Tag: persecution

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 225

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.

Inci­den­tal­ly, 225 is a very cool num­ber.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Meet the Min­nie Church (Ted Olsen, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Cast Mem­ber Church is tru­ly a church for Dis­ney Cast Mem­bers. It’s not a church to attend on vaca­tion. It’s not a church for Dis­ney fans in Cen­tral Flori­da. It’s a church for a cer­tain kind of employ­ee from one com­pa­ny…. Walt Dis­ney World has almost 70,000 employees—a pop­u­la­tion about the size of Can­ton, Ohio. It’s the largest sin­gle-site employ­er in the coun­try. At 40 square miles, it’s about as big as Mia­mi or San Fran­cis­co.” I did not think I would find this arti­cle inter­est­ing, but it’s thor­ough and explores some unex­pect­ed angles. 
  2. “This Should Be a Wake-up Call to the Whole World”: Inside the Hong Kong Protests (Jor­dan Rit­ter Conn, The Ringer): “The street goes qui­et. The pro­test­ers crouch and face the police togeth­er, remain­ing still. They open their umbrel­las and hold them aloft. Sec­onds lat­er, the explo­sions begin.”
  3. Did Emma Sulkow­icz Get Red­pilled? At the very least, she’s found a new social set. (Sylvie McNa­ma­ra, The Cut): “Sulkow­icz is telling me about the “polit­i­cal jour­ney” she’s late­ly been on, a lis­ten­ing tour of ide­o­log­i­cal posi­tions that she’s always con­sid­ered too right-wing to engage: cen­trists, con­ser­v­a­tives, lib­er­tar­i­ans, and what­ev­er Jor­dan Peter­son is — var­i­ous and sundry souls that Jeze­bel­has can­celed, whose names chill din­ner con­ver­sa­tion across pro­gres­sive New York. Sulkow­icz hasn’t been red­pilled; she’s still a fem­i­nist and an advo­cate for sur­vivors of sex­u­al assault. What’s changed is her pos­ture.“ This arti­cle was fun to read and full of sur­pris­es.
  4. Have 1 in 5 Amer­i­cans Been in a Con­sen­su­al Non-Monog­a­mous Rela­tion­ship? (Charles Fain Lehman, Insti­tute For Fam­i­ly Stud­ies): “In pro­mot­ing the show, the net­work tweet­ed out the eye-catch­ing claim that ‘1 in 5 Amer­i­cans have been involved in a con­sen­su­al­ly non-monog­a­mous rela­tion­ship at some point in their life.’ CBS is far from the only out­let to push the ‘one in five’ claim: it’s appeared in Rolling Stone, Quartz (as cit­ed by NPR), Time, Men’s Health, and Psy­chol­o­gy Today, among oth­ers. Where does that num­ber come from?”
  5. The Glob­al Protest Wave, Explained (Max Fish­er and Aman­da Taub, New York Times): “Only 20 years ago, 70 per­cent of protests demand­ing sys­temic polit­i­cal change got it — a fig­ure that had been grow­ing steadi­ly since the 1950s. In the mid-2000s, that trend sud­den­ly reversed. World­wide, pro­test­ers’ suc­cess rate has since plum­met­ed to only 30 per­cent, accord­ing to a study by Eri­ca Chenoweth, a Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty polit­i­cal sci­en­tist who called the decline ‘stag­ger­ing.’”
  6. And if you haven’t heard Kanye West is now pro­fess­ing Christ and peo­ple have opin­ions.
    1. Kanye West Air­pool Karaoke (The Late Late Show with James Cor­den, YouTube): first some thoughts from the man him­self, 20 min­utes. Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
    2. ‘Jesus Is King’ and Kanye West is a tax col­lec­tor (Esau McCaul­ley, Wash­ing­ton Post): “As an African Amer­i­can Chris­t­ian try­ing to make sense of West’s deci­sions, I have repeat­ed­ly reflect­ed on the sto­ries of Jesus eat­ing with tax col­lec­tors that upset many of his con­tem­po­raries.” The author is a pro­fes­sor at Wheaton. Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus.
    3. Yeezus Fol­lows Jesus (Nic Rowan, First Things): “I’m good with it. After all, per­fect­ly nice peo­ple don’t become saints. God tends to pre­fer work­ing with jack­ass­es.”
    4. Kanye West’s Con­ver­sion Could Be a Cul­tur­al Wreck­ing Ball (Andrew Walk­er, Nation­al Review): “The Apos­tle Paul warns in the New Tes­ta­ment about vest­ing too much hope and con­fi­dence in new con­verts, fear­ing they would be puffed up with pride (some­thing, let’s be hon­est, Kanye has no prob­lem exud­ing). We need to let Kanye be a Chris­t­ian Kanye with­out mak­ing him into a Chris­t­ian celebri­ty.”
  7. 11 Places Where Per­se­cut­ed Chris­tians Need Our Prayers (Megan Fowler, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Over 245 mil­lion Chris­tians live in the 50 coun­tries ranked on the World Watch List as worst for Chris­tians. Between Novem­ber 2017 and Octo­ber 2018, 4,136 Chris­tians were killed for their faith in these coun­tries, over 1,266 church­es or Chris­t­ian build­ings were attacked, and 2,625 believ­ers were detained, arrest­ed, sen­tenced, or impris­oned — many of them with­out a tri­al.”

