Tag: politics

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 107

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 Sim­ple Ques­tions to Ask Every Time You Open Your Bible (Justin Tay­lor, Gospel Coali­tion): “1. What does God want me to under­stand? 2. What does God want me to believe? 3. What does God want me to desire? 4. What does God want me to do?”
  2. Ben Sasse on the Space between Nebras­ka and Nev­er­land (Tyler Cowen, Con­ver­sa­tions With Tyler): Sasse is my favorite Repub­li­can Sen­a­tor and he does not dis­ap­point in this inter­view. While you could just read the tran­script, the audio is great and high­ly rec­om­mend­ed. The Con­ver­sa­tions With Tyler pod­cast gen­er­al­ly is a worth­while sub­scrip­tion (iTunes, RSS). My favorite Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tor, by the way, is Cory Book­er. You can read the tran­script of Booker’s 2012 com­mence­ment speech at Stan­ford. Sasse and Book­er being my favorites does not imply that I agree with them on any spe­cif­ic pol­i­cy issue — I just think they’d be great to have as neigh­bors.
  3. Reli­gious Free­dom and Dis­crim­i­na­tion: Why the Debate Con­tin­ues (Albert Mohler, Gospel Coali­tion): “Great moral debates ride on argu­ments, but they’re decid­ed on emo­tion and moral intu­ition. That doesn’t mean argu­ments don’t matter—they assured­ly do. What it does mean is the win­ning side in a great moral cri­sis will nev­er win on argu­ment alone. Moral sen­ti­ment is more basic than moral argu­ment.” Rel­e­vant: In Sex Dis­putes, Most Amer­i­cans Still Favor Reli­gious Rights.
  4. The Supreme Court made a very encour­ag­ing rul­ing in defense of reli­gious lib­er­ty. Here are a few takes on it:
    • SCOTUS ruled that church­es qual­i­fy for state mon­ey. Church­es, beware. (Lyman Stone, Vox): “Church­es should cel­e­brate the Court’s deci­sion, yet think hard about how they’ll act on it…. Reli­gious peo­ple and groups do deserve and are one step clos­er to receiv­ing equal access to pub­lic pro­grams, but if they are wise, they should avoid actu­al­ly avail­ing them­selves of these pro­grams in most cas­es. The expe­ri­ence of cen­turies has shown that far from sacral­iz­ing the state, pub­lic sup­port of reli­gious bod­ies sec­u­lar­izes the church.”
    • The Supreme Court Strikes Down a Major Church-State Bar­ri­er (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “Sev­en jus­tices affirmed the judg­ment in Trin­i­ty Luther­an v. Com­er, albeit with some dis­agree­ment about the rea­son­ing behind it. The major church-state case could poten­tial­ly expand the legal under­stand­ing of the free-exer­cise clause of the First Amend­ment of the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion. It is also the first time the Supreme Court has ruled that gov­ern­ments must pro­vide mon­ey direct­ly to a house of wor­ship, which could have impli­ca­tions for future pol­i­cy fights—including fund­ing for pri­vate, reli­gious char­ter schools.”
    • Paving a Play­ground, and Weed­ing the Unruly Gar­den of Reli­gious Lib­er­ty (Matthew J. Franck, Pub­lic Dis­course): “Some­thing of this gen­er­al­ized ani­mos­i­ty to the place of reli­gion in Amer­i­can soci­ety can be seen in the star­tling­ly reac­tionary dis­sent of Jus­tice Sonia Sotomay­or, who was joined by Jus­tice Ruth Bad­er Gins­burg. Con­sid­er­ably longer than Roberts’s opin­ion of the Court, Sotomayor’s dis­sent stakes out the amaz­ing posi­tion that Mis­souri is not only per­mit­ted by the free exer­cise clause of the First Amend­ment to exclude church­es from equal access to fund­ing avail­able to oth­ers; it is required to exclude them by the estab­lish­ment clause.”
  5. I think health care is a right. I asked an expert to tell me why I’m wrong. (Sean Illing, Vox): “Fun­da­men­tal­ly, you have to under­stand that get­ting access to health­care ser­vices, get­ting peo­ple to be will­ing to pro­vide high-qual­i­ty ser­vices and inno­v­a­tive treat­ments, is the result of a mar­ket deci­sion for those providers as well, and so if you don’t treat it like a mar­ket­place to some degree, you’ll get less inno­va­tion and few­er new treat­ments than you will if you do.” The jour­nal­ist inter­views an econ pro­fes­sor at North­west­ern and they dis­agree help­ful­ly.
  6. The Seat­tle Min­i­mum Wage Study (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “The authors are able to repli­cate the results of oth­er papers that find no impact on the restau­rant indus­try with their own data by impos­ing the same lim­i­ta­tions that oth­er researchers have faced. This shows that those papers’ find­ings were like­ly dri­ven by their data lim­i­ta­tions. This is an impor­tant thing to remem­ber as you see knee-jerk respons­es com­ing from the usu­al cor­ners.” See also The Min­i­mum Wage: Evi­dence from a Dan­ish Dis­con­ti­nu­ity.

