ing inmates at a women’s jail. Karen White, 51, who was born male but now iden­ti­fies as a woman, has plead­ed guilty to two counts of sex­u­al touch­ing at New Hall Prison, Wake­field.” The sto­ry is astound­ing.
  6. Bet­ter Dead Than Dis­abled? (Charles Camosy, Com­mon­weal): “pro­lif­ers are not imag­in­ing things: argu­ments in favor of the autonomous moral and legal choice to com­mit infan­ti­cide are easy to find…. [for exam­ple, a] 2012 arti­cle by moral philoso­phers Alber­to Giu­bili­ni and Francesca Min­er­va, which appeared in the respect­ed Jour­nal of Med­ical Ethics, was provoca­tive­ly titled ‘After-Birth Abor­tion: Why Should the Baby Live?’”
  7. Diary of a Con­cus­sion: What I Learned About Head Injuries By Hav­ing One (Eliz­a­beth Lopat­to, The Verge): “To have your per­son­al­i­ty altered by brain trau­ma seems to upset peo­ple more than hav­ing it altered by, for instance, emo­tion­al trau­ma. I don’t know why this is! …. If I thought I was my brain, prob­a­bly I would have found the injury more upset­ting. But I didn’t and don’t believe that; my self is an inter­ac­tion between my body and my brain.” This is a year old but I just stum­bled upon it. Super inter­est­ing.

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 To Pray A Psalm (Justin Tay­lor, Gospel Coali­tion): prayer life need a boost? Give this a try. (first shared in vol­ume 69)

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.