Tag: slavery

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 129

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 home­less who help them­selves get a need­ed lift (Kevin Kel­ly, San Jose Mer­cury News): “LifeMoves, for­mer­ly known as InnVi­sion Shel­ter Net­work, is a 44-year-old [Bay Area] non­prof­it that spe­cial­izes in get­ting indi­vid­u­als into tem­po­rary hous­ing and on a path to per­ma­nent hous­ing. It claims a 93 per­cent suc­cess rate of get­ting home­less fam­i­lies housed and self-suf­fi­cient, and a 72 per­cent suc­cess rate with indi­vid­u­als. There is just one caveat: Peo­ple who receive assis­tance — referred to as clients — must demon­strate a will­ing­ness to bet­ter them­selves.”
    • Relat­ed: 5 Harsh Real­i­ties Of Home­less Camps Nobody Talks About (Evan Symon, Cracked): “If you live in a major Amer­i­can city, you’ve prob­a­bly seen your fair share of home­less camps. They usu­al­ly crop up in emp­ty lots, parks, and Big Rock Can­dy Moun­tains. City gov­ern­ments gen­er­al­ly have them torn down and cleaned up when­ev­er they can. Leav­ing aside whether or not that’s the right way to address home­less­ness, some­body has to do the work of clean­ing those places up. Our source, Car­ol, did just that.”
  2. Peo­ple for sale: Where lives are auc­tioned for $400 (Nima Elba­gir, Raja Razek, Alex Platt and Bry­ony Jones, CNN). There is a text sto­ry at the link, but the embed­ded sev­en minute video is worth watch­ing, espe­cial­ly the first four min­utes. This is a hor­ri­fy­ing devel­op­ment in the migrant cri­sis — slave auc­tions.
  3. How To Think About Vladimir Putin (Christo­pher Cald­well, Imprim­is): “When Putin took pow­er in the win­ter of 1999–2000, his coun­try was defense­less. It was bank­rupt. It was being carved up by its new klep­to­crat­ic elites, in col­lu­sion with its old impe­r­i­al rivals, the Amer­i­cans. Putin changed that…. Russ­ian peo­ple not only tol­er­ate him, they revere him. You can get a bet­ter idea of why he has ruled for 17 years if you remem­ber that, with­in a few years of Communism’s fall, aver­age life expectan­cy in Rus­sia had fall­en below that of Bangladesh. ” This is a slight­ly old­er arti­cle, and so his com­ments about Russia’s role in the U.S. elec­tion aren’t very cur­rent. His broad­er obser­va­tions are worth pon­der­ing.
  4. The Supreme Court hears argu­ments about the Chris­t­ian bak­er who refused to bake a cake for a gay wed­ding on Tues­day. Lots of peo­ple are writ­ing about it.
      • Against the bak­er: The Chris­t­ian Legal Army Behind ‘Mas­ter­piece Cakeshop’ (Sarah Pos­ner, The Nation): “On Decem­ber 5, with the full force of the Unit­ed States gov­ern­ment behind it, ADF will be ask­ing the Supreme Court to carve out yawn­ing exemp­tions from civ­il-rights laws for con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians.” (this is less about the case and more about the firm rep­re­sent­ing the bak­er — it’s a hit piece but is full of inter­est­ing info)
      • Against the bak­er: The Mas­ter­piece Cakeshop Case Is Not About Reli­gious Free­dom (Jen­nifer Finney Boy­lan, New York Times): “But Mas­ter­piece has noth­ing to do with reli­gious free­dom. It’s about enshrin­ing a free­dom to dis­crim­i­nate. His­tor­i­cal­ly, reli­gious exemp­tions from the law have occa­sion­al­ly been grant­ed to pro­tect the per­son who holds the belief. But this case is dif­fer­ent, in that it gives an indi­vid­ual the right to harm some­one else. And that’s what the Mas­ter­piece case is about: It would give indi­vid­u­als the right to dis­crim­i­nate.” The author is an Eng­lish pro­fes­sor at Barnard Col­lege.