Things Glen Found Amus­ing

From The Archives

I’m exper­i­ment­ing with a new fea­ture — every week high­light­ing an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. First up we have the very first link I ever shared way back in vol­ume 1: The Spir­i­tu­al Shape of Polit­i­cal Ideas (Joseph Bot­tum, The Week­ly Stan­dard). It argues that some of our mod­ern and sup­pos­ed­ly sec­u­lar polit­i­cal ideas are mutant vari­ants of Chris­t­ian the­ol­o­gy.

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 106

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. One Amer­i­can fam­i­ly’s mis­sion to res­cue civil­ians in Mosul (Mar­co Wer­man, PRI’s The World): I heard this sto­ry on NPR this week and was floored. Lis­ten to the thir­teen-minute inter­view (don’t just read the sur­round­ing text ‑the siz­zle is in the audio ver­sion). Amaz­ing. For more about David Eubank’s min­istry, read Jun­gle Cow­boys (Sophia Lee, World Mag­a­zine).
  2. The Legal Mean­ing of the Cos­by Mis­tri­al (Jean­nie Suk Gersen, New York­er): “The extra­or­di­nar­i­ly high pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al bur­den of proof in any crim­i­nal tri­al is inten­tion­al­ly designed to heav­i­ly favor defen­dants, because we long ago embraced as a soci­ety Blackstone’s prin­ci­ple. For­mu­lat­ed in the sev­en­teen-six­ties by the Eng­lish jurist William Black­stone, the pre­sump­tion is that it is bet­ter to have ten guilty peo­ple go free than that one inno­cent per­son suf­fer. Hard as it is to stom­ach today, embrac­ing that cal­cu­lus means that we should even want ten rapists (not to men­tion ter­ror­ists and mur­der­ers) to go free in order to pro­tect the one false­ly accused.” Gersen, a Har­vard Law prof, also has anoth­er sol­id arti­cle this week: Why Racial­ly Offen­sive Trade­marks Are Now Legal­ly Pro­tect­ed.
  3. Phi­lan­do Castile After­math (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “Still, I can’t grasp why Castile’s killer got away scot-free, and why there hasn’t been much of an out­cry. If a police offi­cer can shoot to death a motorist who was obey­ing all his com­mands, and walk away a free man from that shoot­ing, how safe are any of us?” On Slate, Leon Ney­fakh writes Phi­lan­do Castile Should Be the NRA’s Per­fect Cause Célèbre. There’s Just One Prob­lem. See also David French’s The Unwrit­ten Law That Helps Bad Cops Go Free.
  4. Camille Paglia: On Trump, Democ­rats, Trans­gen­derism, and Islamist Ter­ror (Jonathan V. Last, The Week­ly Stan­dard): “Although I describe myself as trans­gen­der (I was don­ning flam­boy­ant male cos­tumes from ear­ly child­hood on), I am high­ly skep­ti­cal about the cur­rent trans­gen­der wave, which I think has been pro­duced by far more com­pli­cat­ed psy­cho­log­i­cal and soci­o­log­i­cal fac­tors than cur­rent gen­der dis­course allows. Fur­ther­more, I con­demn the esca­lat­ing pre­scrip­tion of puber­ty block­ers (whose long-term effects are unknown) for chil­dren. I regard this prac­tice as a crim­i­nal vio­la­tion of human rights.”
  5. Mis-Edu­cat­ing The Young (David Brooks, NY Times): “Child­hood is more struc­tured than it has ever been. But then the great engine of the mer­i­toc­ra­cy spits peo­ple out into a young adult­hood that is less struc­tured than it has ever been.”
  6. The most impor­tant truth about hard work, and also read­ing, that you can find (Tyler Cowen, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “Giv­en two peo­ple of approx­i­mate­ly the same abil­i­ty and one per­son who works ten per­cent more than the oth­er, the lat­ter will more than twice out­pro­duce the for­mer. The more you know, the more you learn; the more you learn, the more you can do; the more you can do, the more the oppor­tu­ni­ty – it is very much like com­pound inter­est.”
  7. Two minds: The cog­ni­tive dif­fer­ences between men and women (Bruce Gold­man, Stan­ford Med­i­cine): “In a study of 34 rhe­sus mon­keys, for exam­ple, males strong­ly pre­ferred toys with wheels over plush toys, where­as females found plush toys lik­able. It would be tough to argue that the mon­keys’ par­ents bought them sex-typed toys or that simi­an soci­ety encour­ages its male off­spring to play more with trucks.” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.