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 223

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. Ethiopia’s Evan­gel­i­cal Prime Min­is­ter Wins Nobel Peace Prize (Kate Shell­nutt, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “The son of a Mus­lim father and Ortho­dox moth­er, Ahmed is a Protes­tant Pen­te­costal, or ‘Pen­tay,’ like many Ethiopi­an politi­cians. His faith is seen as a dri­ving fac­tor in his push for peace.”
  2. Alge­ria Forces Chris­tians Out of the Country’s Largest Church­es (Kate Shell­nutt, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “At least 15 Protes­tant churches—out of only about 46 in the country—have been shut­tered since Jan­u­ary 2018, accord­ing to the Chris­t­ian advo­ca­cy group Mid­dle East Con­cern. The coun­try, home to just 125,000 Chris­tians, few­er than 1 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion, ranks 22nd on Open Doors’ World Watch List. Chris­t­ian con­gre­ga­tions strug­gle to reg­is­ter with the gov­ern­ment agency tasked with reg­u­lat­ing non-Mus­lim wor­ship, per a 2006 law. It nev­er con­venes and has not issued a sin­gle approval.”
  3. The Per­ilous Pow­er of the Preacher’s Wife (Kate Bowler, New York TImes): “Ordained pro­gres­sive women secure a mea­sure of insti­tu­tion­al sway, but they lack the cul­tur­al cap­i­tal of their con­ser­v­a­tive coun­ter­parts. My research shows that con­ser­v­a­tive women gain con­sid­er­able influ­ence with­out insti­tu­tion­al pow­er, and lib­er­al women gain insti­tu­tion­al pow­er with­out con­sid­er­able influ­ence.” The author is a pro­fes­sor at Duke Divin­i­ty School and I have spot­light­ed arti­cles by her three times pre­vi­ous­ly, in vol­ume 37, vol­ume 116, and vol­ume 143.
  4. The delud­ed cult of social jus­tice (John Gray, UnHerd): “Sel­dom have the demands of jus­tice been so man­i­fest­ly fad­dish. Increas­ing­ly, jus­tice is seen as not an attribute of legal sys­tems but of entire soci­eties. At the same time it is believed to be owed to groups more than indi­vid­u­als. In these cir­cum­stances, every­thing depends on whether the group to which peo­ple are deemed to be belong is in vogue.” The author is a retired pro­fes­sor of polit­i­cal phi­los­o­phy (Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics) and a well-known athe­ist. 
  5. How to Con­vince an Athe­ist that God Exists (John Ellis, per­son­al blog): “I didn’t become an athe­ist because that’s what I want­ed; I became an athe­ist because I believed it was the truth. So, stand­ing on that side­walk while try­ing not to think about my mom pray­ing for me, I cursed a God I didn’t even believe exist­ed.”
  6. Some thoughts about China’s gov­ern­ment:
    • What are the Options Part III: The Big­ger Pic­ture (Christo­pher Bald­ing, per­son­al blog): “The Unit­ed States must be pre­pared to lay­out a vision for the val­ue it wants to pro­mote, to make the biggest sac­ri­fices to real­ize those val­ues, share the ben­e­fits with aligned coun­tries, and deny ben­e­fits to adver­sary or non­aligned coun­tries.” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent. I linked to anoth­er of Balding’s posts about Chi­na back in vol­ume 162. 
    • Here’s a grow­ing list of com­pa­nies bow­ing to Chi­na cen­sor­ship pres­sure (Natasha Pinon, Mash­able): “Major glob­al com­pa­nies have been bow­ing to both direct and indi­rect pres­sure from Chi­na’s polit­i­cal lead­ers to con­trol how the eco­nom­ic pow­er­house of a coun­try is por­trayed for some time.”
    • Chi­na’s Vision of Vic­to­ry? (Tan­ner Greer, per­son­al blog): “So-called influ­ence oper­a­tions are aimed at the ene­mies China’s lead­ers fear most: the ones who pose an ide­o­log­i­cal, not a geopo­lit­i­cal, threat to the Com­mu­nist Par­ty. These are the hos­tile forces that threat­en the sta­bil­i­ty of the Com­mu­nist regime, and many of them—from Chris­tians and Uighurs flee­ing reli­gious per­se­cu­tion to Tai­wanese, Hong Kongers, and oth­ers of Chi­nese descent who dare imag­ine dif­fer­ent futures for their people—live in Amer­i­ca. As long as these groups can safe­ly assem­ble and freely speak with­in the Unit­ed States, Amer­i­ca will be seen as a threat to the Chi­nese par­ty-state. Sim­i­lar fears have already led Bei­jing to demand ide­o­log­i­cal feal­ty from its for­eign debtors. China’s lead­ers do not ask clients to change their sys­tem of gov­ern­ment but to squelch crit­i­cism of Chi­nese com­mu­nism inside their bor­ders.” Greer has appeared once before in vol­ume 217.
    • China’s Loom­ing Class Strug­gle (Joel Kotkin, Quil­lette): “Ini­tial­ly, China’s progress lift­ed up all class­es, rais­ing as many as 850 mil­lion peo­ple out of extreme pover­ty in 40 years, one of the great­est eco­nom­ic accom­plish­ments in his­to­ry. Yet the boom has been less suc­cess­ful in cre­at­ing a West­ern-style mass mid­dle class which ana­lyst Nan Chen esti­mates at rough­ly 12 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion. ‘Rather than repli­cat­ing the mid­dle-class growth of post-World War II Amer­i­ca,’ she observes, ‘Chi­na appears to have skipped that stage alto­geth­er and head­ed straight for a mod­el of extra­or­di­nary pro­duc­tiv­i­ty but dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly dis­trib­uted wealth.’” Kotkin is a pro­fes­sor of urban stud­ies at Chap­man Uni­ver­si­ty.
  7. Attor­ney Gen­er­al William P. Barr Deliv­ers Remarks to the Law School and the de Nico­la Cen­ter for Ethics and Cul­ture at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Notre Dame (William Barr, Depart­ment of Jus­tice): “From the Found­ing Era onward, there was strong con­sen­sus about the cen­tral­i­ty of reli­gious lib­er­ty in the Unit­ed States. The imper­a­tive of pro­tect­ing reli­gious free­dom was not just a nod in the direc­tion of piety. It reflects the Framers’ belief that reli­gion was indis­pens­able to sus­tain­ing our free sys­tem of gov­ern­ment.” (you can watch a video of the speech instead)
    • What Barr Got Right — And What He Might Add (Howard Husock, Nation­al Review): “Barr stands accused of endors­ing some sort of Chris­t­ian theoc­ra­cy. Barr, of course, hard­ly endorsed the idea the church–state divide should be erased in the Unit­ed States. Nor did he insist that only the reli­gious could live a healthy and pro­duc­tive life. Rather, he sin­gled out for crit­i­cism those who believe that, in effect, gov­ern­ment social pro­grams could replace the virtues instilled by reli­gion. It’s an impor­tant dis­tinc­tion.”
    • William Barr Is Neck-Deep in Extrem­ist Catholic Insti­tu­tions (Joan Walsh, The Nation): “In a histri­on­ic speech at Notre Dame Law School on Fri­day, he blamed ‘sec­u­lar­ists’ and ‘so-called pro­gres­sives’ for destroy­ing soci­ety and pre­cip­i­tat­ing the crises of fam­i­ly dis­so­lu­tion, crime, and drugs, while talk­ing of a war between reli­gious and non­re­li­gious Amer­i­cans.”
    • Bill Barr: Reli­gious Lib­er­ty War­rior (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “It’s a stan­dard defense of religion’s role in Amer­i­can life. It would have been unre­mark­able for any US Attor­ney Gen­er­al, Repub­li­can or Demo­c­rat, pri­or to 2008 to have giv­en. But now, many on the Left have become so hate­ful of reli­gion that Barr’s speech strikes the ears of peo­ple like Nobel Prize-win­ning econ­o­mist Paul Krug­man as the hand­i­work of a Cos­sack pro­pa­gan­dist…” I prob­a­bly include more arti­cles from Dreher than any­one else because he is so amaz­ing­ly pro­lif­ic and often writes about top­ics I am inter­est­ed in.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have A (Not So) Sec­u­lar Saint (James K.A. Smith, Los Ange­les Review of Books): “Mill’s lega­cy was effec­tive­ly ‘edit­ed’ by his philo­soph­i­cal and polit­i­cal dis­ci­ples, excis­ing any hint of reli­gious life. One would nev­er know from the canon in our phi­los­o­phy depart­ments, for exam­ple, that Mill wrote an appre­cia­tive essay on ‘The­ism.’” First shared in vol­ume 190.

