Tag: theology

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 143

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. I’m a schol­ar of the “pros­per­i­ty gospel.” It took can­cer to show me I was in its grip. (Kate Bowler, Vox): “Every day I pray the same prayer: God, save me. Save me. Save me. Oh, God, remem­ber my baby boy. Remem­ber my son and my hus­band before you return me to ash­es. Before they walk this earth alone. I plead with a God of Maybe, who may or may not let me col­lect more years. It is a God I love, and a God that breaks my heart.” The author is a pro­fes­sor at Duke Divin­i­ty School.
  2. Two intrigu­ing arti­cles on the trans­gen­der move­ment in Amer­i­ca:
    • The Dis­ap­pear­ance of Desire (Sohrab Ahmari, Com­men­tary Mag­a­zine):  “Sex­u­al­i­ty is a bod­i­ly expe­ri­ence. It stretch­es creduli­ty to sug­gest that a trans person’s deci­sion to alter his or her sexed body has noth­ing to do with what he or she wish­es to do with that body—and whom he or she wish­es to attract. Yet, as with gen­der itself, the trans activists treat sex­u­al desire as an abstract and dis­em­bod­ied thing.”
    • Divorc­ing The Trans­gen­der Com­mu­ni­ty (Gretchen Rachel Ham­mond, Tablet Mag­a­zine): the lan­guage in this one is uncouth. “It was then that I began to notice that those trans­gen­der peo­ple who start­ed to speak out as an activist, jour­nal­ist, celebri­ty, orga­niz­er, com­men­ta­tor or even via a social media post were com­ing under attack, not just from the usu­al crowd of Evan­gel­i­cal Con­ser­v­a­tive hys­ter­ics, but increas­ing­ly and unnerv­ing­ly from their own com­mu­ni­ty.”
  3. For the lawyers: Dis­agree­ment is Not Always Dis­crim­i­na­tion: On Mas­ter­piece Cakeshop and the Anal­o­gy to Inter­ra­cial Mar­riage (Ryan Ander­son, George­town Jour­nal of Law and Pub­lic Pol­i­cy): “Col­orado is part of a larg­er nation­al trend in which author­i­ties are using antidis­crim­i­na­tion statutes as swords to pun­ish already mar­gin­al­ized peo­ple (such as sup­port­ers of the con­ju­gal under­stand­ing of mar­riage), rather than as shields to pro­tect peo­ple from unjust dis­crim­i­na­tion (such as African Amer­i­cans in the wake of Jim Crow and today).… sup­port for mar­riage as the union of hus­band and wife is essen­tial­ly dif­fer­ent from oppo­si­tion to inter­ra­cial mar­riage, and that the sta­tus of African Amer­i­cans is impor­tant­ly dif­fer­ent from that of Amer­i­cans who iden­ti­fy as gay. As a result, First Amend­ment pro­tec­tions for peo­ple who act on the belief that mar­riage unites hus­band and wife dif­fer in crit­i­cal ways from hypoth­e­sized First Amend­ment pro­tec­tions for racists—and the courts can dis­tin­guish the two cas­es…. pro­tec­tions for cit­i­zens who sup­port the con­ju­gal under­stand­ing of mar­riage bear much more sim­i­lar­i­ty to pro­tec­tions for pro-life cit­i­zens.”
  4. The Igno­ble Lie (Patrick Deneen, First Things): “This helps explain the strange and often hys­ter­i­cal insis­tence upon equal­i­ty ema­nat­ing from our nation’s most elite and exclu­sive insti­tu­tions. The most absurd recent instance was Har­vard University’s offi­cial effort to elim­i­nate social clubs due to their role in ‘enact­ing forms of priv­i­lege and exclu­sion at odds with our deep­est val­ues,’ in the words of its pres­i­dent. Harvard’s oppo­si­tion to exclu­sion sits com­fort­ably with its admis­sions rate of 5 per­cent (2,056 out of 40,000 appli­cants in 2017). The denial of priv­i­lege and exclu­sion seems to increase in pro­por­tion to an institution’s exclu­siv­i­ty.” The author is a pro­fes­sor of Con­sti­tu­tion­al Stud­ies at Notre Dame.
  5. Sex, Lies, and Spies (Dar­rell Cole, Prov­i­dence): “Once the case for employ­ing a spy in the first place has been made, the ques­tion of how to spy comes into focus, and thus one of the major moral prob­lems for spies is try­ing to make a case that lying and sex are just (com­bat) tac­tics…. We can make a clear and con­vinc­ing case that the Chris­t­ian tra­di­tion may sup­port the idea that lies told for the pub­lic good are jus­ti­fi­able. When spies tell such lies in the line of duty, their decep­tions fall into that cat­e­go­ry and, so, are jus­ti­fi­able. Can the same be said for sex in the line of duty? Can manip­u­la­tive sex for the pub­lic good be jus­ti­fi­able?” A fas­ci­nat­ing dis­cus­sion of a ques­tion that had nev­er crossed my mind. The author is an ethics pro­fes­sor at Drew Uni­ver­si­ty.
