Category: Links

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.

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 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 141

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. Plenty of the ‘Nones’ Actually Head Back to Church (Ryan Burge, Christianity Today): “For atheists, the defection rate is about 18 percent. Even more striking, about 48 percent of agnostics defected, as did 42 percent of those who described their faith as ‘nothing in particular.’ That’s a staggering amount of flux: About half of the agnostics in the US in 2010 were no longer agnostics by 2014.” There are many details not reflected in this quote — read the whole thing. The author is a professor of political science at Eastern Illinois University.
  2. Holy Ambivalence (Brad East, LA Review of Books): “The arc of history does not bend toward justice; it bent and cracked long ago under the weight of another Empire’s injustice, under Pontius Pilate; now it wends in unknown and sometimes wicked ways, under our own disordered direction. Faith confesses that it has been and will be righted, once for all, but we know not when or how the denouement will come; only that it will be beyond history.” This is a very thoughtful commentary about how Christians should think about the Western world.  The author is a theology professor at Abilene Christian University.
  3. The Syria Memory Hole Is Opening Up a Bigger Danger (Tyler Cowen, Bloomberg View): “Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes referred to the dog that didn’t bark as a telltale sign that something unusual was going on during a horse theft. The relative lack of attention being paid to the news that U.S.-backed forces killed 200 to 300 Russian mercenary soldiers this month in Syria seems like a non-barking dog to me…. I have found that I know plenty of well-educated people, with graduate degrees and living in and near Washington, who aren’t even aware this occurred. The story has fallen into a memory hole, in part because neither the Americans nor the Russians wish to escalate the conflict.”
  4. No, Fascism Can’t Happen Here (Tyler Cowen, Politico): “My argument is pretty simple: American fascism cannot happen anymore because the American government is so large and unwieldy. It is simply too hard for the fascists, or for that matter other radical groups, to seize control of.”
  5. Many things were written about the recently-deceased Billy Graham  this week. Here are a few that caught my eye:
    • How Billy Graham Killed Communism with Kindness (David Aikman, Christianity Today): “But 19 years later, at least one major journalistic critic of that day had changed his tune. ‘Graham’s efforts contributed to the fall of communism, and in no small way,’ said Dan Rather in a 2001 interview. ‘He was right; I was wrong, big time.’”
    • What Is Billy Graham’s Friendship with Martin Luther King Jr. Worth? (Kate Shellnut, Christianity Today): “King is quoted as saying, ‘Had it not been for the ministry of my good friend Dr. Billy Graham, my work in the civil rights movement would not have been as successful as it has been.’”
    • Graham And The Jews: A Complex Connection (David Neff, Christianity Today): “When Syria and Egypt launched a surprise attack on Israel in October 1973, it soon became evident that Israel was under severe stress. The European powers refused to help. Richard Nixon hesitated to aid Israel for fear of escalating international tensions. But as the crisis grew graver, and Israel quietly threatened to use nuclear warheads, Nixon delivered weapons and supplies to stabilize Israel. Years later, Tanenbaum’s widow told The New York Times that it was only after Graham personally telephoned Nixon that the airlift began.”
    • The Wrong Spite Of History (Samuel James, Mere Orthodoxy): “Social media doesn’t usually shock me, but it got me this week. I was genuinely taken aback by the bile and viciousness I saw toward Billy Graham and his family from progressives, especially LGBT progressives. What I saw in dozens of tweets from accounts with shiny blue checkmarks was hatred of the simplest and most unembarrassed kind. It bothered me, not least because it threw me: This is Billy Graham we’re talking about. Not a politician, not a culture warrior. Is it even possible to be meeker and milder as a Christian than Billy Graham was, and still actually believe the gospel?”
  6. Expropriating land without compensation is impossible—take it from Zimbabwe (Johann Kirsten and Wandile Sihlobo, Quartz): “South Africa will now begin to reclaim land taken from black people near a century ago without payback to the current owners, dividing public sentiment along fears of a ‘land grab’ and cries for justice. On Feb. 27, lawmakers overwhelmingly voted in favor to amend the constitution to allow land expropriation without compensation…. If the South African government seizes private property for free, someone somewhere within the economy will have to pay.”  The authors are economists in South Africa. One is black and one is white.
  7. More on guns — the debate roils on with no sign of abating:
    • A ‘Deeply Libertarian’ Plan To Restrict Gun Sales (Stephen Carter, Bloomberg View): “The state establishes a ‘No Gun’ registry. Joining is entirely voluntary, but upon adding my name, I give up my right to purchase a firearm. Not forever. Not for some set period of time. The waiver is in effect only until I change my mind, which I am free to do whenever I like. Sound too easy? This is where the elegant part comes in. When I join, I can supply the email addresses for people who should be notified if I change my mind. If I decide later to drop my name from the registry, nobody can stop me, but there’s a three-week cooling-off period.” The author is a law professor at Yale.
    • What Critics Don’t Understand About Gun Culture (David French, The Atlantic): “Because of the threats against my family—and because I don’t want to be dependent on a sometimes shockingly incompetent government for my family’s security—I carry a weapon. My wife does as well. We’re not scared. We’re prepared, and that sense of preparation is contagious. Confidence is contagious. People want to be empowered. That’s how gun culture is built.”
    • Some Thoughts on School Shootings, Media, and the Consequences of Fear (Alex Tabarrok, Marginal Revolution): “Contrary to common wisdom, mass shootings also occur in European countries. I suspect, however, that the Finnish media don’t cover German shootings as frequently as shootings in Florida are covered in Nebraska–as a result the larger the media-market the greater the extent of availability bias. In other words, the larger the media market the greater the over-estimation of rare but vivid events.”
    • Why Gun Laws May Finally Change: Kids Are Leading (Tyler Cowen, Bloomberg View): “Children are effective messengers because they are difficult to convincingly attack. It’s easier to forgive their excesses and their mistakes, and they are not constrained by having full-time jobs. The very fact that children are doing something attracts news coverage.”
    • Why Did It Take Two Weeks To Discover Parkland Students’ Astroturfing? (David Hines, The Federalist): “On Twitter, I lost track of the number of bluechecks rhapsodizing over how effective the kids’ organizational instincts were. But organizing isn’t instinctive. It’s skilled work; you have to learn how to do it, and it takes really a lot of people. You don’t just get a few magical kids who’re amazing and naturally good at it.” This is an excellent article with a unfortunately off-putting title. It’s about how real political advocacy happens.
    • Nation That Calls Trump ‘Hitler’ Demands He Take All Guns Away (Babylon Bee)
  8. Beauty and the Body of the Beholder: Raters’ BMI Has Only Limited Association with Ratings of Attractiveness of the Opposite Sex (many authors, Obesity: A Research Journal): “In summary, individual variations in ratings of physical attractiveness are large. There was little support for the idea of mutual attraction as a driver for assortative mating. Our data suggest that despite overall trends favoring leaner phenotypes of both sexes as most attractive, everyone is beautiful to somebody of the opposite sex.” (emphasis added)