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it). And to the extent you can dis­cern my opin­ions, please under­stand that they are my own and not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of Chi Alpha or any oth­er orga­ni­za­tion I may be per­ceived to rep­re­sent. Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it. If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 214

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 Revolt of the Fem­i­nist Law Profs (Wes­ley Yang, Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion): “The sex bureau­cra­cy, in oth­er words, piv­ot­ed from pun­ish­ing sex­u­al vio­lence to impos­ing a nor­ma­tive vision of ide­al sex, to which stu­dents are held admin­is­tra­tive­ly account­able.” This is a very good piece.
  2. Skillet’s John Coop­er on Apos­ta­sy Among Young Chris­t­ian Lead­ers (George Brahm, Cogent Chris­tian­i­ty: “I’ve been say­ing for 20 years (and seemed prob­a­bly quite judg­men­tal to some of my peers) that we are in a dan­ger­ous place when the church is look­ing to 20 year old wor­ship singers as our source of truth. We now have a church cul­ture that learns who God is from singing mod­ern praise songs rather than from the teach­ings of the Word.”
  3. Jef­frey Epstein and When to Take Con­spir­a­cies Seri­ous­ly (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “Most con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries are false. But often some of the things they’re try­ing to explain are real.” Refresh­ing san­i­ty.
  4. Depor­ta­tion of a Chaldean Chris­t­ian to Iraq, and where he died, gets some decent cov­er­age (Julia Duin, GetRe­li­gion): “The more you look into this sto­ry, the more dis­turb­ing it gets. Mindy Belz, report­ing for World, wrote that a third coun­try had offered to take Aldaoud but that U.S. immi­gra­tion author­i­ties refused. Putting him on a plane to Najaf was an inten­tion­al twist of cru­el­ty. Appar­ent­ly, it was not an acci­dent that he was sent there instead of Bagh­dad.”
  5. The Last Days of John Allen Chau (Alex Per­ry, Out­side Mag­a­zine): “.…to those who know the tribes best, John’s mis­sion did not spell the end of the Sen­tine­lese. To them, he rep­re­sent­ed a pos­si­ble means of sur­vival.“ Chi Alpha makes an appear­ance in this arti­cle. Relat­ed links back in vol­umes 179 and 180.
  6. Jeff Bezos is qui­et­ly let­ting his char­i­ties do some­thing rad­i­cal — what­ev­er they want (Theodore Schleifer, Vox Recode): “Giv­ing $100 mil­lion to non­prof­its based on lit­tle pro­vid­ed infor­ma­tion and then let­ting them run with it sounds, on its face, like a recipe for dis­as­ter. It con­jures the image of fat-and-hap­py char­i­ty lead­ers milk­ing extrav­a­gant salaries from oth­ers’ gen­eros­i­ty, or prof­li­gate spend­ing on extra­ne­ous over­head — or even out­right fraud…. Well, here’s the sur­prise: Mul­ti­ple experts told Recode this strat­e­gy actu­al­ly makes a lot of sense. They think phil­an­thropies should give non­prof­its sub­stan­tial­ly more lee­way.”
    1. Related(ish): Mis­sion­al Mis­con­cep­tion #1 (Sup­port Fig­ures) (Seth Calla­han, per­son­al blog): “If the [Post Office] were a non-prof­it, faith-based orga­ni­za­tion, with all of their employ­ees being respon­si­ble to cov­er their own oper­at­ing costs… then each employ­ee would need to have a month­ly sup­port lev­el of $11,837.69. That fig­ure does not rep­re­sent what your mail­man gets PAID, mind you. It is how much it COSTS for your mail­man to per­form the ser­vices that are required of him: trans­porta­tion and stor­age of goods, pack­ing sup­plies, vehi­cle main­te­nance, health­care, retire­ment, social security…etc. His take-home pay (what he lives off of) is a small per­cent­age of those oper­at­ing costs.”
  7. The Reli­gious Hunger of the Rad­i­cal Right (Tara Isabel­la Bur­ton, New York Times): “Unlike Islamist jihadists, the online com­mu­ni­ties of incels, white suprema­cists and anti-Semit­ic con­spir­a­cy the­o­rists make no meta­phys­i­cal truth claims, do not focus on God and offer no promise of an after­life or reward. But they ful­fill the func­tions that soci­ol­o­gists gen­er­al­ly attribute to a reli­gion: They give their mem­bers a mean­ing­ful account of why the world is the way it is.” 

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 Plan­et of Cops (Fred­die de Boer, per­son­al blog): “The woke world is a world of snitch­es, infor­mants, rats. Go to any space con­cerned with social jus­tice and what will you find? End­less sur­veil­lance. Every­body is to be judged. Every­one is under sus­pi­cion. Every­thing you say is to be scoured, picked over, ana­lyzed for any pos­si­ble offense. Everyone’s a detec­tive in the Divi­sion of Prob­lem­at­ics, and they walk the beat 24/7…. I don’t know how peo­ple can simul­ta­ne­ous­ly talk about prison abo­li­tion and restor­ing the idea of for­give­ness to lit­er­al crim­i­nal jus­tice and at the same time turn the entire social world into a kan­ga­roo court sys­tem.” First shared in vol­ume 161.