      • Against the bak­er: The Gay Wed­ding Cake Case Isn’t About Free Speech (Andrew Kop­pel­man, The Amer­i­can Prospect).”It is mere­ly telling him that if he sells any prod­ucts to het­ero­sex­u­al cou­ples, he must sell the same prod­ucts to same-sex cou­ples. He is free to refuse to write ‘Sup­port Gay Mar­riage’ on any cakes that he sells, so long as he refus­es that to both gay and het­ero­sex­u­al cus­tomers. So this is an easy case. Phillips should lose.“ The author is a law pro­fes­sor at North­west­ern. This is the strongest argu­ment I have read against the Chris­t­ian bak­er.
      • For the bak­er: Stop Mis­rep­re­sent­ing Mas­ter­piece Cakeshop (David French, Nation­al Review): “Phillips isn’t dis­crim­i­nat­ing against a pro­tect­ed class. I’ll repeat this until I’m blue in the face. He serves gay cus­tomers.”
      • For the bak­er: The Chris­t­ian Baker’s Unan­swered Legal Argu­ment: Why the Strongest Objec­tions Fail (Sherif Gir­gis, Pub­lic Dis­course): “Should an Islam­o­pho­bic sect get to force Mus­lim car­i­ca­tur­ists to sketch mock­ing images of the Prophet? Clear­ly not.” Dis­claimer: Sherif was a room­mate of one of our alum­ni and is an acquain­tance of mine.
  5. Duel­ing per­spec­tives on the fam­i­ly lives of blue state and red state Amer­i­cans:
    • Blue States Prac­tice the Fam­i­ly Val­ues Red States Preach (Nicholas Kristof, New York Times): “The lib­er­al impulse may be to gloat: Those con­ser­v­a­tives thun­der about ‘fam­i­ly val­ues’ but don’t prac­tice them. But there’s also per­haps a mea­sure of hypocrisy in the blue states. As Cahn and Car­bone put it: ‘Blue fam­i­ly val­ues bris­tle at restric­tions on sex­u­al­i­ty, insis­tence on mar­riage or the stigma­ti­za­tion of sin­gle par­ents. Their secret, how­ev­er, is that they encour­age their chil­dren to simul­ta­ne­ous­ly com­bine pub­lic tol­er­ance with pri­vate dis­ci­pline, and their chil­dren then over­whelm­ing­ly choose to raise their own chil­dren with­in two-par­ent fam­i­lies.’” Kristof is a Pulitzer prize-win­ning jour­nal­ist who was a Rhodes Schol­ar and is on the Board of Over­seers for Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty.
    • No, Repub­li­cans Aren’t Hyp­ocrites on Fam­i­ly Val­ues W. Brad­ford Wilcox and Vijay Menon, Politi­co): “In oth­er words, even though South­ern­ers in gen­er­al are at greater risk of fam­i­ly insta­bil­i­ty than North­ern­ers, Repub­li­cans in the South enjoy marked­ly high­er lev­els of fam­i­ly sta­bil­i­ty than their fel­low citizens—a fam­i­ly sta­bil­i­ty advan­tage that puts them above Democ­rats and inde­pen­dents in the North. Anoth­er way to put this: It’s blue and pur­ple Amer­i­cans in the South who are real­ly pulling down fam­i­ly sta­bil­i­ty in the South, not red Amer­i­cans.” Wilcox is a soci­ol­o­gy prof at UVA, where Minon is also a grad stu­dent.
  6. We Did­n’t Become Chris­tians Because Of The Huck­sters (Michael Wear, Fath­om): “If the world crit­i­cizes the pride of some­one who claims the name of Christ—or who won the votes of those who do—point them to Jesus, who was born into pover­ty, who instruct­ed his fol­low­ers to take the low posi­tion, and hum­bled him­self on the way to the cross…. There is noth­ing so wrong with the poor exam­ple of Chris­tians that can’t be solved by pro­claim­ing the per­fect exam­ple of Christ.”
  7.  Stan­ford can take Junipero Ser­ra’s name off its build­ings, but it can’t purge him from its his­to­ry (Char­lotte Allen, LA Times): “The Main Quad, part of a mas­ter plan designed by land­scape archi­tect Fred­er­ick Law Olm­stead, imi­tates Serra’s mis­sions (with some Romanesque touch­es). Besides the Mall and the boule­vard, oth­er cam­pus streets are named after his fri­ar-dis­ci­ples (Lasuén and Fran­cis­co Palóu), as well as José de Gálvez, the inspec­tor gen­er­al for New Spain who facil­i­tat­ed Serra’s mis­sion­ary work in Alta Cal­i­for­nia. If the Stan­ford activists aim to oblit­er­ate Serra’s pres­ence from their cam­pus, they’ve got their work cut out for them.” I didn’t know Ser­ra’s influ­ence was so per­va­sive at Stan­ford.

