Tag: racism

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 138

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions. If you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

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

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have This Is What Makes Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats So Dif­fer­ent (Vox, Ezra Klein): the title made me skep­ti­cal, but it’s insight­ful (first shared in vol­ume 32).

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 130

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. There is a small but vocal group of skep­tics who claim that Jesus nev­er exist­ed. Lar­ry Hur­ta­do, a pro­fes­sor of ear­ly Chris­tian­i­ty, takes them down in a series of blog posts.
    • Why The Myth­i­cal Jesus Claim Has No Trac­tion With Schol­ars (Lar­ry Hur­ta­do, per­son­al blog): “The attempts to deny Jesus’ his­tor­i­cal exis­tence are, for any­one acquaint­ed with the rel­e­vant evi­dence, bla­tant­ly sil­ly.”
    • Focus, Focus, Focus! (Lar­ry Hur­ta­do, per­son­al blog): “Anoth­er read­er seems great­ly exer­cised over how much of the Jesus-tra­di­tion Paul recounts in his let­ters, and how much Paul may have known…. Paul ascribes to Jesus a human birth, a min­istry among fel­low Jews, an exe­cu­tion specif­i­cal­ly by Roman cru­ci­fix­ion, named/known sib­lings, and oth­er named indi­vid­u­als who were Jesus’ orig­i­nal com­pan­ions (e.g., Kephas/Peter, John Zebedee).  Indeed, in Paul’s view, it was essen­tial that Jesus is a real human, for the res­ur­rect­ed Jesus is Paul’s mod­el and pro­to-type of the final redemp­tion that Paul believes God will bestow on all who align them­selves with Jesus.”
    • Gee, Dr. Car­ri­er, You’re Real­ly Upset! (Lar­ry Hur­ta­do, per­son­al blog): “This exam­ple will ade­quate­ly serve to illus­trate why Carrier’s work hasn’t had any impact in schol­ar­ly cir­cles.  He gets him­self into a mud­dle.”
  2. Four Ques­tions About Amer­i­can Great­ness (Bret Stephens, New York Times): Dif­fi­cult to excerpt but good. Stephens says Amer­i­ca is great and that to retain our great­ness we must have a prop­er atti­tude toward immi­grants, inde­pen­dent think­ing, fail­ure, and glob­al lead­er­ship. Rec­om­mend­ed by a friend — thank you!
  3. A Police Killing With­out a Hint of Racism (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): “No unjust killing of a black per­son should go uncov­ered. But I sus­pect it would be in everyone’s inter­est if jour­nal­ists and activists paid more atten­tion to egre­gious police killings of white peo­ple. If you’re hor­ri­fied by Daniel Shaver’s untime­ly death, yet against Black Lives Mat­ter, con­sid­er that Shaver might well be alive if only the Mesa police depart­ment had long ago adopt­ed reforms of the sort that Black Lives Mat­ter sug­gests.” There is a fol­low-up arti­cle — Footage Of A Police Shoot­ing Jurors Chose Not To Pun­ish.
  4. The world is rely­ing on a flawed psy­cho­log­i­cal test to fight racism (Olivia Gold­hill, Quartz): “meta-analy­ses showed that the [Implic­it Asso­ci­a­tion Test] is no bet­ter at pre­dict­ing dis­crim­i­na­to­ry behav­ior (includ­ing microag­gres­sions) than explic­it mea­sures of explic­it bias, such as the Mod­ern Racism Scale, which eval­u­ates racism sim­ply by ask­ing par­tic­i­pants to state their lev­el of agree­ment with [racist state­ments].”