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

  1. Christian Breakup Lines (John Crist, YouTube)
  2. Calvinist Dog Corrects Owner: ‘No One Is A Good Boy’ (Babylon Bee)
  3. Black Panther star boldly proclaims “I fell in love with Jesus” (Philip Kosloski, Aleteia): “One of the causes behind that success is breakout star Letitia Wright, who plays T’Challa’s little sister Shuri, a brainy technician who is one of the most likable characters of the movie. Interestingly, Wright almost never got the role, as she left acting completely to purse a relationship with God.”

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll highlight an older link still worth your consideration. This week we have The Weight of Glory (C.S. Lewis): 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! (first shared in volume 36)

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 140

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 gun debate has flared up again in the wake of a school shooting.
  2. Lying to Investigators Shouldn’t Be a Crime (Stephen Carter, Bloomberg View): “Prosecutors want to catch you in a lie because, when they can’t prove an underlying crime, it’s often easy to prove that you lied to them. That’s where the problem arises. I’ve been telling my astonished law students for decades that except in certain well-defined circumstances, lying to investigators shouldn’t be a crime.” Carter is a law professor at Yale. I strongly endorse this view.
  3. Let’s Fix Peer Review (Ray Truant, personal blog): “When we apply for a grant or want to publish our science, we secretly get the work reviewed by our peers, some of which are competing with us for precious funding, or a bizarre version of fame. Under the veil of anonymity, a reviewer can write anything, included false statements, or incorrect statements to justify a decision. The decision is most often, ‘do not fund’ or ‘reject’, even if the review is based off of inaccuracies, lack of expertise, or even blatant slander. There are no rules, there are no repercussions.” Truant is a biochemist at McMaster University in Canada.
  4. Jane Stanford’s Speech (Jane Stanford, stanford.edu): A student had to read this for a class a while back, and was struck by how selectively it is quoted by the university. The original document is thoroughly religious. “An impression has gone forth that we were indifferent to religious influences and instructions being taught here. I am quite sure that if all could be made to understand that this project was born from a great sorrow, the greatest that parents can endure, that the Creator has led us through the deep waters out into the sunshine of faith and and belief in a future life; that we have wholly and entirely as far as possible given our lives to Him; and only ask that He will guide us to do His will; that every stone that has been laid into the buildings of this University but numbers the prayers that have been offered up to our Heavenly Father for strength, guidance, and help. That we should forget His love and mercy and be indifferent as to the Christian influence to be used among the students, it would be an impossibility.”
  5. [Harvard] Places HCFA On ‘Probation’ After Group Barred Student in Same-Sex Relationship from Leadership (Caroline Engelmayer & Michael Xie, Harvard Crimson): “The Office of Student Life has placed religious group Harvard College Faith and Action on ‘administrative probation’ for a year after the organization pressured a female member of its student leadership to resign in September following her decision to date a woman.… College administrators told them HCFA is the first-ever campus group to be placed on administrative probation.”
  6. Meanwhile on the Farm, Lonely Men and Women of Faith: The Experience of Religious Students at Stanford (Ben Simon, Stanford Review): “It may be unreasonable to expect a secular institution like Stanford to fully accommodate each student’s religious needs. With that said, Stanford goes far beyond the letter of the law when it comes to ethnic or racial diversity, but it does little to go out of its way to help religious students.”
  7. As more journalists report on Iceland’s circumcision saga, the country gets a rabbi (Julia Duin, GetReligion): “As Robert George of Princeton University – former chairman of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom – noted in a series of tweets recently, a country banning circumcision effectively bans Jews from living there. Ditto for Muslims…. [However] Gunnarsdóttir told the newspaper she ‘didn’t think it was necessary to consult’ with the island’s small Jewish and Muslim population before proposing the anti-circumcision bill, adding ‘I didn’t see it as a religious matter.’” That last detail is telling. Religious illiteracy causes real harms.
  8. Read My Lips: No New Administrators (Berber Jin, Stanford Review): “Though administrative offices are obviously necessary for the university’s operation, their self-serving incentives should make us wary of their expansion. Unlike faculty, who gain prestige through quality teaching and innovative research, administrators move up the career ladder by expanding bureaucracy.” The Review has been on fire lately.

