Tag: sexual assault

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 190

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. Inside the Secret Facebook War For Mormon Hearts and Minds (Kevin Poulson, The Daily Beast): “We may be resigned to faceless corporations buying their way into our thoughts, but are we ready for a world where our neighbors and in-laws can do the same?” Genius and super-interesting.
  2. The scandal of sexual abuse in Southern Baptist churches: 
    • Part One: Abuse of Faith (Robert Downen, Lise Olsen, and John Tedesco, Houston Chronicle): “In all, since 1998, roughly 380 Southern Baptist church leaders and volunteers have faced allegations of sexual misconduct, the newspapers found. That includes those who were convicted, credibly accused and successfully sued, and those who confessed or resigned. More of them worked in Texas than in any other state. They left behind more than 700 victims, many of them shunned by their churches, left to themselves to rebuild their lives. Some were urged to forgive their abusers or to get abortions. About 220 offenders have been convicted or took plea deals, and dozens of cases are pending.”
    • Part Two: Offend, then repeat (Robert Downen, Lise Olsen, and John Tedesco, Houston Chronicle): ”No religion is immune to sexual misconduct in its ranks. But unlike the Roman Catholic Church, which is wrestling with its own sex-abuse scandal, Baptists don’t answer to a pope or bishop. Local church autonomy is a bedrock foundation of Baptist faith. There’s no diocese that assigns priests to a parish. Instead, each church is responsible for ordaining and hiring its own ministers.”
    • Part Three: Preying On Teens (Robert Downen, Lise Olsen, and John Tedesco, Houston Chronicle): “More than 100 Southern Baptists described as former youth pastors or youth ministers are now in prison, are registered as sex offenders or have been charged with sex crimes, the newspapers found. Their most common targets were teenage girls and boys, though smaller children also were molested, sometimes in pastors’ studies and Sunday school rooms.”
    • Southern Baptists and the Scandal of Church Sexual Abuse (Russell Moore, personal blog): “Jesus does not cover up sin within the temple of his presence. He brings everything hidden to light. We should too. When we downplay or cover over what has happened in the name of Jesus to those he loves we are not “protecting” Jesus’ reputation. We are instead fighting Jesus himself. No church should be frustrated by the Houston Chronicle’s reporting, but should thank God for it. The Judgment Seat of Christ will be far less reticent than a newspaper series to uncover what should never have been hidden.” — he also wrote an op-ed for the New York Times a few days after this: Southern Baptists Face Their #MeToo Moment (Russell Moore, New York Times).
    • The Reality of Sexual Abuse Hits Home: What Happened? What Do We Do Now? (Al Mohler, personal blog): “Southern Baptists, by instinct, have practiced a form of moralism that views sexual misbehavior as an isolated event—deal with it and move on. This simplistic moralism reduces sexual abuse and glosses over the severity of the crime. Sexual abuse is not an isolated act of misbehavior; it leaves in its wake scarred victims as well as malicious victimizers. Abuse of this nature snowballs.” This article has some insightful commentary on the unique challenges facing the Southern Baptists because of their structure.
    • Evangelical Apocalypse (Dale M. Coulter, First Things): “As one denominational leader pointed out to me, ministers brought up on charges and dismissed from one denomination have simply gone to another for credentials. It’s not just laity who take advantage of evangelicalism’s big tent to move around. These open networks for ministerial movement from one part of evangelicalism to another allow sexual abusers to escape judgment and start over. We don’t need a database of sexual abusers for the Southern Baptist Convention, we need it for evangelicalism as a whole.” I don’t know how feasible that specific suggestion is, but I do know Coulter is pointing out a real and very hard-to-address problem.
    • In a different neck of the woods: Why Does the Catholic Church Keep Failing on Sexual Abuse? (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “O’Malley’s career, with all of its successes and frustrations, illuminates why the sex-abuse crisis has once again subsumed the Catholic Church—and why this institution, one of the world’s great moral authorities, has been incapable of solving one of the most morally straightforward problems of our time.”
  3. Bill Gates tweeted out a chart and sparked a huge debate about global poverty (Dylan Matthews, Vox): “Hickel argues that focusing on data showing declines in global poverty does political work on behalf of global capitalism, defending an inherently unjust global system that has failed residents of rich and poor nations alike. Pinker agrees that the data supports the idea that capitalism is working for the world’s poorest, and says that’s a decisive rebuttal of Hickel’s narrative of enduring persecution.”
  4. An African-American Woman Reflects on the Transgender Movement (Nuriddeen Knight, Public Discourse): “Paradoxically, the more our society tries to free itself from gender stereotypes, the more it becomes enslaved to them. By saying that people can be born in a body of the wrong gender, transgender activists are saying there is a set of feelings that are only allocated to women and another set for men. Therefore, they believe, those who feel things that do not conform to their sex’s acceptable set of feelings must outwardly change their gender to match their mind.”
  5. Trevor Noah on Liam Neeson’s Racist Confession (YouTube): much more thoughtful than anything else I have come across.
  6. A (Not So) Secular Saint (James K.A. Smith, Los Angeles Review of Books): “Mill’s legacy was effectively ‘edited’ by his philosophical and political disciples, excising any hint of religious life. One would never know from the canon in our philosophy departments, for example, that Mill wrote an appreciative essay on ‘Theism.’”
    • I am pretty sure I shared a similar link before, but I can’t find it searching my archives. Maybe I cut it at the last minute one week. Fascinating regardless.
  7. Science Is The Evangelical Trophy Wife (David Heddle, personal blog): “In many evangelical circles, science has become a trophy wife. Put her front and center, and show her beauty in, say, the form of Hubble nebulae photographs, with the requisite Psalm 19:1 caption, but do not ever let her speak, for she is likely to embarrass you. Her theological utility is only in the pleasant optics, not in the substance.” Beautiful title.

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 Making Sense of the Numbers of Genesis [pdf link] (Carol Hill, Perspectives on Science and the Christian Faith): “Joseph and Joshua were each recorded as dying at age 110—a number considered ‘perfect’ by the Egyptians. In ancient Egyptian doctrine, the phrase ‘he died aged 110’ was actually an epitaph commemorating a life that had been lived selflessly and had resulted in outstanding social and moral benefit for others. And so for both Joseph and Joshua, who came out of the Egyptian culture, quoting this age was actually a tribute to their character. But, to be described as ‘dying at age 110’ bore no necessary relationship to the actual time of an individual’s life span.” You will not agree with everything in this article, but it is full of fascinating insights. (first shared in volume 51)

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

If this was forwarded to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 188