  6. The Last Temp­ta­tion (Michael Ger­son, The Atlantic): “In a remark­ably free coun­try, many evan­gel­i­cals view their rights as frag­ile, their insti­tu­tions as threat­ened, and their dig­ni­ty as assailed. The sin­gle largest reli­gious demo­graph­ic in the Unit­ed States—representing about half the Repub­li­can polit­i­cal coalition—sees itself as a besieged and dis­re­spect­ed minor­i­ty. In this way, evan­gel­i­cals have become simul­ta­ne­ous­ly more engaged and more alien­at­ed…. It is true that inso­far as Chris­t­ian hos­pi­tals or col­leges have their reli­gious lib­er­ty threat­ened by hos­tile lit­i­ga­tion or gov­ern­ment agen­cies, they have every right to defend their insti­tu­tion­al identities—to advo­cate for a prin­ci­pled plu­ral­ism. But this is dif­fer­ent from evan­gel­i­cals regard­ing them­selves, hys­ter­i­cal­ly and with self-pity, as an oppressed minor­i­ty that requires a strong­man to res­cue it. This is how Trump has invit­ed evan­gel­i­cals to view them­selves.” The author worked in the Bush White House and describes him­self as an evan­gel­i­cal.
    • In response: The True Sin of Amer­i­can Evan­gel­i­cals in the Age of Trump (David French, Nation­al Review): “it mat­ters exact­ly how Evan­gel­i­cals arrived where they are today. It wasn’t the hys­ter­i­cal reac­tion of a self-pity­ing peo­ple. For most it was the sad result of a series of tough choic­es — made in response to dif­fi­cult and unrea­son­able chal­lenges. Even today there are mil­lions of Evan­gel­i­cals — peo­ple who still count them­selves reluc­tant Trump sup­port­ers — who are deeply uneasy with the pres­i­dent and the state of their own reli­gious move­ment. It serves no one’s inter­ests to min­i­mize the legit­i­ma­cy of their deep polit­i­cal con­cern.”
    • My take: Gerson’s essay is very good and French adds a need­ed per­spec­tive. Bonus quote from Gerson’s essay: “The ban­ish­ment of fun­da­men­tal­ism from the cul­tur­al main­stream cul­mi­nat­ed dra­mat­i­cal­ly in a Ten­nessee cour­t­house in 1925. William Jen­nings Bryan, the most promi­nent Chris­t­ian politi­cian of his time, was set against Clarence Dar­row and the the­o­ry of evo­lu­tion at the Scopes ‘mon­key tri­al,’ in which a Ten­nessee edu­ca­tor was tried for teach­ing the the­o­ry in high school. Bryan won the case but not the coun­try. The jour­nal­ist and crit­ic H. L. Menck­en pro­vid­ed the account accept­ed by his­to­ry, dis­miss­ing Bryan as ‘a tin pot pope in the Coca-Cola belt and a broth­er to the for­lorn pas­tors who bela­bor half-wits in gal­va­nized iron taber­na­cles behind the rail­road yards.’ Fun­da­men­tal­ists became com­ic fig­ures, sub­ject to world-class con­de­scen­sion. It has large­ly slipped the mind of his­to­ry that Bryan was a peace activist as sec­re­tary of state under Woodrow Wil­son and that his pol­i­tics fore­shad­owed the New Deal. And Menck­en was even­tu­al­ly revealed as a racist, an anti-Semi­te, and a eugen­ics advo­cate.” Empha­sis mine. I con­sid­er myself fair­ly well-informed about Amer­i­can reli­gious his­to­ry and found the bold­ed details sur­pris­ing.
  7. The real Down syn­drome prob­lem: Accept­ing geno­cide (George Will, Wash­ing­ton Post): “Ice­land must be pleased that it is close to suc­cess in its pro­gram of geno­cide, but before con­grat­u­lat­ing that nation on its final solu­tion to the Down syn­drome prob­lem, per­haps it might answer a ques­tion: What is this prob­lem? To help under­stand why some peo­ple might ask this ques­tion, meet two chil­dren. One is Agus­ta, age 8, a cit­i­zen of Ice­land. The oth­er is Lucas, age 1, an Amer­i­can cit­i­zen in Dal­ton, Ga., who recent­ly was select­ed to be 2018 ‘Spokes­ba­by’ for the Ger­ber baby food com­pa­ny. They are two exam­ples of the prob­lem. Now, before Ice­land becomes snip­py about the descrip­tion of what it is doing, let us all try to think calm­ly about geno­cide, with­out get­ting judg­men­tal about it. It is sim­ply the delib­er­ate, sys­tem­at­ic attempt to erase a cat­e­go­ry of peo­ple. So, what one thinks about a geno­cide depends on what one thinks about the cat­e­go­ry involved. In Iceland’s case, the cat­e­go­ry is peo­ple with Down syn­drome.”
    • Relat­ed: a Face­book post from one of our sopho­mores (shared with his per­mis­sion): “My par­ents were told that I would be born with down syn­drome and advised to abort me. In response my father pulled us out of the hos­pi­tal’s manda­to­ry coun­sel­ing pro­gram, spent a lot of time in prayer, and decid­ed emphat­i­cal­ly that I would be born. I had no say in the mat­ter, as I was too small to com­mu­ni­cate or under­stand. I could­n’t cry or plead for my life. I could­n’t even look the peo­ple in the eyes who want­ed to kill me. 20 years lat­er, I have my God and my par­ents to thank for defend­ing me, defend­ing an unborn child wrong­ly accused of a crime that car­ried a death sen­tence: a defect. My par­ents had no idea exact­ly where God want­ed to take me, but because of their defense, I’m here, down syn­drome free, sit­ting in a class­room at Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty.” (source) By the way, he was was not only admit­ted to Stan­ford. He was admit­ted to every sin­gle Ivy League school.

