Tag: wikipedia

TGFI, Volume 561: church-leavers and wikipedia-gatekeepers

You’ve heard of TGIF? This is TGFI: Things Glen Found Inter­est­ing

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues like­ly to be of inter­est to Chris­tians in col­lege. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions, so if you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Two Hun­dred Peo­ple Left Our Small Church (Ben­jamin Vrbicek, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “In sev­en years, our church—in terms of net attendance—has grown from around 150 to 350. But in the same amount of time, our church has lost as many as have stayed. The loss­es nev­er occur rapid­ly, as though a lev­ee burst, but more as a steady trick­le or slow leak. A few of our mem­bers died. One went to jail. One wrote me an eight-page let­ter of griev­ances I was instruct­ed to share with the elders; anoth­er wrote a chap­ter-length blog post sug­gest­ing we’re not even a church. Some parish­ioners didn’t let the door hit them on the way out because they kicked it off the hinges and left us to pick up the shat­tered pieces. These depar­tures are by far the excep­tions. Many of those who left told me nei­ther why they left nor even that they had left. I often find out via back chan­nels like social media and oth­er imper­son­al means.”
    • This is a fas­ci­nat­ing arti­cle.
    • On a relat­ed note: one of a pas­tor’s love lan­guages is near­ly always atten­dance. If you stop going to a church, pas­tors assume that part of the rea­son you stopped is that you don’t like them. Even though they intel­lec­tu­al­ly know that is not always the case, it is nonethe­less a felt real­i­ty. It’s not true of all pas­tors, but I feel very con­fi­dent say­ing it is true of most pas­tors. Pas­tors often feel great sor­row when remem­ber­ing peo­ple who qui­et­ly depart­ed. Lov­ing peo­ple who don’t love you back (or you assume don’t love you back) is a man­date of the Chris­t­ian life, but it’s not fun.
  2. I read the entire Quran, all the Hadiths, and the Sira. Here is what I found. (A.C. Rosen­thal, Sub­stack): “Plen­ty of ancient texts con­tain things that make mod­ern read­ers uncom­fort­able, and the Bible is not exempt from that cat­e­go­ry. The ques­tion that changed every­thing was struc­tur­al. It is this: in Chris­tian­i­ty, the founder is the stan­dard against which the insti­tu­tion is mea­sured. When the church falls short, the accu­sa­tion is always: you are not liv­ing like Jesus. The stan­dard itself is not in ques­tion. Jesus did not order raids. He did not arrange mar­riages with chil­dren. He did not autho­rize the exe­cu­tion of apos­tates. He was exe­cut­ed by the state, not empow­ered by it. Every­thing the church has done wrong can be mea­sured against what Jesus actu­al­ly did and found want­i­ng. The stan­dard holds. In Islam, the founder is the stan­dard. When you exam­ine the pri­ma­ry sources and find things that trou­ble you, you are not find­ing a gap between Islam and Muham­mad. You are find­ing Muham­mad.”
    • Rec­om­mend­ed by a friend of the min­istry. A sol­id arti­cle with a gen­tle tone.