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. Assessing Betsy DeVos’s Proposed Rules on Title IX and Sexual Assault (Jeannie Suk Gerson, New Yorker): “The truth is that there is much to criticize in DeVos’s proposal but also much that would help to make schools’ processes for handling sexual misconduct fairer to all parties.” Gerson, a Harvard law prof, consistently offers insightful perspective on issues surrounding campus sexual assault.
  2. Cruel and Unusual Punishment (Lionel Shriver, Harpers): “The contemporary impulse to rebuke disgraced creators by vanishing their work from the cultural marketplace exhibits a mean-­spiritedness, a vengefulness even, as well as an illogic. Why, if you catch someone doing something bad, would you necessarily rub out what they’ve done that’s good? If you’re convicted of breaking and entering, the judge won’t send bailiffs around to tear down the tree house you built for your daughter and to pour bleach on your homemade pie.”
  3. How I Knew the #CovingtonBoys Video Was Clickbait (Clair Potter, Public Seminar): “I think the most underreported story about #CovingtonBoys is how it got to us in the first place. It originated with a piece of clickbait that was chosen and edited, by persons unknown, to produce outrage on the right and the left. Originating in a fake account, and proliferated by other fake accounts, it was part of a professional social media campaign intended to disrupt.” 
    • Related: Bad, Press (Charles Cooke, National Review): “For a neat illustration of how farcical things have become, take a look at the Washington Post’s most recent ‘fact check,’ which helpfully informs its readers that the claimed ‘one thousand burgers’ President Trump bought for the Clemson football team were not, in fact, ‘piled up a mile high’ because, ‘at two inches each, a thousand burgers would not reach one mile high.’ Democracy dies in darkness, indeed.”
  4. Imagine Nations Were Selfless—It’s No Paradise (Brad Littlejohn, Providence): “We hear often today about how we live in “a global society” and have to take up the responsibilities of “global citizenship.” But what these exhortations miss is that the exponential growth in human knowledge over the past century has not been matched by nearly as rapid growth in human agency. It is now possible for a housewife in Tennessee to be aware of a rape in Bangladesh within hours or minutes, but she is only marginally more able to do anything about it now than she was 100 years ago.” The article as a whole is not great, but it makes a very interesting argument: patriotism is a necessary way to make our empathy productive.
  5. In polarized Washington, a Democrat anchors bipartisan friendships in faith (Jack Jenkins, Religion News Service): “A bridge builder with Republicans, Coons is known for helping create rare flickers of bipartisan agreement. Part of his secret, it seems, is religion…. Coons, who grew up attending Red Clay Creek Presbyterian Church in Hockessin, Del., explained that his faith has not only provided grounding for his own life but has also emerged as a point of connection with Republicans, with whom he has forged lasting relationships — and legislation.”
  6. What The Establishment Right Doesn’t Get (Rod Dreher, The American Conservative): this essay, a large part of which is actually commentary from a reader, is like a flamethrower. “…those who preach the bourgeois virtues can’t get a hearing if there is no stable employment for people who do the right thing. And, if those who do the right thing (by which I mean play by the rules: live lives of hard work, fair play, and self-discipline) can find everything kicked out from under them all of a sudden, it destabilizes the entire society.” 
    • The follow-up, Liberty, Equality — But Where’s The Fraternity? is also stimulating.
    • Reading the latter one brought to my attention a very short essay by G.K. Chesterton. I highly recommend it. “The English people as a body went blind, as the saying is, for interpreting democracy entirely in terms of liberty. They said in substance that if they had more and more liberty it did not matter whether they had any equality or any fraternity. But this was violating the sacred trinity of true politics; they confounded the persons and they divided the substance.”
  7. 4 Facts Every American Should Know About Third-Trimester Abortions (Joe Carter, Gospel Coalition): “As I noted in an article last week, Democratic legislators in places like New York and Virginia are moving to codify abortion rights in state law to prepare for the day when Roe and Doe are overturned. When the Supreme Court throws the abortion issue back to the individual states, third-trimester abortions will still be protected in states that reiterate Doe’s standards for ‘viability’ or ‘health.’”

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 No Food Is Healthy. Not Even Kale. (Michael Ruhlman, Washington Post): People can be healthy. Food can be nutritious. This is a wonderful essay about how we misuse language to our detriment. If you’re surprised I included this, I believe that our culture has a quasi-religious relationship to health and to food, and I also believe that the use of language is profoundly moral and that our culture is a linguistic mess (to which I know of no finer guide than The Underground Grammarian). (first shared in volume 33)

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

If this was forwarded to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 182

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

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. If They Weren’t Taking Notes, How Did the Disciples Remember Jesus’s Exact Teaching? The 3‑Step Process for Formulating the 4 Gospels (Justin Taylor, Gospel Coalition): “I might not be able to tell you what I did last week, but I could give you a three-hour lecture about Jesus and the Jewish roots of the Last Supper with zero preparation because I have been talking about it all the time for the last ten years. That’s one key difference between rehearsed memories and incidental memories.”
  2. What Straight‑A Students Get Wrong (Adam Grant, New York Times): “The evidence is clear: Academic excellence is not a strong predictor of career excellence. Across industries, research shows that the correlation between grades and job performance is modest in the first year after college and trivial within a handful of years. For example, at Google, once employees are two or three years out of college, their grades have no bearing on their performance.” The author is an organizational psychologist at Penn’s Wharton School. 
    • This article was sent to me by an alumna who said, “I sometimes skipped Chi Alpha or other meaningful activities with friends for that one extra hour of studying, which I now regret.”
  3. Hundreds of sex abuse allegations found in fundamental Baptist churches across U.S. (Sarah Smith, Star-Telegram): “One hundred and sixty-eight church leaders were accused or convicted of committing sexual crimes against children, the investigation found. At least 45 of the alleged abusers continued in ministry after accusations came to the attention of church authorities or law enforcement.… Independent fundamental Baptist churches preach separation: Stay separate from the world, separate from non-believers and separate from Christians who do not believe as they do. That includes Southern Baptists, who are deemed by the strict sect as too liberal.” This is horrifying stuff.
  4. China cracks down on Christians — a new era of religious persecution has arrived (Nina Shea and Bob Fu, Fox News): “The government’s repression against the churches is being done in the name of President Xi Jinping’s ‘sinicization’ campaign, ostensibly to strengthen Chinese culture. However, it increasingly appears aimed at removing the Bible and its teachings from Chinese Christianity.” (related coverage at the New York Times)
    • My Declaration of Faithful Disobedience (Wang Yi, Christian Daily Reporter): “As a pastor, my disobedience is one part of the gospel commission. Christ’s great commission requires of us great disobedience. The goal of disobedience is not to change the world but to testify about another world.” A now-imprisoned pastor wrote this letter with instructions that it be published if he was detained for more than 48 hours. STRAIGHT FIRE.
  5. Masterpiece Cakeshop and how “religious liberty” became so toxic (Andrew Koppelman, Vox): “Deep disagreement about moral fundamentals is nothing new; it is what religious diversity consists of. That ought to include disagreement about such fraught matters as sexuality. Moral disagreement about things that matter a lot is an inevitable consequence of a free society. The best we can hope for is to live peacefully together in mutual contempt.” The author is a law professor at Northwestern University. 
    • Related: ‘Fairness For All’: Smart Politics, Or A Sellout? (Rod Dreher, The American Conservative): “…there really is a question of justice within a pluralistic society that conservative Christians have to face. We may sincerely believe that homosexuality is morally wrong, but at what point does the common good require that we agree that gay people have a right to be wrong? Especially because we are asking them to agree that we have a right to be wrong (in their eyes) too.”
    • Response to the above: Misguided Proposal From Christian Leaders and LGBT Activists Is Anything but ‘Fairness for All’ (Ryan T. Anderson, The Daily Signal): “Establishing bad public policy for everyone and then exempting select religious institutions is not acting for the common good—and is certainly not fair for all. And there are better ways forward for those who seek compromise.”
    • Kinda different, but kinda related: The Culture Wars Are Ancient History (Peter Leithart, Christianity Today): “The real fight isn’t between religion and secularism, but between two kinds of religion. His book makes the case that today’s culture war shares much in common with the culture war that rocked ancient Rome.” Insightful.
  6. The Case Against Meritocracy (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “…meritocrats are often educated to be bad leaders, and bad people, in a very specific way — a way of arrogant intelligence unmoored from historical experience, ambition untempered by self-sacrifice. The way of the ‘best and the brightest’ at the dawn of the technocratic era and the ‘smartest guys in the room’ decades later, the way of the arsonists of late-2000s Wall Street and the ‘move fast and break things’ culture of Silicon Valley.”
  7. Is Sex Socially Constructed? (Alex Byrne, Arc Digital): “Clearly many animals have belonged to the category female (or male) without existing within a society of any kind. Indeed, there would have been females and males even if life on Earth had been destroyed by an asteroid half a billion years ago and humans had never evolved. Female and male are therefore not socially constructed categories; that is, sex is not socially constructed.” Byrne is the head of MIT’s department of linguistics and philosophy. I shared a related article of his back in issue 177.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll highlight an older link still worth your consideration. This week we have On Obstinacy In Belief (C.S. Lewis, The Sewanee Review): this is a rewarding essay from way back in 1955. (first shared in volume 6)

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

If this was forwarded to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 179