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 a debate between two pastors on guns I shared back in volume 48 – both are very thoughtful and are skillful debaters.  Here is the conversation so far. All the posts are pretty short.

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 139

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. Illiberal Democracy (Kyle Harper, First Things): “The fact that democracy at its outset was so flatly illiberal shows that the modern synthesis of liberalism and democracy is not inevitable or necessary.” Harper is a professor of classics at the University of Oklahoma reviewing a book by Stanford classics professor Ober.
  2. How much to spend on an engagement ring (Ramit Sethi, personal blog): “Look at your own financial situation to decide what you can comfortably afford. I asked more than 1,500 of my readers, and depending on income, people typically spent between 4% and 8% of their yearly income.” Sethi is a Stanford grad who is obsessed with personal finance. Gentlemen: read this post even if you’re not in a relationship right now. It’s information you will almost certainly need someday.
    • Related: Planning a Wedding? Say Yes to the Guests and Spend Less on the Dress (Scott Stanley and Galena Rhoades, Institute For Family Studies): “the evidence suggests that the types of weddings associated with lower likelihood of divorce are those that are relatively inexpensive but are high in attendance.” The authors are professors at the University of Denver.
    • Also related and better than the title makes it sound: The Burdensome Myth of Romantic Love (David C. Dollahite and Betsy VanDenBerghe, First Things):  “…in order for a relationship to flourish, existential needs should be met outside it. In study after study, the most successful marriages tend to unite religious couples whose shared beliefs conduce to stability and satisfaction. These marriages not only buck the trends of divorce, abuse, neglect, violence, and dysfunction, but also benefit from the incentive religion offers for couples to work together for something outside the self.”
  3. We All Live on Campus Now  (Andrew Sullivan, NY Magazine): “When elite universities shift their entire worldview away from liberal education as we have long known it toward the imperatives of an identity-based ‘social justice’ movement, the broader culture is in danger of drifting away from liberal democracy as well. If elites believe that the core truth of our society is a system of interlocking and oppressive power structures based around immutable characteristics like race or sex or sexual orientation, then sooner rather than later, this will be reflected in our culture at large.” What happens on campus doesn’t stay on campus. On the plus side, this is why campus ministry can change the world.
  4. How the National Prayer Breakfast sparked an unusual meeting between Muslims and evangelicals (Michelle Boorstein, Washington Post): “The first time I met an imam in my neighborhood, we’re five minutes into the conversation, and he said: ‘Do you think I’m going to hell?’ I said: ‘That’s what my tradition teaches, yes.’ He said: ‘Good, I think you’re going to hell, too, so now we can have an honest conversation.’” The article also draws a useful distinction between interfaith and multifaith activities.
  5. Oh God, That’s Me: The Horror In The Mirror (Rolf Degen, Google Plus): “When adults who have never before seen their own reflection are confronted with a mirror for the first time, they go through an unsettling experience…” Degen is a science journalist, although this isn’t a fully worked out piece of journalism.
  6. Here’s What North Korea Lets You See When You Travel There (Fabian Muir, Buzzfeed): “It has occurred to me that perhaps some people feel certain images are contrived because their composition makes them feel like tableaux. Such skepticism riles me since it’s difficult not to take it personally when an individual who has never even visited North Korea believes they know more on the topic than someone who has completed a two-year project and studied every text available.” The top comment is insightful.
  7. Let’s Ban Porn (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “…we are supposed to be in the midst of a great sexual reassessment, a clearing-out of assumptions that serve misogyny and impose bad sex on semi-willing women. And such a reassessment will be incomplete if it never reconsiders our surrender to the idea that many teenagers, most young men especially, will get their sex education from online smut.” Tyler Cowen is sympathetic but worries about unintended consequences: Should We Censor Porn? (Marginal Revolution).
    • Also from Douthat’s column: “So if you want better men by any standard, there is every reason to regard ubiquitous pornography as an obstacle — and to suspect that between virtual reality and creepy forms of customization, its influence is only likely to get worse. But unlike many structural forces with which moralists of the left and right contend, porn is also just a product — something made and distributed and sold, and therefore subject to regulation and restriction if we so desire. The belief that it should not be restricted is a mistake; the belief that it cannot be censored is a superstition.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

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

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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 138