Things Glen Found Amusing

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Let­ter To My Younger Self (Ryan Leaf, The Player’s Tri­bune): “Con­grat­u­la­tions. You offi­cial­ly have it all — mon­ey, pow­er and pres­tige. All the things that are impor­tant, right?… That’s you, young Ryan Leaf, at his absolute finest: arro­gant, boor­ish and nar­cis­sis­tic. You think you’re on top of the world and that you’ve got all the answers. Well I’m sor­ry to have to tell you this, but the truth is….” Such a grip­ping let­ter. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed. (first shared in vol­ume 99)

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 127

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.

Also, next issue is vol­ume 128, an impor­tant com­put­er sci­ence num­ber. I should do some­thing to make it spe­cial. If you have an idea, let me know.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The Endur­ing Appeal of Creepy Chris­tian­i­ty (David French, Nation­al Review): “The Bible doesn’t have a clear, spe­cif­ic pre­scrip­tion for every life chal­lenge. But rather than seek­ing God prayer­ful­ly and with deep humil­i­ty and rev­er­ence, we want answers, now. And thus we grav­i­tate to those peo­ple who pur­port to offer more than the Bible.”
  2. Chi­na Tells Chris­tians to Replace Images of Jesus with Com­mu­nist Pres­i­dent (Kate Shell­nut, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “‘Many poor house­holds have plunged into pover­ty because of ill­ness in the fam­i­ly. Some resort­ed to believ­ing in Jesus to cure their ill­ness­es,’ the head of the gov­ern­ment cam­paign told SCMP. ‘But we tried to tell them that get­ting ill is a phys­i­cal thing, and that the peo­ple who can real­ly help them are the Com­mu­nist Par­ty and Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary Xi.’”
  3. She led Trump to Christ: The rise of the tel­e­van­ge­list who advis­es the White House (Julia Duin, Wash­ing­ton Post): This is an amaz­ing pro­file. “White insists that lec­tur­ing Trump is not her job. ‘I don’t preach to any­one on behav­ior mod­i­fi­ca­tion,’ she says. ‘There are things I can speak, but that’s not anyone’s busi­ness what I say. Why would I as a pas­tor expose that rela­tion­ship? Every­one needs a safe place in life, and pas­tors can be people’s safe place. That’s why I have this rela­tion­ship, because I don’t talk about it.’”
    • Speak­ing of Trump’s evan­gel­i­cal advi­sors… What Trump’s Evan­gel­i­cal Advis­ers Took Out of Egypt (Jayson Casper, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Rosen­berg thanked [Egypt­ian Pres­i­dent] Sisi for res­cu­ing Egypt and its Chris­tians from the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood. He com­mend­ed the pres­i­dent for reach­ing out to Jews and to Roman Catholics. ‘But there is one group I don’t see: evan­gel­i­cals,’ he told Sisi. ‘It’s not your fault; prob­a­bly we haven’t asked. But would you like us to bring a del­e­ga­tion of lead­ers to come and vis­it you?’”
  4. A Har­vest Of Wit­ness­es (William Mum­ma, First Things): “The fight for reli­gious lib­er­ty is not a sub-cat­e­go­ry of the elec­toral con­test between Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats. It is a strug­gle over whether the state has the author­i­ty to ban­ish the great­est rival to tem­po­ral pow­er that exists. It is the age-old con­test between the King and the Church, between Cae­sar and the Truth. It is a con­test over who gets to decide: ‘What is truth?’” The piece is a lit­tle par­ti­san, but makes an impor­tant point.