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. ‘God, I don’t want to die,’ U.S. missionary wrote before he was killed by tribe on Indian island (Joanna Slater and Annie Gowen, Washington Post): “An American missionary trying to meet and convert one of the most isolated hunter-and-gatherer tribes in the world offered them fish and other small gifts before the tribesmen killed him and buried his body on the beach, journals and emails show.” 
    • Related: US Missionary Killed by ‘World’s Most Isolated’ Tribe (Kate Shellnut, Christianity Today): “Some have declared Chau a martyr and compared him to Jim Elliot, who was famously killed at age 28 while attempting to evangelize an isolated indigenous group in Ecuador.”
    • Related: Death Of A Missionary (Rod Dreher, The American Conservative): “If Chau had been a missionary trying to sneak into North Korea, I would have thought him insanely brave. But the law against visiting that island was there for a very good reason: this tribe has had no exposure to outsiders, and is enormously vulnerable to communicable diseases. There are only a small number of them in existence, and they could be wiped out quickly by common illnesses for which they have no immunity…. It is one thing to be willing to lay down your life for these tribal people. It is cruel to expect them to lay down their lives so you can prove your love for God.”
  2. How do conservatives respond to archaeologists’ skepticism about Bible history? (Richard Ostling, Patheos): “There’s vast unexplored terrain in Israel, where only 50 of an estimated 6,000 sites have undergone thorough examination, with limited work at another 300. Surviving evidence from ancient times is necessarily spotty and interpretations can be subjective. Scholars usually end up with circumstantial plausibility, not absolute proof or disproof.”
  3. Ex-Detainee Describes Torture In China’s Xinjiang Re-Education Camp (Rob Schmitz, NPR): “Samarkand says he was transferred to a re-education camp, where people were separated into three groups: those who were religious, those who were suspected of being criminals, and those, like him, who had traveled abroad. All of them, says Samarkand, had one thing in common, though: They had grown up in Muslim families and communities.”
  4. Infographic: You Have More Time for Bible Reading than You Think (Crossway): “In just 12 minutes per day, you could read the whole Bible in a year. Does that still feel a bit ambitious? In just 6 minutes per day, you could read the entire New Testament over the course of 6 months.”
  5. Elisha and the She-bears (Peter J Williams, Twitter): a very insightful Twitter thread about a disturbing OT story. The author is the Warden of Tyndale House at Cambridge.
  6. Sir Roger Scruton Is a Friend to Muslims and Jews (Jibran Khan, National Review): “There can be no real dialogue with someone who doesn’t believe in anything, and yet this has been the guiding principle of liberal ‘interfaith’ discussion, to so water down the discourse that no one gets to encounter, let alone tolerate and appreciate, difference.” I did not think I would find this article interesting.
  7. It’s time we balance the scales of justice in our schools (Betsy DeVos, Washington Post): “A fair process treats each party with dignity and ensures the integrity of final decisions. Having outcomes overturned and relitigated because of process concerns — which has happened dozens of times in recent years — can be counterproductive to survivors.” 
    • Related: The ACLU Declines to Defend Civil Rights (Conor Friedersdorf, The Atlantic): “the ACLU issued a public statement that constituted a stark, shortsighted betrayal of the organization’s historic mission: It vehemently opposed stronger due-process rights for the accused.”
    • Related: One Criminal-Defense Attorney’s Lament (Conor Friedersdorf, The Atlantic): “In certain ways, social condemnation has become something even worse, the mere accusation being all that’s required for a mob of unduly passionate people to crush a career. There’s no opportunity to defend and no means to challenge an accusation. While the ‘punishment’ isn’t levied by government, and is therefore beyond any required involvement of such niceties as due process, the net result can be as destructive given the current tide of blind acceptance and capitulation.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll highlight an older link still worth your consideration. This week we have the provocative In Defense of Flogging (Peter Moskos, Chronicle of Higher Education) — the author is a former police officer and now a criminologist at the City University of New York. This one was shared back before I started sending these emails in a blog post called Punishment.

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

If this was forwarded to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 174

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. Your Real Biological Clock Is You’re Going to Die (Tom Scocca, Hmm Daily): “If you intend to have children, but you don’t intend to have them just yet, you are not banking extra years as a person who is still too young to have children. You are subtracting years from the time you will share the world with your children.” Straight talk young people need to hear. Make the choices you want, but be sure you understand their consequences. Read it and then think about it.
  2. Half of Pastors Approve of Trump’s Job Performance (Aaron Earls, Christianity Today): “Despite 52 percent of Protestant pastors identifying as a Republican and only 18 percent calling themselves a Democrat in a LifeWay Research survey prior to the November 2016 election, only 32 percent said they planned to vote for Trump. A full 40 percent said they were undecided, with 19 percent planning to vote for Hillary Clinton…. [Now after the election] there is no lack of data on President Trump, but many were still hesitant to give an opinion.” From an alumnus who was quite disturbed by these numbers. 
    • Related: Why Evangelicals Voted Trump: Debunking the 81% (Ed Stetzer & Andrew McDonald, Christianity Today): “The data tells us that most American evangelicals are not looking to their pastors for political guidance, and most pastors are not willing to touch the subject lest they get burned. Only 4 in 10 respondents told us they wanted advice from their pastor on political issues. And only 4 in 10 told us their pastor uses Scripture to address political topics at least once a month or more. Put another way, many evangelicals are likely turning to culture—and often the most outraged voices—rather than the church for political discipleship.”
  3. I support affirmative action. But Harvard really is hurting Asian Americans. (Michael Li, Vox): “As the Harvard case percolated through the courts this summer, I spoke to a number of Asian-American adults, including some who are on the faculties of elite universities. These conversations took place in hushed tones — one person literally looked over his shoulder to make sure no one could hear. Invariably, people thought affirmative action was essential. Just as invariably, people thought maybe, just maybe, Harvard and other elite schools are long overdue for a hard look in the mirror.” The author is senior counsel at NYU’s Brennan Center for Justice.
  4. A Reactionary Renaming: Stanford and English Language Politics (Hollis Robbins, LA Review of Books): “Spanish soldiers preyed on Native women and Serra endeavored — but regularly failed — to protect them. But on the Atlantic coast, what founding American figure isn’t equally implicated in the destruction of native culture even if most lived and wrote long after native populations on the Atlantic coast were decimated, destroyed, and driven west?” An interesting critique of Stanford’s decision to move away from Serra’s name. The author is a humanities scholar at Sonoma State University.
  5. Jim Jones & Harvey Milk: The Secret History (Rod Dreher, The American Conservative): “Milk and Jones were friends and allies.” If you know about either of these men and how they are generally perceived, prepare to be surprised.
  6. More on Kavanaugh because more has been written (and I’ve run across some good stuff I missed previously) 
    • Does Anyone Still Take Both Sexual Assault and Due Process Seriously? (Emily Yoffe, The Atlantic): “Sexual violence is a serious national problem. But in the wake of the Kavanaugh hearing, it has joined the list of explosively partisan issues. Republicans—adopting the rhetorical style of the president—dismiss accusers. Democrats mock the idea that fairness and due process are necessary for the accused. These attitudes will be detrimental to the country and are perilous for each party.”
    • The media mishandled Kavanaugh — and made Trump a winner (Michael Gerson, Washington Post): “Some argue that all journalism involves bias, either hidden or revealed. But it is one thing to say that objectivity and fairness are ultimately unreachable. It is another to cease grasping for them. That would be a world of purely private truths, in which the boldest liars and demagogues would thrive.” Gerson is an evangelical who was a speechwriter in the Bush administration.
    • Everyone Lost at the Ford-Kavanaugh Hearings (Andrew Sullivan, New York Magazine): “When public life means the ransacking of people’s private lives even when they were in high school, we are circling a deeply illiberal drain. A civilized society observes a distinction between public and private, and this distinction is integral to individual freedom. Such a distinction was anathema in old-school monarchies when the king could arbitrarily arrest, jail, or execute you at will, for private behavior or thoughts. These lines are also blurred in authoritarian regimes, where the power of the government knows few limits in monitoring a person’s home or private affairs or correspondence or tax returns or texts. These boundaries definitionally can’t exist in theocracies, where the state is interested as much in punishing and exposing sin, as in preventing crime. The Iranian and Saudi governments — like the early modern monarchies — seek not only to control your body, but also to look into your soul. They know that everyone has a dark side, and this dark side can be exposed in order to destroy people. All you need is an accusation.” This piece is a few weeks old but I missed it. Sullivan, if you don’t recognize the name, is the intellectual father of gay marriage. He’s an interesting chap — he self-identifies as a conservative and yet supported Barack Obama, and he calls himself a faithful Roman Catholic yet had a wedding ceremony with his male partner. He’s one of the most idiosyncratic intellectuals out there.
    • Why Women Can (and Should) Support Brett Kavanaugh (Annika Nordquist, Stanford Daily): “As a student at Stanford, where Dr. Blasey Ford studied and taught, as a graduate of Holton-Arms, the high school she attended at the time of the alleged assault, and, rarer still, as a vocal female conservative on campus, I too have been thinking with about this episode and what it means for women, for men, and for our society as a whole.” This is our Annika.
  7. The Audacity of Gender-Reveal Parties: Another Step Towards Cultural Insanity (Al Mohler, personal blog): “Christians thinking about this moral confusion must first stop at the vocabulary used in this article—particularly the word, ‘cisgender.’ Using that term plays into the entire gender revolution. The term indicates that someone born a male is quite comfortable with being male. Even adopting the vocabulary, therefore, becomes an enormous problem because the vocabulary assumes that you accept the ideology of the transgender revolutionaries—that gender fluidity exists and that the gender assigned at one’s birth may or may not be factual.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

I feel as though the last few issues have had a drought of amusing things. I think this week makes up for it.