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 to read books efficiently in grad school (Thomas Kidd, personal newsletter): “Here’s the method I recommend for reading a book efficiently: read every word of the introduction and conclusion of a book. Then read the introduction and conclusion of each chapter word-for-word. Within each chapter, read the first and last sentence of each body paragraph. Slow down when it gets interesting, or when the author hits on your particular research interest.” Kidd is a history professor at Baylor University. There is a lengthier article with related thoughts titled Efficient Reading by Karin Wulf, a history professor at William and Mary.
  2. The Anti-Christian Alt-Right (Matthew Rose, First Things): “Almost everything written about the ‘alternative right’ in mainstream outlets is wrong in one respect. The alt-right is not stupid. It is deep. Its ideas are not ridiculous. They are serious. To appreciate this fact, one needs to inquire beyond its presence on social media, where its obnoxious use of insult, obscenity, and racism has earned it a reputation for moral idiocy. The reputation is deserved, but do not be deceived. Behind its online tantrums and personal attacks are arguments of genuine power and expanding appeal…. The alt-right is anti-Christian. Not by implication or insinuation, but by confession. Its leading thinkers flaunt their rejection of Christianity and their desire to convert believers away from it.”
  3. News To A Foreign Country (David Warren, personal blog): “The State has its religion, we have ours. So long as we remain meek and obedient, to anything we are required to sign, the Antichrist himself wouldn’t care what we think. The trouble arises only when we fail to sign, salute, or check the right boxes. That is, from the Antichrist’s point of view, a form of defiance that requires punishment — a punishment that we have brought upon ourselves, as will be condescendingly explained.” This is a transcribed speech by a Canadian journalist, and it is extremely fiery and very Catholic.
  4. Transgender Ideology Is Riddled With Contradictions. Here Are the Big Ones. (Ryan T Anderson, Heritage): “If gender is a social construct, how can gender identity be innate and immutable? How can one’s identity with respect to a social construct be determined by biology in the womb? How can one’s identity be unchangeable (immutable) with respect to an ever-changing social construct? And if gender identity is innate, how can it be ‘fluid’?”
  5. Massacre in Myanmar (Wa Lone, Kyaw Soe Oo, Simon Lewis and Antoni Slodkowski, Reuters):  “Reuters has pieced together what happened in Inn Din in the days leading up to the killing of the 10 Rohingya – eight men and two high school students in their late teens. Until now, accounts of the violence against the Rohingya in Rakhine state have been provided only by its victims. The Reuters reconstruction draws for the first time on interviews with Buddhist villagers who confessed to torching Rohingya homes, burying bodies and killing Muslims. This account also marks the first time soldiers and paramilitary police have been implicated by testimony from security personnel themselves.”
  6. Should We Say “Of Course” To Feminism? (Annika Nordquist, Stanford Review): “…I would challenge all critically-thinking feminists to ask the same question I asked my friend: if this movement doesn’t welcome me, my opinions, or my solutions, why would I want to be part of it?” Yes, this is our Annika.
  7. Is There a Smarter Way to Think About Sexual Assault on Campus?  (Jia Tollentino, The New Yorker):  “In college, everything is Janus-faced: what you interpret as refuge can lead to danger, and vice versa. One of the most highly valorized social activities, blacking out and hooking up, holds the potential for trauma within it like a seed.”
  8. What Teenagers Are Learning From Online Porn (Maggie Jones, New York Times): “But you don’t have to believe that porn leads to sexual assault or that it’s creating a generation of brutal men to wonder how it helps shape how teenagers talk and think about sex and, by extension, their ideas about masculinity, femininity, intimacy and power.” This article uses graphic imagery.
  9. How Chinese overseas students are learning harsh life lessons (Eric Fish, South China Morning Post):   “Interviews with Chinese students studying abroad and academics who research their attitudes present a complex picture – one in which students enter and leave with diverse views and identities that often defy clear loyalties or ideological labels. But nevertheless, many feel caught in the geopolitical crossfire – forced to choose a side or keep their heads down.”

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 This Is What Makes Republicans and Democrats So Different (Vox, Ezra Klein): the title made me skeptical, but it’s insightful (first shared in volume 32).

