Tag: politics

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 48

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. The dis­claimers are espe­cial­ly rel­e­vant for many of today’s links.

  1. This first sec­tion is a lot — buck­le up if you’re inter­est­ed. Two pas­tors recent­ly debat­ed guns — both are very thought­ful and are skill­ful debaters.  Here is the con­ver­sa­tion so far. All the posts are pret­ty short.
  2. The Mer­cy Girls (Jen­nifer Miller, Slate): a very inter­est­ing piece about a Chris­t­ian coun­sel­ing min­istry. One sig­nif­i­cant bit buried with­in it: “Nine­ty-four per­cent of respon­dents on 2013 sur­veys (com­mis­sioned by Mer­cy and con­duct­ed by inde­pen­dent firms) answered ‘yes’ to the ques­tion, ‘Did Mer­cy Min­istries help you trans­form your life and restore your hope?’ Eighty-two per­cent said they were ‘well adjust­ed to life’ after leav­ing the pro­gram. And 85 per­cent said they had spent time at oth­er treat­ment cen­ters before Mer­cy, with­out long-term results.” Those sta­tis­tics should have been even more cen­tral to the sto­ry.
  3. Spir­i­tu­al­i­ty May Help HIV Patients Sur­vive Longer (Emma Green, The Atlantic): inter­est­ing. The last para­graph is a reminder that one’s assump­tions great­ly influ­ence one’s inter­pre­ta­tions.
  4. Why Has There Been An Exo­dus Of Black Res­i­dents From West Coast Lib­er­al Hubs? (Aaron Ren, LA Times): “Though results vary to some extent, the broad trend is clear: West Coast pro­gres­sive enclaves are either see­ing an exo­dus of blacks or are fail­ing to attract them. Mid­west­ern and North­east­ern urban areas are attract­ing blacks to the extent that they are afford­able or pro­vid­ing mid­dle class eco­nom­ic oppor­tu­ni­ties. And South­ern cities are now expe­ri­enc­ing the most sig­nif­i­cant gains.” I expect wild­ly diver­gent reac­tions to this. I found it very inter­est­ing. A relat­ed line of think­ing: why col­leges are the way they are.
  5. 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.

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

Past emails are archived at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links (you can also have your non-Stan­ford friends sign up to receive them at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/subscribe)

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 46

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

  1. The Dan­ger Of A Sin­gle Sto­ry (David Brooks, NY Times): “sto­ries have become iden­ti­ty mark­ers. This is a phe­nom­e­non bor­rowed from cam­pus polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness. In order to express your sol­i­dar­i­ty with the vir­tu­ous team, you have to embrace the social­ly approved sto­ry. If you dif­fer from the offi­cial sto­ry.… it is a sign that you have false alle­giances. You must embrace the approved sto­ry to show you are not com­plic­it in a sys­tem of oppres­sion.”
  2. How To Fix Pol­i­tics (David Brooks, NY Times): “Peo­ple put pol­i­tics at the cen­ter of their psy­cho­log­i­cal, emo­tion­al and even spir­i­tu­al life. This is ask­ing too much of pol­i­tics. Once pol­i­tics becomes your eth­nic and moral iden­ti­ty, it becomes impos­si­ble to com­pro­mise, because com­pro­mise becomes dis­hon­or.”
  3. Ohio State Turns The Con­cept of ‘Safe Space’ Against Stu­dent Pro­test­ers (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): “speech codes imple­ment­ed in the late 1980s and ear­ly 90s with the inten­tion of pro­tect­ing black stu­dents were ulti­mate­ly used to charge and pun­ish more black stu­dents than white stu­dents. Inso­far as cam­pus con­cepts like safe spaces, microag­gres­sions, and claims of trau­ma over minor alter­ca­tions spread from activist cul­ture to cam­pus cul­ture, the pow­er­ful will inevitably make use of them.” See his fol­low-up The Tools Of Cam­pus Activists Are Being Turned Against Them.
  4. Fired For Preach­ing: Geor­gia Dumps Doc­tor Over Church Ser­mons (Todd Starnes, Fox News): “First, they silenced the sheep – and now they are try­ing to silence the shep­herds.”
  5. More From Michael McConnell On The Sup­ple­men­tary Brief­ing In ‘Zubik vs Bur­well’ (Eugene Volokh, Wash­ing­ton Post): the title is a lit­tle snore induc­ing, but the con­tent is quite stim­u­lat­ing. It’s a Stan­ford law professor’s thoughts on the nuns suing the gov­ern­ment.
  6. Brazil’s Evan­gel­i­cals Flex Polit­i­cal Pow­er In Impeach­ment Dra­ma (Cather­ine Osborne, NPR): I rec­om­mend lis­ten­ing to the audio rather than mere­ly read­ing the tran­script.
  7. Har­ri­et Tub­man: The “Moses” Of Her Peo­ple (Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “If a slave want­ed to quit in the midst of a res­cue, Tub­man would hold a revolver to his head and ask him to recon­sid­er.” Note that this arti­cle is not a response to Tub­man appear­ing on the $20 bill, this is from an old series called 131 Chris­tians Every­one Should Know (FYI — the relat­ed arti­cles are quite inter­est­ing). For some­thing more recent, check out the GetRe­li­gion post Hon­or­ing Har­ri­et Tub­man, a Methodist, Repub­li­can, Evan­gel­i­cal Woman For the Ages.
  8. The Absurd Pri­ma­cy of the Car in Amer­i­can Life (Edward Humes, The Atlantic): “If U.S. roads were a war zone, they would be the most dan­ger­ous bat­tle­field the Amer­i­can mil­i­tary has ever encoun­tered.”
  9. Trust Us: Politi­cians Keep Most Of Their Promis­es (Tim­o­thy Hill, FiveThir­tyEight): Inter­est­ing arti­cle, although I note that “most” is a very key word. A friend who keeps â…” of the promis­es they make to you keeps most of their promis­es — but would you call that friend trust­wor­thy?
  10. 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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 45