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll highlight an older link still worth your consideration. This week we have The Preacher And Politics: Seven Thoughts (Kevin DeYoung, Gospel Coalition): “I have plenty of opinions and convictions. But that’s not what I want my ministry to be about. That’s not to say I don’t comment on abortion or gay marriage or racism or other issues about the which the Bible speaks clearly. And yet, I’m always mindful that I can’t separate Blogger Kevin or Twitter Kevin or Professor Kevin from Pastor Kevin. As such, my comments reflect on my church, whether I intend them to or not. That means I keep more political convictions to myself than I otherwise would. First shared in volume 150.

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

If this was forwarded to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 172

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.

I didn’t think I’d be able to send the email this week because I’m preaching in rural Alaska without reliable WiFi, but I was able to grab a bit this morning. As a result, this edition feels a bit bigger than normal to me — compiling the list is quick because whenever I read a good article I throw it on the pile, but editing it down takes time I don’t have today. So here you go. Enjoy!

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. First, a bit about Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh. I’ve had less time than normal for reading this week, so I am certain there are interesting and insightful articles I never stumbled upon. Send me things you think I missed! Of one thing I am convinced: the level of fury on both sides over this nomination is off-the-charts, and both sides seem to underestimate just how outraged the other side is. 
    • Only the Truth Can Save Us Now (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “even more than before the hearings, my feeling after over eight hours in purgatory is that I still really want to know the truth. And surprisingly, I left the long day of testimony convinced that for all the years that have passed since the summer of 1982, the truth might actually be accessible, and there are obvious questions and avenues of inquiry, unpursued by both parties, that could bring us closer to understanding which of the two witnesses were telling the real truth.”
    • I Know Brett Kavanaugh, but I Wouldn’t Confirm Him (Benjamin Wittes, The Atlantic): “Faced with credible allegations of serious misconduct against him, Kavanaugh behaved in a fashion unacceptable in a justice, it seems preponderantly likely he was not candid with the Senate Judiciary Committee on important matters, and the risk of Ford’s allegations being closer to the truth than his denial of them is simply too high to place him on the Supreme Court…. As much as I admire Kavanaugh, my conscience would not permit me to vote for him.” This makes the most thoughtful case against Kavanaugh. See last week’s edition for a similar piece that comes to the opposite conclusion.
    • The Rachel Mitchell Memo -“A ‘he said, she said’ case is incredibly difficult to prove. But this case is even weaker than that. Dr. Ford identified other witnesses to the event, and those witnesses either refuted her allegations or failed to corroborate them….I do not think that a reasonable prosecutor would bring this case based on the evidence before the Committee. Nor do I believe that this evidence is sufficient to satisfy the preponderance-of-the-evidence standard.” This is the report written by the sex-crimes prosecutor who interviewed Dr. Ford on the Republicans’ behalf in the Senate hearing.
    • A Non-scandalous, Non-ideological Case Against Brett Kavanaugh (Conor Friedersdorf, The Atlantic): “I do worry about a Supreme Court where literally all nine members received their respective legal education at either Harvard or Yale Law.”
    • Conservative Women Are Angry About Kavanaugh—And They Think Other Voters Are, Too (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “These women are infuriated with the way the sexual-assault allegations against the Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh have been handled. They are not convinced by Ford or any other woman who has come forward. They resent the implication that all women should support the accusers. And they believe that this scandal will ultimately hurt the cause of women who have been sexually assaulted. Above all, these women, and the women they know, are ready to lash out against Democrats in the upcoming midterm elections.”
    • The Pernicious Double Standards Around Brett Kavanaugh’s Drinking (Megan Garber, The Atlantic): “There’s been a lot of talk about double standards of late—rightfully so—and here is one more: the assumption that alcohol is one thing for men and another for women.” This one comes recommended by an alumnus. For the record, you should not get drunk regardless of your gender. Ephesians 5:18, “Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit.”
    • Poll: Amid Kavanaugh Confirmation Battle, Democratic Enthusiasm Edge Evaporates (Domenico Montanaro, NPR): “While Democrats and Republicans are now equally enthusiastic about the midterms, the story is very different for key Democratic base groups and independents. While 82 percent of Democrats say the midterms are very important, that’s true of just 60 percent of people under 30, 61 percent of Latinos and 65 percent of independents.”
  2. On the broader implications of the Ford/Kavanaugh drama. 
    • Six Broader Insights From the Kavanaugh Saga So Far (Tyler Cowen, Bloomberg): “Most men are not abusers, yet very large numbers of women have been abused. So if a man is an abuser, there is a good chance he has abused a fair number of women. That means many well-meaning men experience sexual abuse as a relatively rare phenomenon. They haven’t done it, and most of their male friends haven’t either. At the same time, most women have abuse, rape or #MeToo stories, and they experience these phenomena as relatively common and often life-altering. Probably they also have heard multiple such stories from their female friends. This structural asymmetry of perspectives is crucial to understanding the discourse and the often fundamental differences in opinion.”
    • An Age Divided By Sex (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “the culture war as we’ve known it since has not been a simple clash of conservatives who want to repress and liberals who want to emancipate. Rather it’s been an ongoing argument between two forces — feminists and religious conservatives — that both want to remoralize American society, albeit in very different ways.”
    • The Meritocracy Against Itself (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “the whole meritocratic game… depends on a reproduction of privilege that pretends to be something else, something fair and open and all about hard work and just deserts. In this game the people whose privilege is particularly obvious, the boarding schoolers and New York toffs and Bethesda country clubbers, play a crucially important role. It’s not just that their parents pay full freight and keep the economics of tuition viable for everyone. It’s that the eliter-than-elite kids themselves help create a provisional inside-the-Ivy hierarchy that lets all the other privileged kids, the ones who are merely upper-upper middle class, feel the spur of resentment and ambition that keeps us running, keeps us competing, keeps us sharp and awful in all the ways that meritocracy requires.” This is not really about Kavanaugh, but it is certainly about the world most of you inhabit at Stanford.
    • See this insightful response: Brett Kavanaugh and the Limits of Social-Class Privilege for Conservatives (David French, National Review): “The social battles of the elite college represent the squabbling of men and women at the tip of the privilege spear in the most powerful nation in the history of the planet. But as real as these petty resentments were and are, they pale in comparison to the most important thing. They miss the real roots of Ivy rage. Brett Kavanaugh’s true sin isn’t his connections, his popularity, or his prep school. His true sin is that he’s a conservative. And now he’s a particular kind of conservative — a conservative who matters, a conservative who will have the power (and might actually have the convictions) to threaten one or more of the most sacred elements of progressive jurisprudence. He can potentially affect the law and the culture in a profound way. So what we’re watching is the systematic revocation of his elite privilege.”
    • One of the Best Speeches You Will Ever Hear from the Senate Floor (Justin Taylor, Gospel Coalition): “I believe that we have a widespread legacy of sexual assault in this country. I believe we don’t have much of a shared sexual ethic right now—and we haven’t for quite some time—and I think horrible stuff has happened, and continues to happen. I’ve wept with the victims of sexual assault, and I believe the advocacy groups’ data that between one-fifth and one-third of American women have been sexually assaulted at some point in their lives. And given that most women have many other important women in their lives—a mom, and a daughter, sisters, and a couple of close friends—it means that the overwhelming majority of American women have been deeply affected, deeply hurt, by the tragedy of sexual violence.” The speech is by Ben Sasse, a former seminary president now serving as a senator from Nebraska.
    • Rage Politics On The Left (R. R. Reno, First Things): “Of the utopian dreams of the 1960s, only the sexual revolution has attained cultural dominance. To a great degree, we as a society believe in the promises of that revolution: that sex can be safe; that men and women can enjoy sexual freedom to the same degree and in the same way; that sex need have nothing to do with children; that sex is purely private. These promises are backstopped by abortion, the constitutional status of which fuels the urgency surrounding the Kavanaugh appointment.” 
      • In a similar vein: Believability Is The Road To National Ruin (Bret Stephens, New York Times): “When politics becomes solely a matter of ‘I believe’ versus ‘I believe,’ it descends into a raw contest for power. Historically, it’s been fascists, not liberals, who tend to win such contests.”
    • I was sexually assaulted and thought it was my fault. It’s past time for a 1980s reckoning. (Kirsten Powers, USA Today): “There is a problem, though, and it’s this: The culture failed to give us the language to describe such violations, and made us feel that talking about what happened to an authority figure would only make things worse for us. Fortunately for women, what happened in the 1980s isn’t staying in the 1980s. It’s a reckoning that is well overdue.”
  3. Steelmanning the NIMBYs (Scott Alexander, Slate Star Codex): “San Francisco is easy to hate. Even a lot of the people who already live there hate it. They hate the streets piled with discarded needles and human waste. They hate the traffic (fifth worst in the world) and the crime (third most property crime in the US). They hate living five people to a three-bedroom apartment. They hate having aggressive people scream incomprehensible things at them on the sidewalk. They hate the various mutually hostile transit systems that interlock in a system I would call byzantine except that at least you could get around medieval Constantinople without checking whether the Muni and CalTrain were mysteriously failing to connect to each other today. They hate that everyone else in the city hates them, from visible KILL ALL TECHIES graffiti on their commute to work, to a subtle mood of seething resentment from everyone they meet. They hate the omnipresent billboards expecting them to have strong opinions on apps. I’m not saying everyone in San Francisco hates it. There are people who like all sorts of things. Some people like being tied up, whipped, and electrocuted by strangers. And a disproportionate number of these people live in San Francisco. I am just saying this isn’t a coincidence.” 
    • Steelmanning refers to the opposite of attacking a straw man argument. Instead of making your opponent’s argument weaker, you strengthen it as much as you can.
    • Counterpoint: YIMBY! (Scott Sumner, EconLib): “Think of it this way. Lots of parents don’t let their kids play outside by themselves, because other parents don’t let their kids play outside. If you choose to be the exception, then (unlike during the 1960s) your kid is the only one available for pedophiles to prey upon. Lots of the anti-NIMBY feeling comes from a false perception of what the real estate market would look like if complete laissez-faire were adopted, based on the current distorted market.”
  4. The Disappearing Conservative Professor (Jon A. Shields, National Affairs): “Professors are even less tolerant of evangelicals, whom they associate with social conservatism. Nearly 60% of anthropologists, 50% of literature professors, 39% of political scientists and sociologists, 34% of philosophy professors, and 29% of historians say they would be less inclined to hire evangelicals. Yancey further found that female professors expressed more anti-conservative bias than men, perhaps in part because female professors tend to be more progressive than their male peers.” The author is a professor of government at Claremont McKenna.
  5. The Big Hack: How China Used a Tiny Chip to Infiltrate U.S. Companies (Jordan Robertson and Michael Rieey, Bloomberg): “Nested on the servers’ motherboards, the testers found a tiny microchip, not much bigger than a grain of rice, that wasn’t part of the boards’ original design. Amazon reported the discovery to U.S. authorities, sending a shudder through the intelligence community. Elemental’s servers could be found in Department of Defense data centers, the CIA’s drone operations, and the onboard networks of Navy warships. And Elemental was just one of hundreds of Supermicro customers. During the ensuing top-secret probe, which remains open more than three years later, investigators determined that the chips allowed the attackers to create a stealth doorway into any network that included the altered machines. Multiple people familiar with the matter say investigators found that the chips had been inserted at factories run by manufacturing subcontractors in China.” 
    • This bit made me chuckle: “Two of Elemental’s biggest early clients were the Mormon church, which used the technology to beam sermons to congregations around the world, and the adult film industry, which did not.”
  6. How Do Christians Fit Into the Two-Party System? They Don’t (Tim Keller, New York Times): “Christians are pushed toward two main options. One is to withdraw and try to be apolitical. The second is to assimilate and fully adopt one party’s whole package in order to have your place at the table. Neither of these options is valid.”
  7. Are You a Young Evangelical? We Want to Hear From You Ahead of the Midterm Elections (Elizabeth Dias, New York Times): “If you are an evangelical born after 1980, I’d love to hear about the relationship between your faith and politics today. And if you grew up evangelical and your views are shifting, feel free to share that, too. We may publish a selection of the responses.” Take a few minutes and respond to this — you might get printed in the New York Times.