  3. Why have papers by one of history’s most famous physi­cists been retract­ed? (Sam Kean, Sci­ence): “In ear­ly May, Yves Gin­gras, a his­to­ri­an of physics at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Que­bec (UQ) at Mon­tre­al, was brows­ing Retrac­tion Watch, a web­site that cat­a­logs fraud, data manip­u­la­tion, and oth­er sci­en­tif­ic sins. He noticed a link that read, ‘Retrac­tions by Nobel Prize win­ners.’ Were there real­ly Nobel lau­re­ates whose papers had been with­drawn from the sci­en­tif­ic lit­er­a­ture? After click­ing, Gin­gras froze. ‘That’s impos­si­ble,’ he recalls think­ing. The fourth name on the list, with two retract­ed papers, was Max Planck—a leg­endary pio­neer of quan­tum mechan­ics and the 1918 Nobel lau­re­ate in physics.”
    • Brief and worth the read. Super-inter­est­ing.
  4. He Went to Prison. Now He Is in Charge of Them. (P.G. Sit­ten­feld, The Free Press): “Josh Smith, 51, spent this past Christ­mas in prison. Just like he did for five years after being caught at the age of 21 in pos­ses­sion of a kilo­gram of cocaine and 150 pounds of mar­i­jua­na. The dif­fer­ence? Smith wasn’t behind bars any­more. A year ago this month, he was sworn in as deputy direc­tor of the fed­er­al Bureau of Pris­ons (BOP), one of the world’s largest prison sys­tems.”
    • A fas­ci­nat­ing pro­file of a Chris­t­ian in pub­lic ser­vice.
  5. I Co-Found­ed Wikipedia. Now I’m Banned for Life. (Lar­ry Sanger, The Free Press): “In exas­per­a­tion, I point­ed out that the mob was not fol­low­ing due process. There was no des­ig­nat­ed pros­e­cu­tor, but rather many self-select­ed ones. There was no list of charges, and what­ev­er any­one said became an action­able charge. There was no assigned judge, because my accusers were also my judges. And of course there was no pre­sump­tion of inno­cence, no jury, and no require­ment of deco­rum that would for­bid prej­u­di­cial state­ments. I knew Wikipedia’s dis­ci­pli­nary process­es were bad—but I had nev­er expe­ri­enced them myself. I was tried by a face­less mob. I learned that their great­est anger is reserved for those who refuse to bow in awe of their mighty pow­er.”
    • Sanger is, inci­den­tal­ly, a rel­a­tive­ly recent con­vert to Chris­tian­i­ty, as I men­tioned last year.
  6. Sci­ence rais­es more ques­tions than it answers (Sarah Sal­vian­der, Sub­stack): “[Skep­tics] have faith (not entire­ly unwar­rant­ed on their lim­it­ed knowl­edge) that nat­ur­al the­o­ries will even­tu­al­ly fill every gap, not real­iz­ing that the gaps tend to widen and mul­ti­ply the deep­er we go. The ratio of what we know to what we don’t know keeps shrink­ing, and I sus­pect that’s by design. What’s an athe­ist to do once they ful­ly grasp this? I don’t know—maybe just accept that the uni­verse is fun­ny that way. But they should stop accus­ing Chris­tians of a ‘God of the gaps’ fal­la­cy when we invoke God for what is tru­ly unex­plain­able by nat­ur­al means.”
    • Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus.
  7. Who Should Be Admit­ted to the Lord’s Sup­per? 4 Views (Davy Elli­son, The Gospel Coali­tion): “Today, the table is cel­e­brat­ed less fre­quent­ly and more lan­guid­ly by many. It shouldn’t be so—everyone (but espe­cial­ly church lead­ers) needs to con­sid­er the supper’s fre­quen­cy, sig­nif­i­cance, and ben­e­fits. I want to help you think more deeply about who should be admit­ted to the sup­per. If com­mu­nion is a pre­cious and pro­found priv­i­lege, who par­tic­i­pates is impor­tant.”
    • The author comes to a wrong con­clu­sion, but explains some posi­tions that you might not know exist­ed along the way.