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

This week there are a few more links than nor­mal. Enjoy!

  1. New Evi­dence On When The Bible Was Writ­ten: Ancient Shop­ping Lists (Isabel Ker­sh­n­er, New York Times): “One of the long­stand­ing argu­ments for why the main body of bib­li­cal lit­er­a­ture was not writ­ten down in any­thing like its present form until after the destruc­tion and exile of 586 B.C. is that before then there was not enough lit­er­a­cy or enough scribes to sup­port such a huge under­tak­ing. But if the lit­er­a­cy rates in the Arad fortress were repeat­ed across the king­dom of Judah, which had about 100,000 peo­ple, there would have been hun­dreds of lit­er­ate peo­ple, the Tel Aviv research team sug­gests.” — also check out the AP/Guardian on this.
  2. Is Porn Immoral? That Doesn’t Mat­ter: It’s a Pub­lic Health Cri­sis (Gaile Dines, Wash­ing­ton Post): “After 40 years of peer-reviewed research, schol­ars can say with con­fi­dence that porn is an indus­tri­al prod­uct that shapes how we think about gen­der, sex­u­al­i­ty, rela­tion­ships, inti­ma­cy, sex­u­al vio­lence and gen­der equal­i­ty — for the worse…. just as the tobac­co indus­try argued for decades that there was no proof of a con­nec­tion between smok­ing and lung can­cer, so, too, has the porn indus­try, with the help of a well-oiled pub­lic rela­tions machine, denied the exis­tence of empir­i­cal research on the impact of its prod­ucts.”
  3. Face­book Employ­ees Asked Mark Zucker­berg If They Should Try To Stop A Don­ald Trump Pres­i­den­cy (Michael Nunez, Giz­mo­do): “Face­book has toyed with skew­ing news in the past. Dur­ing the 2008 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, Face­book secret­ly tam­pered with 1.9 mil­lion user’s news feeds. An aca­d­e­m­ic paper was pub­lished about the secret exper­i­ment, claim­ing that Face­book increased vot­er turnout by more than 340,000 peo­ple. In 2010, the com­pa­ny tam­pered with news feeds again. It con­duct­ed a 61-mil­lion-per­son exper­i­ment to see how Face­book could impact the real-world vot­ing behav­ior of mil­lions of peo­ple. In 2012, Face­book delib­er­ate­ly exper­i­ment­ed on its users’ emo­tions.  The com­pa­ny, again, secret­ly tam­pered with the news feeds of 700,000 peo­ple and con­clud­ed that Face­book can basi­cal­ly make you feel what­ev­er it wants you to.”
  4. I Was A Clos­et­ed Chris­t­ian At The Pen­ta­gon (Matthew Spence, Wash­ing­ton Post): “I feared how com­ing out as a prac­tic­ing Chris­t­ian would define me. I wor­ried that my boss­es, peers and sub­or­di­nates might asso­ciate me with Amer­i­can offi­cials who have spo­ken of U.S. mil­i­tary engage­ments in the Mid­dle East as ‘cru­sades’ or with the Islam­ic State’s dec­la­ra­tion of holy war. I feared that talk­ing about my faith would detract from the log­ic of my argu­ments. And, as a rel­a­tive­ly young per­son in a senior posi­tion, I need­ed every scrap of cred­i­bil­i­ty I could claim.”
  5. Why Jesus’ Skin Col­or Mat­ters (Chris­te­na Cleve­land, Chris­tian­i­ty Today):  “While Christ the Lord tran­scends skin col­or and racial divi­sions, white Jesus has real con­se­quences.”
  6. Hous­ton police offi­cer presents a few “dou­ble-edged sword” sce­nar­ios regard­ing body cam­eras (red­dit): unin­tend­ed con­se­quences are always dif­fi­cult to pre­dict.
  7. Was It Wrong To Hack and Leak the Pana­ma Papers? (Tyler Cowen, blog): sur­pris­ing­ly stim­u­lat­ing.
  8. Onward Chris­t­ian Sol­diers: In the Era of Trump-Style Pol­i­tics, Evan­gel­i­cal Vot­ers Are Not a Mono­lith (Julie Lyons, Hous­ton Press): this is a very insight­ful and data-rich arti­cle.
  9. The Ten­sions Threat­en­ing the Future of Reli­gious Free­dom Law (Kelsey Dal­las, Deseret News): this is a very good sum­ma­ry of the cur­rent state of reli­gious free­dom leg­is­la­tion.
  10. Chris­tian­i­ty and Korea (Dave Haz­zan, The Diplo­mat): “Evan­gel­i­cal zeal to send mis­sion­ar­ies to places most oth­ers would nev­er go – includ­ing Afghanistan, Iraq, Jor­dan, and Yemen – have caused headaches for the gov­ern­ment. In 2007, after ignor­ing the government’s advice, 27 Kore­an mis­sion­ar­ies to Afghanistan were kid­napped by the Tal­iban, and two were killed. In 2009, the Kore­an for­eign min­istry warned Kore­an Chris­tians to stop mis­sion­iz­ing in Arab coun­tries, fear­ing it was mak­ing Kore­ans ter­ror­ist targets.”9
  11. Kin­da Ran­dom