  5. Sur­vey: Evan­gel­i­cal Label, Beliefs Often At Odds (Bob Smi­etana, Bap­tist Press): “Few­er than half of those who iden­ti­fy as evan­gel­i­cals (45 per­cent) strong­ly agree with core evan­gel­i­cal beliefs…. Only two-thirds (69 per­cent) of evan­gel­i­cals by belief self-iden­ti­fy as evan­gel­i­cals.” This is impor­tant to remem­ber both when read­ing the news and when talk­ing with oth­ers — the label evan­gel­i­cal does­n’t mean what it should. Use­ful­ly illus­trat­ed in visu­al form on Twit­ter.
  6. The Ori­gin of Sil­i­con Valley’s Dys­func­tion­al Atti­tude Toward Hate Speech (Noam Cohen, The New York­er): “Cen­sor­ing a news­group, he explained to those who might not be famil­iar with Usenet, was like pulling a book from cir­cu­la­tion. Since ‘Mein Kampf’ was still on the library shelves, it was hard to imag­ine how any­thing else mer­it­ed removal.” The arti­cle is about Stan­ford, and it led me to entire­ly dif­fer­ent con­clu­sions than the author intend­ed.
  7. The Church’s Fate Is Not Elec­toral: Our Roy Moore Moment (Greg Forster, Gospel Coali­tion): ”There are no Flight 93 moments for the church; there nev­er have been and nev­er will be. Cer­tain­ly God’s peo­ple will con­tin­ue to face per­se­cu­tion from world­ly pow­ers, as we always have. But the idea that we have to com­pro­mise moral stan­dards in order to pre­vent the destruc­tion of the church reflects an appalling fail­ure to grasp where the church’s fate real­ly lies. The church’s fate is not elec­toral; it’s escha­to­log­i­cal. The church’s tri­umph over its ene­mies comes with the King’s return.”
  8. The Supreme Court heard argu­ments on Tues­day about the Col­orado bak­er who refus­es to bake cakes for events he find objec­tion­able — includ­ing gay wed­dings.
    • Argu­ment analy­sis: Con­ser­v­a­tive major­i­ty lean­ing toward rul­ing for Col­orado bak­er (Amy Howe, SCO­TUS­blog): “Although mak­ing pre­dic­tions based on oral argu­ment is always dan­ger­ous, it seemed very pos­si­ble that there are five votes for Phillips among the court’s more con­ser­v­a­tive jus­tices, even if it is less clear how broad­ly they will rule.”
    • A Baker’s First Amend­ment Rights (Robert P. George and Sherif Gir­gis, New York Times): “You need the First Amend­ment pre­cise­ly when your ideas offend oth­ers or flout the majority’s ortho­dox­ies. And then it pro­tects more than your free­dom to speak your mind; it guards your free­dom not to speak the mind of anoth­er.”
    • We’re lawyers who sup­port same-sex mar­riage. We also sup­port the Mas­ter­piece Cakeshop bak­er. (Dou­glas Lay­cock & Thomas Berg, Vox): “The case tests the nation’s com­mit­ment to lib­er­ty and jus­tice for all. And we aren’t doing well on the part about ‘for all.’ Too many Amer­i­cans, left and right, reli­gious and sec­u­lar, want lib­er­ty for their own side in the cul­ture wars, but not for the oth­er side.” The authors are not just lawyers — they are pro­fes­sors of con­sti­tu­tion­al law.
    • How Not To Advance Gay Mar­riage (David Brooks, New York Times): “If you want to know why we have such a polar­ized, angry and bit­ter soci­ety, one rea­son is we take every dis­agree­ment that could be addressed in con­ver­sa­tion and com­mu­ni­ty and we turn it into a law­suit. We take every moral­ly sup­ple sit­u­a­tion and we hand it over to the legal priest­hood, which by neces­si­ty is a sys­tem of tech­no­crat­ic ratio­nal­ism, strained slip­pery-slope analo­gies and implied coer­cion.”