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.

TGFI, Volume 539: a free book plus Schrödinger’s cat draws closer

You’ve heard of TGIF? This is TGFI: Things Glen Found Inter­est­ing

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues like­ly to be of inter­est to Chris­tians in col­lege. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. I wel­come your sug­ges­tions, so if you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. I Might Owe My Stu­dents an Apol­o­gy About Jose­phus (John Dick­son, The Gospel Coali­tion): “Flav­ius Jose­phus was a Jew­ish aris­to­crat (AD 37–100) who wit­nessed first­hand the great Jew­ish war with Rome.… I’ve taught about Josephus’s life and works for more than 20 years—first in sec­u­lar set­tings like Mac­quar­ie Uni­ver­si­ty and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Syd­ney, and now at Wheaton Col­lege. But Jose­phus and Jesus: New Evi­dence for the One Called Christ by T. C. Schmidt, asso­ciate pro­fes­sor of reli­gious stud­ies at Fair­field Uni­ver­si­ty, has forced me to rewrite my lectures—and it might just have changed my mind. It seems that a con­tro­ver­sial pas­sage about Jesus’s res­ur­rec­tion might be orig­i­nal after all.”
    • A donor has spon­sored free PDF down­loads of the book the above review is about. You can get your copy at https://josephusandjesus.com/purchase-page/ (fol­low the link on the page to a free down­load, it will take you to the OUP book web­site where you’ll need to click the PDF link above the abstract and save it to your com­put­er after it opens in your brows­er tab). This is a great deal — the book retails for $130!
    • My hope for all is that the schol­ar­ship in the book gives you even greater con­fi­dence that your hope in Christ is firm­ly ground­ed.
  2. Dying to Give (Justin Pow­ell, Sub­stack): “Mon­ey doesn’t car­ry the same pow­er in every decade. Most fam­i­lies give it at the stage of life when it accom­plish­es the least. A dol­lar at 25 can change a des­tiny. A dol­lar at 55 bare­ly moves the nee­dle.… The fam­i­lies who stew­ard wealth well think longer, plan ear­li­er, and talk more open­ly. They treat resources as some­thing to be shep­herd­ed across gen­er­a­tions, not hid­den behind emo­tion­al walls or released only after the funer­al. And because of that clar­i­ty, their chil­dren make wis­er deci­sions, ear­li­er, with bet­ter out­comes.”
  3. a gen z guide to fix­ing your doom-pilled brain (Steph Stin­er, Sub­stack): “when­ev­er i hear a young per­son con­fi­dent­ly assert that human­i­ty is cooked, my first instinct is to ask for their screen time report. because, yes, if you spend more time scrolling than you do par­tic­i­pat­ing in real life, it’s actu­al­ly quite rea­son­able to con­clude that we’re hang­ing on by a thread.”
    • Lack of cap­i­tal­iza­tion in orig­i­nal. The author appears to be 0% Chris­t­ian, but offers some very prac­ti­cal wis­dom.
    • I appre­ci­ate the above arti­cle so much that I looked for some of her oth­er con­tent and this one was also sol­id. a gen z guide to enjoy­ing dat­ing (Steph Stin­er, Sub­stack): “a wise woman once said nev­er to go gro­cery shop­ping while you’re hun­gry, or you’ll end up with a cart full of junk food. or maybe i made that up? who’s to say. regard­less, the prin­ci­ple still stands: don’t date while you’re des­per­ate for some­one else to ful­fill you, or you’ll end up with noth­ing but high cor­ti­sol.”
  4. Moral­ly judg­ing famous and semi-famous peo­ple (Tyler Cowen, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “I know some rea­son­able num­ber of famous peo­ple, and I just do not trust the media accounts of their fail­ings and flaws. I trust even less the barbs I read on the inter­net. I am not claim­ing to know the truth about them (most of them, at least), but I can tell when the peo­ple writ­ing about them know even less.… If by any chance you are won­der­ing how to make your­self smarter, learn how to appre­ci­ate almost every­body, and keep on cul­ti­vat­ing that skill.”
  5. Wikipedia Edi­tors Are Help­ing Iran Rewrite His­to­ry (Ash­ley Rinds­berg, The Free Press): “An inves­ti­ga­tion into Wikipedia edit­ing pat­terns reveals a years­long, coor­di­nat­ed cam­paign to san­i­tize the Islam­ic Republic’s human rights record. Accord­ing to a 2024 Times inves­ti­ga­tion, entries have been sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly edit­ed to down­grade Iran­ian atroc­i­ties.”
    • Wikipedia is a case study in nerd naivete, and I speak as one of the pre­vi­ous­ly-naive nerds. If you cre­ate some­thing influ­en­tial, peo­ple will seek to co-opt that influ­ence. That means that what­ev­er rules you cre­ate will be gamed. Wikipedia is still use­ful, but you have to know that it is rife with agen­da-dri­ven edi­tors. Vir­tu­al­ly every­thing reli­gious­ly, polit­i­cal­ly, or moral­ly charged is being edit­ed so as to give you a biased per­spec­tive.
  6. Schrödinger’s cat just got big­ger: quan­tum physi­cists cre­ate largest ever ‘super­po­si­tion’ (Eliz­a­beth Gib­ney, Nature): “A team based at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Vien­na put indi­vid­ual clus­ters of around 7,000 atoms of sodi­um met­al some 8 nanome­tres wide into a super­po­si­tion of dif­fer­ent loca­tions, each spaced 133 nanome­tres apart. Rather than shoot through the exper­i­men­tal set up like a bil­liard ball, each chunky clus­ter behaved like a wave, spread­ing out into a super­po­si­tion of spa­tial­ly dis­tinct paths and then inter­fer­ing to form a pat­tern researchers could detect.”
  7. The lure of Rome (Emma Freire, World): “When young Protes­tants move to Wash­ing­ton, it’s usu­al­ly not long before they start meet­ing smart, influ­en­tial con­ser­v­a­tives who believe Rome is the one true church. Like many of her peers, Smith began to ask her­self: Should I swim the Tiber? Roman Catholics exit­ing their church are dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly dri­ving declin­ing rates of Chris­tian­i­ty in Amer­i­ca. And far more Catholics con­vert to Protes­tant denom­i­na­tions than vice ver­sa. But you wouldn’t know it if you looked only at places like Wash­ing­ton and some influ­en­tial uni­ver­si­ty cam­pus­es. A small but vocal group of Protes­tants is con­vert­ing to Catholicism—and in even small­er num­bers to East­ern Ortho­doxy. They tend to be ambi­tious, high­ly edu­cat­ed, and well con­nect­ed.”
    • I believe I have men­tioned this before, but I intend to write a defense of low-church Protes­tantism for XA some­time. It may wait until I fin­ish my doc­tor­al stud­ies, though.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