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 200

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 big news this week is the hor­rif­ic attacks in Sri Lan­ka on East­er Sun­day. Here are some of the respons­es that caught my inter­est:
    • Sri Lankan Sun­day School Was ‘Will­ing to Die for Christ’ on East­er. Half Did. (Jayson Casper, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Dur­ing Sun­day School, [Prab­ha] had talked to the chil­dren about the impor­tance of repen­tance and receiv­ing Jesus as Lord. Because a recent vehi­cle acci­dent had claimed the lives of six Zion Church mem­bers, he had referred to that event and chal­lenged the chil­dren, ask­ing them if they would be will­ing to even die for Jesus. All the chil­dren had respond­ed by putting their hands up and sig­nalled their fresh ded­i­ca­tion to Jesus by light­ing a sym­bol­ic can­dle. For so many of those chil­dren it would be their final act of wor­ship (2 Tim­o­thy 6:6–8).” WOW
    • Are Chris­tians Priv­i­leged or Per­se­cut­ed? (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “But if the equa­tion of tra­di­tion­al Chris­tian­i­ty with priv­i­lege has some rel­e­vance to the actu­al Euro-Amer­i­can sit­u­a­tion, when applied glob­al­ly it’s a gross cat­e­go­ry error…. One of the basic facts of con­tem­po­rary reli­gious his­to­ry is that Chris­tians around the world are per­se­cut­ed on an extra­or­di­nary scale — by mobs and pogroms in India, jihadists and Unit­ed States-allied gov­ern­ments in the Mus­lim world, sec­u­lar total­i­tar­i­ans in Chi­na and North Korea. Yet as an era-defin­ing real­i­ty rather than an episod­ic phe­nom­e­non this real­i­ty is bare­ly vis­i­ble in the West­ern media, and rarely called by name and addressed head-on by West­ern gov­ern­ments and human­i­tar­i­an insti­tu­tions. (‘Islam­o­pho­bia’ looms large; talk of ‘Christo­pho­bia’ is almost nonex­is­tent.)”
    • When Chris­tians Are Under Attack, Mus­lims and the Left Need to Defend Them (Meh­di Hasan): “I am a Mus­lim, and I con­sid­er myself to be on the left, but I’m embar­rassed to admit that in both Mus­lim and left cir­cles, the issue of Chris­t­ian per­se­cu­tion has been down­played and even ignored for far too long.”
    • Why Con­ser­v­a­tives Are So Angry About Obama’s Ref­er­ence to “East­er Wor­ship­pers” (Ruth Gra­ham, Slate): “I would argue that it takes a true savant of exquis­ite­ly attuned griev­ance col­lec­tion to read an indi­vid­ual ref­er­ence to ‘East­er wor­ship­pers’ as an attempt to avoid acknowl­edg­ing Chris­tian­i­ty. East­er is the most impor­tant hol­i­day in the Chris­t­ian cal­en­dar. ‘East­er’ has no oth­er mean­ing.”
    • Sri Lan­ka attacks: St Antho­ny’s ‘church of mir­a­cles’ a sym­bol of hope (Ayeshea Per­ara, BBC): “Among those gath­ered out­side the church is Pra­bath Bud­dhi­ka. Although Mr Bud­dhi­ka is Bud­dhist by reli­gion, like many oth­ers, he is a strong believ­er in the pow­er of St Antho­ny. ‘My house is right here,’ he said, adding that he’d been attend­ing the church since he was a child and gone along with his fam­i­ly many times.”
    • Why Sri Lan­ka Was Prob­a­bly Not Retal­i­a­tion for Christchurch (Graeme Wood, The Atlantic): “The bomb­ings in Sri Lan­ka were among the more spec­tac­u­lar in the his­to­ry of ter­ror­ism, and they almost cer­tain­ly took more plan­ning than would have been pos­si­ble in the past five weeks. (It may seem easy to get sev­er­al guys to push det­o­na­tor but­tons all at once, in sev­er­al dif­fer­ent loca­tions. But ter­ror­ists are often bum­blers, and the more com­pli­cat­ed the plan, the greater the chance of dis­rup­tion.)”
  2. What About Cap­i­tal­iz­ing Pro­nouns Refer­ring to God? (Randy Alcorn, Eter­nal Per­spec­tives Min­istries): “I have had to fight to get Heav­en cap­i­tal­ized in my books, argu­ing that it is a prop­er noun, and just as real a place as Sat­urn or France. I argue the same for cap­i­tal­iz­ing the New Earth—if we cap­i­tal­ize New Eng­land, why not the redeemed cre­ation that Scrip­ture calls the ‘New Earth’?”
    • This is a very thought­ful per­spec­tive on hon­or­ing God with your writ­ten words.
  3. Is Prison Nec­es­sary? Ruth Wil­son Gilmore Might Change Your Mind (Rachel Kush­n­er, New York Times): “If prison, in its philo­soph­i­cal ori­gin, was meant as a humane alter­na­tive to beat­ings or tor­ture or death, it has trans­formed into a fixed fea­ture of mod­ern life, one that is not known, even by its sup­port­ers and admin­is­tra­tors, for its human­i­ty.”
  4. On East­er Sun­day, Louisiana church looks to rebuild from fires (Ash­ley Cusick, Wash­ing­ton Post via SF Gate): “We got $1,000 from an athe­ist,” Tou­s­saint said with a laugh. ‘He said he did­n’t believe in God, but he don’t believe in burn­ing build­ings down, either.’”
  5. How angry pilots got the Navy to stop dis­miss­ing UFO sight­ings (Dean­na Paul, Wash­ing­ton Post via SF Gate): “A recent uptick in sight­ings of uniden­ti­fied fly­ing objects — or as the mil­i­tary calls them, ‘unex­plained aer­i­al phe­nom­e­na’ — prompt­ed the Navy to draft for­mal pro­ce­dures for pilots to doc­u­ment encoun­ters, a cor­rec­tive mea­sure that for­mer offi­cials say is long over­due.”
    • This being 2019, this is some­how not the most inter­est­ing sto­ry in the news.
  6. And now for some stuff about the major Amer­i­can polit­i­cal par­ties, with par­tic­u­lar atten­tion to reli­gious dynam­ics:
    • Franklin Gra­ham and the High Cost of the Lost Evan­gel­i­cal Wit­ness (David French, Nation­al Review): “The prop­er Evan­gel­i­cal posi­tion toward any pres­i­dent is not hard to artic­u­late, though it is exceed­ing­ly dif­fi­cult to hold to, espe­cial­ly in polar­ized times when one par­ty seems set on lim­it­ing reli­gious lib­er­ty and zeal­ous­ly defend­ing abor­tion: We should pray for pres­i­dents, cri­tique them when they’re wrong, praise them when they’re right, and nev­er, ever impose par­ti­san dou­ble stan­dards.”
    • The Reli­gious Com­po­si­tion of the Two Major Par­ties (Ryan Burge, Reli­gion in Pub­lic): “…nei­ther of the two major par­ties in the Unit­ed States are dom­i­nat­ed by one spe­cif­ic reli­gious group. I know that tons of arti­cles are writ­ten the link between evan­gel­i­cals and Repub­li­cans, but the data indi­cates that over two thirds of Repub­li­cans today are not evan­gel­i­cals. The same is essen­tial­ly true for Democ­rats as well. The largest group for them (the nones) make up just three in ten Democ­rats today.”
    • Relat­ed: The Devout And The Nones (Mark Movs­esian, First Things): “Con­sid­er, for exam­ple, the per­cent­age of Amer­i­cans who report that their reli­gious affil­i­a­tion is ‘Strong.’ This per­cent­age has fluc­tu­at­ed a bit over the decades, but the most recent sur­vey puts it at 34 per­cent, a num­ber that has remained basi­cal­ly unchanged since 1975, when 35 per­cent of Amer­i­cans report­ed a strong reli­gious affil­i­a­tion. Appar­ent­ly, the rise of the Nones is not attrib­ut­able to a decline in reli­gious enthu­si­asm among the most strong­ly com­mit­ted.”
    • Meet Stanford’s Con­gres­sion­al Fresh­men (Jean Yung, Dave Sloane, & Tim­o­thy Weath­er­head, Stan­ford Mag­a­zine): inter­est­ing brief pro­files of the five Stan­ford alum­ni who were recent­ly elect­ed to the nation­al leg­is­la­ture. Two Demo­c­ra­t­ic rep­re­sen­ta­tives, two Repub­li­can rep­re­sen­ta­tives, and one Repub­li­can Sen­a­tor.
    • Why Won’t Twit­ter Treat White Suprema­cy Like ISIS? Because It Would Mean Ban­ning Some Repub­li­can Politi­cians Too. (Joseph Cox and Jason Koe­bler, Moth­er­board): “When a plat­form aggres­sive­ly enforces against ISIS con­tent, for instance, it can also flag inno­cent accounts as well, such as Ara­bic lan­guage broad­cast­ers. Soci­ety, in gen­er­al, accepts the ben­e­fit of ban­ning ISIS for incon­ve­nienc­ing some oth­ers, he said.”
      • I get the impres­sion the authors think this is evi­dence that Repub­li­cans real­ly are white suprema­cists and that the algo­rithms see clear­ly with­out the social pres­sure that holds back truth-tellers. I sus­pect they have the exact oppo­site approach to machine learn­ing when it deliv­ers racist results. I’m spit­balling here, but maybe the bet­ter response is dis­trust algo­rithms a lit­tle more when­ev­er they con­firm your bias­es. Just a thought.
  7. Half of Amer­i­cans Say Evan­gel­i­cals Are Dis­crim­i­nat­ed Against (Grif­fin Paul Jack­son, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Amer­i­cans’ per­cep­tions of dis­crim­i­na­tion tend to be par­ti­san. For instance, 7 in 10 Amer­i­cans on the polit­i­cal right say evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians are sub­ject to dis­crim­i­na­tion, while less than half as many (32%) left-lean­ing Amer­i­cans agree.”

