Tag: missions

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 40

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

  1. The KKK, White Pow­er, and Racism (Chi Alpha’s Dri­ving Diver­si­ty blog): “I woke up a lit­tle after mid­night unable to sleep. On Face­book, an African Amer­i­can stu­dent from one of our Chi Alpha groups mes­saged me ask­ing for my prayers and help. The KKK is hand­ing out fly­ers in his town (more fly­ers).“
  2. An Evan­gel­i­cal Move­ment Takes On Cli­mate Change (Tik Root, Newsweek): “Appalled, Keys found­ed a non­prof­it called Jesus Peo­ple Against Pol­lu­tion in 1992, and for more than two decades that’s been her mis­sion. She calls it her ‘king­dom assign­ment’ from God.“
  3. Defin­ing Evan­gel­i­cals In An Elec­tion Year (Ander­son and Stet­zer, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “The desire to sur­vey white evan­gel­i­cals to deter­mine their polit­i­cal inter­ests inad­ver­tent­ly ends up con­vey­ing two ideas that are not true: that ‘evan­gel­i­cal’ means ‘white’ and that evan­gel­i­cals are pri­mar­i­ly defined by their pol­i­tics…. Bro­ken out by eth­nic­i­ty, 29 per­cent of whites, 44 per­cent of African Amer­i­cans, 30 per­cent of His­pan­ics, and 17 per­cent of peo­ple from oth­er eth­nic­i­ties have evan­gel­i­cal beliefs.” Relat­ed: The Myth of the Evan­gel­i­cal Trump Vot­ers (Dar­ren Guer­ra, First Things): “the anti-Trump vote amongst all evan­gel­i­cals in the coun­try might reach 80–90% once non-Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry vot­ers are account­ed for.” 
  4. This Is A Good Sto­ry About Grow­ing Up Evan­gel­i­cal (Lau­ra Turn­er, Jezebel): “It is rare to hear some­one in main­stream media acknowl­edge that they are glad to be or have been evan­gel­i­cal, even though about a quar­ter of Amer­i­cans are evan­gel­i­cal.” The author is John and Nan­cy Ortberg’s daugh­ter and is on staff with City Church in San Fran­cis­co.
  5. Remem­ber­ing India’s Chris­t­ian Mar­tyrs Should Be a Church Pri­or­i­ty (Thomas Allen, Crux): “In August, 2008, hos­til­i­ty toward the Chris­t­ian “oth­er” explod­ed in Kand­hamal, leav­ing rough­ly 100 peo­ple dead, thou­sands injured, 300 church­es and 6,000 homes destroyed, and 50,000 peo­ple dis­placed, many of them forced to hide in near­by forests where more died of hunger and snakebites.”
  6. The Oba­ma Doc­trine (Jef­frey Gold­berg, The Atlantic): This is real­ly long. Fas­ci­nat­ing, but for polit­i­cal junkies only.
  7. As promised in the meet­ings, some sources to cor­rob­o­rate my claims about the ben­e­fi­cial impact of mis­sions: The Defend­er of the Good News, Ques­tion­ing Lamin San­neh (an inter­view at Chris­tian­i­ty Today), San­neh’s books Trans­lat­ing the Mes­sage: The Mis­sion­ary Impact On Cul­ture (BV2063 .S23 1989), Abo­li­tion­ists Abroad : Amer­i­can Blacks and the Mak­ing of Mod­ern West Africa (DT476.S26 1999) and Dis­ci­ples of All Nations: Pil­lars of World Chris­tian­i­ty (avail­able on reserve at the cir­cu­la­tion desk and also avail­able online), the works of Rod­ney Stark such as How The West Won (CB245 .S715 2014, also avail­able online), The Tri­umph of Chris­tian­i­ty (BR145.3 .S73 2011),  For The Glo­ry of God (BL221 .S747 2003) and, of course, the arti­cle I always allude to: The Mis­sion­ary Roots of Lib­er­al Democ­ra­cy (Wood­ber­ry, Amer­i­can Polit­i­cal Sci­ence Review)
  8. Quick Links:

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

Past emails are archived at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links (you can also sign up to receive them at that site)

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 23

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

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

With­out fur­ther ado, I give you the inter­est­ing things:

