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Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 501: college students, colleges, and youth in general



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.

I’ve had a scat­tered week, so a lil’ less con­tent than usu­al here. Enjoy!

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Sec­u­lar Col­lege Stu­dents Find Ordi­nary Chris­tian­i­ty Per­sua­sive (Dylan Muss­er, The Gospel Coali­tion): “I serve as a cam­pus min­is­ter at one of the most pres­ti­gious and sec­u­lar uni­ver­si­ties in the South, and I’ve noticed that many stu­dents have become dis­en­chant­ed with sec­u­lar­ism.… The vis­i­ble beau­ty of ordi­nary Chris­t­ian liv­ing is a per­sua­sive apolo­getic for today’s stu­dents. It may encour­age even skep­ti­cal stu­dents to recon­sid­er a faith they’ve dis­missed.”
    • The author does cam­pus min­istry at Van­der­bilt.
  2. How Gen Z Became the Most Gullible Gen­er­a­tion (Cather­ine Kim, Politi­co): “It’s a star­tling real­i­ty about Gen Z, backed up by mul­ti­ple stud­ies and what we can all see for our­selves: The most online gen­er­a­tion is also the worst at dis­cern­ing fact from fic­tion on the inter­net.”
  3. The Road to Cam­pus Serf­dom (John O. McGin­nis, Law & Lib­er­ty): “Today’s cir­cum­stances stark­ly illus­trate how expan­sive fed­er­al con­trol over civ­il soci­ety, orig­i­nal­ly cel­e­brat­ed by pro­gres­sives, returns to haunt its archi­tects. The left’s out­rage ought to focus not on this par­tic­u­lar admin­is­tra­tion but on its own reck­less empow­er­ment of the state.”
    • The author is a law pro­fes­sor at North­west­ern.
  4. The Chris­t­ian and Jew­ish Israelis Pro­tect­ing West Bank Pales­tini­ans (Jill Nel­son, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Jonathan Pex is con­cerned about his Pales­tin­ian Bedouin neigh­bors in the West Bank’s South Hebron Hills. They’re sheep­herders who live in an expan­sive cave out­fit­ted with solar elec­tric­i­ty, ten min­utes from Pex’s home. The region has seen an uptick in Israeli set­tler vio­lence against Pales­tini­ans since the Octo­ber 2023 Hamas attacks, and the Pales­tin­ian fam­i­ly is afraid they may be next on the set­tler­s’ hit list, as they’ve had sev­er­al dis­putes with their neigh­bors over graz­ing rights.… ‘I’m going to do what­ev­er I can to sup­port them,’ Pex said. ‘Jesus would have real­ly had a heart for these people.‘”
    • A fas­ci­nat­ing sto­ry.
  5. Make Chris­tian­i­ty cool again: Why Gen Z is flock­ing to church (Helen Cof­fey, The Inde­pen­dent): “Inter­est­ing­ly, a major piece of research on teenage well­be­ing con­duct­ed by sci­en­tists at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oxford and Swansea Uni­ver­si­ty last year found that just three ele­ments strong­ly cor­re­lat­ed with bet­ter ado­les­cent men­tal health: get­ting enough sleep, reg­u­lar exer­cise and – wait for it – attend­ing reli­gious ser­vices.”
    • A British per­spec­tive on reli­gious renew­al among young peo­ple.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 500: faith, China, and Trump

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

This is the 500th time I’ve com­posed this email. I thought I might do some­thing spe­cial this week to com­mem­o­rate that mile­stone, but there are too many inter­est­ing arti­cles I’ve run across — this will a reg­u­lar install­ment. Enjoy!

Maybe when we get to vol­ume 520 — that will sig­ni­fy ten years of emails.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Amer­i­cans Haven’t Found a Sat­is­fy­ing Alter­na­tive to Reli­gion (Lau­ren Jack­son, New York Times): “America’s sec­u­lar­iza­tion was an immense social trans­for­ma­tion. Has it left us bet­ter off? Peo­ple are unhap­pi­er than they’ve ever been and the coun­try is in an epi­dem­ic of lone­li­ness. It’s not just sec­u­lar­ism that’s to blame, but those with­out reli­gious affil­i­a­tion in par­tic­u­lar rank low­er on key met­rics of well-being. They feel less con­nect­ed to oth­ers, less spir­i­tu­al­ly at peace and they expe­ri­ence less awe and grat­i­tude reg­u­lar­ly.”
    • Unlocked. Note that this is not in the opin­ion sec­tion (some­what sur­pris­ing­ly, it is in the style sec­tion). The author is an ex-Mor­mon.
  2. Ross Douthat: Why It’s Log­i­cal to Believe in God (Bari Weiss inter­view­ing Ross Douthat, The Free Press): “The book of Gen­e­sis begins with an admo­ni­tion: Fill the Earth, and sub­due it. We’ve done that. We have reached an inter­est­ing point in his­to­ry from a reli­gious point of view. And there’s a real­ly open question—where do we go next? Do we col­lapse? Do we go to the stars? Do we become tran­shu­man? Do we merge with the machines and so on? So, it’s a high-stakes moment. And if God exists and he has inten­tions for us, it’s real­ly impor­tant at a high-stakes moment to take those inten­tions into account. I think of peo­ple like Musk and Alt­man. The con­test for their lit­er­al souls is real­ly impor­tant to the whole future of the human race. If God exists, it’s a big moment. You want belief to win out over the alter­na­tives.”
  3. The Con­ven­tion­al Wis­dom Is That Chi­na Is Beat­ing Us. Non­sense. (Tyler Cowen, The Free Press): “The bot­tom line is that the smartest enti­ties in the world—the top AI programs—will not just be West­ern but like­ly even Amer­i­can in their intel­lec­tu­al and ide­o­log­i­cal ori­en­ta­tions for some while to come.… Mov­ing to a world where the AIs are the smartest enti­ties in Chi­na, rather than the CCP, is for Chi­na a rad­i­cal change—and one the CCP is prob­a­bly very afraid of. Much of the legit­i­ma­cy of the CCP sprang from its claim to be a wise man­ag­er of the Chi­nese lega­cy. But now it will be out­sourc­ing that man­age­ment to West­ern-based AI mod­els. From a West­ern geopo­lit­i­cal point of view, that could end up a lot bet­ter, and more effec­tive, than plant­i­ng a bunch of spies in the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment.”
  4. Chris Tomlin’s New Song Res­ur­rects The World’s Old­est Known Hymn (Bob Smi­etana, The Roys Report): “A new ver­sion of the Oxyrhynchus Hymn debuted last week, cour­tesy of a new trans­la­tion from Dick­son and help from Chris Tom­lin and Ben Field­ing, two of the most pop­u­lar mod­ern wor­ship song­writ­ers.… ‘I think the most the­o­log­i­cal­ly sig­nif­i­cant thing is that it’s a hymn to the Trin­i­ty — Father, Son and Holy Spir­it, the cen­tu­ry before the Nicene Creed,’ he said.”
  5. Belief in an After­life is Increas­ing in the Unit­ed States (Ryan Burge, Sub­stack): “In that first data col­lec­tion in 1973, about 76% of folks believed in some­thing beyond this life. But by 1990, that fig­ure had crept up to just about 80% and it con­tin­ued to rise very slow­ly from there. Real­ly, from 2000 all the way through 2022, the esti­mates are all basi­cal­ly the same. Even today, the share of Amer­i­cans who believe in life after death is 82%. When peo­ple ask me, “Is the Unit­ed States a reli­gious country?” This is the stat that I’m going to trot out.’ ”
    • Empha­sis removed for read­abil­i­ty.
  6. The Rot­ten Fruit of Oberge­fell: On the Kel­ly Lov­ing Act (Jake Meador, Mere Ortho­doxy): “For the past ten years we have already held, as a nation, that the state defines mar­riage. Why then should the state not also get to define what a par­ent is or what good par­ent­ing is? The Kel­ly Lov­ing Act, in oth­er words, is an obvi­ous out­work­ing of the log­ic of Oberge­fell, the Supreme Court rul­ing that rede­fined mar­riage.”
  7. Trump is all over the news. Here are some things that caught my inter­est. Remem­ber that my shar­ing an arti­cle is not a sign that I agree with it com­plete­ly, it is a mere­ly a sign that I think it makes points or tells a sto­ry worth con­sid­er­ing. See the dis­claimers at the bot­tom: I assure you they are heart­felt.
    • Get Out by Good Fri­day, Feds Say to Afghan Chris­tians (John McCor­ma­ck, The Dis­patch): “Ahmad’s con­ver­sion to Chris­tian­i­ty after attend­ing a uni­ver­si­ty in Afghanistan led to his impris­on­ment by the Taliban—where he said he was beat­en and tor­tured via elec­tric shock—before fel­low Chris­tians were able to ran­som him from Tal­iban cap­tiv­i­ty. The same Chris­tians who got Ahmad out of prison then got him out of Afghanistan by help­ing him trav­el to Brazil. Ahmad tra­versed on foot the Darién Gap that con­nects Cen­tral and South Amer­i­ca for three days and ultimately—after pre­sent­ing him­self at the south­ern U.S. bor­der seek­ing asylum—made a home for him­self in Raleigh.…  Ahmad, like some oth­er Afghans legal­ly liv­ing in the Unit­ed States, received a let­ter from the Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty (DHS) telling him he must leave the coun­try by Good Fri­day.”
    • Prece­dent Trump (Jon­ah Gold­berg, The Dis­patch): “It has been a dream of the left for ages to get rid of the tax-exempt sta­tus and rel­a­tive auton­o­my of reli­gious institutions—Christian uni­ver­si­ties, char­i­ties, hos­pi­tals, etc. If Trump suc­ceeds in mak­ing the IRS revoke Harvard’s tax-exempt sta­tus, based in no small part on per­son­al oppo­si­tion to what Har­vard teach­es, what will be the prin­ci­pled objec­tion to a Pres­i­dent Alexan­dria Oca­sio-Cortez or Eliz­a­beth War­ren when the Eye of Mor­dor swings right­ward?”
    • No, the Pres­i­dent Has Not Defied a Supreme Court Rul­ing (Jeb Ruben­feld, The Free Press): “Due process is a bul­wark of the Con­sti­tu­tion and the rule of law, and the courts must not allow its vio­la­tion. But Trump oppo­nents, like Pro­fes­sor Sny­der, are mak­ing a mis­take when they try to paint this case as a mas­sive assault on due process. For now at least, this case is anoth­er exam­ple of the hyper­bole over a Trump run-in with the courts out­run­ning the facts of the case.”
      • The author is a pro­fes­sor of con­sti­tu­tion­al law at Yale. I found this arti­cle reas­sur­ing in the abstract, while still being dis­pleased over the par­tic­u­lars of this case. There’s a sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ence between deport­ing some­one from the coun­try and deport­ing them into a for­eign prison.
    • Inside the ‘Tropical Gulag’ in El Sal­vador Where U.S. Detainees Are Being Held (Annie Cor­re­al, New York Times): “Deaths and phys­i­cal abuse in CECOT remain undoc­u­ment­ed because of a lack of access to inmates or any­one who has been released, said Juani­ta Goe­ber­tus, Amer­i­c­as direc­tor at Human Rights Watch. But, she added, ‘Based on the tor­ture and mis­treat­ment we have doc­u­ment­ed in oth­er pris­ons in El Sal­vador, we have every rea­son to believe that peo­ple sent to CECOT are at high risk of abuse.’ The U.S. gov­ern­ment itself spot­light­ed atroc­i­ties in El Salvador’s pris­ons in 2023. At El Salvador’s two dozen oth­er jails, rights groups have doc­u­ment­ed sys­tem­at­ic tor­ture, forced con­fes­sions and what Noah Bul­lock, the exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Sal­vado­ran human rights group Cristos­al, calls ‘the inten­tion­al denial of access to basic neces­si­ties like food, water, health care, hygiene.‘”
      • I find these alle­ga­tions plau­si­ble because of my belief in deprav­i­ty. Humans do bad things when they have peo­ple com­plete­ly under their con­trol, espe­cial­ly when there is lit­tle exter­nal over­sight or account­abil­i­ty. We may learn in time that the details are off, but the essen­tial com­plaint is almost cer­tain­ly cor­rect.
    • White House of Wor­ship: Chris­t­ian Prayer Rings Out Under Trump (Eliz­a­beth Dias & Ruth Gra­ham, New York Times): “Rou­tine­ly, and often at Mr. Trump’s enthu­si­as­tic direc­tion, senior admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials and allied pas­tors are infus­ing their brand of Chris­t­ian wor­ship into the work­ings of the White House itself, sug­gest­ing that his cam­paign promise to ‘bring back Chris­tian­i­ty’ is tak­ing tan­gi­ble root.… Mr. Trump’s team has host­ed brief­in­gs and lis­ten­ing ses­sions billed as oppor­tu­ni­ties for the lead­ers to share their par­tic­u­lar con­cerns, which have ranged wide­ly: reli­gious lib­er­ty, adop­tion and fos­ter care, the break­down of the nuclear fam­i­ly, human traf­fick­ing, urban pover­ty and anti­semitism, among oth­ers.”
    • All the President’s Pas­tors: Who’s Advis­ing Trump? (Har­vest Prude, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “The pres­i­dent hasn’t pub­licly attend­ed a church ser­vice since his inau­gu­ra­tion day, he doesn’t hold mem­ber­ship in a par­tic­u­lar con­gre­ga­tion or denom­i­na­tion, he’s gone back and forth over whether he needs to ask for God’s for­give­ness, and he avoids speak­ing in detail about his per­son­al devo­tion­al life, so what we know about Trump’s faith comes large­ly from the pas­tors around him at the White House—starting with Paula White-Cain.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 499: OCD, Morality, and Tariffs