  5. The Politi­ciza­tion of Moth­er­hood (James Taran­to, Wall Street Jour­nal): “The premise of Ms. Komisar’s book—backed by research in psy­chol­o­gy, neu­ro­science and epigenetics—is that ‘moth­ers are bio­log­i­cal­ly nec­es­sary for babies,’ and not only for the obvi­ous rea­sons of preg­nan­cy and birth. ‘Babies are much more neu­ro­log­i­cal­ly frag­ile than we’ve ever under­stood,’ Ms. Komis­ar says.”
  6. Stan­ford Stu­dents Pre­tend to Sup­port Free Speech, Stum­ble at Final Hur­dle (Stan­ford Review, Sam Wolfe): “…at 8:40 p.m., 20 min­utes after he began his talk, over 150 mem­bers of the crowd osten­si­bly gath­ered to hear him speak prompt­ly stood up and left, while Ara­bic music blared from Blue­tooth speak­ers con­cealed around the hall. The stu­dents, plant­ed by SAI, had arrived at the event ear­ly to clog up the venue. As a result, dozens of stu­dents, many of whom were pre­sum­ably inter­est­ed in start­ing a gen­uine dia­logue with Spencer about his views and rebuff­ing him, were turned away. I myself arrived at about 7:20 for an event sched­uled to begin an hour lat­er, and was one of the last peo­ple admit­ted… imag­ine if they had, instead of occu­py­ing the seats and sub­se­quent­ly vacat­ing them, sim­ply blocked oth­ers from enter­ing, and left the seats unfilled that way. The result would have been the same, the inten­tion large­ly the same, and their actions right­ly con­demned. This was bet­ter than vio­lence, yes, bet­ter than shout­ing Spencer down. But the protest was a delib­er­ate attempt to block stu­dents from engag­ing with Spencer in any capac­i­ty.”
  7. Police: ‘Every 16-year-old girl in Fres­no’ has been tar­get­ed by sex trade recruiters (Rory Apple­ton, Fres­no Bee): the entire sto­ry is hor­ri­fy­ing. This seg­ment caught my eye: “It is rare for boys to be traf­ficked, Chas­tain said, but it does hap­pen. It is even more dif­fi­cult for detec­tives to dis­cov­er these vic­tims because it is almost always done in total secre­cy, as even crim­i­nal gangs believe traf­fick­ing boys goes too far.” The instinct to con­sid­er your­self an okay per­son because at least you don’t do _______ is present even in very wicked peo­ple.
  8. Solar eclipse of 1207 BC helps to date pharaohs (Col­in Humphreys and Graeme Wadding­ton, Astron­o­my and Geo­physics): “How­ev­er, a plau­si­ble alter­na­tive mean­ing [to the sun and moon stand­ing still in Joshua 10] is that the Sun and Moon stopped doing what they nor­mal­ly do: they stopped shin­ing.” File under spec­u­la­tive — I am not con­vinced. If true, how­ev­er, this would be evi­dence for the lat­er date of the Exo­dus (13th cen­tu­ry vs 15th cen­tu­ry). The authors have been using astron­o­my to study the Bible for some time (see, for exam­ple, The Date of the Cru­ci­fix­ion writ­ten back in 1985).

Things Glen Found Amusing

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we’re going back to an arti­cle first shared in vol­ume 95, the long and amaz­ing 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.”