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 137

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. My Larry Nassar Testimony Went Viral. But There’s More to the Gospel Than Forgiveness. (Morgan Lee interviewing Rachael Denhollander, Christianity Today): “One of the areas where Christians don’t do well is in acknowledging the devastation of the wound. We can tend to gloss over the devastation of any kind of suffering but especially sexual assault, with Christian platitudes like God works all things together for good or God is sovereign. Those are very good and glorious biblical truths, but when they are misapplied in a way to dampen the horror of evil, they ultimately dampen the goodness of God. Goodness and darkness exist as opposites. If we pretend that the darkness isn’t dark, it dampens the beauty of the light.”
  2. Want to see a spat between two brilliant theologians?
    • The New Testament in the strange words of David Bentley Hart (N.T. Wright, The Christian Century): “When a theologian of the stature of David Bentley Hart offers a ‘pitilessly literal translation’ of the New Testament that is ‘not shaped by later theological and doctrinal history’ and aims to make ‘the familiar strange, novel, and perhaps newly compelling,’ we are eager to see the result. He promises to bring out the ‘wildly indiscriminate polyphony’ of the writers’ styles and emphases, converging on their ‘vibrant certainty that history has been invaded by God in Christ in such a way that nothing can stay as it was.’ But his two main claims (to be ‘literal’ and ‘undogmatic’) are not borne out, and the promise of displaying the strangeness of early Christian life disappears behind different kinds of strangeness.”
    • A Reply To N.T. Wright (David Bentley Hart, Eclectic Orthodoxy): “[A rebuttal] wherein, at long last, our author unburdens himself of a great number of complaints he has long wished to make against that pious man’s earnest but problematic approach to the New Testament, embellished with a few moments of sly mockery, but ultimately intended as a good-natured—albeit inflexible—expression of deep disagreement.”
    • Translating the N. T. Wright and David Bentley Hart Tussle  (Caleb Lindgren, Christianity Today): “While the verbal sparring is both sharp and entertaining (and perhaps off-putting to certain sensibilities), there is a valuable point at the heart of this debate—one that is worth noting as these two Bible scholarship heavy-hitters take swings at each other’s work.”
  3. Fake porn is the new fake news, and the internet isn’t ready (Nicole Lee, Engadget): “Motherboard recently uncovered a disturbing new trend on Reddit, in which users create AI-generated pornographic clips by swapping other people’s faces onto porn stars…. Needless to say, this has frightening consequences. Not only does this open the door for a horrifying new kind of revenge porn, where a vengeful ex could slap your face on an X‑rated video, it also opens a Pandora’s box of fears where nothing on the internet can ever be trusted.” The embedded (non-sketchy) gif is alarmingly realistic. The technology is already good enough that we’re at a tipping point, and it will only get more effective in the future.
  4. A Workout-Tracking App Accidentally Revealed The Location Of A Bunch Of Secret Military Bases And Soldiers’ Names (Digg): “Strava, a GPS-enabled mobile app that allows users to track their running, biking and swimming workouts, is attracting controversy after observers noticed that its global workout heatmap apparently revealed the location of secret military bases and the exercise habits of individual troops on those bases.” Oops. Technology has consequences. Remember that, you startuppy types.
  5. The Abortion Memo (David Brooks, New York Times): “I’m asking us to rethink our priorities. What does America need most right now? One of our talking points is that late-term abortions are extremely rare. If they are extremely rare, why are we giving them priority over all of our other issues combined?”
  6. The female price of male pleasure (Lili Loofbourow, The Week): “Because if you’re going to wax poetic about male pleasure, you had better be ready to talk about its secret, unpleasant, ubiquitous cousin: female pain. Research shows that 30 percent of women report pain during vaginal sex, 72 percent report pain during anal sex, and ‘large proportions’ don’t tell their partners when sex hurts.” First, fascinating because I had no idea. Second, because the author is so cocooned in assumptions stemming from the sexual revolution that she doesn’t seem to have considered whether this is a symptom of the whole thing being unhealthy and mistaken on key points.
  7. Showing Off To the Universe: Beacons For The Afterlife of Our Civilization (Steven Wolfram, personal blog): “There’s a thought experiment I’ve long found useful. Imagine a very advanced civilization, that’s able to move things like stars and planets around at will. What arrangement would they put them in? Maybe they’d want to make a ‘beacon of purpose’. And maybe—like Kant—one could think that would be achievable by setting up some ‘recognizable’ geometric pattern. Like how about an equilateral triangle? But no, that won’t do. Because for example the Trojan asteroids actually form an equilateral triangle with Jupiter and the Sun already, just as a result of physics. And pretty soon one realizes that there’s actually nothing the aliens could do to ‘prove their purpose’. The configuration of stars in the sky may look kind of random to us (except, of course, that we still see constellations in it). But there’s nothing to say that looked at in the right way it doesn’t actually represent some grand purpose.” A long but fascinating essay about how difficult it is to encode a message that unambiguously communicates intelligence. Relevance to natural theology should be obvious (although Wolfram, being an atheist, goes in a different direction).
  8. Some of our students and alumni have published things recently:
    • The One Lesson We Do Not Learn at Stanford (Hugh Zhang, The Stanford Review): “If we fail to develop the type of character needed to resist temptation when the stakes are so low, how can we be trusted to resist them when they are higher? What we do at Stanford is less harmful than the failings of the powerful. But it is only less harmful because our power is yet limited. When those in prominent positions act as we do, we rightly fear for society’s well being…. If we truly believe that the duty of a university is to prepare us for our responsibilities in the world beyond these idyllic palm trees, then the most important lesson we can learn here at Stanford is the age old lesson of integrity: the ability to do what is right even when no one is looking.”
    • Can I Help You? (Ryan Eberhardt, personal blog): “My friend Arjun committed suicide last September. I’m ‘over it’ in as much of a functional sense as possible, but I still think about him all the time. I miss him so much. He was among my best friends in high school…. I wish I could tell him about all the things I’m up to these days, brainstorm things for me to pursue after graduation, and ask for his advice. That will never happen again. But here’s the funny thing: I don’t know if I would be so eager to talk to him if he weren’t dead. Death has an interesting way of doing that.”
    • Reversing the Curse: A Spiritual Guide to Decoding Kendrick Lamar’s DAMN (Femi Olutade, Medium): “For those of you who are rooted in a faith tradition but can’t understand how a popular, ‘secular’ rap album can be a faithful witness to Jesus’s life and mission, Kendrick — and Jesus for that matter — may surprise you. For anyone who is still searching for how truth and justice emerge from the shadow of racism and oppression, I present to you the stories of hip hop and Judeo-Christian scriptures in the hope that you can find in them the kind of transformation that I have experienced.” Femi releasing this free online book bit by bit. Seth, who writes the forward is also one of our alumni.
    • Medical education systematically ignores the diversity of medical practice (Rebekah Fenton, KevinMD): “Medical education systematically ignores the diversity of medical practice during the classroom phase. Why do we only show rashes on Caucasian patients? Why do we only learn to recognize how men present with MIs? Why do we not address how obesity impacts exam findings? Medical education favors the white, thin, male patient. I’ve seen his chest X‑ray, I’ve examined his abdomen, I know his symptoms, and I’ve seen his rashes.”