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.

Next week is vol­ume 500. I can’t decide whether it will be just anoth­er issue or some­thing a lil’ dif­fer­ent.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. In his own words: Colts RT Braden Smith’s des­per­ate, life-threat­en­ing fight vs OCD (Joel A. Erick­son, Indi­anapo­lis Star): “Smith has always gone to church, but he’d com­mit­ted ful­ly to his Chris­t­ian faith, and an obses­sive-com­pul­sive dis­or­der began to warp his faith into some­thing sin­is­ter. From the out­side, it looked like Smith was div­ing deep into his faith. He devoured the Bible, quot­ed Scrip­ture, sought out believ­ers for con­ver­sa­tions. He prayed con­stant­ly and start­ed lis­ten­ing to Chris­t­ian music exclu­sive­ly. Inter­nal­ly, a dis­or­der Smith didn’t real­ize he had was twist­ing the words. ‘There’s the actu­al, real, true, liv­ing God,’ Smith said. ‘And then there’s my OCD god, and the OCD god is this con­demn­ing (deity). It’s like every wrong move you make, it’s like smack­ing the ruler against his hand. “Anoth­er bad move like that and you’re out of here.“ ‘”
    • A grip­ping sto­ry.
  2. Appeal­ing to Moral Sen­ti­ments in an Amoral Age (O. Alan Noble, Sub­stack): “…the moral sen­ti­ments peo­ple have can be real indi­ca­tions of spir­i­tu­al real­i­ties.
    The anx­i­ety a young woman feels about her iden­ti­ty may be a real indi­ca­tion that expres­sive indi­vid­u­al­ism is hol­low. The lone­li­ness a young woman feels in vapid, greedy sex­u­al rela­tion­ships may be a real indi­ca­tion that sex was cre­at­ed for union (and pro­cre­ation). Instead of treat­ing emo­tions as ran­dom or irrel­e­vant or con­ced­ing that neg­a­tive emo­tions are exclu­sive­ly the purview of the ther­a­pist and psy­chi­a­trist, we acknowl­edge that the felt expe­ri­ences of young women are a sign point­ing them to who they were cre­at­ed to be. And this isn’t just true for young women. I think there are many young men who need to hear this approach as well.”
  3. About the tar­iffs:
    • Trade deficits do not make a coun­try poor­er (Noah Smith, Sub­stack): “Does using your cred­it card to buy a wash­ing machine from Tar­get mean that Tar­get has ripped you off? No. Does it make you poor­er when you use your cred­it card to buy a wash­ing machine from Tar­get? Nope. You now have less mon­ey, but you have more stuff. In just the same way, a trade deficit means that the U.S. has less mon­ey and more stuff. It does not mean Amer­i­ca is poor­er, or that it has been ripped off by for­eign­ers.”
      • This is a help­ful explain­er of some key con­cepts which are in the news.
    • Don­ald Trump’s eco­nom­ic mas­ter­plan (Yanis Varo­ufakis, Unherd): “Though we risk the abyss star­ing back when we attempt to gaze into Trump’s mind, we do need a grasp of his think­ing on three fun­da­men­tal ques­tions: why does he believe that Amer­i­ca is exploit­ed by the rest of the world? What is his vision for a new inter­na­tion­al order in which Amer­i­ca can be ‘great’ again? How does he plan to bring it about? Only then can we pro­duce a sen­si­ble cri­tique of Trump’s eco­nom­ic mas­ter­plan.”
      • Rec­om­mend­ed to me by an alum­nus. The things I find most inter­est­ing about this one is (a) it’s by a for­eign expert [an econ­o­mist who served as the Greek min­is­ter of finance] and (b) although writ­ten in Feb­ru­ary it antic­i­pat­ed the type of tar­iff that was imple­ment­ed (trade imbal­ance tar­iffs) instead of what had been expect­ed (rec­i­p­ro­cal tar­iffs).
    • There’s a Method to Trump’s Tar­iff Mad­ness (Jen­nifer Burns, New York Times): “Mr. Trump’s tar­iffs aren’t real­ly about tar­iffs. They are the open­ing gam­bit in a more ambi­tious plan to smash the world’s eco­nom­ic and geopo­lit­i­cal order and replace it with some­thing intend­ed to bet­ter serve Amer­i­can inter­ests. This plan is often referred to as the Mar-a-Lago Accord.”
      • The author is a his­to­ry pro­fes­sor at Stan­ford.
  4. What Age Do Peo­ple Around the World Think Is Best to Reach Major Life Mile­stones? (Janell Fet­terolf et al, Pew Research): “When is the right time in life to get mar­ried or have a child? What is the best age to buy a home? Is there an ide­al age for retire­ment? We asked adults in 18 most­ly mid­dle-income coun­tries what they think is the best age to reach these life mile­stones. Over­all, there is a lot of agree­ment around the world. On aver­age across the coun­tries sur­veyed, peo­ple say it is best to get mar­ried and have a first child around 26 years old.… Gen­er­al­ly, peo­ple across the 18 coun­tries sur­veyed think it’s best to get mar­ried in one’s mid-20s. Aver­age ide­al ages range from 21.2 in Bangladesh to 28.9 in Argenti­na.”
    • Empha­sis in orig­i­nal.
  5. Why Pales­tin­ian Chris­tians Feel Betrayed by Amer­i­can Chris­tians (Nicholas Kristof, New York Times): “Few­er than 2 per­cent of West Bank Pales­tini­ans today are Chris­t­ian, but they are an influ­en­tial minor­i­ty who endure the same land grabs and hard­ships as the major­i­ty Mus­lim pop­u­la­tion.”
    • It is a short col­umn, but one thing I wish Kristof had parsed out were the dif­fer­ences between Pales­tin­ian evan­gel­i­cals and Pales­tin­ian Catholics and Pales­tin­ian main­line Protes­tants. I think they each have dif­fer­ent things to say.
    • Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
  6. Near­ly 300 Stu­dents Have Had Visas Revoked and Could Face Depor­ta­tion (Vimal Patel, Miri­am Jor­dan & Hali­na Ben­net, New York Times): “Near­ly 300 inter­na­tion­al stu­dents were abrupt­ly stripped of their abil­i­ty to stay in the Unit­ed States in recent days, accord­ing to uni­ver­si­ties and media reports, sow­ing fear among stu­dents and con­fu­sion at schools scram­bling to help stu­dents fac­ing deten­tion and pos­si­ble depor­ta­tion.… In some cas­es, immi­gra­tion offi­cers have arrest­ed inter­na­tion­al stu­dents relat­ed to their involve­ment in pro-Pales­tin­ian caus­es. In oth­er cas­es, stu­dents had com­mit­ted legal infrac­tions, such as dri­ving over the speed lim­it or while intox­i­cat­ed, often years ago, sev­er­al immi­gra­tion lawyers said in inter­views. But lawyers said the Trump admin­is­tra­tion had often giv­en no rea­son at all, leav­ing them to guess why stu­dents were tar­get­ed.… The Unit­ed States issued more than 400,000 visas to stu­dents in 2024.”
    • While I am sure almost all inter­na­tion­al stu­dents find the poli­cies dis­tress­ing, they should find the data in this arti­cle reas­sur­ing. To date few­er than one tenth of one per­cent of inter­na­tion­al stu­dents have had their visas revoked. 300/400000 = .00075 
  7. Insti­tu­tions Don’t Main­tain Them­selves (James Did­dams, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Jesus told Peter to for­give the broth­er or sis­ter who sins against him ‘not sev­en times, but sev­en­ty-sev­en times’ (Matt. 18:21–22). I’ve come to think Chris­tians have some oblig­a­tion of for­give­ness to our insti­tu­tions, too—some duty of love and sac­ri­fice to pre­serve and repair these right­ful­ly time-hon­ored ways of orga­niz­ing and shap­ing our lives.… Where did we ever get the idea that these insti­tu­tions would some­how main­tain them­selves? That they would always be there for us, meet­ing all our hopes, in per­fect work­ing order, with­out repair or for­give­ness from us?”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 498: Armageddon, arXiv, and penguins