Things Glen Found Amusing

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have 20 Argu­ments For God’s Exis­tence (Peter Kreeft, per­son­al web­site): “You may be blessed with a vivid sense of God’s pres­ence; and that is some­thing for which to be pro­found­ly grate­ful. But that does not mean you have no oblig­a­tion to pon­der these argu­ments. For many have not been blessed in that way. And the proofs are designed for them—or some of them at least—to give a kind of help they real­ly need. You may even be asked to pro­vide help.” The author is a phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor at Boston Col­lege. (first shared in vol­ume 116)

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 114

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

First, let me say this has been a heart­break­ing week. The racism on dis­play in Char­lottesville was wicked, and if unre­pent­ed of will lead its prac­ti­tion­ers to hell. Most of this week’s links are relat­ed:

  1. Char­lottesville: Race and Ter­ror (VICE News, Youtube link). This video is worth watch­ing, but be warned that this is dis­turb­ing footage. The first two min­utes are com­pelling.
  2. White suprema­cy angers Jesus, but does it anger his church? (Rus­sell Moore, Wash­ing­ton Post): “One of the many remark­able things about the pic­ture we get of Jesus in the Gospels is how rel­a­tive­ly calm he is. When his dis­ci­ples are pan­ick­ing in a life-threat­en­ing storm, Jesus is asleep. When vil­lages reject the mes­sage, the apos­tles are angered but Jesus is not. Threat­ened with arrest and even exe­cu­tion, Jesus meets his accusers with tran­quil­i­ty. The Scrip­tures show us two things that make Jesus vis­i­bly angry: reli­gious hypocrisy and racial suprema­cist ide­ol­o­gy.”
  3. After Char­lottesville, black pas­tors are con­fronting how polit­i­cal to get (Jeff Stein, Vox): “The blood­shed has rein­vig­o­rat­ed those pas­tors’ calls for their fel­low cler­gy to preach about polit­i­cal issues, rather than just sal­va­tion.”
  4. ‘Jews will not replace us’: Why white suprema­cists go after Jews (Yair Rosen­berg, Wash­ing­ton Post): “When white suprema­cists are vicious­ly attack­ing Jews as non­white impos­tors, then any anti-racists wor­thy of the name must be there to defend them. They can­not impose their own def­i­n­i­tions of white­ness on Jews and side­step their plight.”
  5. Is Amer­i­ca Head­ed for a New Kind of Civ­il War? (Robin Wright, New York­er): “Mines con­clud­ed that the Unit­ed States faces a six­ty-per cent chance of civ­il war over the next ten to fif­teen years. Oth­er experts’ pre­dic­tions ranged from five per cent to nine­ty-five per cent. The sober­ing con­sen­sus was thir­ty-five per cent. And that was five months before Char­lottesville.” In response, read Our House Divid­ed (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “…our divi­sions induce a par­tic­u­lar anx­i­ety because each of our two main fac­tions reigns supreme in one par­tic­u­lar are­na. Con­ser­vatism is (some­how) polit­i­cal­ly dom­i­nant, with con­trol of the leg­isla­tive and exec­u­tive branch­es and a remark­able pow­er in the states. Mean­while lib­er­al­ism dom­i­nates the cul­tur­al com­mand­ing heights as nev­er before, with not only acad­e­mia and the media but also late-night tele­vi­sion and sports­writ­ing and even young-adult fic­tion more mono­lith­i­cal­ly and — to con­ser­v­a­tives — oppres­sive­ly pro­gres­sive. So both sides have rea­sons to feel threat­ened, dis­em­pow­ered and sur­round­ed; both can feel as though they exist under a kind of ene­my rule.”
  6. Polit­i­cal Par­a­sites (Pete Spili­akos, First Things): “[Trump] is obdu­rate. He saw that his polit­i­cal ene­mies were call­ing for a con­dem­na­tion and, in his defi­ance and arro­gance, had to show them that they weren’t going to write his scripts.”
  7. The Rise of the Vio­lent Left (Peter Beinart, The Atlantic): “If you believe the pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States is lead­ing a racist, fas­cist move­ment that threat­ens the rights, if not the lives, of vul­ner­a­ble minori­ties, how far are you will­ing to go to stop it?”
  8. Unmask­ing the left­ist Antifa move­ment: Activists seek peace through vio­lence (Sara Gan­im and Chris Welch, CNN): “Antifa mem­bers also some­times launch attacks against peo­ple who aren’t phys­i­cal­ly attack­ing them. The move­ment, Crow said, sees alt-right hate speech as vio­lent, and for that, its activists have opt­ed to meet vio­lence with vio­lence.”
  9. Extreme Protest Tac­tics Reduce Pop­u­lar Sup­port for Social Move­ments (Fein­berg, Willer, and Kovach­eff, SSRN work­ing paper): One of the authors, Robb Willer, is a pro­fes­sor of soci­ol­o­gy at Stan­ford. “The activist’s dilem­ma – where­in tac­tics that raise aware­ness also tend to reduce pop­u­lar sup­port – high­lights a key chal­lenge faced by social move­ments strug­gling to affect pro­gres­sive change.”
  10. Trump Is More In Touch Than You Think (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “The news media have been seri­ous­ly dis­tort­ing pub­lic reac­tion to Trump’s han­dling of Char­lottesville. Whether this is a mat­ter of only see­ing what they want to see, or a mat­ter of the talk­ing heads being con­cen­trat­ed among coastal elites of both par­ties, is a mat­ter of con­jec­ture.”
  11. Fac­ing Our Lega­cy of Lynch­ing (D. L. May­field, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “More than 4,000 African Amer­i­cans were lynched between 1877 and the rise of the civ­il rights move­ment in the ear­ly 1950s. Lynch­ing was a bru­tal pub­lic tac­tic for main­tain­ing white suprema­cy, fre­quent­ly used with the tac­it bless­ing of gov­ern­ment author­i­ties. It was a part of my her­itage I had nev­er been taught…” Note that this piece is inde­pen­dent of the events in Char­lottesville.