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 97

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 ben­e­fits and harms of mar­i­jua­na, explained by the most thor­ough research review yet (Ger­man Lopez, Vox): “the bot­tom line is that mar­i­jua­na does pose some harms — par­tic­u­lar­ly for peo­ple at risk of devel­op­ing men­tal health dis­or­ders, preg­nant women, those vul­ner­a­ble to res­pi­ra­to­ry prob­lems, and any­one get­ting into a car. And while some of these harms may be over­come by marijuana’s ben­e­fits or cur­tailed by con­sum­ing pot with­out smok­ing it, the evi­dence shows that weed’s rep­u­ta­tion as a safe drug is unde­served.”
  2. What do slave­hold­ers think? (Austin Choi-Fitz­patrick, Aeon):  “The con­tem­po­rary traf­fick­ers and slave­hold­ers I spoke with are not moti­vat­ed by a love of injus­tice. They are instead dri­ven by cul­tur­al iner­tia, a desire for prof­it or, more fre­quent­ly, a need for basic sus­te­nance…. The terms used here – slav­ery and slave­hold­er – nev­er crossed the lips, nor per­haps even the minds, of the men I spoke with.” The author is a soci­ol­o­gist at the Uni­ver­si­ty of San Diego.
  3. The Cri­sis of West­ern Civ (David Brooks, NY Times): “These days, the whole idea of West­ern civ is assumed to be reac­tionary and oppres­sive. All I can say is, if you think that was reac­tionary and oppres­sive, wait until you get a load of the world that comes after it.”
  4. Charles Murray’s ‘Provoca­tive’ Talk (Wendy M. Williams and Stephen J. Ceci, NY Times): two Cor­nell pro­fes­sors “tran­scribed Mr. Murray’s speech and — with­out indi­cat­ing who wrote it — sent it to a group of 70 col­lege pro­fes­sors (women and men, of dif­fer­ent ranks, at dif­fer­ent uni­ver­si­ties)… the 57 pro­fes­sors who respond­ed to our request gave Mr. Murray’s talk an aver­age score of 5.05, or ‘mid­dle of the road.’” This, of course, is the speech which faced a back­lash result­ing in a pro­fes­sor need­ing a neck brace. Fas­ci­nat­ing.
  5. This Is About That (Andrew Wil­son, Vimeo): this 3.5 minute video starts slow but ends strong. A med­i­ta­tion on the rela­tion­ship between mar­riage and the gospel. Rec­om­mend­ed.
  6. Inter­sec­tion­al­i­ty Is a Polit­i­cal Foot­ball; Here’s Why It Doesn’t Have to Be (Chris Mar­tin, Het­ero­dox Acad­e­my): “Pro­gres­sives have adopt­ed an over­am­bi­tious mod­el of inter­sec­tion­al­i­ty in which every­one lies on axes of oppres­sion, and I will explain this model’s three flaws. Con­ser­v­a­tives gen­er­al­ly believe that inter­sec­tion­al­i­ty is use­less, but I explain how inter­sec­tion­al schol­ar­ship can be use­ful to researchers, regard­less of whether they are lib­er­al, cen­trist, con­ser­v­a­tive, lib­er­tar­i­an, or eclec­tic.”
  7. Here’s the Mil­lion-Dol­lar Answer to How Per­se­cut­ed Chris­tians Per­se­vere (Sarah Zyl­stra, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Researchers grouped respons­es to per­se­cu­tion into three cat­e­gories: sur­vival, asso­ci­a­tion, and con­fronta­tion…. ‘Evan­gel­i­cals are divid­ed between those who are will­ing to take up arms and those who view wit­ness and non-retal­i­a­tion as the respons­es to which the Bible calls Chris­tians,’ the report stat­ed. They tend to be more skep­ti­cal of the inter­re­li­gious dia­logue favored by Catholics and main­line Protes­tants, and more like­ly to pur­sue evan­ge­liza­tion.”