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 haveLet­ter To My Younger Self (Ryan Leaf, The Player’s Tri­bune): “Con­grat­u­la­tions. You offi­cial­ly have it all — mon­ey, pow­er and pres­tige. All the things that are impor­tant, right?… That’s you, young Ryan Leaf, at his absolute finest: arro­gant, boor­ish and nar­cis­sis­tic. You think you’re on top of the world and that you’ve got all the answers. Well I’m sor­ry to have to tell you this, but the truth is….” Such a grip­ping let­ter. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed. (first shared in vol­ume 99)

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 175

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. Few­er Sex Part­ners Means a Hap­pi­er Mar­riage (Olga Khaz­an, The Atlantic): “Nicholas Wolfin­ger, a soci­ol­o­gist at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Utah, has found that Amer­i­cans who have only ever slept with their spous­es are most like­ly to report being in a ‘very hap­py’ mar­riage. Mean­while, the low­est odds of mar­i­tal happiness—about 13 per­cent­age points low­er than the one-part­ner women—belong to women who have had six to 10 sex­u­al part­ners in their lives.”
    • This arti­cle was inspired by the longer and even more fas­ci­nat­ing Does Sex­u­al His­to­ry Affect Mar­i­tal Hap­pi­ness? (Nicholas Wolfin­ger, Insti­tute for Fam­i­ly Stud­ies): “For a com­bined sam­ple of men and women, spous­es report­ing only one life­time sex­u­al part­ner are 7% more like­ly to be hap­py than are those with oth­er part­ners in their past. This is larg­er than the five-per­cent­age-point dif­fer­ence asso­ci­at­ed with a four-year col­lege degree, larg­er than the six-point dif­fer­ence that comes with attend­ing reli­gious ser­vices sev­er­al times a month or more, and larg­er than the boost that comes with hav­ing an income above the nation­al medi­an.”
  2. Eat, Pray, Code: Rule of St. Bene­dict Becomes Tech Developer’s Com­mu­ni­ty Guide­lines (Kate Shell­nutt, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “SQLite—a data­base man­age­ment engine used in most major browsers, smart phones, Adobe prod­ucts, and Skype—adopted a code of ethics pulled direct­ly from the bib­li­cal pre­cepts set by the ven­er­at­ed sixth-cen­tu­ry monk.” This arti­cle blew my mind.
  3. Find­ing ‘Com­mon Good’ Among Evan­gel­i­cals In The Polit­i­cal Sea­son (Sarah McCam­mon, NPR): “On a recent evening in Hous­ton, under the heavy branch­es of live oak trees, Doug Pagitt stood before a cou­ple dozen peo­ple gath­ered on blue fold­ing chairs on the Rice Uni­ver­si­ty cam­pus. ‘You’ve heard it said that to be a true Chris­t­ian, you must vote like a Repub­li­can,’ he said. ‘But we are here to be remind­ed that just ain’t so.’”
    • Relat­ed: Cory Book­er could be a can­di­date for the ‘reli­gious left’ (Jack Jenk­ins, Reli­gion News Ser­vice): “Ques­tions about reli­gion can par­a­lyze some politi­cians, but not [Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tor] Cory Book­er. If any­thing, the top­ic seems to relax him. Sit­ting in his spa­cious but spar­tan office on Capi­tol Hill in ear­ly Octo­ber, the sen­a­tor propped his sneak­ered feet up on his desk and waxed poet­ic about spir­i­tu­al mat­ters, bounc­ing between dis­cus­sions of Jesus’ dis­ci­ples, hous­ing pol­i­cy and his own reli­gious prac­tices.”
  4. The White House Says Social­ism Is a Threat. It’s Right. (Tyler Cowen, Bloomberg Opin­ion): “Who would have thought that an attack on social­ism would be so con­tro­ver­sial? But these days it is. The White House’s Coun­cil of Eco­nom­ic Advis­ers issued a report called ‘The Oppor­tu­ni­ty Costs of Social­ism’ to a scathing recep­tion on social media: ‘dreck,’ said the econ­o­mist Justin Wolfers, while Paul Krug­man referred to it as ‘amaz­ing­ly dis­hon­est.’ I’m here to tell you that I have read the entire report, and many of the sources it cites, and most of it is cor­rect.” FYI: one of our alum­ni helped to write the report in ques­tion.
  5. The Car­a­van Is a Chal­lenge to the Integri­ty of U.S. Bor­ders (David Frum, The Atlantic): “If lib­er­als insist that only fas­cists will defend bor­ders, then vot­ers will hire fas­cists to do the job lib­er­als will not do.” That sen­tence is one of the most hon­est things I’ve heard in the recent immi­gra­tion debate. When decid­ing what immi­gra­tion pol­i­cy you deem best, rec­og­nize that you have to fac­tor in how pas­sion­ate­ly oth­er­wise apo­lit­i­cal peo­ple feel about this.
  6. A Chris­t­ian Man Receives Jus­tice (David French, Nation­al Review): “gov­ern­ment offi­cials demon­strat­ed sub­stan­tial intol­er­ance in the name of ‘inclu­sion’ and rather than seek­ing solu­tions that allowed each mem­ber of the com­mu­ni­ty to exer­cise their lib­er­ty (to enjoy rights to cakes and con­science, for exam­ple), they took sides against Chris­tians, using their pow­er to send a clear mes­sage: Tra­di­tion­al Chris­tian­i­ty is incom­pat­i­ble with the pro­gres­sive state. That is not a deci­sion the Con­sti­tu­tion empow­ers them to make.”
  7. The midterms are already hacked. You just don’t know it yet. (Ben­jamin Wof­ford, Vox): “The secu­ri­ty expert at a big tech cor­po­ra­tion, who spoke on back­ground in order to speak frankly about elec­tion vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties, put it this way: ‘On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the Pentagon’s [secu­ri­ty mea­sures], elec­tions have prob­a­bly moved from a 2 to a 3.’” Very alarm­ing.