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 Inside Graduate Admissions (Inside Higher Ed, Scott Jaschick): if you plan to apply to grad school, read this. There is one revealing anecdote about how an admissions committee treated an application from a Christian college student. My takeaway: the professors tried to be fair but found it hard to do, and their stated concerns were mostly about the quality of the institution rather than the faith of the applicant. Troubling nonetheless. (first shared in volume 32)

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 136

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. Trump has been president for about a year now. Here are some perspectives (if you only read one, read the one you think you’ll disagree with most):
    • Trump’s first year was even worse than feared (Eugene Robinson, Washington Post):  “Many of us began 2017 with the consoling thought that the Donald Trump presidency couldn’t possibly be as bad as we feared. It turned out to be worse.”
    • I wasn’t a Trump supporter. I am now. (Mollie Hemingway, Washington Post): “My expectations were low — so low that he could have met them by simply not being President Hillary Clinton. But a year into this presidency, he’s exceeded those expectations by quite a bit. I’m thrilled.”
    • ‘Vision, Chutzpah and Some Testosterone’ (New York Times): “Granted we have the most unpresidential president of our time. Crude, rude, clueless dude — but I believe, with the help of his friends, he’s stumbling through one of the most effective presidencies in memory.” This is from a collection of letters to the NY Times by Trump supporters.
    • This one trick explains the pattern of conservative praise for Trump’s first year (Dan Drezner, Washington Post): “All of this is consistent with assessments that Trump’s first year, even from a conservative perspective, has been pretty mediocre.”
    • Trump So Far Is More Farce Than Tragedy (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “A vast gulf between the things Trump says he wants — which are, indeed, often authoritarian — and the things that actually happen is the essential characteristic of his presidency’s first year.… his cabinet looks a lot like a generic Republican administration, whose efforts liberals understandably oppose and sometimes deplore, but which are not remotely like the workings of a fascist cabal circa 1935.”
    • President Trump’s First Year, in 14 Metrics (Mike Nizza, Blomberg View): “Last year our columnists selected a range of conventional and whimsical metrics by which to judge the success of the new president. We revisit them here. Bottom line: By these measures, he’s doing better than his opponents will admit and worse than his supporters believe.”
  2. Is everything you think you know about depression wrong? (Johann Hari, The Guardian): “Once you settle into a story about your pain, you are extremely reluctant to challenge it. It was like a leash I had put on my distress to keep it under some control. I feared that if I messed with the story I had lived with for so long, the pain would run wild, like an unchained animal. Yet the scientific evidence was showing me something clear, and I couldn’t ignore it.”
    • This reminds me of an article that made an impression upon me back in 2003: The Pursuit of Happiness (Benjamin Healy interviewing Carl Elliott, The Atlantic): “On Prozac, Sisyphus might well push the boulder back up the mountain with more enthusiasm and more creativity. I do not want to deny the benefits of psychoactive medication. I just want to point out that Sisyphus is not a patient with a mental health problem. To see him as a patient with a mental health problem is to ignore certain larger aspects of his predicament connected to boulders, mountains, and eternity.”
    • See also Staying Awake Is A Surprisingly Effective Way To Treat Depression (Linda Geddes, Digg):  “‘Sleep deprivation really has opposite effects in healthy people and those with depression,’ says Benedetti. If you’re healthy and you don’t sleep, you’ll feel in a bad mood. But if you’re depressed, it can prompt an immediate improvement in mood, and in cognitive abilities.”
  3. Follow up to last week: Bolivia’s President Revokes Evangelism Restrictions (Morgan Lee, Christianity Today): “President Evo Morales Ayma announced that he will tell the South American nation’s Legislative Assembly to repeal the entire penal code in the wake of recent changes that, among other tweaks, introduced severe restrictions on religious freedom.”
  4. Of Money and Morals (Alex Mayyasi, Aeon): “Today, a banker listening to a theologian seems like a curiosity, a category error. But for most of history, this kind of dialogue was the norm.” I was reluctant to read this piece because I’ve read others that were off-puttingly ill-informed, but I was pleasantly surprised.
  5. It’s the (Democracy-Poisoning) Golden Age of Free Speech (Zeynep Tufekci, Wired): “The most effective forms of censorship today involve meddling with trust and attention, not muzzling speech itself. As a result, they don’t look much like the old forms of censorship at all. They look like viral or coordinated harassment campaigns, which harness the dynamics of viral outrage to impose an unbearable and disproportionate cost on the act of speaking out.”