Things Glen Found Entertaining

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have This Is What Makes Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats So Dif­fer­ent (Vox, Ezra Klein): I was skep­ti­cal of this piece based on the title, but it’s insight­ful. (first shared in vol­ume 32)

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 110

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 First Church of Inter­sec­tion­al­i­ty (Eliz­a­beth C. Corey, First Things): “Inter­sec­tion­al­i­ty is, then, a qua­si-reli­gious gnos­tic move­ment, which appeals to peo­ple for pre­cise­ly the rea­sons that all reli­gions do: It gives an account of our bro­ken­ness, an expla­na­tion of the rea­sons for pain, a sav­ing sto­ry accom­pa­nied by strong eth­i­cal imper­a­tives, and hope for the future. In short, it gives life mean­ing.”
  2. Nondi­crim­i­na­tion For All (Jonathan Rauch, Nation­al Affairs): “The land­mark civ­il-rights bills that broke the back of racial seg­re­ga­tion in the 1960s were not abso­lutist. They pro­vid­ed exemp­tions for reli­gious orga­ni­za­tions. They exempt­ed ‘Mrs. Mur­phy,’ the land­la­dy rent­ing a room in her own house. At the time, civ­il-rights advo­cates in Con­gress made the prag­mat­ic argu­ment that exemp­tions were need­ed to pass the bill, but they also made the polit­i­cal­ly prin­ci­pled argu­ment that excep­tions would increase social com­fort with the leg­is­la­tion while still cov­er­ing the vast major­i­ty of cas­es — a trade they deemed worth mak­ing…. In fact, the pop-cul­ture ide­al of zero-tol­er­ance nondis­crim­i­na­tion is pos­si­ble only because of the under­ly­ing real­i­ty of ubiq­ui­tous accom­mo­da­tion.”
  3. The Wast­ed Mind of Ben Sasse (Ben Math­is-Lil­ley, Slate): “What is most mad­den­ing about Sasse is not his par­ty feal­ty per se—I’m not expect­ing a Repub­li­can sen­a­tor to sup­port left-wing poli­cies; that’s not the stan­dard we should hold him to—but the way he has out­lined the basis for a path he has yet to take him­self.” This is more par­ti­san than most things I share, but since I high­light­ed Sasse as one of my two favorite Sen­a­tors back in issue 107 it seems appro­pri­ate. I still like both Sasse and Book­er, by the way.
  4. Some ques­tions I’m ask­ing while off to my white evan­gel­i­cal church (Lisa Robin­son, per­son­al blog): “Has all this atten­tion on white suprema­cy maybe pushed down cen­tral issues to being part of the king­dom of God togeth­er, with its dis­ci­ple­ship man­dates and being salt and light in the world? Because it seems to me, based on what I read in Scrip­ture any­way, that only through him can true rec­on­cil­i­a­tion hap­pen.”
  5. Meet Five Men Who All Think They’re The Mes­si­ah (Jonas Bendik­sen, Nation­al Geo­graph­ic)  “If Christ were to come back to com­plete his work today, I’ve thought, what would he think of the world we’ve cre­at­ed? And what would we think of him? With these thoughts tum­bling around in my head, I decid­ed to start look­ing for mes­si­ahs. I found them the way you find every­thing these days: through Google.”
  6. “Main­line” Church­es Are Emp­ty­ing. The Polit­i­cal Effects Could Be Huge (Lyman Stone, Vox): “While pro­gres­sives are keen to see in the decline of labor unions an impor­tant com­po­nent in the rise of con­ser­v­a­tive polit­i­cal pow­er, they rarely con­sid­er the impact of los­ing their movement’s soul. Despite main­line denom­i­na­tions com­mand­ing as much or more pop­u­lar sup­port and mem­ber­ship as labor unions, their decline seems to be unmourned with­in the pro­gres­sive move­ment they birthed; the con­se­quences of that decline like­wise go uncon­sid­ered.”
  7. Get­ting the Rich and Pow­er­ful to Give (SSRN, Kessler, Milk­man & Zhang): “Con­sis­tent with past psy­chol­o­gy research, we find that the rich and pow­er­ful respond dra­mat­i­cal­ly, and dif­fer­ent­ly than oth­ers, to being giv­en a sense of agency over the use of donat­ed funds. Gifts from rich and pow­er­ful alum­ni increase by 200–300 per­cent when they are giv­en a sense of agency.”