Things Glen Found Entertaining

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 95

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. ‘You Can’t Give In’: Mon­ty Williams On Life After Tragedy (Chris Bal­lard, Sports Illus­trat­ed): “He puts on a good face, but talk­ing about what hap­pened, as he does over the course of the next three days, often paus­ing for min­utes at a time, remains dif­fi­cult. ‘I just couldn’t under­stand it,’ he says. ‘And nev­er will. But my faith in God nev­er wavered. Just, some­times your faith and your feel­ings don’t line up.’” This is the pick of the week. Very pow­er­ful.
  2. When Char­ac­ter No Longer Counts (Alan Jacobs, Nation­al Affairs): “What is required of seri­ous reli­gious believ­ers in a plu­ral­is­tic soci­ety is the abil­i­ty to code-switch: nev­er to for­get or neglect their own native reli­gious tongue, but also nev­er to for­get that they live in a soci­ety of peo­ple for whom that lan­guage is gib­ber­ish. To speak only in the lan­guage of prag­ma­tism is to bring noth­ing dis­tinc­tive to the table; to speak only a pri­vate lan­guage of rev­e­la­tion and self-pro­claimed author­i­ty is to leave the table alto­geth­er. For their own good, but also for the com­mon good, reli­gious believ­ers need to be always bilin­gual­ly present.” Includ­ing for the sum­ma­ry para­graph. That’s gold.
  3. Count­ing The Cost: DR Con­go Demon­strates Dif­fi­cul­ty of Mea­sur­ing Mar­tyr­dom (Sarah Zyl­stra, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Why do cal­cu­la­tions of Chris­tians killed for their faith world­wide each year range from 1,000 to 100,000? The rea­son large­ly comes down to one coun­try: the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Repub­lic of the Con­go (DRC).” Many sur­pris­ing pieces of infor­ma­tion. Worth­while.
  4. Book Review: See­ing Like A State (Scott Alexan­der, Slate Star Codex): “Peas­ants didn’t like per­ma­nent sur­names. Their own sys­tem was quite rea­son­able for them: John the bak­er was John Bak­er, John the black­smith was John Smith, John who lived under the hill was John Under­hill, John who was real­ly short was John Short. The same per­son might be John Smith and John Under­hill in dif­fer­ent con­texts, where his sta­tus as a black­smith or place of ori­gin was more impor­tant. But the gov­ern­ment insist­ed on giv­ing every­one a sin­gle per­ma­nent name, unique for the vil­lage, and track­ing who was in the same fam­i­ly as whom. Resis­tance was intense.” This is long and amaz­ing.
  5. Chi­na’s Suc­cess Explains Author­i­tar­i­an­is­m’s Allure (Tyler Cowen, Bloomberg View): “…if there is a pow­er­ful sys­tem on the world stage, many of us will be drawn to it and seek to emu­late it, with­out always being con­scious of the rea­sons for those attrac­tions. This process is actu­al­ly not so dif­fer­ent from how neolib­er­al­ism attract­ed greater sup­port dur­ing the 1990s, when it was per­ceived as the major vic­tor on the world stage.”