Things Glen Found Amusing

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 80

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

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Rage and Heart­break: Required Reac­tions to Alep­po (Richard Stearns, ERLC): “Let your heart be bro­ken for the suf­fer­ing in the Mid­dle East and around the world. Pray it stays bro­ken as long as any moth­er any­where pleads for help and any child fears this night will be her last.” For some con­text, read 9 Things You Should Know About Alep­po and the Syr­i­an Cri­sis (Joe Carter, Gospel Coali­tion). And this is an inter­est­ing Mus­lim take on Alep­po (Omed Safi, Wash­ing­ton Post).
  2. The Cri­sis of Chris­tians in Egypt (Gabriel Reynolds, First Things):  “It is telling, for exam­ple, that almost no such attacks have tak­en place in major­i­ty Shi’ite Iran against the Chris­t­ian minor­i­ty there. What, then, dis­tin­guish­es Egypt and Pak­istan from Iran?”
  3. My Pres­i­dent Was Black (Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Atlantic): this is a long, beau­ti­ful­ly-writ­ten piece. The Atlantic is pub­lish­ing response pieces. The first one is intense: “My pres­i­dent was black and I still am.”
  4. Why Hillary Clin­ton Bombed With White Evan­gel­i­cal Vot­ers (Ruth Gra­ham, Slate): “It was as if she was try­ing to alien­ate evan­gel­i­cals… and it worked.” This arti­cle nails a big part of the dynam­ic.
  5. With Jesus’ Birth, Why Does The Bible List Two Dif­fer­ent Fam­i­ly Trees? (Richard Ostling, Patheos): “The gen­er­al con­sen­sus on the dif­fer­ences is that Matthew depict­ed Jesus’ legal descent from David, on the assump­tion Joseph adopt­ed him. If Mary had no broth­ers, by com­mon cus­tom Joseph would have been his father-in-law’s legal ‘son’ and heir through the mar­riage. Luke defined Jesus through Mary as a blood descen­dant of David.” (for some oth­er pos­si­ble expla­na­tions, see Mark Strauss at Zon­der­van Aca­d­e­m­ic)
  6. The Defense of Lib­er­ty Can’t Do With­out Iden­ti­ty Pol­i­tics (Jacob Levy, Niska­nen Cen­ter): “Iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics… is about fight­ing for polit­i­cal jus­tice by draw­ing on the com­mit­ment that aris­es out of tar­get­ed injus­tice…. It lets us spot the major­i­ty group’s iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics rather than treat­ing it as the nor­mal back­ground state of affairs, and to rec­og­nize the oppres­sion and injus­tice that it gen­er­ates.” The author is a pro­fes­sor of polit­i­cal sci­ence at McGill.
  7. The Right Shuts Down Free Speech, Too (Cather­ine Ramp­bell, Wash­ing­ton Post): it’s almost as though human nature is the same regard­less of what one thinks about the tax code. 
  8. On the academic/research side of things:

Things Glen Found Amusing

  • Indul­gences  (Pearls Before Swine): the­o­log­i­cal warn­ing — this form of recur­sion does not actu­al­ly work 
  • Local Man Relieved After Spir­i­tu­al Gift Test Comes Back Neg­a­tive For Giv­ing (Baby­lon Bee): “Accord­ing to sources, Shep­herd ripped open his results pack­et Thurs­day, and after ner­vous­ly perus­ing the cov­er let­ter, jumped for joy upon dis­cov­er­ing he had no desire or respon­si­bil­i­ty to be gen­er­ous what­so­ev­er.”
  • Band Offers Admin­is­tra­tion $60,000 To Drop Accu­sa­tions (The Flip­side): bru­tal and well-deserved (if you don’t get the joke, check out two recent edi­tions of the Foun­tain Hop­per (dirty lan­guage ahead): about the $60,000 and about the band. In case you’re won­der­ing, I do think the band is being treat­ed unfair­ly (and I have not been a huge fan of the band’s cul­ture his­tor­i­cal­ly). 
  • How To Get Vin­di­ca­tion (Basic Instruc­tions): if you are squea­mish, this one may not be for you. I found it hilar­i­ous. There is a video in the notes below the com­ic and I rec­om­mend it — if you are not squea­mish.

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 76

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

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

Things Glen Found Interesting

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

Things Glen Found Amusing

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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