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  Book Review: Seeing Like A State (Scott Alexander, Slate Star Codex): “Peasants didn’t like permanent surnames. Their own system was quite reasonable for them: John the baker was John Baker, John the blacksmith was John Smith, John who lived under the hill was John Underhill, John who was really short was John Short. The same person might be John Smith and John Underhill in different contexts, where his status as a blacksmith or place of origin was more important. But the government insisted on giving everyone a single permanent name, unique for the village, and tracking who was in the same family as whom. Resistance was intense.” This is long and amazing. (first shared in volume 95)

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

If this was forwarded to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 170

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. So I was mostly ignoring the Kavanaugh nomination, but this week things turned way up. Wow. Here are the articles that have helped to shape my thinking. 
    • What Would a Serious Investigation of Brett Kavanaugh Look Like? (Jeannie Suk Gerson, New Yorker): “…Kavanaugh does not stand to lose something that he already has. He is petitioning the public for the privilege of holding one of the highest public offices in the country, and he should have to persuade us that he didn’t do what he is accused of doing. ”
    • The Kavanaugh Debacle (Rod Dreher, The American Conservative): “I am glad that Ford will have a chance to speak her mind, and that Kavanaugh will have the opportunity to defend himself. But I think this will only make things worse for all of us. If Kavanaugh gets a Senate vote, and prevails, he will forever be tainted as a Supreme Court justice. If he is forced to withdraw (that is, without further evidence against him emerging), or is voted down, he will become a martyr to many, and will, as the Wall Street Journal editorial page said, legitimize ‘weaponizing every sexual assault allegation no matter the evidence.’”
    • I Believe Her (Caitlin Flanagan, The Atlantic): “I have been entirely agnostic about Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination. Republican presidents nominate conservative judges, and Democratic presidents nominate liberal judges. This guy sounded like he was entirely qualified for the job. When Dianne Feinstein made her announcement about the super-secret mystery letter by the anonymous woman that she had sent to the FBI, I thought it was a Hail Mary pass aimed at scotching the nomination, the kind of distasteful tactic that makes people hate politics.”
    • In Evaluating Credibility, the Signs Point in Brett Kavanaugh’s Favor (Dan McLaughlin, National Review): “It’s always a good idea, in politics, to evaluate accusations against your friends as if they were made against your enemies, and to evaluate accusations against your enemies as if they were made against your friends.” This is a very thorough argument.
  2. The Unlikely Endurance of Christian Rock (Kelefah Sanneh, The New Yorker): “On Billboard’s list of the twenty most popular rock songs of 2017, fully half of them were by bands whose members have espoused the Christian faith.” A striking claim, but you have to count Mormons as Christians for the math to work. A fascinating and well-researched article nonetheless.
  3. The Tiny Blond Bible Teacher Taking on the Evangelical Political Machine (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “Whereas her criticisms of church leaders were once veiled, she now speaks her mind freely. She blogged icily about meeting a prominent male theologian who looked her up and down and told her she was prettier than another famous female Bible teacher. She has castigated the evangelical movement for selling its soul to buy political wins. “ 
  4. The Other Political Correctness (Isaac Stone Fish, The New Republic): “There is an epidemic of self-censorship at U.S. universities on the subject of China, one that limits debate and funnels students and academics away from topics likely to offend the Chinese Communist Party.” 
    • From someone not worried about offending China: The People’s Republic of Cruelty (Bret Stephens, New York Times): “In the list of what ails China — slowing growth; corrupt officialdom; a declining birth rate; a trade war with the U.S.; Xi Jinping’s cult of personality; the inherent disconnect between a politics of repression and the spirit of innovation — the regime’s war on the soul doesn’t usually rank high. But it matters most. It means the regime has made an enemy of the one thing it cannot kill, capture, eradicate or cure. At some point it will either have to abandon the struggle or destroy itself in the effort, much as the Soviet Union did.”
  5. So a Chicago priest who was once abused burns a rainbow-cross flag: All heck breaks out (Terry Mattingly, GetReligion): the title is clickbaity, but the article delivers. “Well, here is a hot-button story if I’ve ever seen one.”
  6. The Liberalism of the Religious Right (Emily Ekins, New York Times): “Religion appears to actually be moderating conservative attitudes, particularly on some of the most polarizing issues of our time: race, immigration and identity. Churchgoing Trump voters have more favorable feelings toward African-Americans, Hispanics, Asians, Jews, Muslims and immigrants compared with nonreligious Trump voters. This holds up even while accounting for demographic factors like education and race.“ Recommended by an alumnus.
  7. What Do We Owe Her Now? (Elizabeth Bruenig, Washington Post): “‘The examination that I did was consistent with what [Wyatt] said,’ [Nurse] Schiavo told me when I contacted her this May to discuss her finding. ‘That girl was raped.’ As I read her exam notes aloud to her over the phone, Schiavo began to fill in details on her own. She remembered Wyatt’s case all these years later, right down to the fact that she was never called to court to testify about it.” This is a depressing story, well-researched. 
    • The follow-up is more encouraging: Amber Wyatt told her story of rape. This is how the world responded. (Elizabeth Bruenig, Washington Post): “The day after her 29th birthday, which was also the day after her story first appeared online, Amber Wyatt, now Wilson, stood in the shower in her San Marcos home and sobbed — hard, wrenching, wrung-out tears. They had been a long time in coming.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll highlight an older link still worth your consideration. This week we have On Political Correctness (William Deresiewicz, The American Scholar): a long and thoughtful article. “Selective private colleges have become religious schools. The religion in question is not Methodism or Catholicism but an extreme version of the belief system of the liberal elite: the liberal professional, managerial, and creative classes, which provide a large majority of students enrolled at such places and an even larger majority of faculty and administrators who work at them. To attend those institutions is to be socialized, and not infrequently, indoctrinated into that religion…. I say this, by the way, as an atheist, a democratic socialist, a native northeasterner, a person who believes that colleges should not have sports teams in the first place—and in case it isn’t obvious by now, a card-carrying member of the liberal elite.” (first shared in volume 92)

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

If this was forwarded to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 167

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 Catholic Church is facing a tremendous crisis, one potentially far bigger than any I have seen in my lifetime. There’s been a lot of ink spilled about it. Here are some pieces I found illuminating. 
    • Protestants Should Care Deeply about the Catholic Catastrophe (David French, National Review): “The Church is like a navy, a collection of ships united in purpose and in destination. Each denomination is like a different ship in that navy, and while each crew is primarily tasked with the health and well-being of its own vessel, it’s also deeply invested in the strength of the fleet. Each vessel is more vulnerable as the fleet weakens. Each vessel is stronger surrounded by its protective armada. If the analogy holds, then one of the mightiest battleships in the fleet, the Catholic Church, is taking torpedoes left and right.”