Things Glen Found Amusing

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 94

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. Sor­ry, but if you’re a Chris­t­ian, you need to go to church. Reg­u­lar­ly. (Paul Prather, Lex­ing­ton Her­ald-Leader): “You might see your­self as a ter­rif­ic base­ball pitch­er. But if you only throw base­balls in your back­yard at a ply­wood cutout, you won’t progress. You’re not even real­ly play­ing base­ball. To dis­cov­er the full extent of your abil­i­ties, to under­stand the true game, you need a catch­er, a coach, infield­ers and out­field­ers — and even some­one stand­ing in the batter’s box ready to swat your best fast­ball right back at you.”
  2. Review­ing Rod Dreher’s “The Bene­dict Option” (Jake Meador, Mere Ortho­doxy): The Bene­dict Option is a much-dis­cussed book which lays out a strat­e­gy for Chris­tians in the mod­ern world — delib­er­ate with­draw­al from some aspects of cul­ture, delib­er­ate engage­ment with oth­ers. This is one of the most insight­ful reviews I’ve read.
  3. Just Who Are These ‘Peo­ple of Faith’ Any­way? (John Stack­house, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “The Ther­ava­da form of Bud­dhism, still the dom­i­nant ver­sion of that reli­gion in Sri Lan­ka and South­east Asia, does not ven­er­ate a deity. The Chi­nese tra­di­tions of Con­fu­cian­ism and Dao­ism do not, either. Many forms of belief in the super­nat­ur­al do not require faith so much as knowl­edge of the divine and of the cor­rect prac­tices to align one­self with it in order to best nego­ti­ate the world.”
  4. Can Reli­gious Char­i­ties Take the Place of the Wel­fare State? (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “Keis­ter [a pro­fes­sor of soci­ol­o­gy at Duke Uni­ver­si­ty] has argued that reli­gious engage­ment is close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with finan­cial generosity—in a recent paper, for exam­ple, she found that those who attend reli­gious ser­vices every week give near­ly three times as much as those who don’t.”
  5. Read the above in con­junc­tion with How Utah Keeps The Amer­i­can Dream Alive (Megan McAr­dle, Bloomberg View): “The vast wel­fare infra­struc­ture from the Mor­mon Church nat­u­ral­ly makes it eas­i­er to have small­er gov­ern­ment. Per­haps that could be repli­cat­ed by oth­er com­mu­ni­ties. But the val­ues of the Mor­mon Church may cre­ate a pub­lic that sim­ply needs less help. That’s hard­er for anoth­er com­mu­ni­ty to imi­tate. I’m not sure this key ingre­di­ent is avail­able in a sec­u­lar ver­sion; I think reli­gion might only come in reli­gion fla­vor. How the heck is some state gov­ern­ment sup­posed to get peo­ple to mar­ry, and stay mar­ried?”
  6. In Europe, cohab­i­ta­tion is stable…right? (Brad Wilcox and Lau­rie DeRose, Brook­ings): “It is easy to see why some con­clude that mar­riage per se does not mat­ter. But here’s the thing: mar­riage is itself strong­ly asso­ci­at­ed with fam­i­ly sta­bil­i­ty. U.S. chil­dren born to cohab­it­ing par­ents are twice as like­ly to see their par­ents’ rela­tion­ship end com­pared to chil­dren born to mar­ried par­ents…”
  7. Does it pay to get a dou­ble major? (Chris­tos Makridis, Quartz): our very own Chris­tos ana­lyzes whether get­ting a techie plus a fuzzy major yields a high­er salary than get­ting either alone.
  8. Why Amer­i­can Farm­ers Are Hack­ing Their Trac­tors With Ukrain­ian Firmware (Jason Koe­bler, Vice): “It’s quite sim­ple, real­ly. John Deere sold farm­ers their trac­tors, but has used soft­ware to main­tain con­trol of every aspect of its use after the sale.”

    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 93

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. Yes, You Can Please Your Heav­en­ly Father (Kevin DeY­oung, Gospel Coali­tion): “Over and over, more than a dozen times in the New Tes­ta­ment, we [are clear­ly taught that our actions can please God]. We ought to be gen­er­ous. We ought to be god­ly. We ought to love and live a cer­tain way because it pleas­es God.”
  2. Break­ing Faith (Peter Beinart, The Atlantic): “As Amer­i­cans have left orga­nized reli­gion, they haven’t stopped view­ing pol­i­tics as a strug­gle between ‘us’ and ‘them.’ Many have come to define us and them in even more pri­mal and irrec­on­cil­able ways.”
  3. Sor­ry, But The Irish Were Always ‘White’ (And So Were Ital­ians, Jews, and So On): (David Bern­stein, Wash­ing­ton Post): The author makes intu­itive and com­pelling argu­ments. He is a law pro­fes­sor at George Mason Uni­ver­si­ty. 
  4. The Expe­ri­ence of Dis­crim­i­na­tion in Con­tem­po­rary Amer­i­ca: Results from a Nation­al­ly Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Sam­ple of Adults (SocArX­iv): note that this has not yet under­gone peer review and that the dataset has some lim­i­ta­tions. Hav­ing said that, I don’t think I’ve ever seen such research about how fre­quent­ly peo­ple feel dis­crim­i­nat­ed against. Table 2 on page 11 is where the most inter­est­ing infor­ma­tion can be found. Dif­fi­cult to sum­ma­rize but provoca­tive. 
  5. Relat­ed: White Evan­gel­i­cals Believe They Face More Dis­crim­i­na­tion Than Mus­lims (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “White evan­gel­i­cals per­ceive dis­crim­i­na­tion in Amer­i­ca in vast­ly dif­fer­ent terms than all oth­er reli­gious groups, includ­ing their minor­i­ty peers.”
  6. The recent nation­wide threats against the Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty seem to have been per­pe­trat­ed large­ly by a 19 year-old dual-cit­i­zen­ship Amer­i­can-Israeli Jew (Yon­ah Jere­my Bob, Jerusalem Post) with a small sub­set stem­ming from a reporter stalk­ing an ex-girl­friend (Eric Lev­en­son and AnneClaire Sta­ple­ton, CNN). A use­ful reminder that our assump­tions are often wrong. 
  7. The Fake Kid­nap­ping Scan­dal That Almost Destroyed A Megachurch Pio­neer (Luke Har­ring­ton, Christ and Pop Cul­ture): “…it turns out the cul­ture wars weren’t invent­ed last week. The U.S.’s reli­gious and cul­tur­al land­scape of the 1920s was rocked by no short­age of its own con­flict, with fac­tions of evan­gel­i­cals, fun­da­men­tal­ists, main­line Chris­tians, and sec­u­lar­ists all vying for pow­er, and McPher­son had man­aged to make ene­mies of most of them.”