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 McCar­dle, 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). (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.

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Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 142

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. A Qui­et Exo­dus: Why Black Wor­shipers Are Leav­ing White Evan­gel­i­cal Church­es (Camp­bell Robert­son, NY Times): “As the head­lines of the out­side world turned to police shoot­ings and protest, lit­tle changed inside major­i­ty-white church­es. Black con­gre­gants said that beyond the occa­sion­al vague prayer for heal­ing a divid­ed coun­try, or a dona­tion dri­ve for law enforce­ment, they heard noth­ing.” The dynam­ic described is real and one I have per­son­al­ly wit­nessed.  All in all a pret­ty good arti­cle although it has a few glar­ing blind spots, most­ly because it focus­es almost exclu­sive­ly on those who chose to leave and does­n’t tell the sto­ry of those who chose to stay.
  2. And while we’re talk­ing about race: “I Hope We Have No Crack­ers Here”: EBF Staff Sanc­tion Racial Slur (Anna Mitchell & Philip Clark, Stan­ford Review): “You would think that res­i­dents of a sup­pos­ed­ly pro­gres­sive and racial­ly con­scious house would jump to remove a racial epi­thet from house prop­er­ty.”
  3. This is also rel­e­vant to the first arti­cle: In Don­ald Trump, Evan­gel­i­cals Have Found Their Pres­i­dent (David Brody, New York Times): “In fact, evan­gel­i­cals take the long view on Mr. Trump; they afford him grace when he doesn’t deserve it. Few dis­pute that Mr. Trump may need a lit­tle more grace than oth­ers. But evan­gel­i­cals tru­ly do believe that all peo­ple are flawed, and yet Christ offers them grace. Shouldn’t they do the same for the pres­i­dent?”
  4. This Is How To Pay Col­lege Ath­letes (Patrick Hru­by, Dead­spin): “Because here’s the thing: nobody asks how’s it going to work when it comes to, say, pay­ing den­tists. Or invest­ment bankers. Or pro­gram­mers. Or pro­fes­sors. Or for that mat­ter col­lege coach­es, ath­let­ic direc­tors, and school pres­i­dents. There are no mas­ter com­pen­sa­tion plans for those and hun­dreds of oth­er lines of work because there’s no need for a plan. The very notion of com­ing up with a com­pli­cat­ed, cen­tral­ized set of rules dic­tat­ing how much plumbers can earn and under what cir­cum­stances they can earn it would be un-Amer­i­can…” 
  5. Was the apos­tle Paul mar­ried? Yes, he was. Here’s how we know. (Den­ny Burk, Per­son­al Blog):  “It may be that Paul’s words have impli­ca­tions for all who are unmar­ried, but I think Paul’s ref­er­ence to the unmar­ried refers to wid­ow­ers specif­i­cal­ly. There are a num­ber of rea­sons for this. Not the least of which is the fact that the Greek word for ‘wid­ow­er’ was rarely used in ancient Greek and was nev­er used in the Koine peri­od…. Paul uses the term ‘unmar­ried’ two oth­er times in this chap­ter to refer to those who were pre­vi­ous­ly mar­ried.” The author is a pro­fes­sor of Bib­li­cal stud­ies.
  6. Leav­ing Blokesworld: Why You Can’t Have Your Porn and #MeToo (Mea­gan Tyler, Aus­tralian Broad­cast­ing Com­pa­ny: Reli­gion and Ethics): “In one of the few attempts to link #MeToo and porn cul­ture, two Dutch filmmakers asked men to try and dif­fer­en­ti­ate between wom­en’s accounts of sex­u­al assault and scripts from porn films. The com­par­i­son high­lights the dif­fi­cult­ly in dis­cern­ing any dif­fer­ence…. So, for all the men who have been ask­ing what they can do in light of #MeToo, here’s a place start: stop link­ing your sex­u­al arousal to wom­en’s sex­u­al sub­or­di­na­tion. Stop watch­ing porn.”
  7. The Cen­ter Left Is On Life Sup­port (Michael Bren­dan Dougher­ty, Nation­al Review): “As lib­er­als backed away from the hard pol­i­tics of mate­r­i­al redis­tri­b­u­tion, they found them­selves try­ing to redis­trib­ute the hon­orif­ic resources of soci­ety. Instead of dra­mat­i­cal­ly expand­ing day care, you could talk about sin­gle moth­ers as heroes.” The author is on the right and is diag­nos­ing a prob­lem he sees across the aisle. His com­ments about redis­trib­ut­ing hon­orifics are insight­ful and remind me of Tyler Cowen’s obser­va­tion that pol­i­tics is often more about rais­ing or low­er­ing some group’s social sta­tus than actu­al­ly solv­ing press­ing prob­lems. 
  8. What’s an Inclu­sion Rid­er? Let the Pro­fes­sor Who Helped Invent the Con­cept Explain (Rebec­ca Kee­gan, Van­i­ty Fair): “Smith said that an inclu­sion rid­er is a pro­vi­sion added to actors’ con­tracts to ensure that cast­ing on pro­duc­tions is more rep­re­sen­ta­tive. ‘It stip­u­lates that in small and sup­port­ing roles, char­ac­ters should reflect the world we live in,’ she said. That includes 50 per­cent gen­der par­i­ty, 40 per­cent inclu­sion for peo­ple of col­or, 5 per­cent L.G.B.T.Q., and 20 per­cent dis­abled.” This is a clever maneu­ver. Unsur­pris­ing­ly, there does not seem to be a pro­vi­sion for high­light­ing evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians accord­ing to our pro­por­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion in soci­ety. What if in every sit­com there was a Ned Flan­ders char­ac­ter?