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 Christian Missions and the Spread of Democracy (Greg Scandlen, The Federalist): This is a summary of some rather wonderful research Robert Woodberry published in The American Political Science Review back in 2012: The Missionary Roots of Liberal Democracy. If it looks familiar it’s because I allude to it from time to time in my sermons and conversations. (first shared in volume 14)

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 135

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. Match Made in Marrow (Jad Abumrad & Robert Krulwich, Radiolab): this is a podcast featuring someone we’ve brought to campus before: a magician named Jim Munroe. Several alumni emailed/texted me to ask if I had heard it. Jim is a good model in this podcast of how to interact with the media — he is forthright about his faith while remaining likable. He’s not perfect in all of his responses, which in some ways makes him even better as a role model.
  2. Another podcast episode you might find interesting: Is miracle healing for real? Ken Fish vs Frances Janusz (Justin Brierly, Unbelievable): Unbelievable is a weekly radio program in the UK that brings two people, usually a Christian and a skeptic, together in dialog about a specific topic. FYI: I’ve posted a list of podcasts I listen to.
  3. How ‘Cheap Sex’ Is Changing Our Lives – and Our Politics (Park MacDougald, New York Magazine): “Virtually no one… is happy with the state of maleness today, and yet the male behavior we witness today seems a rational, if short-sighted, response to their circumstances.”
    • See also Jordan Peterson’s interview on BBC Channel 4 (YouTube). It’s long but quite interesting and parts of it are relevant to the state of masculinity in North America. Peterson is a clinical psychologist at the University of Toronto. He is controversial — see What’s So Dangerous About Jordan Peterson (Tom Bartlett, Chronicle of Higher Education): “He’s also heard the criticism, including from some longtime colleagues, that he fails to couch his language carefully and as a result naïvely wades into fraught conversations about gender and race.”
  4. Bolivia Makes Evangelism a Crime (Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra, Christianity Today):  “As always, the level of enforcement will determine how harmful to religious freedom the new restrictions prove to be.”
  5. Today was the annual Rally for Life in Washington, DC so there have been a lot of articles about abortion this week.
    • Does the Pro-Life Movement Have Science on Its Side? (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “When Colleen Malloy, a neonatologist and faculty member at Northwestern University, discusses abortion with her colleagues, she says, ‘it’s kind of like the emperor is not wearing any clothes.’ Medical teams spend enormous effort, time, and money to deliver babies safely and nurse premature infants back to health. Yet physicians often support abortion, even late into fetal development. As medical techniques have become increasingly sophisticated, Malloy said, she has felt this tension acutely: A handful of medical centers in major cities can now perform surgeries on genetically abnormal fetuses while they’re still in the womb. Many are the same age as the small number of fetuses aborted in the second or third trimesters of a mother’s pregnancy. ‘The more I advanced in my field of neonatology, the more it just became the logical choice to recognize the developing fetus for what it is: a fetus, instead of some sort of sub-human form,’ Malloy said. ‘It just became so obvious that these were just developing humans.’”
    • Trump Backs Health-Care Workers Who Object to Providing Abortions (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “All of these laws are already on the books. But now, HHS is promising to enforce these statutes more aggressively. ‘For too long, governments big and small have treated conscience claims with hostility instead of protection,’ said Severino in the press release. ‘But change is coming and it begins here and now.’”
    • Why Trump is targeting health workers’ religious objections (Sarah Pulliam Bailey, Washington Post): “A concern among many is that religious freedom is becoming a partisan issue dependent on whoever sits in office, said Michael Wear, who did religious outreach for Obama. The Trump administration, he said, has done little on religious freedom issues that will have much lasting change. ‘The next administration could scrap this office their first day in,’ Wear said. ‘It’s not necessarily putting [religious conservatives] in a better situation when they’re not in a favorable position politically.’”
    • No, Politico, Conscience Protections Are Neither ‘So-Called’ Nor ‘Controversial’ (Casey Mattox, The Federalist): “Government shouldn’t force people to violate their consciences. Until recently, that opinion hasn’t been particularly controversial, even where actual controversial issues like abortion were involved. One can support abortion and still think government shouldn’t discriminate against medical professionals who don’t perform abortions.” This article is a response to Trump to overhaul HHS office, shield health workers with moral objections (Dan Diamond And Jennifer Haberkorn, Politico)
  6. The Church Needs a Masterclass in How to Apologize for Sexual Assault (Abby Perry, Christ and Pop Culture): “Abuse of power, refusal to admit sin in its fullness, and grasping authority with clenched fists have no place in God’s kingdom. His is an economy of intertwined justice and grace, one that looks sin in the face and is repelled by it, not minimizing its grotesque nature but covering it with true grace. True grace does not thinly veil gross moral failure and allow those who commit it to continue wielding power, but offers discipline, discipleship, care, wise counsel, and friendship as means of walking with a person who has fallen.”
  7. Wow. Asiz Ansari. First a summary, then links to commentary. The controversy around Babe.net’s Aziz Ansari story, explained (Caroline Framke, Vox): “The Babe.net report is markedly different from any of the others that have come out since the New York Times broke the story of Harvey Weinstein’s decades of alleged abuse in October. It is not about workplace harassment; nor does it interview multiple victims to portray a pattern of abuse. It is about a single woman who was excited to go out to dinner with a comedian she liked, before quickly becoming uncomfortable with the tenor of his aggressive advances once they went back to his apartment.”
    • The Humiliation of Aziz Ansari (Caitlin Flanagan, The Atlantic):  “I thought it would take a little longer for the hit squad of privileged young white women to open fire on brown-skinned men. I had assumed that on the basis of intersectionality and all that, they’d stay laser focused on college-educated white men for another few months. But we’re at warp speed now, and the revolution—in many ways so good and so important—is starting to sweep up all sorts of people into its conflagration: the monstrous, the cruel, and the simply unlucky.”
    • The Aziz Ansari debacle proves it’s time for a new sexual revolution (Elizabeth Bruenig, Washington Post): “In fact, it seems we have these sorts of public airings of female sexual misery all the time now, which suggests to me that something is wrong with our sexual culture that can’t simply be explained by positing that women are insufficiently aware of their rights and liberties.”
    • Listen to the ‘Bad Feminists’ (Megan McArdle, Bloomberg View): “How has the most empowered generation of women in all of human history come to feel less control over their bodies than their grandmothers did?”
    • Purity and Prejudice (Samuel D. James, First Things): “If nothing else, the failure of contemporary sexual politics to deliver a better experience for women should make us reconsider our assumptions about progress. Why have decades of porn and pills failed to snuff out male privilege?”
    • If I may interject my unsolicited opinion: boy, wouldn’t it be great if there were clear rules governing sexual behavior? And imagine how much clarity would ensue if they were connected to public declarations of consent. That would be wonderful! #ifonly #ohwait #backtothebible