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 Let­ter To My Younger Self (Ryan Leaf, The Player’s Tri­bune): “Con­grat­u­la­tions. You offi­cial­ly have it all — mon­ey, pow­er and pres­tige. All the things that are impor­tant, right?… That’s you, young Ryan Leaf, at his absolute finest: arro­gant, boor­ish and nar­cis­sis­tic. You think you’re on top of the world and that you’ve got all the answers. Well I’m sor­ry to have to tell you this, but the truth is….” Such a grip­ping let­ter. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed. (first shared in vol­ume 99)

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 138

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. How to read books effi­cient­ly in grad school (Thomas Kidd, per­son­al newslet­ter): “Here’s the method I rec­om­mend for read­ing a book effi­cient­ly: read every word of the intro­duc­tion and con­clu­sion of a book. Then read the intro­duc­tion and con­clu­sion of each chap­ter word-for-word. With­in each chap­ter, read the first and last sen­tence of each body para­graph. Slow down when it gets inter­est­ing, or when the author hits on your par­tic­u­lar research inter­est.” Kidd is a his­to­ry pro­fes­sor at Bay­lor Uni­ver­si­ty. There is a length­i­er arti­cle with relat­ed thoughts titled Effi­cient Read­ing by Karin Wulf, a his­to­ry pro­fes­sor at William and Mary.
  2. The Anti-Chris­t­ian Alt-Right (Matthew Rose, First Things): “Almost every­thing writ­ten about the ‘alter­na­tive right’ in main­stream out­lets is wrong in one respect. The alt-right is not stu­pid. It is deep. Its ideas are not ridicu­lous. They are seri­ous. To appre­ci­ate this fact, one needs to inquire beyond its pres­ence on social media, where its obnox­ious use of insult, obscen­i­ty, and racism has earned it a rep­u­ta­tion for moral idio­cy. The rep­u­ta­tion is deserved, but do not be deceived. Behind its online tantrums and per­son­al attacks are argu­ments of gen­uine pow­er and expand­ing appeal…. The alt-right is anti-Chris­t­ian. Not by impli­ca­tion or insin­u­a­tion, but by con­fes­sion. Its lead­ing thinkers flaunt their rejec­tion of Chris­tian­i­ty and their desire to con­vert believ­ers away from it.”
  3. News To A For­eign Coun­try (David War­ren, per­son­al blog): “The State has its reli­gion, we have ours. So long as we remain meek and obe­di­ent, to any­thing we are required to sign, the Antichrist him­self wouldn’t care what we think. The trou­ble aris­es only when we fail to sign, salute, or check the right box­es. That is, from the Antichrist’s point of view, a form of defi­ance that requires pun­ish­ment — a pun­ish­ment that we have brought upon our­selves, as will be con­de­scend­ing­ly explained.” This is a tran­scribed speech by a Cana­di­an jour­nal­ist, and it is extreme­ly fiery and very Catholic.
  4. Trans­gen­der Ide­ol­o­gy Is Rid­dled With Con­tra­dic­tions. Here Are the Big Ones. (Ryan T Ander­son, Her­itage): “If gen­der is a social con­struct, how can gen­der iden­ti­ty be innate and immutable? How can one’s iden­ti­ty with respect to a social con­struct be deter­mined by biol­o­gy in the womb? How can one’s iden­ti­ty be unchange­able (immutable) with respect to an ever-chang­ing social con­struct? And if gen­der iden­ti­ty is innate, how can it be ‘flu­id’?”
  5. Mas­sacre in Myan­mar (Wa Lone, Kyaw Soe Oo, Simon Lewis and Antoni Slod­kows­ki, Reuters):  “Reuters has pieced togeth­er what hap­pened in Inn Din in the days lead­ing up to the killing of the 10 Rohingya – eight men and two high school stu­dents in their late teens. Until now, accounts of the vio­lence against the Rohingya in Rakhine state have been pro­vid­ed only by its vic­tims. The Reuters recon­struc­tion draws for the first time on inter­views with Bud­dhist vil­lagers who con­fessed to torch­ing Rohingya homes, bury­ing bod­ies and killing Mus­lims. This account also marks the first time sol­diers and para­mil­i­tary police have been impli­cat­ed by tes­ti­mo­ny from secu­ri­ty per­son­nel them­selves.”
  6. Should We Say “Of Course” To Fem­i­nism? (Anni­ka Nordquist, Stan­ford Review): “…I would chal­lenge all crit­i­cal­ly-think­ing fem­i­nists to ask the same ques­tion I asked my friend: if this move­ment does­n’t wel­come me, my opin­ions, or my solu­tions, why would I want to be part of it?” Yes, this is our Anni­ka.
  7. Is There a Smarter Way to Think About Sex­u­al Assault on Cam­pus?  (Jia Tol­lenti­no, The New York­er):  “In col­lege, every­thing is Janus-faced: what you inter­pret as refuge can lead to dan­ger, and vice ver­sa. One of the most high­ly val­orized social activ­i­ties, black­ing out and hook­ing up, holds the poten­tial for trau­ma with­in it like a seed.”
  8. What Teenagers Are Learn­ing From Online Porn (Mag­gie Jones, New York Times): “But you don’t have to believe that porn leads to sex­u­al assault or that it’s cre­at­ing a gen­er­a­tion of bru­tal men to won­der how it helps shape how teenagers talk and think about sex and, by exten­sion, their ideas about mas­culin­i­ty, fem­i­nin­i­ty, inti­ma­cy and pow­er.” This arti­cle uses graph­ic imagery.
  9. How Chi­nese over­seas stu­dents are learn­ing harsh life lessons (Eric Fish, South Chi­na Morn­ing Post):   “Inter­views with Chi­nese stu­dents study­ing abroad and aca­d­e­mics who research their atti­tudes present a com­plex pic­ture – one in which stu­dents enter and leave with diverse views and iden­ti­ties that often defy clear loy­al­ties or ide­o­log­i­cal labels. But nev­er­the­less, many feel caught in the geopo­lit­i­cal cross­fire – forced to choose a side or keep their heads down.”