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).

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 119

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions, so if you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

A note to our new stu­dents: no, you don’t have to read the whole thing. What a lot of Chi Alphans do is skim the list and find one or two that seem inter­est­ing to them and open them in new tabs.

Be sure to read the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Views among col­lege stu­dents regard­ing the First Amend­ment: Results from a new sur­vey (John Vil­lasenor, Brook­ings Insti­tu­tion): “Stu­dents act as de fac­to arbiters of free expres­sion on cam­pus. The Supreme Court jus­tices are not stand­ing by at the entrances to pub­lic uni­ver­si­ty lec­ture halls ready to step in if First Amend­ment rights are cur­tailed. If a sig­nif­i­cant per­cent­age of stu­dents believe that views they find offen­sive should be silenced, those views will in fact be silenced.” The author is an  absurd­ly accom­plished Stan­ford grad: he is a simul­ta­ne­ous­ly a pro­fes­sor of elec­tri­cal engi­neer­ing and pub­lic pol­i­cy while also serv­ing as a vis­it­ing pro­fes­sor of law (all at at UCLA) as well as a senior fel­low at the Brook­ings Insti­tu­tion.
  2. I Went To North Korea: What You’ve Heard vs What I Saw (Mark Hill, Cracked): “Sev­en care­ful­ly con­trolled days isn’t enough time to become an expert in any coun­try, let alone one this com­pli­cat­ed, and the best peo­ple to tell the sto­ry are Kore­ans them­selves. But they’re not real­ly avail­able right now…” The arti­cle is inter­est­ing and most­ly con­firms my impres­sions of North Korea.
  3. Is Inter­net Porn Mak­ing Young Men Impo­tent? (EJ Dick­son, Rolling Stone): “A num­ber of fac­tors have been spec­u­lat­ed as being behind this trend, from eat­ing processed foods to tak­ing psy­chotrop­ic drugs. Yet it’s porn that is most fre­quent­ly cit­ed as the like­ly cul­prit, prompt­ing the cre­ation of the term ‘porn-induced erec­tile dys­func­tion,’ which was coined by Dr. Abra­ham Mor­gen­taler, an asso­ciate clin­i­cal pro­fes­sor of urol­o­gy at Har­vard Med­ical School.”
  4. Protes­tants: The Most ‘Catholic’ of Chris­tians (Caleb Lind­gren, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “The ‘Reform­ing Catholic Con­fes­sion,’ released today, aims to demon­strate that—despite “denominationalism”—Protestants are remark­ably uni­fied.” See A Reform­ing Catholic Con­fes­sion for the text of the state­ment.
  5. Big Data Sur­veil­lance: The Case of Polic­ing (Sarah Brayne, Amer­i­can Soci­o­log­i­cal Review): “In some instances, it is sim­ply eas­i­er for law enforce­ment to pur­chase pri­vate­ly col­lect­ed data than to rely on in-house data because there are few­er con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­tec­tions, report­ing require­ments, and appel­late checks on pri­vate sec­tor sur­veil­lance and data col­lec­tion.… More­over, respon­dents explained, pri­vate­ly col­lect­ed data is some­times more up-to-date.” (hat tip: Big Data Sur­veil­lance by Alex Tabar­rok at Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion). The author is a soci­ol­o­gist at UT Austin.
  6. The Aca­d­e­m­ic Rea­son Why There Are So Few Con­ser­v­a­tives In Acad­e­mia (George Yancey, Patheos): “…over the last sev­er­al years, I have been doing empir­i­cal work in anti-Chris­t­ian bias in soci­ety and acad­e­mia. The way my work has been treat­ed has changed dra­mat­i­cal­ly although I became bet­ter, not worse, in doing research. Review­ers are clear­ly more hos­tile to my work on anti-Chris­t­ian bias than my work in race and eth­nic­i­ty, and some of their cri­tiques are almost laugh­able. Those who want to state that we can trust sci­ence because it enables an open search for the truth have nev­er tried to pub­lish work that vio­lates the polit­i­cal and moral sen­si­bil­i­ties of aca­d­e­mics.” The author is a pro­fes­sor of soci­ol­o­gy at the Uni­ver­si­ty of North Texas.
  7. A Third of Veg­e­tar­i­ans Eat Meat When They’re Drunk (Phoebe Hurst, Vice):  this research does not appear to be of the high­est qual­i­ty, but I found it intrigu­ing nonethe­less.