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. Archae­ol­o­gists find first evi­dence of epic bib­li­cal bat­tle at ‘Armageddon’ (Rossel­la Ter­catin, The Times of Israel): “For the first time, a team of Israeli archae­ol­o­gists has uncov­ered ancient arti­facts at north­ern Israel’s ‘Armaged­don’ site that might offer proof of an epic bat­tle doc­u­ment­ed in the books of Kings II and Chron­i­cles between a king of Judah and an Egypt­ian pharaoh. Two aca­d­e­m­ic papers pub­lished ear­li­er this year explained how an unprece­dent­ed amount of 7th-cen­tu­ry BCE Egypt­ian pot­tery was found in recent exca­va­tions at Megid­do, sug­gest­ing that Egypt­ian sol­diers were indeed in the right bib­li­cal place at what could be the right bib­li­cal peri­od.”
  2. ‘I Applied for a Work Visa—and Was Thrown in Prison for Week­s’ (Jas­mine Mooney, The Free Press): “Then I was tak­en to the nurse’s office for a med­ical check. She asked what had hap­pened to me and said she had nev­er seen a Cana­di­an here before. When I told her my sto­ry, she looked at me, grabbed my hand, and said, ‘Do you believe in God?’ I told her I had only recent­ly found God, but that I now believed in God more than any­thing. ‘I believe God brought you here for a rea­son,’ she said. ‘I know it feels like your life is in a mil­lion pieces, but you will be okay. Through this, I think you are going to find a way to help oth­ers.’ She asked if she could pray for me. I held her hands and wept.”
  3. Inside arXiv—the Most Trans­for­ma­tive Plat­form in All of Sci­ence (Sheon Han, Wired): “For sci­en­tists, imag­in­ing a world with­out arX­iv is like the rest of us imag­in­ing one with­out pub­lic libraries or GPS. But a look at its inner work­ings reveals that it isn’t a fric­tion­less utopia of open-access knowl­edge. Over the years, arXiv’s per­ma­nence has been threat­ened by every­thing from bureau­crat­ic strife to out­dat­ed code to even, once, a spy scan­dal. In the words of Ginsparg, who usu­al­ly redi­rects inter­view requests to an FAQ document—on arX­iv, no less—and tried to talk me out of vis­it­ing him in per­son, arX­iv is ‘a child I sent off to col­lege but who keeps com­ing back to camp out in my liv­ing room, behav­ing badly.‘”
  4. Rubio Orders U.S. Diplo­mats to Scour Stu­dent Visa Appli­cants’ Social Media (Edward Wong, New York Times): “As a sen­a­tor from Flori­da, Mr. Rubio pressed the Biden administration’s State Depart­ment, run by Antony J. Blinken, to can­cel the visas of stu­dents involved in cam­pus protests against Israel’s mil­i­tary cam­paign in Gaza. Since becom­ing sec­re­tary of state in late Jan­u­ary, Mr. Rubio has revoked per­haps 300 or more visas, many of them belong­ing to stu­dents, he told reporters last Thurs­day. He said he had been sign­ing let­ters dai­ly revok­ing visas.”
  5. Trump’s intu­itions on tar­iffs won’t help Amer­i­cans (or pen­guins) (Megan McAr­dle, Wash­ing­ton Post): “…I spent the twi­light hours gog­gling at the Trump administration’s new tar­iff sched­ule, try­ing to grasp its log­ic. For exam­ple, the tar­iffs on the Heard and McDon­ald islands, which have pop­u­la­tions of zero, except for the pen­guins and assort­ed oth­er ani­mals. I mean, I’m glad that the rapa­cious wad­dlers will no longer fleece Amer­i­can con­sumers by dump­ing their shod­dy goods on our mar­kets. But still the thing vexed me … what do pen­guins export? Besides nature doc­u­men­taries, I mean. Obvi­ous­ly some­one at the White House, pos­si­bly a soon-to-be-ex intern, pulled up a list of ter­ri­to­ries with­out check­ing whether those ter­ri­to­ries were, you know, inhab­it­ed.”
    • Unlocked. As McAr­dle notes, a sin­gle absur­di­ty like that is not unusu­al for a mas­sive fed­er­al pol­i­cy. She moves quick­ly to a sub­stan­tive cri­tique.
    • Relat­ed: Kak­istoc­ra­cy as a Nat­ur­al Result of Pop­ulism (Richard Hana­nia, Sub­stack): “The for­mu­la of ‘reci­procity’ being used is so stu­pid I approach the top­ic with awe, and have an almost super­sti­tious feel­ing that if I even describe it I’ll some­how become stu­pid­er myself… The word ‘kak­istoc­ra­cy’ means rule by those least suit­ed to gov­ern. His argu­ment, sim­i­lar to one I’ve made before, is that Trump only cares about loy­al­ty, and a move­ment that pri­or­i­tizes loy­al­ty to a sin­gle extreme­ly flawed man is going to facil­i­tate the worst peo­ple ris­ing to the top.”
      • A wild rant, plus I learned a new word.
  6. The Great­est Hate Hoax of All Time? The Cana­di­an ‘Mass Graves’ Lie Unrav­els (Wil­fred Reil­ly, Nation­al Review): “…there is a rough­ly 0.00 per­cent chance that there are actu­al­ly 200 dead Native kids interred on the grounds of a well-known board­ing school that oper­at­ed until 1978. Such things hap­pen in the Saw movies, not in urban mod­ern Cana­da. And, as I note in my ear­li­er piece on this top­ic: ‘Kam­loops Res­i­den­tial School is locat­ed smack-dab in the mid­dle of both the well-known Kam­loops Indi­an Reser­va­tion and the 100,000 per­son city of Kam­loops in British Colum­bia.’ Not­ing this him­self, Dr. Rouil­lard asks: ‘Is it real­ly cred­i­ble that the remains of 200 chil­dren were buried clan­des­tine­ly in a mass grave, on the reserve itself, with­out any reac­tion from the Band Coun­cil, until last summer?‘”
    • The author is a polit­i­cal sci­en­tist at Ken­tucky State (which I learned today is a HBCU) whose schol­ar­ship focus­es on hate crime hoax­es.
  7. ‘Our Kids Are the Least Flour­ish­ing Gen­er­a­tion We Know Of’ (Ezra Klein, New York Times): “Teenagers are des­per­ate for pres­tige. And what the social media com­pa­nies did — and we know this from things that insid­ers have said — is they hacked that. Nor­mal­ly, through­out his­to­ry, to become pres­ti­gious, you had to become a good archer or a good leader or a good bas­ket weaver. You had to do some­thing in the world. And then peo­ple would respect you, and you would gain social sta­tus. That’s the way it always used to be. What social media is able to do is say: You don’t have to do any­thing. Just do what­ev­er it takes to get peo­ple to fol­low you. And bin­go — you’ve got pres­tige.”
    • Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus. Long but worth­while. I should men­tion that at the end Haidt rec­om­mends three books he wants every 20something to read. I am hap­py to endorse the lat­ter two. Replace the first with the New Tes­ta­ment.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

