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
- Stop Striving and Have a Baby (Nicholas Clairmont, The Free Press): “…having kids isn’t just possible, thinkable, or doable. It’s actually super fun, massively easier than anyone tells you, and so energizing and clarifying that if you are an ambitious person, you should have a kid out of pure personal selfishness.”
- Friends say Minnesota shooting suspect was deeply religious and conservative (Jim Mustian & Michael Biesecker, Associated Press): “Friends and former colleagues interviewed by AP described Boelter as a devout Christian who attended an evangelical church and went to campaign rallies for President Donald Trump.”
- In response: The Problem of the Christian Assassin (David French, The New York Times): “Our nation is relearning a lesson that it never should have forgotten. Extremist Christian language and theology can lead to extreme Christian violence in the same way that extreme language can lead to extreme violence in other faith traditions and among people who have no faith at all. Christians aren’t better than anyone else. We’re fashioned from the same human clay, and we’re susceptible to the same temptations and failures.”
- The Gospel Doesn’t Impart a Lens, but a Life (Steven M. Bryan, Mere Orthodoxy): “I suspect that some of the ways that we speak about those who abandon Christian faith and become secular mirrors a secular understanding of what it means to become a Christian in the first place. To speak about ‘de-construction’ implies that becoming a Christian is a matter of constructing a ‘worldview.’ It risks ratifying the claim that becoming a Christian is something like becoming a Marxist or a nationalist or even a postmodernist. It is simply to dismantle one story about the world and to construct another. To speak about ‘de-conversion’ implies that the Gospel imparts a lens, not life.”
- The author is a New Testament professor at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School.
- What Church Do You Attend? Maybe More Than One, Survey Finds (Adelle Banks, Roys Report): “Researchers for the multiyear Hartford Institute for Religion Research study found that 46% of some 24,000 churchgoers responding to their survey reported active engagement with more than one church.”
- Matt Yglesias on debating (Tyler Cowen, Marginal Revolution): “In practice, one big reason to debate is so you can put four people on the floor and attract an audience and some public attention, yet without slighting any one of the ‘stars’ by making it a panel. As a method of truth-seeking, I do not think public debate does very well.”
- Exclusive: Harvard Law Review Axes 85 Percent of Submissions Using Race-Conscious Rubric, Documents Show (Aaron Sibarium, Washington Free Beacon): “The Free Beacon obtained more than 500 documents from the journal’s two latest volumes, including the one currently in production. The new documents are all from 2024 and 2025—after the Supreme Court banned affirmative action at universities—and span four distinct stages of the article selection process. They provide the most comprehensive picture yet of the racial and ideological preferences at the elite law review, which has become a key front in the Trump administration’s war on Harvard and is now the subject of three federal probes. The documents show that at least 42 different editors considered race or gender when making recommendations in 2024. That number accounts for 40 percent of the 104 editors who serve on the journal at any given time, all of whom have a vote in publication decisions. While some editors recommended pieces on the grounds that the author was a minority, others paid more attention to the article’s footnotes, combing through the citations to see how many sources were white, black, or transgender.”
- The Free Beacon is a partisan source, but Sibarium has a track record of getting scoops with receipts to back them up. The article contains a link to all the leaked memos the publication analyzed: https://freebeacon.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/HLR-Memos_Final.pdf
- Articles which appear to have been written in honor of Juneteenth:
- Juneteenth Is Our Second Independence Day (Condoleeza Rice, The Free Press): “But even though my family has been celebrating Juneteenth since my childhood, it wasn’t until 2021 that Congress voted, almost unanimously, to make Juneteenth National Independence Day a federal holiday. Because many Americans are unfamiliar with its significance, some, perhaps understandably, wonder why it needed national recognition at all. After all, all Americans celebrate the Fourth of July—the ultimate celebration of our nation’s founding, of our independence and our liberty. To me, Juneteenth is a recognition of what I call America’s second founding.”
- The author is a fellow believer and also the director of Stanford’s Hoover Institution.
- The article contains this stunning paragraph: “I was eight years old when, on a Sunday morning in September 1963, the 16th Street Baptist Church was bombed. I felt the blast a few blocks away in the church where my father was the pastor. Four little girls, two of whom I knew, were killed.”
- What American Students Aren’t Taught About Slavery (Coleman Hughes, The Free Press): “What I learned from teaching slavery to a group of college freshmen is that many (perhaps most) American kids graduate high school believing, falsely, that slavery happened only in America. Their minds are not blown by rehearsing the brutal facts of American slavery. Their minds are blown to learn that other brutal slaveries also existed all over the world. Nor is this historical amnesia confined to high school students. The United Nations has deemed March 25 a day of remembrance for the transatlantic slave trade. There is no UN day of remembrance for the Arab slave trade, the Barbary slave trade, the Indian Ocean slave trade, or any of the slaveries localized to specific regions such as the Indian subcontinent, China, Korea, and Eastern Europe—each of which accounted for millions of slaves.… Instead of whitewashing the grim facts of American slavery—as American history textbooks did in the past, and as certain corners of the American right would be all too happy to revive—I recommend taking the opposite approach: adding material rather than subtracting it. We must include the global and ubiquitous nature of slavery in every school curriculum.”
- The author, himself African-American and Puerto Rican, is a journalist and a visiting professor at the University of Austin.
- Frederick Douglass Found His Mission in the Black Church (Jessica Janvier, Christianity Today): “Douglass’s muddled experience with evangelical Christianity mirrored what many other slaves experienced. Many of them came to faith through evangelicalism and were able to grasp the hope of emancipation—and equality. Yet they also saw white evangelical preachers espouse proslavery doctrines and comfort with tearing apart Black families to uphold the lucrative institution. With this hypocrisy in mind, Douglass famously wrote, ‘I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slaveholding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land.’ ”
- Juneteenth Is Our Second Independence Day (Condoleeza Rice, The Free Press): “But even though my family has been celebrating Juneteenth since my childhood, it wasn’t until 2021 that Congress voted, almost unanimously, to make Juneteenth National Independence Day a federal holiday. Because many Americans are unfamiliar with its significance, some, perhaps understandably, wonder why it needed national recognition at all. After all, all Americans celebrate the Fourth of July—the ultimate celebration of our nation’s founding, of our independence and our liberty. To me, Juneteenth is a recognition of what I call America’s second founding.”
Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen
- Death (Pearls Before Swine): buddy, have I got good news for you
- Unearthed Ancient Sculpture Gives Insight Into How Much Ancient People Sucked At Art (Babylon Bee)
- Concerns Raised As ChatGPT Begins Replying To All Prompts With ‘Are You Sarah Connor?’ (Babylon Bee)
- Waymo Car Achieves Sentience At Worst Possible Moment (Babylon Bee) — the accompanying photo made me laugh out loud for real, your mileage may vary
- Good Science (xkcd)
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.