Things Glen Found Amusing

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Alco­hol, Black­outs, and Cam­pus Sex­u­al Assault (Texas Month­ly, Sarah Hep­o­la), the most thought­ful sec­u­lar piece I’ve read on the issue. “Con­sent and alco­hol make tricky bed­fel­lows. The rea­son I liked get­ting drunk was because it altered my con­sent: it changed what I would say yes to. Not just in the bed­room but in every room and cor­ri­dor that led into the squint­ing light. Say yes to adven­ture, say yes to risk, say yes to karaoke and pool par­ties and argu­ments with men, say yes to a life with­out fear, even though such a life is nev­er pos­si­ble… We drink because it feels good. We drink because it makes us feel hap­py, safe, pow­er­ful. That it often makes us the oppo­site is one of alcohol’s das­tard­ly tricks.” (first shared in vol­ume 25)

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 102

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. Tran­script of New Orleans May­or Landrieu’s address on Con­fed­er­ate mon­u­ments (Derek Cos­son, The Pulse): “To lit­er­al­ly put the con­fed­er­a­cy on a pedestal in our most promi­nent places of hon­or is an inac­cu­rate recita­tion of our full past, it is an affront to our present, and it is a bad pre­scrip­tion for our future.”
  2. Rod Dreher’s A Mon­u­men­tal His­to­ry offers a gen­er­al agree­ment with Lan­drieu’s speech along with a thought­ful defense of Robert E. Lee. “I am only some­what trou­bled by the Lee monument’s removal. That’s not because of any sym­pa­thy for the Con­fed­er­a­cy — it deserved to lose, and the suf­fer­ing of the South in and after the war was, I believe, God’s judg­ment on it for the sin of slav­ery…. [nonethe­less] Lee was a far more com­plex man than many peo­ple today seem to real­ize.” (Dreher is also a Louisiana res­i­dent)
  3. Col­lege Fresh­men Are Less Reli­gious Than Ever (Allen Downey, Sci­en­tif­ic Amer­i­can): “Most of this growth [of ‘no reli­gious pref­er­ence’] comes at the expense of Catholi­cism, which dropped from 32 per­cent to 23 per­cent, and main­stream Protes­tant denom­i­na­tions includ­ing Bap­tists (from 17 per­cent to 7 per­cent), and Methodists (from 9 per­cent to 3 per­cent). At the same time the num­ber of stu­dents choos­ing ‘Oth­er Chris­t­ian’ increased from 5 per­cent to 13 per­cent.”
  4. UK Mus­lims Report­ed Abe­di (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “What else would you have had these Mus­lims do? Sounds like they did exact­ly what they were sup­posed to do… [On the oth­er hand] what more would you have author­i­ties do? If he had not act­ed out… what do you do?” Things are com­plex. And yes, this is the same Rod Dreher as in the sec­ond entry on this list. He’s pro­lif­ic. 
  5. Sex­u­al regret in US and Nor­way: Effects of cul­ture and indi­vid­ual dif­fer­ences in reli­gios­i­ty and mat­ing strat­e­gy (Ben­dix­en, Asao, Wyck­off, Buss and Ken­nair, Per­son­al­i­ty and Indi­vid­ual Dif­fer­ences):  From the abstract: “Men were sig­nif­i­cant­ly less like­ly to regret hav­ing had casu­al sex than women and were sig­nif­i­cant­ly more like­ly to regret pass­ing up casu­al sex­u­al oppor­tu­ni­ties than women… Final­ly, North Amer­i­cans and Nor­we­gians did not dif­fer sig­nif­i­cant­ly in over­all amount of sex­u­al regret nor in pat­terns of sex dif­fer­ences in sex­u­al regret.” I’m always fas­ci­nat­ed by gen­der dif­fer­ences that tran­scend cul­tures. 