  • An AI Gen­er­at­ed Com­ic (on Twit­ter)
  • Author­ship The­o­ries (SMBC) — let the read­er under­stand its rel­e­vance to Bib­li­cal schol­ar­ship
  • ‘Monster’ under bed in Kansas town leads to arrest (Wil Day, KSN): “The Bar­ton Coun­ty Sheriff’s Office says a babysit­ter was putting the chil­dren to bed when one of them told her that a “monster” was under their bed. The babysit­ter, hop­ing to com­fort the child by show­ing them there was noth­ing, looked under the bed and came face-to-face with a man hid­ing under­neath. There was an alter­ca­tion, and the babysit­ter and a child were knocked over.”
    • THERE WAS ACTUALLY A MONSTER UNDER THE BED. That kid ain’t nev­er falling asleep again.
  • Basic Instruc­tions (Basic Instruc­tions): the first pan­el is what got me: “for now”
  • Pen­guin Tar­iffs (Dork Tow­er)

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 497: Christianity in Space, Redeeming Turkish Delight, and How To Sneeze

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. Strand­ed Astro­naut Held Onto Faith in Dark­est Moments: ‘God Was There’ (Sylvia St. Cyr, The Roys Report): “After being strand­ed for nine months in space, vet­er­an NASA astro­naut Bar­ry ‘Butch’ Wilmore is shar­ing how his faith in God kept him going.… Wilmore, a mem­ber and elder of Prov­i­dence Bap­tist Church in Pasade­na, Texas, stayed con­nect­ed with his church through­out his time in space. He even made a few calls to some elder­ly church mem­bers through­out his time strand­ed on the sta­tion, to encour­age them.”
  2. What Fol­lows from Lab Leak? (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “First, and most impor­tant­ly, the high­er the prob­a­bil­i­ty that SARS-CoV­‑2 leaked from a lab the high­er the prob­a­bil­i­ty we should expect anoth­er pan­dem­ic. Research at Wuhan was not espe­cial­ly unusu­al or high-tech. Mod­i­fy­ing virus­es such as coro­n­avirus­es (e.g., insert­ing spike pro­teins, adapt­ing recep­tor-bind­ing domains) is com­mon prac­tice in virol­o­gy research and gain-of-func­tion exper­i­ments with virus­es have been wide­ly con­duct­ed. Thus, man­u­fac­tur­ing a virus capa­ble of killing ~20 mil­lion human beings or more is well with­in the capa­bil­i­ty of say ~500‑1000 labs world­wide. The num­ber of such labs is grow­ing in num­ber and such research is becom­ing less cost­ly and eas­i­er to con­duct. Thus, lab-leak means the risks are larg­er than we thought and increas­ing.”
    • Some very prac­ti­cal sug­ges­tions in this short piece.
  3. The Hid­den Hands: Amanu­enses and the Let­ters Behind the Let­ters (C. Michael Pat­ton, Cre­do House): “Yes, the sec­re­taries could write com­pe­tent Greek. But often, due to the per­son­al addi­tions at the end of these let­ters, I was able to com­pare the hand­writ­ing and style of the author him­self. And get this: in many cas­es, the author’s own Greek was bet­ter than the scribe’s. More refined. More flu­id. More leg­i­ble. This shat­tered my assump­tions. It meant that we can’t assume that peo­ple used sec­re­taries only because they were illit­er­ate, une­d­u­cat­ed, or of low sta­tus. On the con­trary, peo­ple who were clear­ly capa­ble writers—sometimes bet­ter writers—still made use of amanu­enses.”
    • This is a fas­ci­nat­ing look at the way ancient let­ters were writ­ten with the help of assis­tants — includ­ing let­ters in the New Tes­ta­ment.
    • Vague­ly relat­ed (in the sense that it’s about the his­tor­i­cal back­ground for Bible stuff): Did Jesus teach in Greek? (Ian Paul, blog): “The argu­ment about Jesus and Greek has sev­er­al lay­ers, start­ing with the most gen­er­al. Were the regions Jesus taught in mul­ti­lin­gual (poly­glot), and how do we know? Is it like­ly that Jesus him­self was mul­ti­lin­gual? And is there spe­cif­ic evi­dence of this in the New Tes­ta­ment, in exam­ples of his teach­ing?”
  4. Why Chris­t­ian Men Need Friend­ship, Not Just “Account­abil­i­ty” (Samuel D. James, Sub­stack): “Account­abil­i­ty is a fruit from a much larg­er tree. In an age in which mil­lions of Amer­i­can men are so lone­ly it’s lit­er­al­ly killing them, the urgent issue is not find­ing some­one to receive a report of your web activ­i­ty. It’s find­ing some­one who’ll talk to you at all. Why? Because friend­ship has a sanc­ti­fy­ing pow­er. Not only is it eas­i­er to be hon­est and trans­par­ent with some­one whom you’re con­vinced is a true friend, but the friend­ship itself is a means of grace in the fight against lust.”
  5. The Trump Admin­is­tra­tion Acci­den­tal­ly Texted Me Its War Plans (Jef­frey Gold­berg, The Atlantic): “I had very strong doubts that this text group was real, because I could not believe that the nation­al-secu­ri­ty lead­er­ship of the Unit­ed States would com­mu­ni­cate on Sig­nal about immi­nent war plans. I also could not believe that the nation­al secu­ri­ty advis­er to the pres­i­dent would be so reck­less as to include the edi­tor in chief of The Atlantic in such dis­cus­sions with senior U.S. offi­cials, up to and includ­ing the vice pres­i­dent.”
    • A wild sto­ry. Lots of fol­low-up in the news. Just google for it.
    • Sev­en Ways of Look­ing at a Group Chat (Nick Cat­to­gio, The Dis­patch): “There are three dis­tinct scan­dals here and dif­fer­ent cul­prits in each one. The first is using Sig­nal instead of secure gov­ern­ment chan­nels to dis­cuss some­thing as sen­si­tive as mil­i­tary strikes. Every­one involved, save Jef­frey Gold­berg, bears respon­si­bil­i­ty for that. The sec­ond is mis­tak­en­ly includ­ing Gold­berg in the dis­cus­sion, for which Waltz would seem to be at fault. And the third is going so far as to share ‘oper­a­tional details’ in the chat, poten­tial­ly plac­ing peo­ple in the field at risk, which sure sounds like reck­less mis­han­dling of clas­si­fied information—a sub­ject on which Repub­li­cans have had a lot to say in recent years. The blame for that would appear to land on Hegseth.”
    • Inves­ti­ga­tion Reveals DOGE Had Just Laid Off The Guy Whose Job It Was To Make Sure Jef­frey Gold­berg Wasn’t In The War Group Chat (Baby­lon Bee)
  6. The Inklings:
    • Why JRR Tolkien Made March 25 the Day the Ring Was Destroyed (Joseph Pearce, Nation­al Catholic Reg­is­ter): “Fro­do Bag­gins, as the one cho­sen to be the Ring bear­er, is the Cross bear­er. He is, there­fore, a Christ fig­ure. This is why Tolkien has him leav­ing Riven­dell on Dec. 25 and arriv­ing at Mount Doom (Gol­go­tha) on March 25 (Good Fri­day). Frodo’s jour­ney, or pil­grim­age, begins on Christ’s birth­day and ends on the date of Christ’s death.”
    • In Search of Turk­ish Delight (Valerie Stivers, First Things): “IÅŸin quotes Amer­i­can Naval physi­cian James McK­ay, writ­ing in 1830: Turk­ish delight was ‘a deli­cious pasty-mass which melts away in the mouth, and leaves a fra­grant fla­vor behind.’ The French artist and writer Pre­tex­tat Lecomte described it as ‘beau­ti­ful’ in col­or and ‘warm and trans­par­ent.’ To make it, Turk­ish con­fec­tion­ers used hand-sift­ed wheat starch (pro­duced by a domes­tic process with a long local tra­di­tion), and employed a labo­ri­ous tech­nique that called for sev­er­al hours of con­tin­u­ous stir­ring. They used musk and rose water as fla­vor­ings, and also sprin­kled musk on the pow­dered sug­ar coat­ing. They rubbed the trays used to mold it and the scis­sors used to cut it with fra­grant almond oil. By the 1880s, IÅŸin says, the fla­vors had mul­ti­plied to include clot­ted cream, mas­tic, almond, and pis­ta­chio. In the 1900s came pine nut and hazel­nut, and fla­vors from essences or syrups such as vio­let, lemon, and bit­ter orange. This starts to sound like a dessert a child could dream of, or that an open-mind­ed and plea­sure-lov­ing adult like C. S. Lewis would find tempt­ing. It seems like­ly that very few mod­ern eaters have ever tast­ed true Turk­ish delight, at least out­side the Grand Bazaar. All con­tem­po­rary recipes use corn starch. Musk oil is ille­gal.”
      • I am both per­son­al­ly dis­ap­point­ed that I can’t taste it and thrilled that Lewis was­n’t crazy.
  7. How wor­ried should legal immi­grants be about Trump’s depor­ta­tions? (Nicole Narea, Vox): “These are uncer­tain times for many immi­grants in the US. There have been reports of indi­vid­ual visa and green card hold­ers and tourists who have been detained and deport­ed. How­ev­er, the Trump admin­is­tra­tion does not seem to be indis­crim­i­nate­ly tar­get­ing legal immi­grants who have autho­riza­tion to be in the US on a large scale. Some have report­ed­ly been tar­get­ed based on their polit­i­cal activism.…  And it’s not just immi­grants who have been affect­ed. A US cit­i­zen said he was walk­ing down the streets of Chica­go when he was arrest­ed by immi­gra­tion agents, who con­fis­cat­ed his ID and held him for 10 hours before releas­ing him. Even though lim­it­ed in num­ber, these cas­es have been going viral — and are under­stand­ably caus­ing fear in immi­grant com­mu­ni­ties.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume #496: Christianity in Silicon Valley, Bogus World Happiness, and Smut

