Tag: new zealand

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 194

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. Relat­ed to the mosque attack in New Zealand:
    • Mass mur­der­ers crave pub­lic­i­ty. Maybe giv­ing them less would be help­ful. (Megan McAr­dle, Wash­ing­ton Post): “Many com­men­ta­tors, won­der­ing why mass shoot­ings became so com­mon in the late 20th cen­tu­ry, have point­ed to var­i­ous cul­tur­al and eco­nom­ic devel­op­ments. They might bet­ter have point­ed to cable news, which ensured that dis­af­fect­ed losers with hyper­tro­phied egos and shriv­eled souls became the non­stop talk of the nation — in every nation, and most of the world’s 6,500 lan­guages. The wall-to-wall cov­er­age teach­es men who may not be able to get a job or a girl­friend that, nonethe­less, in some­thing under an hour, they can become Genghis Khan.”
    • The New Zealand Attack and the Glob­al Chal­lenge of Far-Right Extrem­ism (Seth Jones, Cen­ter for Strate­gic and Inter­na­tion­al Stud­ies): “Based on the glob­al­iza­tion of far-right extrem­ism, the Christchurch attack—and the attacker—needs to be under­stood as part of a grow­ing inter­na­tion­al trend that requires more atten­tion and greater invest­ment from gov­ern­ments and the pri­vate sector.”
    • White Nationalism’s Deep Amer­i­can Roots (Adam Ser­w­er, The Atlantic): “A pop­u­lar myth of Amer­i­can his­to­ry is that racism is the exclu­sive province of the South. The truth is that much of the nativist ener­gy in the U.S. came from old-mon­ey elites in the North­east, and was also fueled by labor strug­gles in the Pacif­ic North­west, which had stirred a wave of big­otry that led to the Chi­nese Exclu­sion Act of 1882.” (this is not direct­ly relat­ed to the shoot­ing but is time­ly)
  2. An MIT Pro­fes­sor Meets the Author of All Knowl­edge (Ros­alind Picard, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “I once thought I was too smart to believe in God. Now I know I was an arro­gant fool who snubbed the great­est Mind in the cosmos—the Author of all sci­ence, math­e­mat­ics, art, and every­thing else there is to know. Today I walk humbly, hav­ing received the most unde­served grace. I walk with joy, along­side the most amaz­ing Com­pan­ion any­one could ask for, filled with desire to keep learn­ing and exploring.”
  3. The Indus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion of Shame (Sal­va­tore Sci­bona, New York Times): “We are under­go­ing an indus­tri­al rev­o­lu­tion in shame. New tech­nolo­gies have rad­i­cal­ly expand­ed our abil­i­ty to make and dis­trib­ute a prod­uct. The prod­uct is our judg­ment of one anoth­er. As in past indus­tri­al rev­o­lu­tions, the mass man­u­fac­ture and use of a prod­uct pre­vi­ous­ly avail­able to just a few or in small amounts has giv­en us the pow­er to do harm at a pre­vi­ous­ly unthink­able scale.”
  4. The Supreme Court Is Qui­et­ly Chang­ing the Sta­tus of Reli­gion in Amer­i­can Life (Jef­frey Toobin, New York­er): “What the con­ser­v­a­tives are doing, in effect, is read­ing the estab­lish­ment clause out of the Con­sti­tu­tion, and turn­ing almost every issue into a free-exer­cise case. In this read­ing, any denial of gov­ern­ment ben­e­fits to a church can be seen as dis­crim­i­na­tion which amounts to a denial of free exercise—and the con­ser­v­a­tives are mak­ing the same move with respect to individuals.”
    • Relat­ed: The Court and the Cross (Lin­da Green­house, New York Times): “The appetite of the two newest jus­tices, Mr. Kavanaugh and Mr. Gor­such, for cas­es that would enlarge the con­sti­tu­tion­al play­ing field for reli­gion appears near­ly boundless.”
  5. If Lib­er­als Won’t Enforce Bor­ders, Fas­cists Will (David Frum, The Atlantic): “Demagogues don’t rise by talk­ing about irrel­e­vant issues. Dem­a­gogues rise by talk­ing about issues that mat­ter to peo­ple, and that more con­ven­tion­al lead­ers appear unwill­ing or unable to address: unem­ploy­ment in the 1930s, crime in the 1960s, mass immi­gra­tion now. Vot­ers get to decide what the country’s prob­lems are. Polit­i­cal elites have to devise solu­tions to those prob­lems. If dif­fi­cult issues go unad­dressed by respon­si­ble lead­ers, they will be exploit­ed by irre­spon­si­ble ones.” I high­light­ed a piece by Frum with a sim­i­lar theme back in issue 175. This is a very thought­ful arti­cle.
  6. The Scan­dalous Acad­e­my: Social Sci­ence in Ser­vice of Iden­ti­ty Pol­i­tics (Scott Yenor, Pub­lic Dis­course): “Let us not ignore the most dis­turb­ing find­ing: that men who have sex with men are expect­ed to live twelve years less than those who do not. This mir­rors oth­er stud­ies con­duct­ed in British Colum­bia (which see an eight- to twen­ty-year dif­fer­ence) and Den­mark (which sees a small­er dif­fer­ence of four to twelve years). M. Ryan Baker’s ‘Gay and Les­bian Health Dis­par­i­ties: Evi­dence and Rec­om­men­da­tion­s’ in a 2008 issue of the Jour­nal of Health Dis­par­i­ties Research and Prac­tice yield­ed sim­i­lar results. To put that in per­spec­tive, smok­ing decreas­es life expectan­cy only ten years.” The author is a pro­fes­sor of polit­i­cal sci­ence at Boise State and the arti­cle is focused on bias­es and blind spots in the social sci­ences more than on the spe­cif­ic issue high­light­ed in the excerpt.
  7. No Hate Left Behind (Thomas Edsall, New York Times): “Just over 42 per­cent of the peo­ple in each par­ty view the oppo­si­tion as ‘downright evil.’ In real num­bers, this sug­gests that 48.8 mil­lion vot­ers out of the 136.7 mil­lion who cast bal­lots in 2016 believe that mem­bers of oppo­si­tion par­ty are in league with the devil.”
    • Relat­ed: Par­ti­san Hate Is Becom­ing a Nation­al Cri­sis (David French, Nation­al Review): “I won­der where [par­ti­san hatred] would be if our nation hadn’t been extra­or­di­nar­i­ly lucky in the last two years. Yes, lucky. Imag­ine our nation­al cul­ture if the con­gres­sion­al base­ball shoot­er hadn’t been imme­di­ate­ly con­front­ed by two brave Capi­tol Police offi­cers. Imag­ine a nation where the Char­lottesville ter­ror­ist kept plow­ing through the ranks of pro­test­ers, or where the Trump super­fan bomber actu­al­ly suc­ceed­ed in mak­ing func­tion­ing explosives.”

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 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.

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