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 100

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. Chris­tians, in an Epochal Shift, Are Leav­ing the Mid­dle East (Maria Abi-Habib, Wall Street Jour­nal): “Like the Jews before them, Chris­tians are flee­ing the Mid­dle East, emp­ty­ing what was once one of the world’s most-diverse regions of its ancient reli­gions. They’re being dri­ven away not only by Islam­ic State, but by gov­ern­ments the U.S. counts as allies in the fight against extrem­ism.” You might need to search for an ungat­ed copy.
  2. The Col­or of Law (Tyler Cowen, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “Call­ing itself the Penin­su­la Hous­ing Asso­ci­a­tion of Palo Alto, the co-op pur­chased a 260-ranch [sic] adja­cent to the Stan­ford cam­pus and planned to build 400 hous­es as well as shared recre­ation­al facil­i­ties, a shop­ping area, a gas sta­tion, and a restau­rant on com­mon­ly owned land.  But the bank would not finance con­struc­tion costs nor issue mort­gages to the co-op or its mem­bers with­out gov­ern­ment approval, and the FHA would not insure loans to a coop­er­a­tive that includ­ed African Amer­i­can mem­bers.”
  3. Sil­i­con Val­ley: A Real­i­ty Check (Scott Alexan­der, Slate Star Codex): “…peo­ple should lay off the crit­i­cism a lit­tle. When Capi­tol Hill screws up, tens of thou­sands of inno­cent Iraqis get killed. When Wall Street screws up, the coun­try is plunged into reces­sion and poor fam­i­lies lose their homes. When Sil­i­con Val­ley screws up, peo­ple who want a point­less Wi-Fi enabled juicer get a point­less Wi-Fi enabled juicer. Which by all accounts makes pret­ty good juice.”
  4. The Case for Idol­a­try: Why Chris­tians Can Wor­ship Idols (Andrew Wil­son, Gospel Coali­tion): this is a reprint of a satir­i­cal piece from a few years back. I thought I had linked to it when it first came out, but can’t find it in the archives. 
  5. The Rise of Café Church­es in South Korea (Jason Strother, The Atlantic): “‘Church­es and cafés have the hard­est time sur­viv­ing in Korea,’ said Ahn Min-ho, a 42-year-old ordained min­is­ter and cer­ti­fied barista. ‘Com­bin­ing the two is mutu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial.’”

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 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 83

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting

There are a few more links than nor­mal because I missed send­ing out last week­s’s email.