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. Chris­tian­i­ty Was “Borderline Ille­gal” in Sil­i­con Val­ley. Now It’s the New Reli­gion (Zoë Bernard, Van­i­ty Fair): “It used to be that the 20-some­thing whiz kid who cod­ed a viral game and dropped out of Stan­ford was a ven­ture cap­i­tal­ist dar­ling. ‘VCs used to throw mon­ey at that guy,’ said a woman who man­ages com­mu­ni­ca­tions at a top-tier ven­ture firm. ‘Now if some­one comes in and says, ‘I love my par­ents so much, I grew up going to church, and then I joined the Army and that’s what gives me my work ethic,’ VCs will be like, ’Oh my God, that guy. Let’s fund that guy.’’ ”
  2. Sex With­out Women (Caitlin Flana­gan, The Atlantic): “…the force that through the green fuse dri­ves the flower (and the mon­ey) is het­ero­sex­u­al male desire for women. And here was porn so good, so var­ied, so ready to please, so instantly—insistently—available, that it led to a gen­er­a­tion of men who think of porn not as a back­up to hav­ing sex, but as an improve­ment on it. They pre­fer it.”
  3. The World Hap­pi­ness Report Is a Sham (Yascha Mounk, Sub­stack): “When you walk around the—admittedly beautiful—centers of Copen­hagen or Stock­holm, you rarely see any­body smile. Could these real­ly be the hap­pi­est places in the whole wide world? So, to hon­or World Hap­pi­ness Day, I final­ly decid­ed to fol­low my hunch, and look into the research on this top­ic more deeply. What I found was worse than I’d imag­ined. To put it polite­ly, the World Hap­pi­ness Report is beset with method­olog­i­cal prob­lems. To put it blunt­ly, it is a sham.”
    • The author is a polit­i­cal sci­ence pro­fes­sor at Johns Hop­kins.
  4. We Were Bad­ly Mis­led About the Event That Changed Our Lives (Zeynep Tufek­ci, New York Times): “If any­one needs con­vinc­ing that the next pan­dem­ic is only an acci­dent away, check out a recent paper in Cell, a pres­ti­gious sci­en­tif­ic jour­nal. Researchers, many of whom work or have worked at the Wuhan Insti­tute of Virol­o­gy (yes, the same insti­tu­tion), describe tak­ing sam­ples of virus­es found in bats (yes, the same ani­mal) and exper­i­ment­ing to see if they could infect human cells and pose a pan­dem­ic risk.… Why haven’t we learned our les­son? Maybe because it’s hard to admit this research is risky now, and to take the req­ui­site steps to keep us safe, with­out also admit­ting it was always risky. And that per­haps we were mis­led on pur­pose.”
  5. The real­i­ty of pros­ti­tu­tion is not com­plex. It is sim­ple (Rachel Moran, Psy­che): “So many of these women’s sto­ries stay with me: the 19-year-old French girl who got into pros­ti­tu­tion as a direct result of watch­ing a TV series that depict­ed pros­ti­tu­tion as glam­orous and empow­er­ing; the mid-20s Aus­tralian woman who believed – because well-fund­ed NGOs told her to believe – that ‘sex work’ was legit­i­mate employ­ment; or the ear­ly 20s Ger­man woman who told me that, because pimp­ing had been decrim­i­nalised in her coun­try, she’d got the mes­sage that what was legal­ly sanc­tioned sure­ly had to be OK. Just about every man in Ger­many seemed to have got the same mes­sage, and the result was social car­nage.”
    • The author was a pros­ti­tute from the ages of 15 to 22.
  6. As Trump Attacks Elite Col­leges, Their Usu­al Allies Are Nowhere in Sight (Ginia Bel­lafante, New York Times): “Pres­ti­gious uni­ver­si­ties have come to find adver­saries in many worlds, among the work­ing class, among rich alum­ni, among high­ly edu­cat­ed pro­gres­sives who find them self-regard­ing.”
  7. Pow­er of Babel: Real-Time AI Trans­la­tion May Be Com­ing to Church Near You (Ale­ja Hert­zler-McCain, The Roys Report): “John Mehl, a teach­ing pas­tor at Colorado’s Tim­ber­line Church, and Miguel Flo­res Rob­les, the drum­mer in the wor­ship band at Timberline’s Wind­sor cam­pus, get along well, even though they don’t under­stand each other’s lan­guage. Flo­res, who is only flu­ent in Span­ish, also is unable to com­mu­ni­cate direct­ly with the leader of the wor­ship band he plays for, even as he enjoys Mehl’s ser­mons, which are in Eng­lish. The answer to this rid­dle is arti­fi­cial-intel­li­gence real-time trans­la­tion, a tech­nol­o­gy that has yet to become wide­spread in hous­es of wor­ship but is already pro­vid­ing a way for con­gre­ga­tions to wel­come mem­bers who don’t speak their lan­guage.”
    • I find it amus­ing that in the arti­cle Tim­ber­line is described as “non­de­nom­i­na­tion­al” although it is an Assem­blies of God con­gre­ga­tion.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 495: Math Points to God, Slavery Persists, and the Gospel Draws Crowds at Stanford