    • A Catholic Civil War? (Matthew Schmitz, New York Times): “…the Catholic Church has been plunged into all-out civil war. On one side are the traditionalists, who insist that abuse can be prevented only by tighter adherence to church doctrine. On the other side are the liberals, who demand that the church cease condemning homosexual acts and allow gay priests to step out of the closet.” This may sound like hyperbole, but I believe it is accurate.
    • Catholics Face A Painful Question: Is It True? (Elizabeth Bruenig, Washington Post): “In his statements on Viganò’s testimony last Sunday, Francis invited journalists to use their skills and capacities to draw conclusions about the matter. And so, on Monday morning, I began to try.” This is sad. It seems the only person doing actual journalism on this for a major newspaper is… an opinion columnist. It stinks to high heaven that the major papers aren’t ferociously pursuing this.
    • What Did Pope Francis Know? (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “this doesn’t mean that the pope should resign — not even if Viganò is fully vindicated. One papal resignation per millennium is more than enough. That cop-out should not be easily available to pontiffs confronted with scandals, including scandals of their own making, any more than it should be available to fathers.”
    • Answering Vigano’s Critics (Rod Dreher, The American Conservative): “Again: if the allegations are false, you say, ‘They’re false.’ But that’s not what the Pope said. At all. If the Pope thinks he can ignore Vigano as he has ignored the dubia cardinals, he is gravely mistaken.”
    • Story of bombshell charges against Pope more surreal by the minute (John L. Allen, Jr., Crux): “If there’s one thing anyone who’s covered the Vatican for a long time ought to have learned by now, it’s never to say a particular story just can’t get anymore surreal, because trust me — it always can.”
  2. The School Shootings That Weren’t (Anya Kamenetz, Alexis Arnold, and Emily Cardinali, NPR): Difficult to excerpt the key data, so here’s the summary: schools reported 240 shootings in the 2015–2016 school year, but NPR followed up and was only able to verify 11. How did this happen? “the law of really, really big numbers. Temkin notes that ‘240 schools is less than half of 1 percent,’ of the schools in the survey. ‘It’s in the margin of error.’ ”
  3. There was a revealing kerfluffle at Brown University. 
    • Rapid-onset gender dysphoria in adolescents and young adults: A study of parental reports (Lisa Littman, PLOS ONE): “The elevated number of friends per friendship group who became transgender-identified, the pattern of cluster outbreaks of transgender-identification in these friendship groups, the substantial percentage of friendship groups where the majority of the members became transgender-identified, and the peer group dynamics observed all serve to support the plausibility of social and peer contagion for ROGD [Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria]. The worsening of mental well-being and parent-child relationships and behaviors that isolate teens from their parents, families, non-transgender friends and mainstream sources of information are particularly concerning. More research is needed to better understand rapid-onset gender dysphoria, its implications, and scope.” The research paper in question.
    • Journal Looking Into Study on ‘Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria’ (Colleen Flaherty, Inside Higher Ed): “Brown University and PLOS ONE have distanced themselves from a controversial, peer-reviewed published study on ‘rapid-onset gender dysphoria,’ or gender identity issues that present not early and over a lifetime but quickly, in teenagers and young adults.” This is the neutral take.
    • New paper ignites storm over whether teens experience ‘rapid onset’ of transgender identity (Meredith Wadman, Science): “The actions by the journal and the university have infuriated some researchers who say the moves trample academic freedom, although the paper remains freely available. ‘This is a sad day for @BrownUniversity, and an indictment of the integrity of their academic and administrative leadership,’ Jeffrey Flier, a former dean of Harvard Medical School in Boston and a professor of medicine there, tweeted on Monday.” This is a slightly more feisty take.
    • Ryan T. Anderson on Twitter: “If this is the sort of censorship that takes place out in the open, just image what’s taking place behind closed doors. All because this research reached politically incorrect conclusion. But when lives are at stake, it’s more important to be correct than politically correct.” A feisty and I suspect very accurate take.
  4. The French, Coming Apart (Christopher Caldwell, City Journal): “Since Tocqueville, we have understood that our democratic societies are emulative. Nobody wants to be thought a bigot if the membership board of the country club takes pride in its multiculturalism. But as the prospect of rising in the world is hampered or extinguished, the inducements to ideological conformism weaken. Dissent appears. Political correctness grows more draconian. Finally the ruling class reaches a dangerous stage, in which it begins to lose not only its legitimacy but also a sense of what its legitimacy rested on in the first place.” This is a fascinating article that’s sort of about France, sort of about America, and mostly about Western modernity.
  5. China Is Treating Islam Like A Mental Illness (Sigal Samuel, The Atlantic): “The medical analogy is one way the government tries to justify its policy of large-scale internment: After all, attempting to inoculate a whole population against, say, the flu, requires giving flu shots not just to the already-afflicted few, but to a critical mass of people. In fact, using this rhetoric, China has tried to defend a system of arrest quotas for Uighurs. Police officers confirmed to Radio Free Asia that they are under orders to meet specific population targets when rounding up people for internment. In one township, police officials said they were being ordered to send 40 percent of the local population to the camps.” I’ve mentioned this before, but it truly is one of the scandals of the modern world.
  6. With Flowers In Their Hair (Andrew Ferguson, The Weekly Standard): “The seeds of the destruction of the Haight experiment could be found in its own antinomianism, in its original inspiration. Maybe the wholesale rejection of time-honored and time-tested values — monogamy, moderation, good manners, self-denial, self-control, the sanctity of private property, personal accountability to higher authorities, both material and spiritual — leads to squalor and misery. Maybe the project they’re celebrating in San Francisco this summer was doomed from the start.” Long and good.
  7. America Soured on My Multiracial Family (David French, The Atlantic): “There are three fundamental, complicating truths about adoption. First, every single adoption begins with profound loss. Through death, abandonment, or even loving surrender, a child suffers the loss of his or her mother and father. Second, the demographics of those in need of loving homes do not precisely match the demographics of those seeking a new child. Adoptive parents are disproportionately white. Adopted children are not. Thus, multiracial families are a natural and inevitable consequence of the adoption process. Third, American culture has long been obsessed with questions of race and identity.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll highlight an older link still worth your consideration. This week we have The world will only get weirder (Steven Coast, personal blog): “We fixed all the main reasons aircraft crash a long time ago. Sometimes a long, long time ago. So, we are left with the less and less probable events.” The piece is a few years old so the examples are dated, but it remains very intriguing. (first shared in volume 67)