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 A His­to­ry of the Sec­ond Amend­ment in Two Paint­ings (Ezra Klein, Wonkblog): this brief arti­cle from a few years ago is still one of the most insight­ful things I’ve read about firearms in Amer­i­ca. The Yale pro­fes­sor inter­viewed, Dr. Amar, also wrote a length­i­er arti­cle about this for Slate. (first shared in vol­ume 54)

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 109

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

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. How We Are Ruin­ing Amer­i­ca (David Brooks, NYT): “To feel at home in oppor­tu­ni­ty-rich areas, you’ve got to under­stand the right barre tech­niques, sport the right baby car­ri­er, have the right pod­cast, food truck, tea, wine and Pilates tastes, not to men­tion pos­sess the right atti­tudes about David Fos­ter Wal­lace, child-rear­ing, gen­der norms and inter­sec­tion­al­i­ty.” This col­umn spawned much deri­sion on social media, but I strong­ly agree with Brooks — and so do many com­men­ta­tors. Here are sym­pa­thet­ic reac­tions from Fred­die deBoer on the left and from Rod Dreher on the right. Dan Drezn­er takes it in a dif­fer­ent direc­tion, and the Mon­key Cage says “duh” while Alan Jacobs calls peo­ple unwill­ing to acknowl­edge Brooks’ obser­va­tion “will­ful­ly blind”.
  2. Luther’s Rev­o­lu­tion (The Nation, Eliz­a­beth Bru­enig): “The­ol­o­gy is moral­i­ty is pol­i­tics is law—and whether or not it’s imme­di­ate­ly obvi­ous, the world is steeped in the­ol­o­gy. In con­tem­po­rary Amer­i­ca, and espe­cial­ly in the more sec­u­lar precincts of West­ern Europe, it seems unlike­ly that one could look at a prop­er­ty deed or a gov­ern­ment bud­get and find, just beneath its explic­it rea­son­ing, traces of old the­o­log­i­cal dis­putes and their res­o­lu­tions. But they’re there…”
  3. I’ve Worked with Refugees for Decades. Europe’s Afghan Crime Wave Is Mind-Bog­gling. (Cheryl Benard, The Nation­al Inter­est): “Euro­peans were pre­dis­posed to be pos­i­tive towards Afghan refugees. But it quick­ly became obvi­ous that some­thing was wrong, very wrong, with these young Afghan men: they were com­mit­ting sex crimes to a much greater extent than oth­er refugees… It took a while for the pat­tern to be rec­og­nized because, until recent­ly, west­ern Euro­pean media delib­er­ate­ly refrained from iden­ti­fy­ing an assailant’s refugee or asy­lum sta­tus, or his coun­try of ori­gin.”
  4. Per­son­al­i­ty, Gen­der, and Age in the Lan­guage of Social Media: The Open-Vocab­u­lary Approach (Schwartz HA, Eich­staedt JC, Kern ML, Dzi­urzyn­s­ki L, Ramones SM, Agraw­al M, et al., PLOS One) — This one is from 2013. Pay par­tic­u­lar atten­tion to Fig­ure 6 and notice the clus­ter of words asso­ci­at­ed with emo­tion­al sta­bil­i­ty. #blessed #on_my_way to #church
  5. No Retreat: Lecrae’s Approach to “Cul­ture-Mak­ing” (Jemar Tis­by, Christ and Pop Cul­ture): “But Lecrae couldn’t ful­fill his mis­sion if his beats only banged in Chris­t­ian ears, though not because Chris­tians aren’t impor­tant to him. It was Chris­t­ian fans who pro­pelled him to pop­u­lar­i­ty and still con­tin­ue to sup­port him. Nev­er­the­less, hav­ing tes­ti­fied in Jerusalem, so to speak, Lecrae felt com­pelled to tes­ti­fy also in Rome (Acts 23:11).” This is relat­ed to what we’re cov­er­ing in our sum­mer read­ing project, and you’re wel­come to join us. 
  6. In Praise of Extreme Med­i­cine (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “It’s odd that we allow some crazy things and ban others—even more that the crazy things we allow are some­times social­ly use­less while the crazy things that we ban are some­times social­ly valu­able. The case for ban­ning extreme sports, for exam­ple, is much stronger than the case for ban­ning extreme med­i­cine.”