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 mir­a­cle of math (Sarah Sal­vian­der, Sub­stack): “In 1960, the­o­ret­i­cal physi­cist Eugene Wign­er iden­ti­fied a meta­phys­i­cal mys­tery for the ages: why are the laws of nature so apt­ly described by math­e­mat­ics? It is a decep­tive­ly sim­ple ques­tion. We think we grasp the answer easily—until we actu­al­ly try to explain it. Wigner’s essay, titled ‘The Unrea­son­able Effec­tive­ness of Math­e­mat­ics in the Nat­ur­al Sci­ences,’ high­lights this enig­ma. The term ‘unrea­son­able’ cap­tures the bewil­der­ing real­i­ty that there is no appar­ent rea­son why math should so flaw­less­ly mir­ror the universe’s behav­iors. This sug­gests, whether intend­ed by Wign­er or not, that the answer to this mys­tery lies beyond the uni­verse.”
    • The author is an astro­physi­cist who now does apolo­get­ics.
    • For those who have nev­er seen it, here is the well-known paper: The Unrea­son­able Effec­tive­ness of Math­e­mat­ics in the Nat­ur­al Sci­ences (Eugene Wign­er, Com­mu­ni­ca­tions in Pure and Applied Math­e­mat­ics): “The mir­a­cle of the appro­pri­ate­ness of the lan­guage of math­e­mat­ics for the for­mu­la­tion of the laws of physics is a won­der­ful gift which we nei­ther under­stand nor deserve. We should be grate­ful for it and hope that it will remain valid in future research and that it will extend, for bet­ter or for worse, to our plea­sure, even though per­haps also to our baf­fle­ment, to wide branch­es of learn­ing.”
  2. The Secret Cam­paign in Chi­na to Save a Woman Chained by the Neck (Vivan Wang, New York Times): “The out­cry rip­pled nation­wide for weeks. Many observers called it the biggest moment for women’s rights in recent Chi­nese his­to­ry. The Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty sees pop­u­lar dis­con­tent as a chal­lenge to its author­i­ty, but this was so intense that it seemed even the par­ty would strug­gle to quash it. And yet, it did. To find out how, I tried to track what hap­pened to the chained woman and those who spoke out for her. I found an expan­sive web of intim­i­da­tion at home and abroad, involv­ing mass sur­veil­lance, cen­sor­ship and deten­tions — a cam­paign that con­tin­ues to this day.”
    • Pray for Chi­na reg­u­lar­ly.
    • Relat­ed: slav­ery is not a rel­ic of the past and crops up in unex­pect­ed places. UN judge guilty of forc­ing woman to work as slave (BBC): “Gasps were heard from the pub­lic gallery as the ver­dicts were giv­en, and the court was cleared as the defen­dant appeared unwell.… Mugambe, who was study­ing for a law PhD at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Oxford, had con­spired with Ugan­dan deputy high com­mis­sion­er John Leonard Muger­wa to arrange for the young woman to come to the UK.”
  3. Jesus Is A Jew (David Brooks, Com­ment): “Jesus is inher­ent­ly mysterious—a lion who is also a lamb. But he is also intel­li­gi­ble. And that’s because he lived an actu­al life in an actu­al his­tor­i­cal con­text.… Jesus is amid the muck and armed with the Word, and yet emerges as a fig­ure ulti­mate­ly alone—a vor­tex of spir­i­tu­al forces con­verg­ing in one per­son, no one else quite like him.”
  4. We Live Like Roy­al­ty and Don’t Know It (Charles Mann, The New Atlantis): “My wife and I were at a table­ful of smart, well-edu­cat­ed twen­ty-some­things — friends of the bride and groom. The wed­ding, with all its hope and aspi­ra­tion, had put them in mind of the future. As young peo­ple should, they want­ed to help make that future bright. There was so much to do! They want­ed the hun­gry to be fed, the thirsty to have water, the poor to have light, the sick to be well. But when I men­tioned how remark­able it was that a hun­dred-plus peo­ple could para­chute into a remote, unfa­mil­iar place and eat a gourmet meal untrou­bled by fears for their health and com­fort, they were sur­prised. The hero­ic sys­tems required to bring all the ele­ments of their din­ner to these tables by the sea were invis­i­ble to them. Despite their fine edu­ca­tion, they knew lit­tle about the mech­a­nisms of today’s food, water, ener­gy, and pub­lic-health sys­tems. They want­ed a bet­ter world, but they didn’t know how this one worked.”
    • Relat­ed: Break­fast for Eight Bil­lion (Charles Mann, The New Atlantis): “Some­time in the 1980s, an unprece­dent­ed change in the human con­di­tion occurred. For the first time in known his­to­ry, the aver­age per­son on Earth had enough to eat all the time.”
  5. The Work­ism Trap (Bob­by Jamieson, Plough): “And a 2018 research arti­cle found that, com­pared to women who grad­u­at­ed from low­er-ranked schools, women who attend­ed elite, selec­tive uni­ver­si­ties do not, on aver­age, earn more per hour, but they do work more. For women, it seems, the ben­e­fits of an elite diplo­ma are more time at work and low­er chances of mar­ry­ing and hav­ing chil­dren.”
    • Vague­ly relat­ed (at least to the excerpt): Are Men OK? (Eamon Whalen, The Nation): “The biggest risk fac­tor for drop­ping out of col­lege, con­trol­ling for every­thing else, is being a man. Those strug­gles have extend­ed to the labor mar­ket. When adjust­ed for infla­tion, most Amer­i­can men today earn around $3,000 less than men did in 1979, which leads to a grim real­iza­tion: Much of the nar­row­ing of the per­sis­tent wage gap between men and women can be explained by the stag­nat­ing wages for men.”
    • Com­ment­ing on the above arti­cle: Cre­at­ing a Per­mis­sion Space for Men’s Issues (Aaron Renn, Sub­stack): “The fem­i­nist movement’s suc­cess depend­ed on telling men they had to change, that there were cer­tain choic­es and behav­iors they could no longer engage in. It also explic­it­ly real­lo­cat­ed resources and posi­tions from men to women.  While I don’t think the sit­u­a­tion with men is sym­met­ri­cal, it strikes me as dubi­ous that noth­ing needs to change with regards to women. For exam­ple, as econ­o­mist Melis­sa Kear­ney, also a Brook­ings affil­i­at­ed schol­ar, doc­u­ment­ed in her superb book The Two-Par­ent Priv­i­lege — I sum­ma­rized some key find­ings — the ben­e­fits of grow­ing up in an intact fam­i­ly vs. a sin­gle par­ent home are over­whelm­ing. The Unit­ed States has the high­est share of its chil­dren liv­ing in sin­gle par­ent homes of any coun­try in the entire world. That’s Amer­i­can excep­tion­al­ism we could live with­out.” (empha­sis removed for read­abil­i­ty)
  6. Is Reli­gion Taboo at Stan­ford? (Sloane Wehman, Stan­ford Review): “On the after­noon of Mon­day March 3, hun­dreds of stu­dents con­gre­gat­ed in White Plaza to lis­ten to Cliffe Knech­tle and his son Stu­art Knech­tle debate Chris­tian­i­ty as a part of their ‘Give Me An Answer’ min­istry, a pro­gram that strives to answer tough ques­tions about faith. Cliffe and Stu­art are both pas­tors at Grace Com­mu­ni­ty Church in New Canaan, Con­necti­cut, and Cliffe has been debat­ing stu­dents on Chris­tian­i­ty since devel­op­ing the Give Me An Answer min­istry in 1991.”
  7. How Do You Solve a Prob­lem Like Mar­tinez? (Ben­jamin Flesh­man, SSRN): “All told, there are reports of 175 reli­gious stu­dent groups that were ful­ly denied offi­cial recog­ni­tion since 1990. One hun­dred and nine­teen of those groups were kicked off their cam­pus­es after Mar­tinez was decid­ed. That means that more than twice as many groups have been dere­c­og­nized in the fif­teen years since Mar­tinez than in the twen­ty years before­hand. Part of this is due to the more aggres­sive mass dere­cog­ni­tions at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Iowa, Cal­i­for­nia State Uni­ver­si­ty, and Van­der­bilt. There real­ly weren’t any mas­sive dere­cog­ni­tion cam­paigns pre-Mar­tinez, with the largest being Cal State’s dere­cog­ni­tion of a hand­ful of groups that led to the lit­i­ga­tion in Alpha Delta Chi. When you include the num­ber of recog­ni­tion issues that stopped just short of a full dere­cog­ni­tion, but which still required the inter­ven­tion of legal coun­sel or nation­al orga­ni­za­tions to resolve, the num­bers shoot to 257 total report­ed inci­dents since 1990, with 195 occur­ring post-Mar­tinez. That means rough­ly three times as many total report­ed inci­dents post-Mar­tinez as pre-Mar­tinez.”
    • Men­tions Chi Alpha (not at Stan­ford, just gen­er­al­ly) in a few places. The Beck­et Fund, with whom the author is affil­i­at­ed, are Chi Alpha’s legal rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 494: Religion at Elite Schools, Why Shrimp Must Die, and Funny Videos