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

If this was forwarded to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 165

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. Our Hope Is Coming (Steven Longoria, Denison Forum): “The world we live in would tell us that hope is closely tied to doubt. To say ‘I hope it doesn’t rain tomorrow’ carries with it a fear that it will likely rain…. Biblical hope is something entirely different. It conveys a state of confidence, security, and lack of worry.” Steven is an alumnus of our ministry who is currently studying at Dallas Theological Seminary. Go, Steven!
  2. How the State Serves Both Salvation and Religious Freedom (Jonathan Leeman, 9 Marks): “Two basic kinds of governments, then, show up in the Bible: those that shelter God’s people, and those that destroy them. Abimelech sheltered; Pharoah destroyed. The Assyrians destroyed; the Babylonians and Persians, ultimately, sheltered. Pilate destroyed; Festus sheltered. And depending on how you read Revelation, the history of government will culminate in a beastly slaughter of saintly blood. Romans 13 calls governments servants; Psalm 2 calls them imposters. Most governments contain both. But some are better than others.” Recommended.
  3. #ChurchToo
    • What Would Jesus Do? Clean House In The Catholic Church. (Megan McArdle, Washington Post): “[Congregants] do not expect the church to be perfect; even St. Peter, after all, denied Christ three times. But they do expect to find the reflection of Christ there. According to news reports, the church hierarchy in Pennsylvania and beyond has already denied Christ’s gospel three times: once when it sheltered predators in silence; once when it failed to remove everyone who was involved in covering up any crime; and again when two of the six dioceses involved tried to shut down the grand jury investigation that produced the report. Now they face the same choice Peter did.” Straight fire.
    • Why Men Like Me Should Not Be Priests (Daniel Mattson, First Things): “Most of the horrific abuse detailed in the Pennsylvania Grand Jury report involved adolescent boys and young men. This isn’t pedophilia…. If the Church wants to avoid sex scandals, it must stop ordaining the sorts of men who have the hardest time remaining chaste.” This article is full of details I did not know. Fascinating and no doubt a lightning rod for controvery.
    • How the Willow Creek Church Scandal Has Stunned the Evangelical World (Laurie Goodstein, New York Times): “The sudden resignation of Willow Creek Community Church’s top leaders following sexual harassment allegations against Rev. Bill Hybels, their founding pastor, has shaken evangelicals far from the church’s base in the Chicago suburbs. There are few bigger names in the evangelical world than Mr. Hybels, and few churches more influential than Willow Creek. Christians worldwide looked to it as a model of smart leadership.”
    • These two scandals are especially interesting when juxtaposed. The Roman Catholic Church is the most hierarchical of denominations with authority flowing down from the Pope. Willow Creek is a nondenominational congregation and is completely independent of external authority. They represent two extremes of church governance and the revelation of their moral failures demonstrate that the problem of sin is not solved by rules. See Colossians 2:20–23.
    • Related: Evangelical Purity Culture Taught Me to Rationalize My Sexual Assault (Becca Andrews, Mother Jones): “I understood my role: I was a sexual gatekeeper. Men, we were taught, are burdened by God with insatiable lust. Women, of course, are not, so it makes sense that we are expected to create the boundaries. We are responsible for what we wear, but more broadly, we are tasked with defining consent, as thorny as that may seem…. The stakes are high in purity culture. Every slipup is a strike against any hope of a successful marriage.” Although interesting, the article doesn’t quite make the case that the title implies.
    • For the record: never keep a criminal matter private because you fear your report will hurt the public perception of a religious body, political entity, or any other institution. Souls are eternal, organizations are not. Individuals are more important than institutions. This is true even of denominations and individual congregations — Jesus died for the Church and not for a brand. 1 Corinthians 6:1–7 tells us to forbear in civil matters, but when it comes to criminal matters Romans 13:1–7 is the relevant passage.
  4. Social Injustice and the Gospel (John MacArthur, Grace To You): “I am convinced the only long-term solution to every brand of ethnic animus is the gospel of Jesus Christ. In Christ alone are the barriers and dividing walls between people groups broken down, the enmity abolished, and differing cultures and ethnic groups bound together in one new people (Ephesians 2:14–15). The black leaders with whom I ministered during the civil rights movement shared that conviction. The evangelicals who are saying the most and talking the loudest these days about what’s referred to as ‘social justice’ seem to have a very different perspective.” This is apparently the first in a series.
  5. “Let The Whorehouse Burn!” (Christopher Caldwell, The Weekly Standard): “‘As of this evening,’ said Pierre Moscovici in Luxembourg in June, ‘the Greek crisis is over.’ Moscovici, a French Socialist politician who serves as the economics commissioner of the European Union, was making quite a claim…. Today, despite what Pierre Moscovici and his colleagues said in Luxembourg, Greek debt, at 179 percent, is higher still. The latest E.U. deal requires Greece to run large budget surpluses until the year 2060 to repay the debts brought on by the E.U.’s own mismanagement. The country is in some respects worse off than it was when Greek protesters mobbed the parliament in May 2010, howling, ‘Let the whorehouse burn!’”
  6. Norway’s hidden scandal (Tim Whewell, BBC): “His conviction puts the spotlight back on a system which has been heavily criticised by some parents – and by leading Norwegian professionals in the childcare field – for being too quick to put children into care, splitting families unnecessarily. The disgraced psychiatrist has had his professional licence revoked, meaning he cannot work in the same field again. But parents who’ve lost custody of children in cases he was involved in believe all his previous decisions should be reviewed.” This is outrageous.
  7. Colorado Defies the Supreme Court, Renews Persecution of a Christian Baker (David French, National Review): “On the very day that Phillips won his case at the Supreme Court, a person emailed with yet another deliberately offensive design request: “I’m thinking a three-tiered white cake. Cheesecake frosting. And the topper should be a large figure of Satan, licking a 9″ black Dildo. I would like the dildo to be an actual working model, that can be turned on before we unveil the cake. I can provide it for you if you don’t have the means to procure one yourself.” And finally, two days later, a person identifying as ‘Autumn Marie’ visited Phillips’s shop and requested a cake featuring a pentagram. According to ADF, ‘Phillips believes that person was Autumn Scardina.’ Rather than recognizing Scardina’s conduct as nothing more than a bad-faith campaign of harassment, Aubrey Elenis, the director of the Colorado Civil Rights Division, found on June 28 ‘probable cause’ to believe that Phillips violated Scardina’s civil rights….” 
    • Related: When opposition to religious liberty becomes silly, petty, and vindictive (Andrew T. Walker. Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission): “When our creative director walked into my office to notify me [that our ministry was being discriminated against by a company], my first response was to smile. Why? Because the ERLC had been the victim of discrimination, and I knew an opportunity like this meant the ERLC could pursue the moral high ground. What progressivism does to dissenters, we would not do to them…. No lawsuit was necessary. No media storm was called for. We have zero desire to force the discriminating company to agree with us or comply with our demands. No one was holding the other hostage to their ideological expectations. The power of choice and the freedom of viewpoint diversity allowed two actors to pursue a pathway of pluralism.”