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 it’s insight­ful (first shared in vol­ume 32).

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.

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 136

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. Trump has been pres­i­dent for about a year now. Here are some per­spec­tives (if you only read one, read the one you think you’ll dis­agree with most):
    • Trump’s first year was even worse than feared (Eugene Robin­son, Wash­ing­ton Post):  “Many of us began 2017 with the con­sol­ing thought that the Don­ald Trump pres­i­den­cy couldn’t pos­si­bly be as bad as we feared. It turned out to be worse.”
    • I wasn’t a Trump sup­port­er. I am now. (Mol­lie Hem­ing­way, Wash­ing­ton Post): “My expec­ta­tions were low — so low that he could have met them by sim­ply not being Pres­i­dent Hillary Clin­ton. But a year into this pres­i­den­cy, he’s exceed­ed those expec­ta­tions by quite a bit. I’m thrilled.”
    • ‘Vision, Chutz­pah and Some Testos­terone’ (New York Times): “Grant­ed we have the most unpres­i­den­tial pres­i­dent of our time. Crude, rude, clue­less dude — but I believe, with the help of his friends, he’s stum­bling through one of the most effec­tive pres­i­den­cies in mem­o­ry.” This is from a col­lec­tion of let­ters to the NY Times by Trump sup­port­ers.
    • This one trick explains the pat­tern of con­ser­v­a­tive praise for Trump’s first year (Dan Drezn­er, Wash­ing­ton Post): “All of this is con­sis­tent with assess­ments that Trump’s first year, even from a con­ser­v­a­tive per­spec­tive, has been pret­ty mediocre.”
    • Trump So Far Is More Farce Than Tragedy (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “A vast gulf between the things Trump says he wants — which are, indeed, often author­i­tar­i­an — and the things that actu­al­ly hap­pen is the essen­tial char­ac­ter­is­tic of his presidency’s first year.… his cab­i­net looks a lot like a gener­ic Repub­li­can admin­is­tra­tion, whose efforts lib­er­als under­stand­ably oppose and some­times deplore, but which are not remote­ly like the work­ings of a fas­cist cabal cir­ca 1935.”
    • Pres­i­dent Trump’s First Year, in 14 Met­rics (Mike Niz­za, Blomberg View): “Last year our colum­nists select­ed a range of con­ven­tion­al and whim­si­cal met­rics by which to judge the suc­cess of the new pres­i­dent. We revis­it them here. Bot­tom line: By these mea­sures, he’s doing bet­ter than his oppo­nents will admit and worse than his sup­port­ers believe.”
  2. Is every­thing you think you know about depres­sion wrong? (Johann Hari, The Guardian): “Once you set­tle into a sto­ry about your pain, you are extreme­ly reluc­tant to chal­lenge it. It was like a leash I had put on my dis­tress to keep it under some con­trol. I feared that if I messed with the sto­ry I had lived with for so long, the pain would run wild, like an unchained ani­mal. Yet the sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence was show­ing me some­thing clear, and I couldn’t ignore it.”
    • This reminds me of an arti­cle that made an impres­sion upon me back in 2003: The Pur­suit of Hap­pi­ness (Ben­jamin Healy inter­view­ing Carl Elliott, The Atlantic): “On Prozac, Sisy­phus might well push the boul­der back up the moun­tain with more enthu­si­asm and more cre­ativ­i­ty. I do not want to deny the ben­e­fits of psy­choac­tive med­ica­tion. I just want to point out that Sisy­phus is not a patient with a men­tal health prob­lem. To see him as a patient with a men­tal health prob­lem is to ignore cer­tain larg­er aspects of his predica­ment con­nect­ed to boul­ders, moun­tains, and eter­ni­ty.”
    • See also Stay­ing Awake Is A Sur­pris­ing­ly Effec­tive Way To Treat Depres­sion (Lin­da Ged­des, Digg):  “‘Sleep depri­va­tion real­ly has oppo­site effects in healthy peo­ple and those with depres­sion,’ says Benedet­ti. If you’re healthy and you don’t sleep, you’ll feel in a bad mood. But if you’re depressed, it can prompt an imme­di­ate improve­ment in mood, and in cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties.”
  3. Fol­low up to last week: Bolivia’s Pres­i­dent Revokes Evan­ge­lism Restric­tions (Mor­gan Lee, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Pres­i­dent Evo Morales Ayma announced that he will tell the South Amer­i­can nation’s Leg­isla­tive Assem­bly to repeal the entire penal code in the wake of recent changes that, among oth­er tweaks, intro­duced severe restric­tions on reli­gious free­dom.”
  4. Of Mon­ey and Morals (Alex Mayyasi, Aeon): “Today, a banker lis­ten­ing to a the­olo­gian seems like a curios­i­ty, a cat­e­go­ry error. But for most of his­to­ry, this kind of dia­logue was the norm.” I was reluc­tant to read this piece because I’ve read oth­ers that were off-putting­ly ill-informed, but I was pleas­ant­ly sur­prised.
  5. It’s the (Democ­ra­cy-Poi­son­ing) Gold­en Age of Free Speech (Zeynep Tufek­ci, Wired): “The most effec­tive forms of cen­sor­ship today involve med­dling with trust and atten­tion, not muz­zling speech itself. As a result, they don’t look much like the old forms of cen­sor­ship at all. They look like viral or coor­di­nat­ed harass­ment cam­paigns, which har­ness the dynam­ics of viral out­rage to impose an unbear­able and dis­pro­por­tion­ate cost on the act of speak­ing out.”