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll highlight an older link still worth your consideration. This week we have Alcohol, Blackouts, and Campus Sexual Assault (Texas Monthly, Sarah Hepola): I think this is the most thoughtful secular piece I’ve read on the issue. “Consent and alcohol make tricky bedfellows. The reason I liked getting drunk was because it altered my consent: it changed what I would say yes to. Not just in the bedroom but in every room and corridor that led into the squinting light. Say yes to adventure, say yes to risk, say yes to karaoke and pool parties and arguments with men, say yes to a life without fear, even though such a life is never possible… We drink because it feels good. We drink because it makes us feel happy, safe, powerful. That it often makes us the opposite is one of alcohol’s dastardly tricks.” (first shared in volume 25)

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 134

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. ‘Walking a line’: The shrewd tactics of the White House’s evangelical gatekeeper (Michelle Boorstein & Sarah Pulliam Bailey, The Washington Post):  “The Senate race in Alabama and Christian nationalist Roy Moore? ‘I’m not involved.’ Trump’s penchant for lying? ‘I don’t want to get into it. Because I don’t focus on those things.’ The GOP tax law that bitterly divided religious leaders? ‘I don’t think there’s an answer.’ ‘For me, that’s all noise,’ he said. ‘It’s not that it isn’t important, but I don’t have time for all that… If I did dig into it, I might have stronger opinions, and that would be a distraction for me.’”
  2. The Top 50 Countries Where It’s Most Dangerous to Follow Jesus (Sarah Zylstra, Christianity Today): “For decades, North Korea has clearly been the world’s worst persecutor of Christians. But now, another nation nearly matches it.” Spoiler alert: Afghanistan.
  3. Classical Liberalism Strikes Out (Rod Dreher, The American Conservative): “Thus, the irony: individualism and statism are not opposites, but grow together in tandem. In our daily partisan politics, we have tended to pit individualism against statism – Ayn Rand against Karl Marx – with conservatives claiming to be individualists and progressives claiming to support an expansive state. But what we have witnessed is the simultaneous growth of both the state and the rise of individualism, not as opposites, but as necessary partners. The world has never seen a more individualistic society nor a more encompassing state. The state has empowered itself by claiming to empower the individual.” This is a very stimulating interview with Notre Dame professor Patrick Deneen. Highly recommended.
  4. Higher Education Is Drowning In BS (Christian Smith, Chronicle of Higher Education): “Ideas and their accompanying practices have consequences. What is formed in colleges and universities over decades shows up for better or worse in the character and quality of our public servants, political campaigns, public-policy debates, citizen participation, social capital, media programming, lower school education, consumer preferences, business ethics, entertainments, and much more. And the long-term corrosive effects on politics and culture can also be repaired only over the long term, if ever. There are no quick fixes here.” Side note: I’ve met Dr. Smith, who is a sociologist at Notre Dame, before. He’s a smart cookie. 
  5. Oprah: Prophet, Priestess … Queen? (Ross Douthat, New York Times):  “American culture is divided between three broad approaches to religious questions: one traditional, one spiritual and one secular. The traditional approach takes various forms (Catholic and Protestant, Muslim and Orthodox Jewish) but its instincts are creedal, confessional, dogmatic; it believes in a specific revelation, a specific authority and a specific holy book, and seeks to conform itself to teachings handed down from the religious past. The secular approach is post-religious, scientistic, convinced that the laboratory and the microscope will ultimately account for everything that matters, while hopefully justifying a liberal society’s still-somewhat-Christian moral commitments along the way. But in between secularism and traditionalism lies the most American approach to matters of faith….”
  6. Can We Teach Ourselves to Believe? (Agnes Callard, New York Times): “Pascal seems to concede that trying to believe is a matter of wishful thinking, self-deception or self-manipulation. He thinks we should do it anyway. But I think our hope of becoming better people — whether in respect of religion, friendship or justice, or in any number of different ways — rests on the possibility that there is a more straightforward and less self-abasing way to try to believe.” The author is a professor of philosophy at the University of Chicago. 
  7. The Legion Lonely (Steven Thomas, Hazlitt): “Friendship in adulthood is a challenge for a lot of people. On average, both men and women start to lose friends around age 25, and continue to lose friends steadily for the rest of our lives.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

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

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

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.