  7. ‘Born this way’? It’s way more com­pli­cat­ed than that (Alia E. Dasta­gir, USA Today): “Get­ting Amer­i­ca to believe that peo­ple are born gay — that it’s not some­thing that can be cho­sen or ever changed — has been cen­tral to the fight for gay rights. If some­one can’t help being gay any more than they can help the col­or of their skin, the log­ic goes, deny­ing them rights is wrong. But many mem­bers of the LGBTQ com­mu­ni­ty reject this nar­ra­tive…”
  8. Why Roman con­crete still stands strong while mod­ern ver­sion decays (Nico­la Davis, The Guardian): rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus. I some­times hear peo­ple state it like a self-evi­dent truth that we are smarter than the ancients. I see no evi­dence we are any more intel­li­gent than them. We just have more accu­mu­lat­ed knowl­edge in cer­tain domains.

Things Glen Found Entertaining

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have On Obsti­na­cy In Belief (C.S. Lewis, The Sewa­nee Review). Lewis explains why Chris­tians are jus­ti­fied in con­tin­u­ing to believe even when they encounter an argu­ment they can’t imme­di­ate­ly answer (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).

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 101

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 Curi­ous Rise Of The ‘White Left” As A Chi­nese Inter­net Insult (Chenchen Zhang, Open Democ­ra­cy): “If you look at any thread about Trump, Islam or immi­gra­tion on a Chi­nese social media plat­form these days, it’s impos­si­ble to avoid encoun­ter­ing the term baizuo (白左), or lit­er­al­ly, the ‘white left’.… Crit­i­cisms of the ‘white left’ against the back­ground of the Euro­pean refugee cri­sis fit espe­cial­ly well with the ‘ris­ing Chi­na’ ver­sus ‘Europe in decline’ nar­ra­tive.”
  2. The True Heart­break Of Read­ing The Bible (Rebec­ca McLaugh­lin, Ver­i­tas): “When we humans make metaphors, we’re notic­ing con­nec­tions.  Love is a sick­ness. Life is a marathon. Par­ents can be heli­copters.  But if the mes­sage of the Bible is true – if there is a God who cre­at­ed the uni­verse  – then bib­li­cal metaphors are dif­fer­ent. God did not notice how human fathers love their chil­dren and decide to call him­self our Father (e.g. Isa­iah 63:16, Matthew 6:9).  Rather, God cre­at­ed father­hood, so that the best of human fathers could give us some small glimpse of how he loves us.”
  3. Beau­ty sleep is a real thing, research shows (Michelle Roberts, BBC): “Beau­ty sleep is a real thing, accord­ing to researchers who have shown that peo­ple who miss out on sleep do appear less attrac­tive to oth­ers. A cou­ple of bad nights is enough to make a per­son look “sig­nif­i­cant­ly” more ugly, their sleep exper­i­ments sug­gest.” Bad news for Stan­ford stu­dents.
  4. Way More Amer­i­cans May Be Athe­ists Than We Thought (Daniel Cox, Five Thir­ty Eight): I sus­pect that even the high­est esti­mate in the arti­cle is low­er than what many at Stan­ford assume.
  5. The Dam­age We Would Do To Each Oth­er If We Had “The Expla­na­tion”  (Richard Beck, per­son­al blog): “Imag­ine, if you will, that the Bible gave us an expla­na­tion for why there is so much pain and suf­fer­ing in the world. Imag­ine that the Bible gave us ‘The Expla­na­tion’ in a spe­cif­ic text, some­thing we could eas­i­ly quote and share…. Then imag­ine how The Expla­na­tion would be used.”
  6. What Makes A Par­ent? (Ian Park­er, New York­er): “…at the end she stood to make a skep­ti­cal point or two. In her view, the speak­ers had under­es­ti­mat­ed the legal con­se­quences of mak­ing a per­son a par­ent. The panel’s chair, a judge, asked Rabin to stop lec­tur­ing the room. It was a pecu­liar moment. Rabin—who is gay, and a par­ent, and who has no argu­ment with Barone’s vic­to­ry, and who is admired for her own chal­lenge to Ali­son D., in 2010—seemed to have been cast as a reac­tionary, intrud­ing on a cel­e­bra­tion.” This is a long, fas­ci­nat­ing piece which (in my view but not the author’s) high­lights some of the neg­a­tive con­se­quences of the LGBT rev­o­lu­tion in soci­ety.