  1. North­west­ern Grad Stu­dent Sues Evanston Police; Dash­cam Arrest Video Released (Lau­ra Podes­ta, ABC Chica­go Eye­wit­ness News): Lawrence is an alum­nus of our min­istry. This one hits close to home.
  2. The Sex Bureau­cra­cy (Jacob Gersen & Jean­nie Suk Gersen, Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion): “Under the rubric of pre­vent­ing sex­u­al vio­lence, col­leges are now deep in the busi­ness of pro­vid­ing advice on sex and rela­tion­ships. And they’re not good at it.” Even from a sec­u­lar per­spec­tive, col­lege admin­is­tra­tors are act­ing absurd­ly.
  3. We’re Liv­ing Through The First World Cyber­war — But Just Haven’t Called It That (Marin Belam, The Guardian): “It is impor­tant to remem­ber that the inter­net orig­i­nal­ly came from defence research….. we are liv­ing through the first time it is being used in anger.”
  4. Putin’s Real Long Game (Mol­ly McK­ew, Politi­co): “What both admin­is­tra­tions fail to real­ize is that the West is already at war, whether it wants to be or not…. This war seeks, at home and abroad, to erode our val­ues, our democ­ra­cy, and our insti­tu­tion­al strength; to dilute our abil­i­ty to sort fact from fic­tion, or moral right from wrong; and to con­vince us to make deci­sions against our own best inter­ests.”
  5. Sug­ar, Explained (Julia Bel­luz and Javier Zarraci­na, Vox): “The back­lash against sug­ar, and the sci­ence behind it, is a lot more com­pli­cat­ed than it seems.”
  6. The Life And Death Of Evangelicalism’s Lit­tle Mag­a­zine (John Schmalzbauer,Comment): this was extreme­ly inter­est­ing to me, although prob­a­bly less so to many oth­ers.
  7. When There’s No Ther­a­pist, How Can The Depressed Find Help? (Joanne Sil­bern­er, NPR): Dif­fi­cult to excerpt — very inter­est­ing sto­ry.
  8. Some­times the Peo­ple Need to Call the Experts (Tyler Cowen, Bloomberg View): There are some good insights here. My favorite line, though, was this: “It’s a good rule of gov­er­nance that pol­i­cy can­not race too far ahead of the cit­i­zen­ry, and I don’t view fac­ul­ty as a class of peo­ple well-suit­ed for that kind of humil­i­ty.”
  9. The Ide­o­log­i­cal Rea­sons Why Democ­rats Have Neglect­ed Local Pol­i­tics (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “The pro­gres­sive project is ulti­mate­ly about work­ing toward a soci­ety built on one uni­fied vision of pol­i­cy and cul­ture, rather than a diverse array of poli­cies and cul­tures.”
  10. Intel­lec­tu­als For Trump (Kele­fah San­neh, New York­er):  “We have grown accus­tomed to hear­ing sto­ries about the lib­er­al bub­ble, but the real sto­ry of this year’s elec­tion was about the con­ser­v­a­tive bub­ble: the results showed how sharply the pri­or­i­ties of the movement’s lead­ers dif­fered from those of their puta­tive fol­low­ers.”
  11. Harvard’s George J. Bor­jas (Robert Ver­bruggen, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “Per­haps odd­ly for some­one who gained immense­ly from mov­ing from one coun­try to anoth­er, Bor­jas has spent much of his career try­ing to answer the ques­tions of who los­es from immi­gra­tion and how much.”