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. What Does Reli­gion Look Like At Elite Uni­ver­si­ties? (Ryan Burge, Sub­stack): “Yeah, again, I am not bowled over by any huge dif­fer­ences in the reli­gious atten­dance of stu­dents at Ivy league schools ver­sus non-selec­tive insti­tu­tions. 49% of stu­dents who attend pres­ti­gious schools attend church less than once a year com­pared to 46% of stu­dents who go to a non-selec­tive school. So, those at the top end are slight­ly less reli­gious­ly active, but three points is cer­tain­ly not a chasm. That’s the gen­er­al trend here when com­par­ing across all types of atten­dance lev­els. For stu­dents at non-selec­tive schools, 19% say they attend reli­gious ser­vices about week­ly or more. It’s 14% of those at selec­tive schools. Again, a gap, but a rel­a­tive­ly small one.”
  2. Did God cre­ate log­ic? (J. Budziszews­ki, blog): “To say that He cre­at­ed log­ic would be to sug­gest that He could have done dif­fer­ent­ly and cre­at­ed illog­ic – that He could have allowed con­tra­dic­tions such as a man who is a don­key, or a two which is a three. But if I make a sen­tence by plac­ing the words ‘God can’ before a string of non­sense, that doesn’t make the sen­tence true, would it? Sen­tences like ‘Can God make a man who is not a man but a don­key?’ or ‘Can God make a two which is a three?’ wouldn’t even rise to the lev­el of being mean­ing­ful ques­tions. They would be like ask­ing ‘Can God moon­gog­gle twee­dledee?’ So we shouldn’t say that God can­not do these things, but that they can­not be done. A lot of things are exclud­ed from divine omnipo­tence not because God doesn’t have the pow­er to do them, but because in their very nature they are not ‘doable’ or pos­si­ble.”
    • The author is a pro­fes­sor of phi­los­o­phy at UT Austin.
  3. Three More Rea­sons Shrimp Must Die (Lyman Stone, Sub­stack): “All that to say, I am not insen­si­tive to the intu­ition many of us have that ani­mal tor­tur­ing real­ly is bad for some rea­son we strug­gle to artic­u­late. I think it’s because we all intu­it that ani­mal-tor­tur­ers are usu­al­ly peo­ple okay with tor­tur­ing humans too. But this leads to the wrong intu­ition that ani­mal pain per se is the yard­stick here, when real­ly virtue is the yard­stick: in fact peo­ple who are unusu­al­ly empa­thet­ic to ani­mals are prob­a­bly also peo­ple unusu­al­ly will­ing to tor­ture humans.”
  4. The Gov­ern­ment Knows A.G.I. is Com­ing (Ezra Klein, New York Times): “And while there is so much else going on in the world to cov­er, I do think there’s a good chance that, when we look back on this era in human his­to­ry, A.I. will have been the thing that mat­ters.”
    • A very long inter­view with the Biden admin’s spe­cial advis­er on AI which I found worth­while.
    • This part in par­tic­u­lar I’ll be think­ing about: “Samuel Ham­mond, who’s an econ­o­mist at the Foun­da­tion for Amer­i­can Inno­va­tion, had this piece months back called ‘Nine­ty-Five The­ses on A.I.’ One point he makes that I think about a lot is: If we had the capac­i­ty for per­fect enforce­ment, a lot of our cur­rent laws would be con­strict­ing. Laws are writ­ten with the knowl­edge that human labor is scarce. And there’s this ques­tion of what hap­pens when the sur­veil­lance state gets real­ly good. What hap­pens when A.I. makes the police state a very dif­fer­ent kind of thing than it is? What hap­pens when we have war­fare of end­less drones?”
  5. He Gave a Name to What Many Chris­tians Feel (Ruth Gra­ham, New York Times): “Mr. Renn has an unusu­al pro­file for some­one who has cap­tured the atten­tion of Amer­i­can evan­gel­i­cal­ism. He is not a pas­tor, an aca­d­e­m­ic or a politi­cian. He has no insti­tu­tion­al affil­i­a­tions with high-pro­file evan­gel­i­cal orga­ni­za­tions. He is a mild-man­nered for­mer con­sul­tant with a wide-rang­ing Sub­stack whose top­ics include urban pol­i­cy, self-improve­ment and mas­culin­i­ty.”
    • Aaron Renn is a name famil­iar to read­ers of this email. This is a pret­ty good pro­file. Unlocked.
  6. How to Think About Using Gov­ern­ment Funds for Chris­t­ian Char­i­ty (Matthew Lof­tus, Mere Ortho­doxy): “As long as we live in bio­log­i­cal bod­ies, ‘biopol­i­tics’ are unavoid­able and a nat­ur­al law per­spec­tive does not dis­tin­guish between the government’s role in pre­vent­ing a mali­cious human actor that threat­ens your life or a non­hu­man virus, fire, or can­cer cell. In either case, the gov­ern­ment has a respon­si­bil­i­ty to pre­vent deaths that it is capa­ble of pre­vent­ing.”
    • A thought­ful piece; I found it help­ful.
  7. Roman Catholic Apolo­get­ics Is Surg­ing Online. Intend­ed Audi­ence? Protes­tants. (Andrew Voigt, The Gospel Coali­tion): “Where Protes­tant apolo­get­ics is more focused on win­ning the sec­u­lar world to Christ, Roman Catholic apolo­get­ics often has a dif­fer­ent audi­ence in mind: their ‘sep­a­rat­ed brethren.’ Tar­get­ing Protes­tants is explic­it­ly encour­aged.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 493: Christianity stabilizes in America, the truth about a spying monk, & why denominations struggle

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. Christianity’s Decline in U.S. Appears to Have Halt­ed, Major Study Shows (Ruth Gra­ham, New York Times): “After years of decline, the Chris­t­ian pop­u­la­tion in the Unit­ed States has been sta­ble for sev­er­al years, a shift fueled in part by young adults, accord­ing to a major new sur­vey from the Pew Research Cen­ter. And the num­ber of reli­gious­ly unaf­fil­i­at­ed Amer­i­cans, which had grown steadi­ly for years, has also lev­eled off.… The sur­vey finds that 62 per­cent of adults in the Unit­ed States describe them­selves as Chris­tians, includ­ing 40 per­cent who iden­ti­fy as Protes­tant and 19 per­cent who are Catholic.”
  2. No Longer I Who Live (Antho­ny David, Com­ment): “Two years ago, I was ready to aban­don a biog­ra­phy I’d spent years try­ing to write when a fel­low his­to­ri­an threw me a life­line. The book was about the triple agent Her­mann Keller (1905–1970), a Bene­dic­tine mole embed­ded by con­spir­a­tors against Hitler into the upper ech­e­lons of the SS. Keller report­ed not only to the Ger­man resis­tance but also to the Vat­i­can and the British MI6. In the his­to­ry of espi­onage, few spies pen­e­trat­ed deep­er into ene­my ranks.”
    • The arti­cle is absolute­ly fas­ci­nat­ing, espe­cial­ly for the detail that before her research Keller was wide­ly regard­ed as a vil­lain and not a hero. “By ear­ly 2011, I had fin­ished the book on [anoth­er guy], which was set to be pub­lished in Aus­tria. A few weeks before I was due to return the gal­leys, I shared them with a monk at the Dor­mi­tion who had asked to review the man­u­script before pub­li­ca­tion. When he saw what I wrote about Keller, he cau­tioned me against tak­ing his­to­ri­ans at their word. I should talk to some­one who knew him before pass­ing judg­ment.” She did pri­ma­ry research and real­ized the exist­ing con­sen­sus was very wrong. Her dis­cov­ery res­onat­ed with me. The more I read the more skep­ti­cal I become of extreme alle­ga­tions against dead Chris­tians. Vir­tu­al­ly every time I dig into some­thing in detail (the his­to­ry of mis­sions, the Cru­sades, the Inqui­si­tion, the church in Pro­hi­bi­tion, etc) I dis­cov­er that the default under­stand­ing of edu­cat­ed peo­ple is wrong and pre­dictably so. This isn’t to say all of church his­to­ry is exem­plary — some events deserve con­dem­na­tion. But even the bad events usu­al­ly weren’t as bad as com­mon­ly imag­ined. I find that most Stan­ford stu­dents’ assump­tions about the his­to­ry of the church and of Chris­tians is WAY more neg­a­tive than jus­ti­fied by the his­tor­i­cal record.
  3. what if its just life (Kris­ten Sanders, Sub­stack): “Dis­cern­ment is some­thing many Chris­tians uncon­scious­ly despise. Many would rather have the rules giv­en to them, with­out devi­a­tion, than choose for them­selves. No one wants to be left hold­ing the bag of their own life.”
  4. How Uni­ver­si­ties Get Away With Hir­ing Rad­i­cals (John D. Sail­er, City Jour­nal): “Usu­al­ly, a post­doc­tor­al fel­low­ship is just a small step in a scholar’s career. After a fel­low­ship ends, for­mer post­docs apply to com­pet­i­tive posi­tions on the open mar­ket. The diver­si­ty-focused fel­low-to-fac­ul­ty mod­el mod­i­fies this path­way. First, the pro­gram­s’ admin­is­tra­tors select fel­lows with spe­cial atten­tion to how they con­tribute to diver­si­ty. Fel­lows are then heav­i­ly favored for—often guaranteed—tenure-track posi­tions, bypass­ing a com­pet­i­tive search. It’s a side-door into the fac­ul­ty lounge.… Over the last five years, one in 20 tenure-track hires in the UC Sys­tem were for­mer president’s or chancellor’s post­doc­tor­al fel­lows.”
  5. Is Dis­trust Dri­ving the Rise in Non-Denom­i­na­tion­al­ism? (Ryan Burge, Sub­stack): “Non-denom­i­na­tion­al­ism is pred­i­cat­ed on the col­lapse of insti­tu­tion­al trust. Amer­i­cans, for myr­i­ad rea­sons, do not trust major insti­tu­tions. Banks, unions, big busi­ness, media and gov­ern­ment are all viewed with deep skep­ti­cism. Name­less and face­less CEOs and bureau­crats are wast­ing your mon­ey and tak­ing your free­dom. In reli­gion, there’s a sim­ple solu­tion to this. Kill the denom­i­na­tions. Voila. No more unac­count­able head office that wastes your mon­ey on projects to spruce up the nation­al head­quar­ters. In a non-denom­i­na­tion­al church, all the peo­ple who decide where the mon­ey goes are sit­ting right next to you in the pew. That’s a whole lot more account­abil­i­ty.”
  6. Would You Rather Have Mar­ried Young? (Lil­lian Fish­man, Met­ro­pol­i­tan Review): “This was the first time it crossed my mind that a young woman like us — a knowl­edge work­er, a writer, a left­ist — might regret her inde­pen­dent youth and wish she had mar­ried a lov­ing per­son at a young age. I’d asso­ci­at­ed this idea with a type of wom­an­hood we con­sid­ered total­ly out­side of our zone of inter­est: anti-intel­lec­tu­al­ism, a belief in the pri­ma­cy of moth­er­hood. I was blind­sided by the sug­ges­tion that we might be bet­ter peo­ple if we were recused from for­ma­tive inde­pen­dence and strug­gle. I looked around at my friends and acquain­tances, espe­cial­ly the mar­ried ones, and won­dered if there was any truth in the idea that the years they spent as poor cap­tains of their own ships, unmoored and often lone­ly, were in fact not remote­ly nec­es­sary or enlight­en­ing.”
  7. Some Mir­a­cles Hap­pen Super­nat­u­ral­ly. Oth­ers Hap­pen ‘Hypernaturally.’ (John Van Sloten, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Keath­ley defines hyper­nat­u­ral­ism as the ‘extra­or­di­nary use of nat­ur­al law by the God described in the Bible. When God acts hyper­nat­u­ral­ly, He employs nat­ur­al law and nat­ur­al phe­nom­e­na in an extra­or­di­nary way to bring about His will.’… Per­haps this cat­e­go­ry helps peo­ple hold two oppo­sites togeth­er: that the world oper­ates in an empir­i­cal­ly explain­able way (a more basic def­i­n­i­tion of prov­i­dence) and that God occa­sion­al­ly inter­venes to accom­plish his will (through an exer­cise of spe­cial prov­i­dence). Hyper­nat­u­ral­ism describes one facet of how prov­i­dence and mir­a­cle over­lap.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 492: suffering, plane crashes, and near death experiences