Things Glen Found Amusing

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 92

Hypocrites! You know how to interpret the earth and the sky. How is it that you don't know how to interpret this present time? Luke 12:56

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. On Polit­i­cal Cor­rect­ness (William Dere­siewicz, The Amer­i­can Schol­ar): a long and thought­ful arti­cle. “Selec­tive pri­vate col­leges have become reli­gious schools. The reli­gion in ques­tion is not Method­ism or Catholi­cism but an extreme ver­sion of the belief sys­tem of the lib­er­al elite: the lib­er­al pro­fes­sion­al, man­age­r­i­al, and cre­ative class­es, which pro­vide a large major­i­ty of stu­dents enrolled at such places and an even larg­er major­i­ty of fac­ul­ty and admin­is­tra­tors who work at them. To attend those insti­tu­tions is to be social­ized, and not infre­quent­ly, indoc­tri­nat­ed into that reli­gion.… I say this, by the way, as an athe­ist, a demo­c­ra­t­ic social­ist, a native north­east­ern­er, a per­son who believes that col­leges should not have sports teams in the first place—and in case it isn’t obvi­ous by now, a card-car­ry­ing mem­ber of the lib­er­al elite.”
  2. Sim­i­lar: Is Inter­sec­tion­al­i­ty a Reli­gion? (NY Mag, Andrew Sul­li­van): “It posits a clas­sic ortho­doxy through which all of human expe­ri­ence is explained — and through which all speech must be fil­tered. Its ver­sion of orig­i­nal sin is the pow­er of some iden­ti­ty groups over oth­ers. To over­come this sin, you need first to con­fess, i.e., ‘check your priv­i­lege,’ and sub­se­quent­ly live your life and order your thoughts in a way that keeps this sin at bay. The sin goes so deep into your psy­che, espe­cial­ly if you are white or male or straight, that a pro­found con­ver­sion is required.”
  3. Con­sis­tent Veg­e­tar­i­an­ism and the Suf­fer­ing of Wild Ani­mals (Thomas Sit­tler-Adam­czews­ki, Jour­nal of Prac­ti­cal Ethics): argues that “…wild ani­mals have worse lives than farmed ani­mals, and that con­sis­tent veg­e­tar­i­ans should there­fore reduce the num­ber of wild ani­mals as a top pri­or­i­ty.”
  4. What Chris­tian­i­ty in Chi­na Is Real­ly Like (Col­in Clark, Gospel Coali­tion): “First and fore­most, house church lead­ers aren’t under­ground because of the extent of gov­ern­men­tal med­dling, but because of the mere fact of it…. Extend all the appar­ent olive branch­es you want, but Jesus Christ is still the head of the church, not the TSPM and not the CCC.”
  5. Why the courts were wrong to rule against a florist who declined ser­vice to a gay wed­ding (Robert Vis­ch­er, Amer­i­ca Mag­a­zine): “The florist, Bar­ronelle Stutz­man, had served the gay cus­tomers, Robert Inger­soll and Curt Freed, many times over a num­ber of years, includ­ing by pro­vid­ing flow­ers for birth­days and oth­er per­son­al events; she object­ed only to pro­vid­ing flow­ers for their wed­ding. The court declined to rec­og­nize such a dis­tinc­tion, find­ing that a refusal to pro­vide ser­vices for a wed­ding between mem­bers of the same sex amounts to dis­crim­i­na­tion based on sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion.” The author is the dean of a law school and this is one of the more thought­ful and com­pre­hen­sive pieces I have seen on this issue. Relat­ed: UW Madi­son Stu­dents On Reli­gious Free­dom (YouTube): I am skep­ti­cal of videos like this (how many peo­ple did they inter­view and cut out?), but it def­i­nite­ly reflects a ten­den­cy many col­lege stu­dents have — they instinc­tive­ly sup­port reli­gious free­dom when it’s not for evan­gel­i­cals.
  6. Dream­ing of life with­out the GOP? Wel­come to California—where things are far from per­fect (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, LA Times): “We’re a case study in what a polit­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty looks like when Repub­li­cans wield lit­tle or no pow­er — and an ongo­ing refu­ta­tion of the con­ceit that but for the GOP, the Unit­ed States would be free of dys­func­tion.”