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 76

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Some thoughts about slav­ery and the Bible — Does The Bible Sup­port Slav­ery? (a lec­ture giv­en by the war­den of Tyn­dale House at Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty, the link is to the video with notes) and Does God Con­done Slav­ery In The Bible? (Part One — Old Tes­ta­ment) and also Part Two — New Tes­ta­ment (longer pieces from Glenn Miller at Chris­t­ian Think­tank). All three are quite help­ful.
  2. Struc­tur­al Racism (John Piper, Desir­ing God): “if your mind is Bible-sat­u­rat­ed, you would con­sid­er it absolute­ly aston­ish­ing if struc­tur­al racism were not per­va­sive wher­ev­er sin is per­va­sive. In oth­er words, Bible-shaped peo­ple should expect to see struc­tur­al racism almost every­where in a fall­en world.”
  3. How Methodists Invent­ed Your Kid’s Grape Juice Sug­ar High (Luke Har­ring­ton, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): why many church­es use grape juice for com­mu­nion.
  4. More post-elec­tion thoughts:
    1. Why Can’t I Mourn? (Kyle James Howard, per­son­al blog): “For many, it appears that it is unac­cept­able for me to grieve racism and abor­tion equal­ly. That for many, a Chris­t­ian only has the capac­i­ty to grieve one or the oth­er but not both.”
    2. No, the Major­i­ty of Amer­i­can Evan­gel­i­cals Did Not Vote for Trump (Joe Carter, Gospel Coali­tion): you may recall that I sug­gest­ed some­thing sim­i­lar in last week’s email — here’s a wide-rang­ing expla­na­tion. There is no doubt more to be said on this.
    3. You Are Still Cry­ing Wolf (Scott Alexan­der, Slat­eStar­Codex): “I real­ize that all of this is going to make me sound like a crazy per­son and put me com­plete­ly at odds with every respectable thinker in the media, but luck­i­ly, being a crazy per­son at odds with every respectable thinker in the media has been a pret­ty good tick­et to pre­dic­tive accu­ra­cy late­ly, so what­ev­er.” This is a long and detailed argu­ment that Trump is not racist (or at least not more racist than lots of peo­ple). I was sur­prised at how well it held my inter­est. See also Ross Douthat’s insight­ful twit­ter cri­tique of the arti­cle. For a con­trary point of view (sort of — it’s less about Trump and more about what Trump sig­ni­fies), see Racism Prob­a­bly Is Get­ting Worse. (I Hope I’m Wrong.) (Tyler Cowen, Bloomberg View). If you read one, read all three.
    4. Stunned By Trump, The New York Times Finds Time For Some Soul-Search­ing (Michael Cieply, Dead­spin): “By and large, tal­ent­ed reporters scram­bled to match sto­ries with what inter­nal­ly was often called ‘the nar­ra­tive.’ We were occa­sion­al­ly asked to map a nar­ra­tive for our var­i­ous beats a year in advance, square the plan with edi­tors, then gen­er­ate sto­ries that fit the pre-des­ig­nat­ed line.” This piece is impor­tant and depress­ing.
    5. The coali­tion for diver­si­ty whose diver­si­ty did diver­si­ty just win? (Tyler Cowen, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): do not let the con­fus­ing title put you off. Cowen argues that the Repub­li­cans are in some sens­es sig­nif­i­cant­ly more diverse than the Democ­rats.
    6. #Nev­erTrump And Pres­i­dent Trump (Jake Meador, Mere Ortho­doxy): “The church’s great­est the­olo­gians have long said that a prop­er­ly Chris­t­ian com­mon­wealth will be con­cerned not with the greater good—the most good for the most people—or with the pri­vate good of Chris­tians alone, but with the com­mon good.”
    7. How cov­er­ing the Red­skins name debate pre­pared me for Don­ald Trump’s win (Dan Stein­berg, Washing­ton Post): “They told me that media Twit­ter wasn’t the real world, that it cre­at­ed a pho­ny idea of con­sen­sus for a stance that wasn’t actu­al­ly ascen­dant. And they argued that a polit­i­cal­ly cor­rect onslaught from big-city elites would only strength­en their con­vic­tions.”
    8. Don­ald Trump can absolute­ly ban Mus­lims from enter­ing the US, with­out Con­gress (Zack Beauchamp, Vox): “I [asked] sev­er­al experts on US immi­gra­tion law. Their answer was unan­i­mous: Trump would be able to imple­ment his ban. In fact, he would be able to do it eas­i­ly.” I didn’t know the pres­i­dent had this pow­er. Sur­pris­ing giv­en our sys­tem of checks and bal­ances.
    9. The Cul­ture That Cre­at­ed Don­ald Trump Was Lib­er­al Not Con­ser­v­a­tive (Jim Lewis, The Inter­cept): “Lib­er­als were sure the dev­il would come slouch­ing out of Alaba­ma or Texas, beat­ing a bible and shout­ing about sodomy and sin. They didn’t expect him to be a busi­ness­man who lives on Fifth Avenue and 57th Street.” This is some­thing I saw allud­ed to in the pri­maries but haven’t seen men­tioned in a while. 

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.