  • ‘KPop Demon Hunters’ Helped a Mis­sion­ary Talk About Jesus (Jen­nifer Park, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “The Kore­an and Kore­an Amer­i­can Chris­tians CT inter­viewed appre­ci­ate how KPop Demon Hunters’ wide­spread acclaim has enabled them to share the gospel more effec­tive­ly.… Intro­duc­ing Christ to peo­ple in the Mus­lim-major­i­ty South­east Asian coun­try has also felt eas­i­er thanks to increas­ing inter­est in Kore­an cul­ture, Park said. Once, his church held a sum­mer event in its court­yard where a short-term mis­sions team from South Korea taught local youth sim­ple K‑pop dance moves and how to cook Kore­an dish­es.”
  • Lorem Ipsum Final­ly Trans­lat­ed, And It Is Shock­ing­ly Prob­lem­at­ic (Stan­ford Flip­side)
  • Pen­te­costal Church Does­n’t Notice Riot Is Occur­ring (Baby­lon Bee): “Church mem­ber­ship at Gol­go­tha Holy Fire Vic­to­ry Pen­te­costal was report­ed­ly over­joyed at the influx of vis­i­tors who joined them to speak in strange tongues, shove each oth­er, and roll all over the floor. Church lead­er­ship called it the most suc­cess­ful ser­vice they’d ever had.”
    • As a Pen­te­costal this made me laugh. Nor­mal­ly with the Bee I just read the head­lines. The text of this one has got some zing as well.
  • Pres­i­dent Trump’s Cho­sen Artist? A Chris­t­ian Speed Painter. (Zachary Small, New York Times): “The painter, Vanes­sa Horabue­na, spent the next 10 min­utes mak­ing an image inspired by the Shroud of Turin, con­tour­ing Jesus’s eye­brows and nose from a yel­low cross that she ini­tial­ly paint­ed at the cen­ter of her black can­vas. The pres­i­dent returned to the stage, promised to sign the art­work him­self, and the paint­ing was quick­ly auc­tioned for $2.75 mil­lion to a cou­ple who promised to split their dona­tion between St. Jude Children’s Research Hos­pi­tal and the local sheriff’s depart­ment. The artwork’s sale eas­i­ly set a new bench­mark for speed paint­ing, a once-obscure com­pet­i­tive art form that has gained pop­u­lar­i­ty over the last decade in South­ern beau­ty pageants, Mid­west cor­po­rate events, bas­ket­ball half­time shows and church gath­er­ings.”
    • If you’ve nev­er seen some­one do this live, it’s actu­al­ly quite stun­ning.

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it). And to the extent you can dis­cern my opin­ions, please under­stand that they are my own and not nec­es­sar­i­ly those of Chi Alpha or any oth­er orga­ni­za­tion I may be per­ceived to rep­re­sent. Also, remem­ber that I’m not report­ing news — I’m giv­ing you a selec­tion of things I found inter­est­ing. There’s a lot hap­pen­ing in the world that’s not mak­ing an appear­ance here because I haven’t found stim­u­lat­ing arti­cles writ­ten about it. If this was for­ward­ed to you and you want to receive future emails, sign up here. You can also view the archives.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 461



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.