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 44

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

  1. How Covenants Make Us (David Brooks, NYT): “A con­tract pro­tects inter­ests, Pal­ly notes, but a covenant pro­tects rela­tion­ships. A covenant exists between peo­ple who under­stand they are part of one anoth­er. It involves a vow to serve the rela­tion­ship that is sealed by love: Where you go, I will go. Where you stay, I will stay. Your peo­ple shall be my peo­ple. Peo­ple in a con­tract pro­vide one anoth­er ser­vices, but peo­ple in a covenant delight in offer­ing gifts.”
  2. When Reli­gious Groups Do What the Gov­ern­ment Won’t (Alana Semuels, The Atlantic): inter­est­ing through­out.
  3. Let’s Make Foot­ball A Col­lege Major (David John­son, Aeon): I am large­ly per­suad­ed. If a per­for­mance art can be a major, then why not a sport such as foot­ball? At least give ath­letes aca­d­e­m­ic cred­it for the work they put in.
  4. Is It Time for Amer­i­can Chris­tians to Dis­obey the Gov­ern­ment? (David Koyzis, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): the piece is much less alarmist than the title sug­gests. Worth read­ing.
  5. PIN Analy­sis (Nick Berry, blog): this is a pret­ty cool analy­sis of the dis­tri­b­u­tion of four dig­it PIN codes.
  6. Final­ly, some arti­cles by stu­dents in or alum­ni from our min­istry. If you get some­thing pub­lished, be sure to let me know!

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. Your sug­ges­tions are wel­come.