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 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. (first shared in vol­ume 14)

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.

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 134

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. ‘Walk­ing a line’: The shrewd tac­tics of the White House’s evan­gel­i­cal gate­keep­er (Michelle Boorstein & Sarah Pul­liam Bai­ley, The Wash­ing­ton Post):  “The Sen­ate race in Alaba­ma and Chris­t­ian nation­al­ist Roy Moore? ‘I’m not involved.’ Trump’s pen­chant for lying? ‘I don’t want to get into it. Because I don’t focus on those things.’ The GOP tax law that bit­ter­ly divid­ed reli­gious lead­ers? ‘I don’t think there’s an answer.’ ‘For me, that’s all noise,’ he said. ‘It’s not that it isn’t impor­tant, but I don’t have time for all that… If I did dig into it, I might have stronger opin­ions, and that would be a dis­trac­tion for me.’”
  2. The Top 50 Coun­tries Where It’s Most Dan­ger­ous to Fol­low Jesus (Sarah Zyl­stra, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “For decades, North Korea has clear­ly been the world’s worst per­se­cu­tor of Chris­tians. But now, anoth­er nation near­ly match­es it.” Spoil­er alert: Afghanistan.
  3. Clas­si­cal Lib­er­al­ism Strikes Out (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “Thus, the irony: indi­vid­u­al­ism and sta­tism are not oppo­sites, but grow togeth­er in tan­dem. In our dai­ly par­ti­san pol­i­tics, we have tend­ed to pit indi­vid­u­al­ism against sta­tism – Ayn Rand against Karl Marx – with con­ser­v­a­tives claim­ing to be indi­vid­u­al­ists and pro­gres­sives claim­ing to sup­port an expan­sive state. But what we have wit­nessed is the simul­ta­ne­ous growth of both the state and the rise of indi­vid­u­al­ism, not as oppo­sites, but as nec­es­sary part­ners. The world has nev­er seen a more indi­vid­u­al­is­tic soci­ety nor a more encom­pass­ing state. The state has empow­ered itself by claim­ing to empow­er the indi­vid­ual.” This is a very stim­u­lat­ing inter­view with Notre Dame pro­fes­sor Patrick Deneen. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed.
  4. High­er Edu­ca­tion Is Drown­ing In BS (Chris­t­ian Smith, Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion): “Ideas and their accom­pa­ny­ing prac­tices have con­se­quences. What is formed in col­leges and uni­ver­si­ties over decades shows up for bet­ter or worse in the char­ac­ter and qual­i­ty of our pub­lic ser­vants, polit­i­cal cam­paigns, pub­lic-pol­i­cy debates, cit­i­zen par­tic­i­pa­tion, social cap­i­tal, media pro­gram­ming, low­er school edu­ca­tion, con­sumer pref­er­ences, busi­ness ethics, enter­tain­ments, and much more. And the long-term cor­ro­sive effects on pol­i­tics and cul­ture can also be repaired only over the long term, if ever. There are no quick fix­es here.” Side note: I’ve met Dr. Smith, who is a soci­ol­o­gist at Notre Dame, before. He’s a smart cook­ie. 
  5. Oprah: Prophet, Priest­ess … Queen? (Ross Douthat, New York Times):  “Amer­i­can cul­ture is divid­ed between three broad approach­es to reli­gious ques­tions: one tra­di­tion­al, one spir­i­tu­al and one sec­u­lar. The tra­di­tion­al approach takes var­i­ous forms (Catholic and Protes­tant, Mus­lim and Ortho­dox Jew­ish) but its instincts are creedal, con­fes­sion­al, dog­mat­ic; it believes in a spe­cif­ic rev­e­la­tion, a spe­cif­ic author­i­ty and a spe­cif­ic holy book, and seeks to con­form itself to teach­ings hand­ed down from the reli­gious past. The sec­u­lar approach is post-reli­gious, sci­en­tis­tic, con­vinced that the lab­o­ra­to­ry and the micro­scope will ulti­mate­ly account for every­thing that mat­ters, while hope­ful­ly jus­ti­fy­ing a lib­er­al society’s still-some­what-Chris­t­ian moral com­mit­ments along the way. But in between sec­u­lar­ism and tra­di­tion­al­ism lies the most Amer­i­can approach to mat­ters of faith….”
  6. Can We Teach Our­selves to Believe? (Agnes Callard, New York Times): “Pas­cal seems to con­cede that try­ing to believe is a mat­ter of wish­ful think­ing, self-decep­tion or self-manip­u­la­tion. He thinks we should do it any­way. But I think our hope of becom­ing bet­ter peo­ple — whether in respect of reli­gion, friend­ship or jus­tice, or in any num­ber of dif­fer­ent ways — rests on the pos­si­bil­i­ty that there is a more straight­for­ward and less self-abas­ing way to try to believe.” The author is a pro­fes­sor of phi­los­o­phy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go. 
  7. The Legion Lone­ly (Steven Thomas, Hazlitt): “Friend­ship in adult­hood is a chal­lenge for a lot of peo­ple. On aver­age, both men and women start to lose friends around age 25, and con­tin­ue to lose friends steadi­ly for the rest of our lives.”

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).

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.

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.