  1. The Ulti­mate List of Birth­day Free­bies (Stan­ford Dai­ly, Saman­tha Wong): This is, with­out a doubt, one of the most use­ful links I have ever shared with you. Not so much about broad­er soci­etal issues — but you’ll want to read it nonethe­less.
  2. The Anti-Free Speech Move­ment at UCLA (The Atlantic, Conor Frieder­s­dorf): I par­tic­u­lar­ly liked this bit: “The col­lege stu­dents fight­ing to lim­it free speech or to pun­ish free expres­sion are court­ing tremen­dous harms that would ulti­mate­ly fall dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly on the least pow­er­ful, most mar­gin­al­ized groups of the present and future…. activists who say that they live in a sys­tem of white suprema­cy [should not] empow­er state admin­is­tra­tors to police speech at their dis­cre­tion!”  For much more, check out UCLA law prof Eugene Volokh’s com­ments on cam­pus free­dom of speech (some of which are quot­ed in the Frieder­s­dorf arti­cle).
  3. Cash Strapped Mis­sion­ar­ies Get A New Call­ing: Home (Wall Street Jour­nal, Tama­ra Audi): this is sad. I encour­age you to pray for and give to mis­sion­ar­ies.
  4. Refram­ing The Debate About Pay­day Lend­ing (the blog of the New York Fed): Fas­ci­nat­ing. I’ve been crit­i­cal of pay­day lenders in the past, but at least some of my mis­giv­ings appear to have been off the mark.
  5. A Black Leg­end Refut­ed (Catholic World Report): this is a review of Church of Spies: The Pope’s Secret War Against Hitler. The review is from a biased source, but is the most detailed of the reviews I’ve seen. Kirkus Reviews, a sec­u­lar source, also has good things to say about it as does First Things, which is in between the two ide­o­log­i­cal­ly. The book’s endorse­ments are impres­sive.
  6. Quick links:

Disclaimer

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 22

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

To that end, on week­ends (usu­al­ly Fri­days but last night we had alum­ni over for home­com­ing and it turned into a five hour par­ty, so this time Sat­ur­day) I’ve been shar­ing articles/resources I have found help­ful recent­ly in think­ing about broad­er cul­tur­al and soci­etal issues (be sure to see the dis­claimer at the bot­tom). May these give you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar. Past emails are archived at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links

With­out fur­ther ado, I give you the inter­est­ing things:

  1. Mus­lim Migrants, Meet Chris­t­ian Gyp­sies (Jil­lian Mel­chior, Wall Street Jour­nal): this is pret­ty beau­ti­ful.
  2. Moral Respon­si­bil­i­ty and Emo­tion­al Rejec­tion of God (William Lane Craig): Craig, who we host­ed on cam­pus years ago, answers a tough ques­tion. I think it’s amus­ing how often he directs the read­er to anoth­er one of his books, but I don’t guess he had an alter­na­tive if he want­ed to keep his answer short enough to be read­able.
  3. Hook­ing Up Is Easy To Do (Katie Van Syck­le, NY Mag):  “I’ve come back to my alma mater because it sits at the cross­roads of two major themes of mod­ern-day col­lege sex: hookup cul­ture, which seems as ram­pant as I remem­ber it, and sex­u­al assault… Late­ly, researchers have been mak­ing an obvi­ous but con­tro­ver­sial point: that these two trend lines are in fact relat­ed — that hook­ing up puts stu­dents at high­er risk of hav­ing non­con­sen­su­al sex, and that there are ele­ments of this cul­ture… that are more com­pli­cat­ed than ‘yes means yes.’”
  4. How Friend­ships Change In Adult­hood (Julie Beck, The Atlantic): there’s a lot in this arti­cle. I was struck by the idea that friend­ships are either active, dor­mant, or com­mem­o­ra­tive.
  5. Joel Osteen: Would Jesus Christ Be A Good Pres­i­dent? (David Wal­lis, New York Observ­er): the title is super-click-bait. It’s a short, inter­est­ing inter­view with Joel Osteen, pas­tor of the largest church in Amer­i­ca.
  6. Trea­sures On Earth: How Reli­gion Is Redis­trib­ut­ing The World’s Wealth (Mor­gan Lee, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): mis­lead­ing title, inter­est­ing data.
  7. Quick Links:

Disclaimer

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 14

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

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

  1. From the big-bang-faith depart­ment: May­im Bia­lik: Hol­ly­wood is not friend­ly to peo­ple of faith (Sasha Bogursky, Fox News): Bia­lik, a devout Jew, is an actress on the Big Bang The­o­ry and in real life holds a Ph.D. in neu­ro­science. This inter­view caused such com­ment that she post­ed a fol­low-up on her blog: Where Faith Meets Sci­ence.

  2. From the his­tor­i­cal analy­sis depart­ment: Did Reli­gion Make The Civ­il War Worse? (Allen Guel­zo, The Atlantic): the author is a respect­ed pro­fes­sor with a sem­i­nary back­ground. I’m not sure what I think of his argu­ment, but I did find it inter­est­ing. The arti­cle made me think about Lincoln’s Sec­ond Inau­gur­al Address, which is always worth a re-read.

  3. From the hap­py news depart­ment: Chris­t­ian Mis­sions and the Spread of Democ­ra­cy (Greg Scan­dlen, The Fed­er­al­ist): This is a sum­ma­ry of some rather won­der­ful research Robert Wood­ber­ry pub­lished in The Amer­i­can Polit­i­cal Sci­ence Review back in 2012: The Mis­sion­ary Roots of Lib­er­al Democ­ra­cy. If it looks famil­iar it’s because I allude to it from time to time in my ser­mons and con­ver­sa­tions.

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.