 

 

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 43

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

  1. Mid­dle Knowl­edge and the Calvin­ist-Armin­ian Debate (Craig Blomberg, per­son­al blog): This is what I was talk­ing about in my ser­mon this week. Also see the YouTube video where Dr. William Lane Craig explains it to a Sun­day School class.
  2. What Apple’s Encryp­tion Fight Has To Do With Reli­gious Free­dom (Chelsea Langston, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “[Apple’s] exam­ple reminds us of the broad impor­tance of pro­tect­ing organizations—both sec­u­lar and reli­gious, for-prof­it and non-profit—from com­pul­sion to act against their most foun­da­tion­al val­ues.”
  3. How To Hack An Elec­tion (Jor­dan Robert­son, Michael Riley, and Andrew Willis, Bloomberg Busi­ness­week): this is a fas­ci­nat­ing and unset­tling arti­cle. ‘On the ques­tion of whether the U.S. pres­i­den­tial cam­paign is being tam­pered with, he is unequiv­o­cal. “I’m 100 per­cent sure it is,” he says.’
  4. Is Islam a Reli­gion of Peace? A For­mer Mus­lim Weighs In. (Dar­gan Thomp­son, Rel­e­vant Mag­a­zine): “What I’m say­ing is the foun­da­tions of Islam—I’m talk­ing about the Quran and the life of Muhammed—are very vio­lent. Islam can be for­mu­lat­ed in non-vio­lent ways, but to do so, you have to depart from its foun­da­tions, as many Mus­lims do.”
  5. Reli­gion is the Foun­da­tion of Democ­ra­cy and Pros­per­i­ty (Clay­ton Chris­tensen, Mor­mon Per­spec­tives): the author, a Har­vard pro­fes­sor, talks about a con­ver­sa­tion he had with a friend, “I learned the impor­tance of reli­gion for the strength of democ­ra­cy and cap­i­tal­ism in a con­ver­sa­tion 12 years ago with a Marx­ist econ­o­mist from Chi­na who was near­ing the end of a Ful­bright Fel­low­ship in Boston. I asked my friend if he had learned here any­thing that was sur­pris­ing or unex­pect­ed. His response was imme­di­ate and, to me, quite pro­found: ‘I had no idea how crit­i­cal reli­gion is to the func­tion­ing of democ­ra­cy and cap­i­tal­ism.’ ”
  6. Per­son­al Love and the Call to Chasti­ty (Saman­tha Schroed­er, The Pub­lic Dis­course): there is a lot I like and a lot I don’t like about this arti­cle.
  7. Here’s Every Bib­li­cal Ref­er­ence in ‘Hamil­ton’ (Alis­sa Wilkin­son, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): of inter­est to the Hamil­ton fanat­ics who seem to abound in Chi Alpha.

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 40

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

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

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 39

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

  1. This is the research paper behind the sto­ry I shared in my ser­mon this week: Spon­ta­neous Human Speech Mim­ic­ry By A Cetacean (Cur­rent Biol­o­gy), a read­able sum­ma­ry is The Whale Who Talked (Nature) and to hear it your­self, here is a one minute YouTube video about Noc. (the video describes his voice as kazo­o­like, which is apt).
  2. How The Church Helps Black Men Flour­ish In Amer­i­ca (Wilcox and Wolfin­ger, The Atlantic): “The black church’s suc­cess val­i­dates the cul­tur­al argu­ments made by con­ser­v­a­tives and the struc­tur­al argu­ments made by lib­er­als regard­ing race in Amer­i­ca.”
  3. Who Are The Gay Evan­gel­i­cals? (Mol­ly Worthen, NY Times):  “In an era when gay mar­riage is legal and a range of gay Chris­tians are mod­el­ing dif­fer­ent ways to rec­on­cile sex­u­al­i­ty and faith, are the deci­sions of young believ­ers like Lani­ra Postell still a result of coer­cion and con­fused self-hatred? I asked her what she thought about those lib­er­al crit­ics who might think so. ‘I under­stand where they’re com­ing from, that to them what I’m doing doesn’t make any sense,’ she said. ‘That’s why being a Chris­t­ian is not com­mon. It’s weird. It is unnat­ur­al for me to deny myself what I desire, but I do it because of the love of God.’”
  4. Are You A Fem­i­nist If You Always Let Him Pay? (Aman­da Fitzsim­mons, Elle): def­i­nite­ly not writ­ten from a Chris­t­ian per­spec­tive. I found it fas­ci­nat­ing through­out and insight­ful at points. “…of all the myr­i­ad rea­sons I’ve enter­tained as to why a guy did­n’t call me or a friend back (and, believe me, I’ve not lacked for cre­ativ­i­ty in this area), the fact that we did­n’t offer to pay the bill nev­er once occurred to me.”
  5. As the elec­tion draws ever clos­er, some stim­u­lat­ing con­tent:

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 38

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

  1. From The The­ol­o­gy Side:
    • Was Jesus Nei­ther a Demo­c­rat Nor a Repub­li­can? (Michael Kruger, blog): Kruger argues that this is a mis­lead­ing and triv­ial­ly true state­ment.
    • The Mega Church­es of Lagos (Andrew Esiebo, The Guardian): this is a col­lec­tion of pic­tures. The third pic­ture is mind-blow­ing.
    • Tran­script: Rev. Paul Scalia’s Eulo­gy for His Father Jus­tice Antonin Scalia (Paul Scalia, USA Today): it’s rare to find a funer­al ser­mon for a famous per­son that is this the­o­log­i­cal­ly rich. Being Protes­tant there are bits I would quib­ble with, but wow.
    • What Con­ser­v­a­tive Gay Chris­tians Want (Dan Hitchens, The Spec­ta­tor): a per­spec­tive rarely heard in main­stream media: “When Shaw writes in praise of the ‘real ele­ments of beau­ty’ in gay rela­tion­ships, or laments how the C of E’s ‘hypocrisy’ has ‘hurt a lot of peo­ple’, he sounds like a lib­er­al Angli­can. At oth­er times, he sounds like any­thing but. Sex is ‘not a small issue that we can afford to dis­agree on’, he says; ‘mar­riage between a man and a woman, union in dif­fer­ence, sex with­in that’ is one of the most impor­tant ‘pic­tures of God’s love for us’. The Bible starts with a mar­riage in Eden and ends with a mar­riage between Christ and the Church. ‘It’s not just a cou­ple of vers­es in Leviti­cus that we need to change,’ Shaw argues: recon­struct­ing mar­riage would mean ‘rip­ping out the heart of almost every part of scrip­ture’.”
    • Three Lies Every Cam­pus Min­is­ter Must Silence (Paul  Worces­ter, Cam­pus Min­istry Today): this arti­cle has an amaz­ing close. Even if you skim the arti­cle, devour the tes­ti­mo­ny at the end. You nev­er know the impact you have.
    • An Economist’s Ratio­nal Road to Chris­tian­i­ty (Eric Falken­stein, per­son­al blog): one man’s jour­ney to con­ver­sion. It’s a bit long. The author’s Ph.D. is from North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty, he works in indus­try, and has pub­lished two well-received books. My favorite line is “in the words of a famous short green deist, ‘Do, or do not, there is no try.’”
  2. From The Polit­i­cal Side
  3. God Loved Alexan­der Hamil­ton (Susan Lim, Chris­tian­i­ty Today) — his­to­ry nerds pay atten­tion — there’s some good stuff here.
  4. Ran­dom Research

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 37

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

Also, I nor­mal­ly include arti­cles from a vari­ety of sources, but this week I noticed that I’m includ­ing a bunch from GetRe­li­gion. I guess they’ve been on fire late­ly. 