Things Glen Found Amusing

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 91

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 Cri­sis of Lib­er­ty In The West (Ryan Ander­son, Her­itage Foun­da­tion): “Free­dom today is under­stood as a mat­ter of indifference—a free­dom from con­straint. But free­dom right­ly under­stood is a free­dom for—a free­dom for excel­lence.” This. Read this.
  2. Gen­der Rever­sal Teach­es Uncom­fort­able Lessons (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “How would the Trump-Clin­ton debates have been per­ceived if the gen­ders had been reversed? Two pro­fes­sors worked with trained actors to dupli­cate not just the words but also the man­ner­isms of Trump and Clinton–only with a female actor play­ing Trump, now called Bren­da King, and a male actor play­ing Clin­ton, now called Jonathan Gor­don.” The pro­fes­sors found the oppo­site of what they expect­ed. There is a video clip so you can judge for your­self. A lit­tle mind-blow­ing.
  3. Amer­i­can Car­nage (Christo­pher Cald­well, First Things): “Call­ing addic­tion a dis­ease use­ful­ly describes cer­tain mea­sur­able aspects of the problem—particularly tol­er­ance and with­draw­al. It fails to cap­ture what is spe­cial and dan­ger­ous about the way drugs bind with people’s minds. Almost every known dis­ease is some­thing peo­ple wish to be rid of. Addic­tion is dif­fer­ent. Addicts resist known cures—even to the point of death.” A pow­er­ful arti­cle.
  4. There’s Enough Time To Change Every­thing (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): “If I were loose­ly gath­er­ing top­ics of study into cat­e­gories, I might call them arts, reli­gion, schol­ar­ship, and sci­ence. As impor­tant as schol­ar­ship and sci­ence are, arts and reli­gion are more impor­tant” A wide-rang­ing and fas­ci­nat­ing inter­view with Yale pro­fes­sor David Gel­ern­ter. This one is long.
  5. Faith Is Chang­ing The Way Peo­ple Think About Music (Marc Barnes, Rel­e­vant): “The cre­ative arts have a long his­to­ry of tak­ing to what is taboo in the pub­lic square. It is no sur­prise that they are tak­ing reli­gion, the ugly duck­ling of mod­ern sec­u­lar life, under their wing.”
  6. North Korea Is Prac­tic­ing For Nuclear War (Jef­frey Lewis, For­eign Pol­i­cy): “What­ev­er restraint Kim or Trump might show — and let’s be hon­est, our expec­ta­tions here are not high — each will face enor­mous pres­sure to start the attack lest his oppo­nent beat him to the punch.” Ouch.
  7. 10 Ques­tions for Sha­di Hamid (Raz­ib Khan, per­son­al blog): “It’s not so much that [devout Mus­lims] want to die; it’s more that they are ready to die, and it doesn’t fright­en them as much as it might fright­en some­one else, because they believe there’s a pret­ty good chance that they’ll be grant­ed par­adise espe­cial­ly if they hap­pen to killed while they’re in the mid­dle of an act that they con­sid­er to be in the ser­vice of God and his mes­sage.” The inter­view­er is a doc­tor­al can­di­date in genet­ics at UC Davis and the inter­vie­wee is a senior fel­low at the Brook­ings Insti­tu­tion. Also worth read­ing is Rod Dreher’s reac­tion piece Islam: The Last Badass Reli­gion.