This is vol­ume 461, a prime num­ber.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. So You’ve Decid­ed to Vote for an Unfit Can­di­date (O. Alan Noble, Sub­stack): “Come Novem­ber, most vot­ers will choose between two pres­i­den­tial can­di­dates, nei­ther of whom are fit for office, as I have pre­vi­ous­ly argued. I’m not just argu­ing that they are sin­ners and there­fore ‘evil’ in the sense that every­one is fall­en; I’m argu­ing that they are specif­i­cal­ly unjust and immoral and unfit for posi­tions of nation­al lead­er­ship.… There are many issues to take into account when vot­ing for a can­di­date, but one of them is how your vote will form your own soul.”
  2. Arti­cles mak­ing obser­va­tions rarely heard in high-sta­tus soci­ety:
    • New Research Finds Huge Dif­fer­ences Between Male and Female Brains (Leonard Sax, Psy­chol­o­gy Today): “As you can see, there wasn’t a con­tin­u­um: the female fin­ger­prints of brain activ­i­ty were quite dif­fer­ent from the male fin­ger­prints of rest­ing brain activ­i­ty, with no over­lap. These find­ings strong­ly sug­gest that what’s going on in a woman’s brain at rest is sig­nif­i­cant­ly dif­fer­ent from what’s going on in a man’s brain at rest.”
    • How divorce nev­er ends (Brid­get Pheta­sy, The Spec­ta­tor): “All of this is to say some­thing you don’t hear that often: divorce will affect your kids for the rest of their lives, well into adult­hood. They will have split hol­i­days and sum­mers. They will have step­par­ents. Their kids will have step-grand­par­ents. What­ev­er inher­i­tance they would have been enti­tled to is often being divvied up with oth­er spous­es and their kids. More impor­tant than the mon­ey, how­ev­er, is the atten­tion they’ll nev­er get because their par­ents are dat­ing or remar­ry­ing or what­ev­er. They will only be with one par­ent half of the year — if they’re lucky: we only saw my dad twice a year. They will have to choose who gets Christ­mas, for­ev­er. Or they will be bounc­ing around at hol­i­day time with their kids, just like the old days.”
    • The Real Prob­lem With Legal Weed (Charles Fain Lehman, New York Times Mag­a­zine): “While mar­i­jua­na may not be as bad as some crit­ics claim, the med­ical evi­dence is clear that it can do sub­stan­tial harm. Mar­i­jua­na is addic­tive — around 30 per­cent of users use com­pul­sive­ly, even as their use harms them­selves and the peo­ple around them.… Mar­i­jua­na does hurt a sub­stan­tial por­tion of its con­sumers, often quite bad­ly. And there is no rea­son to think that busi­ness­es won’t sell mar­i­jua­na to those it hurts, if they’re allowed to. What the alco­hol and tobac­co mar­kets show us, rather, is that addic­tion and prof­it don’t mix well.”
      • Unlocked.
    • We deserve a more nuanced con­ver­sa­tion about work­ing moms (Rachel M. Cohen, Vox): “After the essay on moth­er­hood dread was pub­lished, I heard from Sharon Sassler, a Cor­nell Uni­ver­si­ty soci­ol­o­gist who stud­ies rela­tion­ships and gen­der. She had recent­ly pub­lished a paper on gen­der wage gaps in the com­put­er sci­ence field and found that moth­ers in com­put­er sci­ence actu­al­ly earned more than child­less women (though this ‘wage pre­mi­um’ was sig­nif­i­cant­ly less than what fathers earned). ‘It was dif­fi­cult for me to find a home for the attached arti­cle because review­ers can­not fath­om that moth­ers might out-earn sin­gle women, though there is a grow­ing body of evi­dence that [they] do,’ she wrote in her email to me. ‘It might be selec­tion [bias] … but giv­en that folks have found this across dis­ci­plines sug­gests that the moth­er­hood penal­ty real­ly needs to be reassessed.’ I was curi­ous about Sassler’s sug­ges­tion that moms might actu­al­ly earn more and that we don’t often hear that because gate­keep­ers ‘seem to like the nar­ra­tive that women are always screwed by fam­i­ly.’”