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 Best Argu­ment Against Hav­ing Faith in God (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “One inter­est­ing point about [suf­fer­ing] is that while it’s often fold­ed into the briefs for athe­ism that claim to rely pri­mar­i­ly on hard evi­dence and sci­ence, it isn’t prop­er­ly speak­ing an argu­ment that some cre­at­ing pow­er does not exist. Rather it’s an argu­ment about the nature of that pow­er, a claim that the par­tic­u­lar kind of God envi­sioned by many believ­ers and philoso­phers — all pow­er­ful and all good — would not have made the world in which we find our­selves, and there­fore that this kind of God does not exist. The oth­er inter­est­ing point about this argu­ment is that while its core evi­dence is empir­i­cal, in the sense that ter­ri­ble forms of suf­fer­ing obvi­ous­ly exist and can be exten­sive­ly enu­mer­at­ed, its pow­er fun­da­men­tal­ly rests on an intu­ition about just how much suf­fer­ing is too much. By this I mean that many peo­ple who empha­size the prob­lem of evil would con­cede that a good God might allow some form of pain and suf­fer­ing with­in a mate­r­i­al cre­ation for var­i­ous good rea­sons.”
  2. Why Are So Many Planes Crash­ing? (Lyman Stone, Sub­stack): “Now let’s zoom out and just ask: are inci­dents of any cause get­ting more com­mon? They aren’t.… [Also] I don’t see any mean­ing­ful uptick over time in fatal­i­ty inci­dents. Actu­al­ly they’ve clear­ly declined since the ear­ly 1990s or even ear­ly 2000s. Which is wild, since total amounts of flights have mas­sive­ly increased! Note that I am includ­ing known inci­dents through Feb­ru­ary 18, 2025 in those fig­ures above!”
    • Empha­sis removed. Lots of charts.
  3. It’s Going To Take More Than An Exec­u­tive Order To Tru­ly Pro­tect Women’s Sports (Kate Bier­ly, Dai­ly Caller): “Since the 1990s, Con­gress has steadi­ly abdi­cat­ed its respon­si­bil­i­ty to leg­is­late, opt­ing instead to let the exec­u­tive branch take the polit­i­cal heat. Mem­bers of Con­gress, more con­cerned with reelec­tion than with the duty to gov­ern, pre­fer to pass the buck. An exec­u­tive order com­mands only the exec­u­tive branch, requir­ing fed­er­al agen­cies to com­ply. But its pow­er is inher­ent­ly lim­it­ed. Reg­u­la­to­ry author­i­ty has been reined in, espe­cial­ly after the Supreme Court’s recent deci­sion to over­turn Chevron def­er­ence. No longer can agen­cies broad­ly inter­pret con­gres­sion­al statutes to impose sweep­ing reg­u­la­tions. Now, their author­i­ty is con­fined strict­ly to what Con­gress has explic­it­ly grant­ed them. This lim­its the scope of what Trump’s lat­est exec­u­tive order can achieve. His direc­tive to the Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion to restrict women’s sports to bio­log­i­cal females is bound by statu­to­ry inter­pre­ta­tion, which blue states can chal­lenge.… This is why con­gres­sion­al action is nec­es­sary, because reliance on exec­u­tive orders and judi­cial inter­pre­ta­tion fos­ters legal insta­bil­i­ty.”
    • Writ­ten by one of our alum­ni.
  4. 70 Chris­tians found behead­ed in church in DRC (Open Doors): “Accord­ing to field sources, at around 4am last Thurs­day (13 Feb­ru­ary) sus­pect­ed mil­i­tants from the Allied Demo­c­ra­t­ic Forces (ADF) – a group with ties to so-called Islam­ic State (IS) – approached homes in May­ba in the ter­ri­to­ry of Lubero, say­ing: ‘Get out, get out and don’t make any noise.’ Twen­ty Chris­t­ian men and women came out and were cap­tured. Shak­en by this inci­dent, peo­ple from the local com­mu­ni­ty in May­ba lat­er gath­ered to work out how to release those held cap­tive. How­ev­er, ADF mil­i­tants sur­round­ed the vil­lage and cap­tured a fur­ther 50 believ­ers.”
  5. The ker­nel of truth in gen­der stereo­types: Con­sid­er the avo­ca­do, not the apple (Eagly & Hall, Jour­nal of Exper­i­men­tal Social Psy­chol­o­gy): “…in 85% of [the 673] com­par­isons [from across the 43 stud­ies], par­tic­i­pants got the direc­tion [of gen­der dif­fer­ence] right.… Our review sug­gests that All­port’s (1954/1988, p. 190) clas­sic and wide­ly cit­ed ker­nel of truth metaphor is incor­rect for gen­der stereo­types unless this ker­nel is more like the seed of an avo­ca­do than an apple.”
    • The authors are pro­fes­sors at North­west­ern and North­east­ern, a com­bi­na­tion I found fun­ny.
  6. Learn­ings from 1,000+ Near-Death Expe­ri­ences — Dr. Bruce Greyson, Uni­ver­si­ty of Vir­ginia (Tim Fer­riss, per­son­al blog): “I start­ed out as a mate­ri­al­ist skep­tic. After 50 years, I’m still skep­ti­cal, but I’m no longer a mate­ri­al­ist. I think that’s a dead end when it comes to explain­ing near-death expe­ri­ences and oth­er phe­nom­e­na like this.… About five per­cent of the gen­er­al population—or one to every 20 people—has had a near-death expe­ri­ence. Sec­ond­ly, they are not asso­ci­at­ed in any way with men­tal ill­ness. Peo­ple who are per­fect­ly nor­mal have these NDEs in abnor­mal sit­u­a­tions that can hap­pen to any­body.”
  7. Miran­da July’s Lucra­tive Fan­tasies (Fred­die deBoer, Sub­stack): “The anti-monogamists con­stant­ly insist that monogamy is just too roman­tic to build a life on, that it’s con­trary to human nature. But what could pos­si­bly be more roman­tic, in the most child­ish sense, than the belief that you’ll stay attrac­tive and roman­ti­cal­ly desir­able for your entire life? That you’ll sim­ply cycle end­less­ly between will­ing part­ners who you find attrac­tive and who feel the same about you and who you’ll hap­pi­ly let go of as soon as you’re bored, and you’ll keep doing that in a state of bliss until you die? You’d call that, what, real­is­tic?”
    • deBoer, as I often remind peo­ple, an athe­ist social­ist who is nonethe­less very clear-mind­ed on some top­ics. He is near­ly always enter­tain­ing to read.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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