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 43

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

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

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 36

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

  1. The Weight of Glo­ry (C.S. Lewis): this is a PDF of the 9 pages of thought­ful good­ness I ref­er­enced in my ser­mon this week. It was orig­i­nal­ly preached as a ser­mon and then print­ed in a the­ol­o­gy mag­a­zine. Relat­ed: see the C. S. Lewis Doo­dle YouTube chan­nel — it’s real­ly good!
  2. Leave Chi­na, Study In Amer­i­ca, Find Jesus (Han Zhang, For­eign Pol­i­cy) — “U.S. uni­ver­si­ties are the first places that hun­dreds of thou­sands of edu­cat­ed young Chi­nese are exposed to dif­fer­ent reli­gious ideas, and invit­ed to con­sid­er them freely. Sens­ing an oppor­tu­ni­ty, on-cam­pus Chris­t­ian fel­low­ships and church­es have gone out of their col­lec­tive way to help those fresh from Chi­na.”
  3. Uncov­er­ing the Assem­blies of God’s Black Her­itage (Dar­rin Rodgers, Vital Mag­a­zine): the Assem­blies of God is Chi Alpha’s spon­sor­ing denom­i­na­tion and the group with which I am ordained. Some neat anec­dotes here.
  4. Why Nepal Has One of the World’s Fastest Grow­ing Chris­t­ian Pop­u­la­tions (Danielle Preiss, NPR): my favorite bit, “a team were also in Nepal in Octo­ber help­ing rebuild the earth­quake-dam­aged house that belongs to the fam­i­ly of Sum­i­tra Pari­yar, a young woman who believes she was healed from paral­y­sis and seizures by her accep­tance of Christ.” I find the choice of words fun­ny: she “believes” she was healed from paral­y­sis by Christ. I’m pret­ty sure she knows whether she was par­a­lyzed or not. How about “a young woman who says she was healed from paral­y­sis and seizures by her accep­tance of Christ.” That’s just bet­ter jour­nal­ism.
  5. Reli­gious Free­dom Keeps Us Strong (Barack Oba­ma, Reli­gion News Ser­vice): yes, this is by Pres­i­dent Oba­ma. The thing I am most pleased about is his use of the phrase “free­dom of reli­gion” as opposed to the much less expan­sive “free­dom of wor­ship.”
  6. What A Super Bowl Ad Reveals About Our Abor­tion Cul­ture (Rus­sell Moore, per­son­al blog): this went in a dif­fer­ent direc­tion than I assumed it would. Rec­om­mend­ed.
  7. Some humor:

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 35

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

  1. The Grounds Of Our Assur­ance (D. A. Car­son, YouTube): Dr. Car­son is one of my favorite schol­ars. This youtube clip is def­i­nite­ly worth three min­utes of your time.
  2. Hal­lelu­jah Col­lege (Mol­ly Worthen, NY Times): “The thing you’ll run into with any of the cam­pus activists that I’ve encoun­tered is this idea that human nature is a col­lec­tion of iden­ti­ty cat­e­gories, that I as a human being am com­posed of a gen­der iden­ti­ty, a sex­u­al iden­ti­ty, a racial iden­ti­ty and so forth,” he said. “Their per­cep­tion of Chris­tians, or of reli­gious peo­ple more gen­er­al­ly, is: ‘O.K., these are peo­ple who have this one iden­ti­ty cat­e­go­ry, reli­gion, and the reli­gion they iden­ti­fy as is over­step­ping its bounds. It’s telling my gen­der or sex­u­al iden­ti­ty how to act.’ The Chris­t­ian response has to be: There’s some­thing more to what a human being is than just these col­lec­tive attrib­ut­es.”
  3. Pas­tor Of China’s Largest Church Jailed For Protest­ing Removal of 1,500 Cross­es (Mor­gan Lee, Chris­tian­i­ty Today). Note that he is the pas­tor of China’s largest offi­cial church — there are under­ground church­es that are much larg­er. The Com­mu­nist Par­ty must be get­ting ner­vous about the strength of Chris­tian­i­ty in Chi­na if they are oppress­ing the state-sanc­tioned church as well.
  4. Chris­tians In Latin Amer­i­ca Are Numer­ous But Still Vul­ner­a­ble (John Allen, Crux): a very strong arti­cle about Chris­t­ian per­se­cu­tion in the west­ern hemi­sphere. “Chili­to was exe­cut­ed by a right-wing para­mil­i­tary and Castil­la by a left-wing guer­ril­la group, prov­ing that mar­tyr­dom in Colom­bia is an equal-oppor­tu­ni­ty enter­prise. Glob­al­ly, the two women are chap­ters in one of the most wide­spread human rights scourges of the ear­ly 21st cen­tu­ry, which is lethal anti-Chris­t­ian per­se­cu­tion. Though esti­mates vary wide­ly, even low-end counts sug­gest that one Chris­t­ian is killed for motives relat­ed to the faith some­where in the world every hour of every day.”
  5. Main­stream­ing “Ani­mal Per­son­hood” (Wes­ley J. Smith, First Things): this is some­thing you should do some think­ing about. Start by reflect­ing on Gen­e­sis 1:26–30, Gen­e­sis 9:1–6, Num­bers 22:21–34, Proverbs 12:10, Jon­ah 4:10–11, and Matthew 6:26.
  6. Mey­er vs Nebras­ka: As Told By The Lawyer Who Won It (David Kopel, Wash­ing­ton Post): this sto­ry of a 1922 Supreme Court deci­sion absolute­ly sucked me in. It touch­es on issues of parental rights, pub­lic edu­ca­tion, reli­gious lib­er­ty, and nation­al­is­tic prej­u­dice.
  7. 3 Ways To Work For The Glo­ry of God (Chris­tos Makridis, The Rebe­lu­tion). Yes, this is writ­ten by our very own Chris­tos. Good thoughts, Chris­tos!
  8. Some comics that amused me:

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 33

In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world.

To that end, on Fri­days I’ve been shar­ing articles/resources I have found help­ful recent­ly in think­ing about broad­er cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues (be sure to see the dis­claimer at the bot­tom). May these give you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar. Past emails are archived at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links

With­out fur­ther ado, I give you the inter­est­ing things:

  1. What Would Cool Jesus Do? ( Taffy Brodess­er-Akn­er, GQ): this is a long and amaz­ing piece. Jew­ish reporter goes to Hill­song in NYC, likes it but doesn’t buy it. Fun to read and inter­est­ing through­out.
  2. When Abor­tion Sud­den­ly Stopped Mak­ing Sense (Fred­er­i­ca Matthews-Green, Nation­al Review): unusu­al­ly insight­ful. Today is the 43rd anniver­sary of Roe v. Wade. Vague­ly relat­ed: 43 years lat­er, a look at Nor­ma McCor­vey, the Roe of Roe v. Wade, the pro-choice poster child turned abor­tion oppo­nent (Keri Blakinger, NY Dai­ly News). The lat­ter arti­cle is a use­ful reminder that peo­ple are com­pli­cat­ed.
  3. Is “Slave” A Good Eng­lish Trans­la­tion? (Andy Nasel­li, per­son­al blog): there is a 4 minute BBC video embed­ded at this link which is worth watch­ing about the com­plex­i­ties of Bible trans­la­tion, fol­lowed by many good links for dig­ging deep­er.
  4. 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).
  5. To The Per­son Who Tried To Pray My Dis­abil­i­ty Away (Madylin Ullmin, The Mighty): a min­is­ter friend of mine with cere­bral pal­sy  shared this on Face­book. He prays for the sick and has seen mir­a­cles. He added this when he shared the arti­cle: “I have also expe­ri­enced more than a few times in my life where a per­son asked to pray for my heal­ing and if it did­n’t hap­pen, they felt they had to explain to me why God did­n’t heal me right there and then. It got to the point where the per­son pray­ing for me was often more dis­ap­point­ed than I was , which made me won­der if the per­son cared about me as a per­son, or were more con­cerned about a cer­tain result. I have no doubt almost every­one means well and wants to see God heal but the way that it hap­pens is some­times jar­ring for a per­son who needs heal­ing.”

Disclaimer

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

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