Things Glen Found Amusing

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 90

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 Sto­ry of Those Lit­tle Com­mu­nion Cups, What­ev­er Those Are Tech­ni­cal­ly Called (Luke Har­ring­ton, Christ and Pop Cul­ture): “If you’re won­der­ing, there’s actu­al­ly nev­er been a dis­ease out­break traced back to the com­mon com­mu­nion cup. Nor is it like­ly to occur, giv­en the par­tic­u­lars of the ceremony—silver and gold don’t con­sti­tute a hos­pitable envi­ron­ment for bac­te­ria, and nei­ther does an alco­holic bev­er­age. And if you come from a tra­di­tion, as I do, that believes Jesus is actu­al­ly present in the wine (and the bread), it seems per­ti­nent to point out that that guy is in the busi­ness of heal­ing dis­ease, not spread­ing it.”
  2. Chance the Rap­per, Chris­tian­i­ty, and Black­ness (Ernest Ezeu­go, New Amer­i­ca): “For dis­en­chant­ed Chris­t­ian millennials—specifically those of color—Chance’s pro­found faith is a reminder that there is a place where we belong, because it was made for us, labored over for us, bled over for us, no mat­ter what the rest of it looks like.”
  3. Black Church­es Mat­ter: Research Ties Atten­dance to Pos­i­tive Out­comes (David Brig­gs, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Sev­er­al new stud­ies build on past research to con­tin­ue reveal­ing how faith is asso­ci­at­ed with pos­i­tive out­comes for black Amer­i­cans amid the real­i­ties of dis­crim­i­na­tion and eco­nom­ic, polit­i­cal, and social inequal­i­ty.”
  4. Some Groups of Peo­ple Who May Not 100% Deserve Our Eter­nal Scorn (Scott Alexan­der, Slate Star Codex): this is a fun list includ­ing celebri­ties who speak out about pol­i­tics, peo­ple who com­pare events to Har­ry Pot­ter, and pun­dits who failed to pre­dict Trump.
  5. How Pro-Life Move­ment Was Born A Lib­er­al Cause (Charles Camosy, Crux):  “The con­tro­ver­sy over abor­tion orig­i­nat­ed as a con­flict between two dif­fer­ent groups of lib­er­als.  For that rea­son, it has not fol­lowed the polit­i­cal tra­jec­to­ry of oth­er social­ly con­ser­v­a­tive move­ments.” The title is not a typo, by the way.
  6. The true sto­ry of Army medic Desmond Doss, the soft-spo­ken Chris­t­ian super­hero (Ter­ry Mat­ting­ly, On Reli­gion): “Work­ing alone, Doss – who refused a weapon, because of his Sev­enth-day Adven­tist con­vic­tions – low­ered at least 75 injured men over a 400-foot cliff dur­ing the World War II Bat­tle of Oki­nawa. He col­lapsed sev­er­al times dur­ing that night, but kept going with these words on his lips: ‘Please Lord, help me get one more.’ A Japan­ese sol­dier lat­er tes­ti­fied that he aimed at Doss sev­er­al times, but his rifle kept jam­ming when he tried to fire.”
  7. Van Jones’ Excel­lent Metaphors About the Dan­gers of Ide­o­log­i­cal Safe­ty (Jonathan Haidt, Het­ero­dox Acad­e­my): the link has a com­pelling video of Van Jones talk­ing about how to deal with offen­sive words. There is a tran­script, but the ver­bal deliv­ery is pow­er­ful. It’s under five min­utes and well worth your time.

Things Glen Found Entertaining

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 87

1 Chronicles 12:32 - they "understood the times"
1 Chron­i­cles 12:32 — they “under­stood the times”

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. I Helped Cre­ate the Milo Trolling Play­book. You Should Stop Play­ing Right Into It (Ryan Hol­l­i­day, The Observ­er): “It was a mas­ter­ful bit of trolling that admit­ted­ly felt a lot more mean­ing­ful and excit­ing when I was younger than it does to me today: We encour­aged protests at col­leges by send­ing out­raged emails to var­i­ous activist groups and clubs on cam­pus­es where the movie was being screened. We sent fake tips to Gawk­er, which duti­ful­ly ate them up.” Fas­ci­nat­ing. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed.
  2. Meet the Pas­tor Who Chal­lenged Africa’s Old­est Dic­ta­tor with Sur­pris­ing Suc­cess (Ann Thomp­son, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Last sum­mer, Mawarire led nation­al protests against the gov­ern­ment, includ­ing call­ing for every­one to stay home from work for a day; hun­dreds of thou­sands did. Mawarire was arrest­ed in July and charged with incit­ing pub­lic vio­lence. After thou­sands ral­lied to sup­port him and a court tossed the charges, Mawarire and his fam­i­ly fled to Amer­i­ca. The pas­tor returned to Zim­bab­we alone last week.”
  3. Remind me what was so great about trade? (Tim Har­ford, Finan­cial Times): “…there are two ways to make cheese in the UK: the obvi­ous way, using cows, and the indi­rect way, by mak­ing cars and then trad­ing the cars in exchange for cheese. The British cheese indus­try is, in a very real sense, direct­ly com­pet­ing with the British car indus­try. Pro­tect one with a tar­iff, and you hurt the oth­er.”
  4. The Preach­er and the Sher­iff (Nathaniel Rich, NY Times): “The police said that Vic­tor White III, while detained in the back seat of a locked police car, his hands shack­led behind his back, had com­mit­ted sui­cide by shoot­ing him­self in the back with a hand­gun that an offi­cer had not found dur­ing an ear­li­er search.”
  5. Not ‘Lone Wolves’ After All: How ISIS Guides World’s Ter­ror Plots From Afar (Ruk­mi­ni Cal­li­machi, NY Times): “Inves­ti­ga­tion doc­u­ments from Europe show that a grow­ing share of attacks bear signs of con­tact with the Islam­ic State’s strong­hold, even though the attack­er was ini­tial­ly described as act­ing alone.”
  6. The Com­forts of the Bet­sy DeVos War (Ross Douthat, NY Times): “It’s not that lib­er­als aren’t gen­uine­ly wor­ried about every­thing that makes Trump­ism poten­tial­ly abnor­mal and un-repub­li­can and author­i­tar­i­an. But a more nor­mal threat to a deep-pock­et­ed inter­est group’s pref­er­ences still turned out to be a more nat­ur­al ral­ly­ing point than the specter of creep­ing Putin­ism.”