  1. Death, The Pros­per­i­ty Gospel, and Me (Kate Bowler, NY Times): This piece is mov­ing and fun­ny and also not quite right… despite her study she still mis­un­der­stands some aspects of the Charis­mat­ic and Pen­te­costal world. All in all well worth read­ing. “No word of a lie: I once saw a megachurch pas­tor almost choke to death on his own fog machine. Some­one had cranked it up to the Holy Spir­it max­i­mum.”
  2. Think Pieces on Jus­tice Scalia, Funer­al Ser­mons, Humil­i­ty, and the First Amend­ment (Ter­ry Mat­ting­ly, GetRe­li­gion): Scalia was such a fas­ci­nat­ing man.I like what one of our lawyer alum­ni post­ed on Face­book: “Jus­tice Scalia! You wrote your opin­ions with so much life, I guess I thought you’d nev­er die. The world has lost a great grumpy con­ser­v­a­tive. Rest easy.”
  3. Why Is The Atlantic Sur­prised That Ear­ly Pro-Lif­ers Were, Uh, Lib­er­als? (Julia Dulin, GetRe­li­gion): This is an arti­cle about some arti­cles about a book. Meta but fas­ci­nat­ing.
  4. Lit­tle Sis­ters of the Poor on Supreme Court case: Why we can’t “just sign the form” (Con­stance Veit, Catholic Review): Moth­er Theresa’s com­pa­tri­ots explain their con­sci­en­tious objec­tion in their own words.
  5. Vote For Trump! Vote For Hilary! Vote For Jesus At This Racial­ly Diverse S.C. Megachurch! (Bob­by Ross, GetRe­li­gion): Inter­est­ing. Also, a reminder that reporters’ per­spec­tives on church­es often miss signif­i­cant details.  “None of the rough­ly 1,300 words in the Times report is ‘Jesus.’”
  6. Caus­es and Con­se­quences of the Protes­tant Ref­or­ma­tion (Beck­er, Pfaff & Rubin, a work­ing paper): There’s a lot here. Rec­om­mend­ed for social sci­en­tists. One cool bit: “They argue that the spread of uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents from Protes­tant strong­holds (Wit­ten­berg and Basel, the intel­lec­tu­al homes of Luther and Zwingli) and ortho­dox Catholic strong­holds (Cologne and Lou­vain) had a sig­nif­i­cant impact on whether a town ulti­mate­ly adopt­ed the Ref­or­ma­tion.” Which is a very fan­cy way of say­ing God uses uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents.
  7. On the ran­dom side:

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

Past emails are archived at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 34

Here are some things I found inter­est­ing this week. See the bot­tom for con­text.

  1. On The Via­bil­i­ty of Con­spir­a­to­r­i­al Beliefs (David Robert Grimes, PLOS One): Oxford physi­cist Grimes came up with an equa­tion that shows how like­ly a con­spir­a­cy will be to suc­ceed under ide­al con­di­tions. Of par­tic­u­lar inter­est is the chart on the bot­tom of page 11, show­ing that a con­spir­a­cy with more than 502 peo­ple has a 95% like­li­hood of expo­sure after just 25 years. Read­ing that puts 1 Corinthi­ans 15:3–6 in a new light: “For what I received I passed on to you as of first impor­tance: that Christ died for our sins accord­ing to the Scrip­tures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day accord­ing to the Scrip­tures, and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hun­dred of the broth­ers and sis­ters at the same time, most of whom are still liv­ing, though some have fall­en asleep.” Please note that there are all kinds of assump­tions in the paper that are sub­ject to chal­lenge… but if one of your friends brings this study up you should men­tion this pas­sage to them. 🙂
  2. Cer­ti­tude And Seek­ing The Truth (Peter Wehn­er, Com­men­tary). Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus (the rec­om­men­da­tion was actu­al­ly for a blog post excerpt­ing this arti­cle, but I thought the whole thing was worth read­ing — it aligns nice­ly with my dis­claimer at the bot­tom).
  3. My Major, Myself: (Olga Khaz­an, The Atlantic). What does your major reveal (prob­a­bilis­ti­cal­ly) about your per­son­al­i­ty?
  4. Why Humans Find It Hard To Do Away With Reli­gion (John Gray, The New States­man): Gray is him­self an athe­ist. My favorite line: “The invet­er­ate human incli­na­tion to reli­gion is, in effect, the athe­ist prob­lem of evil.” This isn’t quite right but it is amus­ing.
  5. Peo­ple Can Be Con­vinced They Com­mit­ted A Non-Exis­tant Crime In Just Three Hours (Bec Crew, Sci­ence Alert). Dis­turb­ing. This is a sum­ma­ry of the find­ings of an aca­d­e­m­ic paper: Con­struct­ing Rich False Mem­o­ries of Com­mit­ting Crime (Shaw & Porter, Psy­cho­log­i­cal Sci­ence).
  6. How Reli­gion Is Shap­ing the 2016 Pres­i­den­tial Race (Pew Research). If pol­i­tics is your thing, this arti­cle will be inter­est­ing.
  7. Are Aca­d­e­mics Dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly Gay? (Colleen Fla­her­ty, Inside High­er Edu­ca­tion). The tl;dr ver­sion is yes.

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.

To that end, on Fri­days I’ve been shar­ing articles/resources I have found help­ful recent­ly in think­ing about broad­er cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues (be sure to see the dis­claimer at the bot­tom). I pray this email gives you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar.

Disclaimer

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

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

Past emails are archived at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links