  3. This Is What Elite Fail­ure Looks Like (Oren Cass, New York Times): “Tak­ing the majority’s pref­er­ences seri­ous­ly, even when they con­flict with the pref­er­ences of more sophis­ti­cat­ed experts, is often dis­par­aged as pop­ulism. But while elect­ed offi­cials and their tech­no­crat­ic advis­ers may have spe­cial insight into how the people’s goals are best achieved, only the peo­ple can deter­mine what those goals should be and whether they are being met…. While pol­i­cy ini­tia­tives so often seek to max­i­mize effi­cien­cy and growth, move peo­ple to oppor­tu­ni­ty and redis­trib­ute from the economy’s win­ners to the losers, the typ­i­cal Amer­i­can has an attach­ment to place, a focus on fam­i­ly, a com­mit­ment to mak­ing things, and would accept eco­nom­ic trade-offs in pur­suit of those pri­or­i­ties.… The impor­tant fea­ture of all these pref­er­ences is that they are inher­ent­ly valid. No set of facts or sta­tis­ti­cal analy­ses, to which an expert might have supe­ri­or access, over­rides what peo­ple actu­al­ly val­ue and what trade-offs they would choose to make. Lead­ers might seek to shape pub­lic opin­ion and alter pref­er­ences — indeed, that is part of lead­ing — but they must yield to the out­come. Their oblig­a­tion is to pur­sue the community’s pri­or­i­ties, not their own.”
  4. Mis­sion­ar­ies Have Gone to Thai­land for 200 Years. Why Aren’t There More Chris­tians? (Rebec­ca Brit­ting­ham, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Yet the free­dom that Chris­tians enjoy in Thai­land hasn’t trans­lat­ed into a wide accep­tance of Chris­tian­i­ty by local Thais. Despite near­ly 200 years of Protes­tant mis­sions, only about 1.2 per­cent of the pop­u­la­tion are Chris­tians. The ques­tion of why Thai­land is such dif­fi­cult soil for the seed of the gospel to grow has plagued mis­sion­ar­ies, as many have seen lit­tle fruit for the years they’ve spent learn­ing Thai, build­ing rela­tion­ships, and try­ing to intro­duce locals to the gospel.”
  5. I Went From Fos­ter Care to Yale. This Is What I Learned About ‘Lux­u­ry Beliefs.’ (Rob K. Hen­der­son, New York Times on YouTube): six minute video.
    • This is worth watch­ing even if you’re famil­iar with his ‘lux­u­ry beliefs’ con­cept.
    • I actu­al­ly had din­ner in a group with Rob on Sun­day night. We’re not friends — I just saw that he was in town and will­ing to meet up with peo­ple so I DMd him on Twit­ter. Nice guy.
  6. How Lib­er­al Col­lege Cam­pus­es Ben­e­fit Con­ser­v­a­tive Stu­dents (Lau­ren A. Wright, The Atlantic): “Con­ser­v­a­tive cul­ture war­riors argue that edu­ca­tion at high­ly selec­tive col­leges is worth­less, and rec­om­mend that con­ser­v­a­tive stu­dents who don’t want to be silenced or indoc­tri­nat­ed opt out. I dis­agree. Con­ser­v­a­tive stu­dents expe­ri­ence what high­er edu­ca­tion has long claimed to offer: expo­sure to dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives, reg­u­lar prac­tice build­ing and defend­ing coher­ent argu­ments, intel­lec­tu­al chal­lenges that spur cre­ativ­i­ty and growth. Lib­er­al acad­e­mia has large­ly robbed lib­er­al stu­dents of these rewards.”
    • The author is a polit­i­cal sci­ence pro­fes­sor at Prince­ton. No pay­wall.
  7. Reli­able Sources: How Wikipedia Admin David Ger­ard Laun­ders His Grudges Into the Pub­lic Record (Trac­ing Wood­grains, Sub­stack): “Wikipedia’s job is to repeat what Reli­able Sources say. David Gerard’s mis­sion is to deter­mine what Reli­able Sources are, using any argu­ments at his dis­pos­al that instru­men­tal­ly favor sources he finds agree­able.… From there, it’s sim­ple: Wikipedia edi­tors duti­ful­ly etch onto the page, with a neu­tral point of view, that Huff­in­g­ton Post writ­ers think this, PinkNews edi­tors think that, and expe­ri­enced Har­vard pro­fes­sors who make the mis­take of writ­ing for The Free Press think noth­ing fit for an ency­clo­pe­dia.”
    • This is a long, wild arti­cle about inter­net minu­ti­ae. But if you’ve ever won­dered about bias on Wikipedia, dive in.

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.