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 86

1 Chronicles 12:32 - they "understood the times"
1 Chron­i­cles 12:32 — they “under­stood the times”

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. Here are the two arti­cles I allud­ed to in this week’s mes­sage: Why The Best Thing This Gen­er­a­tion Can Do Is Put Down The Drink (Alex­ia LaFe­ta, Elite Dai­ly) and The Alco­hol Black­out (Sarah Hep­o­la, Texas Month­ly). The lat­ter is par­tic­u­lar­ly insight­ful. I have shared these both before (see vol­ume 18 and vol­ume 25).
  2. Who Is To Blame For The Great­est Myth In The His­to­ry Of Sci­ence And Reli­gion? These Two Guys (Justin Tay­lor, Gospel Coali­tion): “The so-called ‘war’ between faith and learn­ing, specif­i­cal­ly between ortho­dox Chris­t­ian the­ol­o­gy and sci­ence, was man­u­fac­tured…. It is a con­struct that was cre­at­ed for polem­i­cal pur­pos­es.”
  3. Home­less Find Rest In Faith-Based Shel­ters More Than Oth­ers (Adelle Banks, Reli­gion News Ser­vice): “In a pre­lim­i­nary study of 11 U.S. cities, 58 per­cent of emer­gency beds for the home­less were at faith-based orga­ni­za­tions. That per­cent­age ranged wide­ly across the cities, with 90 per­cent of emer­gency beds in Oma­ha, Neb., pro­vid­ed by faith groups and 33 per­cent in Port­land, Ore.”
  4. How To Protest Bet­ter (Leah Sargeant, First Things): excel­lent sub­ti­tle, “light hearts, not trash cans, on fire.” Relat­ed per­spec­tive from the oppo­site side of the ide­o­log­i­cal aisle: And Now It’s Time To Do The Real Work (Fred­erik deBoer). Also worth not­ing, Anar­chists, NOT Cal stu­dents, respon­si­ble for vio­lence in UC Berke­ley protests.
  5. The biggest news since last Friday’s email is Trump’s immi­gra­tion action. The two pieces I saw shared most by my thought­ful friends on social media are Malev­o­lence Tem­pered by Incom­pe­tence: Trump’s Hor­ri­fy­ing Exec­u­tive Order on Refugees and Visas (Ben­jamin Wittes, Law­fare) and Trump’s Exec­u­tive Order on Refugees, Sep­a­rat­ing Fact from Hys­te­ria (David French, Nation­al Review). Two insight­ful fol­low-ups are What Con­ser­v­a­tives Get Wrong About Trump’s Immi­gra­tion Order (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic) and Tal­ly­ing Up Trump (Peter Lei­thart, First Things). George Wood, the leader of my denom­i­na­tion, penned a Response To The Exec­u­tive Order on Immi­gra­tion.
  6. An Evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian Defends Trump’s First Week In Office (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “I’m will­ing to give him the ben­e­fit of the doubt thus far because I, and many Amer­i­cans, have been unfor­tu­nate­ly trained by the press in recent years not to take their side auto­mat­i­cal­ly any­more. They have tremen­dous­ly under­mined them­selves.” It’s inter­est­ing to read Fake News and Evan­gel­i­cals (Alex Wil­gus, Com­mon Vision) in con­junc­tion with this.
  7. Neil Gor­such belongs to a notably lib­er­al church — and would be the first Protes­tant on the Court in years (Julie Zauzmer, Wash­ing­ton Post): He is Epis­co­pal, yet many Epis­co­pals (espe­cial­ly cler­gy) are opposed to his nom­i­na­tion, where­as evan­gel­i­cals and Catholics are most­ly delight­ed. 

Things Glen Found Amusing/Entertaining

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.