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 Every Place Has Detractors. Consider Where They’re Coming From.(Megan McArdle, Bloomberg View): “There is grave danger in judging a neighborhood, or a culture, by the accounts of those who chose to leave it. Those people are least likely to appreciate the good things about where they came from, and the most likely to dwell on its less attractive qualities.” Bear this in mind when listening to conversion testimonies (both secular and religious). This serendipitously happened to be next in the sequence of older links. It fits very well with the above article about evangelical purity culture. (first shared in volume 62)

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.

If this was forwarded to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 157

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. These Harvard Kids Got the Lesson of Their Lives in the Heartland (Salena Zito, NY Post): “I have been a national political journalist for nearly 15 years. Whenever and wherever I travel in this country, I abide by a few simple rules: No planes, no interstates and no hotels. And definitely no chain restaurants…. Those simple rules are what intrigued students at the Harvard Institute of Politics (IOP) after hearing me speak at a Pizza and Politics event on the school’s campus last fall.”
  2. Don’t Quit the Republican Party. Stay and Fight (Michael Wear, Time Magazine): “The problem is that politics is not an individualistic endeavor. Independents tend to spurn institutions generally, and then feel vindicated when our institutions do not reflect their views. But while Independents think they are sending political parties a message, political parties do not hear them…. In essence, Independents actively minimize their impact on elections and party positions. When people leave (or fail to join) parties in protest, they starve those parties of ideological diversity, driving them to their extremes.” 
    • On Twitter the author (a former Obama White House staffer) says “The headline is misleading. My argument is a caution against becoming an indy. If you read the article, I explicitly argue that if you believe the Democratic Party more closely aligns with your vision of what is best for our nation’s politics, you should become a Democrat.” In case you didn’t know, authors rarely choose their headlines (or even the titles of their books).
  3. When Children Say They’re Trans (Jesse Singal, The Atlantic): “ …to deny the possibility of a connection between social influences and gender-identity exploration among adolescents would require ignoring a lot of what we know about the developing teenage brain—which is more susceptible to peer influence, more impulsive, and less adept at weighing long-term outcomes and consequences than fully developed adult brains—as well as individual stories like Delta’s.” This is a long and balanced piece which has garnered outrage in some online circles.
  4. The Sin Of Silence (Joshua Pease, Washington Post): “Without a centralized theological body, evangelical policies and cultures vary radically, and while some church leaders have worked to prevent abuse and harassment, many have not. The causes are manifold: authoritarian leadership, twisted theology, institutional protection, obliviousness about the problem and, perhaps most shocking, a diminishment of the trauma sexual abuse creates — especially surprising in a church culture that believes strongly in the sanctity of sex…. Roger Canaff, a former New York state prosecutor who specialized in child sexual abuse, tells me that many worshipers he encountered felt persecuted by the secular culture around them — and disinclined to reach out to their persecutors for help in solving problems.”
  5. Contra Caplan On Arbitrary Deploring (Scott Alexander, Slate Star Codex): “This is my long-winded answer to a question several people asked on the last links post – why should we prioritize responding to China’s mass incarceration of the Uighurs? Aren’t there other equally bad things going on elsewhere in the world, like malaria? Yes. But I had optimistically thought we had mostly established a strong norm around ‘don’t put minorities in concentration camps’. Resources devoted to enforcing that norm won’t just solve the immediate problem in China, they’ll also help maintain a credible taboo against this kind of thing so it’s less likely to happen the next time.”
  6. The Handmaids of Capitalism (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “Feminists were divided over surrogacy and commercialized fertility, but the opposition to both practices gradually dissolved, and now only eccentric conservatives notice the weird resemblances between California-style surrogacy practices and the handmaids and econowives of Gilead. They were divided over pornography, often bitterly — but over time the sex-positive side increasingly won out over the Andrea Dworkinish dissenters, even as the online realm was overrun with images and videos that more than justified her arguments. They were, and are, divided over prostitution, but it’s pretty clear that the version of feminism that supports the rights of sex workers to sell their bodies in the marketplace has the intellectual momentum.” 
  7. More on border family separations, a policy that has been stopped by executive order after massive public outcry. 
    • The Lesser Cruelty On Immigration (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “it would be useful for everyone if the Trump White House just admitted that this policy was conceived as a deterrent — traumatizing a certain number of families in the hopes of bringing greater order to the border in the long run. That admission would get us closer to the hard problem in migration policy. Some harshness, some deterrence, really is unavoidable in any immigration system that doesn’t simply dissolve borders. So policymakers are therefore obliged to choose tolerable cruelties over the intolerable one that we’re witnessing in action right now.”
    • Immigration: Was A.G. Sessions Right to Quote the Bible in Defense of Family Separation? (Bruce Ashford, personal blog): “Paul is saying, in effect, ‘Look, it’s true that Jesus is the ultimate Ruler of a cosmic Kingdom while Caesar is only the temporary ruler of a limited earthly kingdom. But that doesn’t mean you’re above the law. You should be a good citizen and obey the law except, of course, when God’s law conflicts with Caesar’s law.’”
    • A case study in the proper role of Christians in politics (Michael J. Gerson, Washington Post): “In the case of child separation, some of the most effective resistance has come from religious leaders — Catholic, Protestant mainline and even some evangelical Christian (see Cardinal Timothy Dolan and Franklin Graham). It was a case study in the proper and positive role that religion can play in our common life.”
    • Enforce the Border — Humanely (David Frum, The Atlantic): “Illegal immigrants are committing no moral wrong. They are doing what we might do in their place—as we, by defending borders, are doing what they would do if they were in ours. Like so many human institutions, borders are both arbitrary and indispensable. Without them, there are no nations. Without nations, there can be no democracy and no liberalism. John Lennon may imagine that without nations there will be only humanity. More likely, without nations there will only be tribes.”
    • Our Debate On Illegal Immigration Is A National Disaster (David Harsanyi, The Federalist): “The majority of kids in care of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, most often teenagers, are apprehended because they’re here without any parents. It’s a growing problem. In 2013, a little fewer than 40,000 unaccompanied minors were apprehended by the Border Patrol. That was a historic high. In 2016 there were nearly 60,000. This year there are likely to be more than 80,000.”
    • American Families Shouldn’t Be Separated, Either (Tyler Cowen, Bloomberg View): “Obviously, a case can be made for enforcing the border, but deliberate cruelty is never a good idea. Those children — innocent victims all of them — will likely be traumatized for life…. If you agree with me on this, I’d like to push you one step further. It’s horrible to forcibly separate lawbreaking parents from their young children, but we do that to American citizens, too. According to one 2010 study, more than 1.1 million men and 120,000 women in U.S. jails and prisons have children under the age of 17.” This is one of the most intriguing things I read this week.
    • The Rise of the Amnesty Thugs (David Brooks, New York Times): “For centuries, conservatives have repeated a specific critique against state power. Statism, conservatives have argued, has a tendency to become brutalist and inhumane because a bureaucracy can’t see or account for the complexity of reality. It tries to impose uniform rules on the organic intricacy of human relationships. Statist social engineering projects cause horrific suffering because in the mind of statists, the abstract rule is more important than the human being in front of them. The person must be crushed for the sake of the abstraction.” Astute insights in this op-ed. Recommended. Also, the title is slightly misleading.
    • A Twitter thread from an immigration attorney explaining how longstanding this problem has been

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 Alcohol, Blackouts, and Campus Sexual Assault (Texas Monthly, Sarah Hepola): I think this is 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.

If this was forwarded to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.