Category: Links

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 30

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

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

With­out fur­ther ado, I give you the inter­est­ing things:

  1. A Carved Stone Block Upends Assump­tions About Ancient Judaism (NY Times, Isabel Kir­sh­n­er): I find the title amus­ing (the find­ing lines up per­fect­ly with my assump­tions about Judaism before the destruc­tion of the tem­ple).
  2. Jesus’ Left­ward Bias (Pacif­ic Stan­dard, Tom Jacobs): warn­ing — this is not about what you think it prob­a­bly is. It is based on the study Did Bud­dha Turn The Oth­er Cheek Too? A Com­par­i­son of Pos­ing Bias­es Between Jesus and Bud­dha and weaves togeth­er art, self­ies, and the role of emo­tions in Chris­tian­i­ty. Real­ly.
  3. Shut­ting Down Con­ver­sa­tions About Rape at Har­vard Law (New York­er, Jean­nie Suk): a Har­vard Law prof com­ments on how cam­pus­es should han­dle rape accu­sa­tions, and points out that a rigid “believe the accuser” stance will result in great injus­tice against black men.
  4. Amer­i­can Chris­tians Could Take A Les­son From Angela Merkel (Reli­gion News Ser­vice, Guthrie Graves-Fitzsim­mons): I did not know Merkel (Ger­man Chan­cel­lor and Time Per­son of the Year) was pious. See the com­ments for clar­i­fi­ca­tion about what tribe of Chris­tian­i­ty she belongs to. As always, take claims about the faith of pub­lic fig­ures with a grain of salt, espe­cial­ly when they are from anoth­er cul­ture. I was also inter­est­ed by Mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism Is A Sham, Says Angela Merkel (Wash­ing­ton Post, Rick Noack)
  5. Beyond Fight or Flight: $1 Mil­lion Reveals How Chris­tians Cope with Per­se­cu­tion in 30 Coun­tries (Chris­tian­i­ty Today, Sarah Zyl­stra): Fas­ci­nat­ing research on what Chris­tians actu­al­ly do when they face intense per­se­cu­tion. Relat­ed: Glob­al­ly, Reli­gious Per­se­cu­tion is Chris­t­ian Per­se­cu­tion (Crux, John Allen): I appre­ci­at­ed the selec­tion of sto­ries in this arti­cle. They avoid­ed the crazy, gory sto­ries that make you put this into a spe­cial place in your brain and chose much sim­pler anec­dotes that make you see what this is a like on a day-to-day basis in cer­tain parts of the world. See also, The Biggest Apol­o­gy For Chris­t­ian Per­se­cu­tion of Oth­er Chris­tians Ever. (Chris­tian­i­ty Today, Sarah Zyl­stra).
  6. Quick Links

Disclaimer

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 29

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

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

With­out fur­ther ado, I give you the inter­est­ing things:

  1. C.S. Lewis Was A Secret Gov­ern­ment Agent (Chris­tian­i­ty Today, Har­ry Lee Poe): It’s not as excit­ing as the title sounds, but it’s still cool. C.S. Lewis did some work for MI6. That’s the same agency as James Bond.  JAMES BOND.
  2. Why I wor­ry exper­i­men­tal social sci­ence is head­ed in the wrong direc­tion (Chris Blattman, per­son­al blog). This is an excel­lent piece by a polit­i­cal sci­ence pro­fes­sor at Colum­bia.
  3. Utah Reduced Chron­ic Home­less­ness By 91 Per­cent. Here’s How. (NPR, Kel­ly McEv­ers). Props to the Mor­mons. It reminds me of an old piece by Mal­colm Glad­well: Mil­lion Dol­lar Mur­ray.
  4. Phil­an­thropy Should Be Con­tro­ver­sial (Bloomberg View, Justin Fox): Fas­ci­nat­ing through­out — the last two para­graphs were quite sur­pris­ing to me.
  5. John Ker­ry Should Rec­og­nize Chris­t­ian Geno­cide (USA Today, Kirsten Pow­ers): I’ve post­ed about this before and will like­ly keep doing so. The sit­u­a­tion is insane.
  6. Why Chris­tians Must Speak Out Against Don­ald Trump’s Mus­lim Remarks (Wash­ing­ton Post, Rus­sell Moore). Relat­ed: Is An Immi­gra­tion Ban on Mus­lims Uncon­sti­tu­tion­al? (Eric Pos­ner, a law prof at U Chica­go).  Moore has been on a tear late­ly, see also his What We Lose When We Prayer Shame Politi­cians After A Mass Shoot­ing (Wash­ing­ton Post, Rus­sell Moore). “The first response to a word of our fel­low cit­i­zens in per­il should be a human response of empa­thy. For reli­gious peo­ple, that means a call to pray for them, and to encour­age oth­ers of like mind to do so…. When that becomes just anoth­er cul­ture war bat­tle­field, we’ve lost more than a set of pol­i­cy pro­pos­als. We’ve lost the social cohe­sion we need to do any­thing.”
  7. How Oba­ma’s Gun-Con­trol Push Invert­ed the Pol­i­tics of the No-Fly List (The Atlantic, David Gra­ham): this is a depress­ing com­men­tary on the polar­iza­tion of Amer­i­can pol­i­tics. See also Eric Posner’s com­ments: The Repub­li­can-Demo­c­ra­t­ic Divide on Civ­il Lib­er­ties. Relat­ed — Par­ty­ism Now Trumps Racism (Bloomberg View, Cass Sun­stein) and Polit­i­cal Iden­ti­ty Is Now Fair Game For Hatred: How Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats Dis­crim­i­nate (Vox, Ezra Klein).
  8. Quick Links:

Disclaimer

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 28

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

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

With­out fur­ther ado, I give you the inter­est­ing things:

  1. Pay­ing, Pray­ing It For­ward (Hous­ton Chron­i­cle, Mag­gie Gor­don): an inspir­ing sto­ry — also not very long. If you just want a boost as finals draw near, read this one and skip down to the quick links.
  2. San Bernadi­no Vic­tim Was Upfront About Pol­i­tics and Reli­gion — With Farook Too (LA Times, Veron­i­ca Rocha): one of the shoot­ing vic­tims had been wit­ness­ing to one of the shoot­ers in the days before the car­nage. See some reflec­tion on this issue at Anoth­er First Amend­ment Ghost: Did Debate With Evan­gel­i­cal Trig­ger Farook? (GetRe­li­gion, Ter­ry Mat­ting­ly).
  3. Why The Pro-Life Move­ment Oppos­es Vio­lence (NY Times, Ross Douthat). “Giv­en anti-abor­tion premis­es, why is it not obvi­ous­ly rea­son­able to take up arms against abor­tion providers? Why isn’t the pro-lif­er who shoots an abor­tion­ist just like a man or woman who uses dead­ly force against a would-be child mur­der­er — a vig­i­lante, yes, but also a hero­ic one?” See also Rus­sell Moore for a more the­o­log­i­cal approach in Is Pro-Life Rhetoric Dead­ly?
  4. Relat­ed to the sto­ries that inspired the pieces in the two pre­vi­ous bul­let points: How Many Mass Shoot­ings Are There, Real­ly? (NY Times, Mark Foll­man). It turns out that there’s not a com­mon­ly accept­ed way to quan­ti­fy the data. I found this piece fas­ci­nat­ing. Foll­man is the nation­al affairs edi­tor of Moth­er Jones.
  5. Who Influ­ences Whom? Reflec­tions on U.S. Gov­ern­ment Out­reach to Think Tanks (Brook­ings Insti­tute, Jere­my Shapiro): this is an engag­ing peek behind the cur­tains at a world some of you will wind up enter­ing.
  6. Why The Pub­lic Can’t Read The Press (The Atlantic, John Helt­man): this piece is a bit long for my taste, but the sub­ject is impor­tant. There’s a lot of good jour­nal­ism you will nev­er be giv­en the chance to see.
  7. Quick Links:

Disclaimer

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

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 27

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

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

To be frank, most of what I found inter­est­ing this week was turkey. The pick­ings are lit­tle slim­mer than oth­er weeks:

  1. The Chris­t­ian Cen­tu­ry No One Pre­dict­ed (Justin Tay­lor, per­son­al blog): “it was also a rever­sal in that Chris­tian­i­ty moved from being cen­tered in Chris­t­ian nations to being cen­tered in non-Chris­t­ian nations. Chris­ten­dom, that remark­able con­di­tion of church­es sup­port­ing states and states sup­port­ing Chris­tian­i­ty, died. The idea of Chris­t­ian priv­i­lege in soci­ety was all but killed. And yet the reli­gion seemed stronger than ever at the end of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry.”
  2. Ross Douthat on The Joy of ISIS (NY Times): “But if the West’s offi­cial alter­na­tive to ISIS is the full Bel­gium (basi­cal­ly good food + bureau­cra­cy + euthana­sia), if West­ern soci­ety seems like it’s closed most of the paths that human beings have tra­di­tion­al­ly fol­lowed to find tran­scen­dence, if West­ern cul­ture los­es the abil­i­ty to even imag­ine the joy that comes with full com­mit­ment, and not just the remis­sive joy of slough­ing com­mit­ments off — well, then we’re going to be sup­ply­ing at least some recruits to groups like ISIS for a very long to come.”
  3. Why Tol­er­ate Reli­gion? (First Things, Rafael Domin­go):  “The right to reli­gion is dif­fer­ent from free­dom of con­science. Con­science is a sort of pro­tec­tive shell around people’s pri­va­cy: it safe­guards them from abu­sive intru­sions by the law. Con­science marks a pri­vate lim­it of the legal sys­tem, not a pub­lic one.… The right to reli­gion demands tol­er­a­tion; free­dom of con­science demands accom­mo­da­tion.”
  4. Fear and Vot­ing on the Chris­t­ian Right (CNN, Thomas Lake). “They called her a big­ot, a homo­phobe, even a racist, which was strange, because the two gay men were white and so was Bet­ty Odgaard. The angry peo­ple on the Inter­net told Bet­ty she would die soon, that her death would be good for Amer­i­ca, and then she would prob­a­bly go to hell. Bet­ty had oth­er ideas about her final des­ti­na­tion, but she agreed it was time to go.”
  5. There’s an Awful Cost To Get­ting a Ph.D. That No One Talks About (Quartz). Also of inter­est to Chris­tians con­sid­er­ing a doc­tor­al pro­gram, The Illu­sion of Respectabil­i­ty (Chris­tian­i­ty Today, Allen Guel­zo).
  6. Chica­go School of Free Speech (Wall Street Jour­nal, L. Gor­don Crovitz): one school’s response to the tumult sweep­ing col­lege cam­pus­es. (may be behind a pay­wall)

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 26

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

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

On this half-year mark, I give you the inter­est­ing things:

  1. Reli­gious Lib­er­ty and Human Dig­ni­ty: Tale Of Two Dec­la­ra­tions (Har­vard Jour­nal of Law and Pub­lic Pol­i­cy, Kevin Has­son). This arti­cle from 2003 argues that reli­gious free­dom is the fun­da­men­tal free­dom. It starts slow as it lays a foun­da­tion, but picks up about halfway through.
  2. While you’re on Thanks­giv­ing break, please reg­is­ter to vote if you have not already done so. I strong­ly sug­gest you reg­is­ter as a Per­ma­nent Vote-By-Mail Vot­er, which sim­ply means that you will receive a bal­lot in the mail before every elec­tion. It gives you plen­ty of time to research the can­di­dates and issues from the com­fort of your dorm room with your bal­lot in front of you. If you pre­fer to vote in anoth­er state then vis­it http://www.brennancenter.org/student-voting). If you’re a cit­i­zen of anoth­er coun­try, do what­ev­er you’re sup­posed to do there. 🙂
  3. Some glob­al per­spec­tive:
  4. More cam­pus activism links: Pres­i­dent Oba­ma weighs in (real­ly). See also A Cri­sis Our Uni­ver­si­ties Deserve (NY Times, Ross Douthat): this is a help­ful big-pic­ture overview of the col­lege scene. Also, Yale’s Activists Deserve Con­struc­tive Crit­i­cism (The Atlantic, Conor Frieder­s­dorf).
  5. Are Non-Reli­gious Chil­dren Real­ly More Altru­is­tic? (Robert Wood­ber­ry) — this is prob­a­bly the last thing I will post on this. I almost didn’t, but WOW what a smack­down. Wood­ber­ry is the author of that arti­cle I keep shar­ing about Chris­tian­i­ty and democ­ra­cy.
  6. Quick Links:

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 25

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

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

There’s a lot of heavy con­tent in this one. Buck­le your seat­belt. With­out fur­ther ado, I give you the inter­est­ing things:

  1. 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.”
  2. Fatal Flaws In That Reli­gion And Gen­eros­i­ty Study (The Stream, George Yancey). Yancey is a soci­ol­o­gy prof. Relat­ed: Are Reli­gious Kids Real­ly Mean­er Than Their Coun­ter­parts? by a social psy­chol­o­gist.
  3. Now for a ton of links relat­ed to the racial inci­dents and respons­es at Yale and Miz­zou (which seem dif­fer­ent to me but which hap­pened in such close prox­im­i­ty that they are linked in the nation­al dia­log).
  4. In glob­al news: On The Brink: Chris­tian­i­ty Fac­ing Mid­dle East Purge With­in Decade, Group Says (Fox News). Sto­ries like this have led one law­mak­er to intro­duce a bill to Pri­or­i­tize Refugee Sta­tus For Chris­tians Flee­ing ISIS (The Hill). See also Islam Is A Reli­gion Of Vio­lence by Joel Miller, where­in he argues that the lack of Trini­tar­i­an doc­trine cor­rupts the Mus­lim con­cep­tion of God.
  5. Chris­t­ian Belief Cost This Man His Job: (Wall Street Jour­nal, Jason Riley): appar­ent­ly the fire chief of Atlanta was fired because of some­thing he said in a book he wrote. Note that this is an op-ed, not a news sto­ry.
  6. Hat­ing Queer­ness With­out Hat­ing The Queer (The Atlantic, Emma Green): basi­cal­ly an arti­cle-length inter­ac­tion with Albert Mohler’s book We Can­not Be Silent.
  7. Quick Links:

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 24

News News News 98/365In the time of King David, the tribe of Issachar pro­duced shrewd war­riors “who under­stood the times and knew what Israel should do” (1 Chron 12:32). In a sim­i­lar way, we need to become wise peo­ple whose faith inter­acts with the world.

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

With­out fur­ther ado, I give you the inter­est­ing things:

  1. I heard a mov­ing Radi­o­lab episode: Gray’s Dona­tion. If you’ve nev­er lis­tened to Radi­o­lab before, I high­ly rec­om­mend the episodes Col­ors and Oops. If you’re into pod­casts, check out a list of thought­ful Chris­t­ian pod­casts I com­piled a while back.
  2. ’A Tour of Burned Church­es’ Explores Race, Resilience, and Reli­gion in Amer­i­ca (Huff­in­g­ton Post, Christo­pher Math­ias): an inter­view with a pod­cast­er about a series he did on the burn­ing of black church­es in Amer­i­ca. I have not lis­tened to the series, but the inter­view was good.
  3. Data about Adults Who Do Not Believe In God (Pew Forum) — one of the charts makes me think of a fun­ny clip about athe­ism as white priv­i­lege [the whole thing is worth watch­ing, but you can jump to the sound bite at 5:45]. There is a good sum­ma­ry of some of the take­aways at GetRe­li­gion. On a relat­ed note, there is a study in Cur­rent Biol­o­gy: The Neg­a­tive Asso­ci­a­tion Between Reli­gious­ness and Children’s Altru­ism Across The World. The com­ments on red­dit are inter­est­ing (more inter­est­ing to me than the study itself).
  4. A some­what con­trar­i­an piece: Lib­er­als Are Los­ing The Cul­ture War (Mol­ly Ball, The Atlantic). A semi-response piece: This Isn’t A Cul­ture War, It’s A War On Cul­ture (The Fed­er­al­ist, David Harsanyi).
  5. File under sad: The State Depart­ment Turns Its Back on Syr­i­an Chris­tians and Oth­er Non-Mus­lim Refugees (Nation­al Review, Nina Shea)
  6. The sto­ry I allud­ed to in my ser­mon: How Prop 47 Helped One Man Keep His Job (KQED,  Sara Hos­sai­ni). This is an illus­tra­tion of what jus­ti­fi­ca­tion involves — a legal decree that exempts you from penal­ties the law would oth­er­wise apply (when I quote stuff in my ser­mon I try to remem­ber to share it here).
  7. Quick Links:

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 23

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

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

With­out fur­ther ado, I give you the inter­est­ing things:

  1. The Ulti­mate List of Birth­day Free­bies (Stan­ford Dai­ly, Saman­tha Wong): This is, with­out a doubt, one of the most use­ful links I have ever shared with you. Not so much about broad­er soci­etal issues — but you’ll want to read it nonethe­less.
  2. The Anti-Free Speech Move­ment at UCLA (The Atlantic, Conor Frieder­s­dorf): I par­tic­u­lar­ly liked this bit: “The col­lege stu­dents fight­ing to lim­it free speech or to pun­ish free expres­sion are court­ing tremen­dous harms that would ulti­mate­ly fall dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly on the least pow­er­ful, most mar­gin­al­ized groups of the present and future…. activists who say that they live in a sys­tem of white suprema­cy [should not] empow­er state admin­is­tra­tors to police speech at their dis­cre­tion!”  For much more, check out UCLA law prof Eugene Volokh’s com­ments on cam­pus free­dom of speech (some of which are quot­ed in the Frieder­s­dorf arti­cle).
  3. Cash Strapped Mis­sion­ar­ies Get A New Call­ing: Home (Wall Street Jour­nal, Tama­ra Audi): this is sad. I encour­age you to pray for and give to mis­sion­ar­ies.
  4. Refram­ing The Debate About Pay­day Lend­ing (the blog of the New York Fed): Fas­ci­nat­ing. I’ve been crit­i­cal of pay­day lenders in the past, but at least some of my mis­giv­ings appear to have been off the mark.
  5. A Black Leg­end Refut­ed (Catholic World Report): this is a review of Church of Spies: The Pope’s Secret War Against Hitler. The review is from a biased source, but is the most detailed of the reviews I’ve seen. Kirkus Reviews, a sec­u­lar source, also has good things to say about it as does First Things, which is in between the two ide­o­log­i­cal­ly. The book’s endorse­ments are impres­sive.
  6. Quick links:

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 22

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

To that end, on week­ends (usu­al­ly Fri­days but last night we had alum­ni over for home­com­ing and it turned into a five hour par­ty, so this time Sat­ur­day) I’ve been shar­ing articles/resources I have found help­ful recent­ly in think­ing about broad­er cul­tur­al and soci­etal issues (be sure to see the dis­claimer at the bot­tom). May these give you greater insight, so that you may con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion of Issachar. Past emails are archived at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links

With­out fur­ther ado, I give you the inter­est­ing things:

  1. Mus­lim Migrants, Meet Chris­t­ian Gyp­sies (Jil­lian Mel­chior, Wall Street Jour­nal): this is pret­ty beau­ti­ful.
  2. Moral Respon­si­bil­i­ty and Emo­tion­al Rejec­tion of God (William Lane Craig): Craig, who we host­ed on cam­pus years ago, answers a tough ques­tion. I think it’s amus­ing how often he directs the read­er to anoth­er one of his books, but I don’t guess he had an alter­na­tive if he want­ed to keep his answer short enough to be read­able.
  3. Hook­ing Up Is Easy To Do (Katie Van Syck­le, NY Mag):  “I’ve come back to my alma mater because it sits at the cross­roads of two major themes of mod­ern-day col­lege sex: hookup cul­ture, which seems as ram­pant as I remem­ber it, and sex­u­al assault… Late­ly, researchers have been mak­ing an obvi­ous but con­tro­ver­sial point: that these two trend lines are in fact relat­ed — that hook­ing up puts stu­dents at high­er risk of hav­ing non­con­sen­su­al sex, and that there are ele­ments of this cul­ture… that are more com­pli­cat­ed than ‘yes means yes.’”
  4. How Friend­ships Change In Adult­hood (Julie Beck, The Atlantic): there’s a lot in this arti­cle. I was struck by the idea that friend­ships are either active, dor­mant, or com­mem­o­ra­tive.
  5. Joel Osteen: Would Jesus Christ Be A Good Pres­i­dent? (David Wal­lis, New York Observ­er): the title is super-click-bait. It’s a short, inter­est­ing inter­view with Joel Osteen, pas­tor of the largest church in Amer­i­ca.
  6. Trea­sures On Earth: How Reli­gion Is Redis­trib­ut­ing The World’s Wealth (Mor­gan Lee, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): mis­lead­ing title, inter­est­ing data.
  7. Quick Links:

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 21

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

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

With­out fur­ther ado, I give you the inter­est­ing things:

  1. How big of a deal do you have to be for POTUS to inter­view you? Pres­i­dent Oba­ma & Mar­i­lynne Robin­son: A Con­ver­sa­tion In Iowa (NY Review of Books). You might recall that Robin­son is speak­ing at Stan­ford soon and also that I men­tioned her essay “Fear” a few emails back.
  2. Won­der­ing why peo­ple are flee­ing Syr­ia? Check out Syria’s War: A Five Minute His­to­ry (a Vox video). This is real­ly well-done. 
  3. There is also vio­lence erupt­ing in Israel. For­eign Pol­i­cy asks Can Any­one Pre­vent A Third Intifa­da?  Inci­den­tal­ly, if you won­der why peo­ple are skep­ti­cal of the way news con­cern­ing Israel is report­ed, take a look at Return­ing to the Copy Desk, Briefly (Kevin Williamson, Nation­al Review). It is a take­down of a NY Times arti­cle show­ing how much bias can creep into an appar­ent­ly objec­tive arti­cle (this is from the right cri­tiquing the left — for coun­terex­am­ples search for clips from the Dai­ly Show). Bot­tom line: it’s real­ly hard to find trust­wor­thy news about Israel.
  4. Lying About Our Reli­gion, and Oth­er Prob­lems With Polling (Reli­gion Dis­patch­es). There real­ly is a prob­lem devel­op­ing with polling, which is bad news because we rely upon polling in our nation­al life to tell us what the pub­lic thinks. Nate Sil­ver is also wor­ried about this — Polling Is Get­ting Hard­er, But It’s A Vital Check On Pow­er (FiveThir­tyEight).
    • An insight­ful obser­va­tion from the “Lying About Our Reli­gion” arti­cle: “In a democ­ra­cy with hun­dreds of mil­lions of peo­ple, how do you know what the pub­lic thinks and wants? How do you fig­ure out what binds them togeth­er, besides an annu­al oblig­a­tion to the IRS and a love of fire­works? In short: how do you know what the pub­lic is? Like many hard ques­tions, these prob­lems have been ren­dered large­ly invis­i­ble, in no small part because “The Pub­lic” and “The Amer­i­can Peo­ple” are favorite fic­tion­al char­ac­ters for politi­cians and jour­nal­ists, who speak of them with­out a trace of pre­ci­sion. So let’s indulge in a quick real­i­ty check. The Super Bowl—that nation­al spec­ta­cle that unites us around the flick­er­ing LCD hearth—had 115 mil­lion view­ers in the Unit­ed States last Feb­ru­ary; in oth­er words, near­ly two-thirds of us weren’t watch­ing it. The most-viewed polit­i­cal spec­ta­cle of the year, the State of the Union address, draws around 10% of the pop­u­la­tion. Barack Oba­ma won the 2012 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion with 62 mil­lion votes, mean­ing that few­er than 20% of us vot­ed for him. The peo­ple have spoken…kind of.”
  5. Quick links:

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.