Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 267

some apolo­get­i­cal­ly-inter­est­ing links near the top — rec­om­mend­ed!

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues.

We have some new mem­bers on our mail­ing list — wel­come! I’d like to direct you to the dis­claimers at the end of this email — they real­ly do mat­ter and I real­ly do mean them.

I wel­come your sug­ges­tions. If you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way!

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Uncon­scious Learn­ing Under­lies Belief in God – Stronger Beliefs in Peo­ple Who Can Uncon­scious­ly Pre­dict Com­plex Pat­terns (Sci Tech Dai­ly): “Individuals who can uncon­scious­ly pre­dict com­plex pat­terns, an abil­i­ty called implic­it pat­tern learn­ing, are like­ly to hold stronger beliefs that there is a god who cre­ates pat­terns of events in the uni­verse, accord­ing to neu­ro­sci­en­tists at George­town University.” Shock­er: peo­ple who see real­i­ty clear­ly are more like­ly to per­ceive God’s hand at work in real­i­ty. 
  2. Redeem­ing Con­dos, Pres­by­te­ri­ans Buy NYC Build­ing for $30 Mil­lion (Kathryn Wat­son, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “In a study of 22 US cites—including Grand Rapids, Detroit, Min­neapo­lis, San Fran­cis­co, and Seattle—Hartson and Williams looked at mail­ing list data to iden­ti­fy address­es that were labeled as church­es in 2003 but not in 2018. They iden­ti­fied approx­i­mate­ly 200 church build­ings that had been flipped for com­mer­cial or res­i­den­tial use. In the same cities, in the same 15 years, they found about 2,000 com­mer­cial spaces that had been turned into hous­es of wor­ship. While there are many sacred spaces becom­ing sec­u­lar, it seems more are con­vert­ing the oth­er way.” 👀 — I did not know this and am very encour­aged by it. 
  3. On pol­i­tics:
    • No Longer Human (George Yancey, Patheos): “In one way it real­ly does not mat­ter if Trump or Biden wins the pres­i­den­cy. Either way you will have a sub­stan­tial per­cent­age of indi­vid­u­als who will feel dis­placed. They will be tempt­ed to cre­ate an us ver­sus them men­tal­i­ty in which they can envi­sion the elec­tion vic­tors as ene­mies of the state who must be defeat­ed at all costs. ” The author is a soci­ol­o­gist at Bay­lor. 
    • Relat­ed — two arti­cles high­light­ing how the right is afraid of the left in Amer­i­ca:
      1. Ide­ol­o­gy Binds And Blinds (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “As I see it, the ‘major threat of the far left’ to us on the right — the major threat, not the only threat — is that in pow­er, they will go ped­al to the medal on a soft total­i­tar­i­an ‘social jus­tice’ regime that would pun­ish dis­senters by cost­ing them their liveli­hoods, and ruin­ing their church­es and oth­er institutions.”
      2. On Not Accept­ing Stolen Elec­tions (Dou­glas Wil­son, per­son­al blog): “Don’t take your eye off the ball. Who is going to be riot­ing in late Novem­ber after the elec­tion? Well, who’s riot­ing now? This is not a trick question.”
    • And it’s not just one-sided. Here are two arti­cles high­light­ing how the left is afraid of the right in Amer­i­ca:
      1. The Left Secret­ly Preps for MAGA Vio­lence After Elec­tion Day (Sam Stein, The Dai­ly Beast): “‘I don’t know what the strat­e­gy is when armed right-wing mili­tia dudes show up in polling places,’ the same source said. ‘This [Kyle] Rit­ten­house guy is being lion­ized on the right, right now. If it is being unleashed that you can shoot peo­ple and be a hero, I don’t know what prepa­ra­tion we can pos­si­bly do for that.’”
      2. We Don’t Know How to Warn You Any Hard­er. Amer­i­ca is Dying. (umair haque, Medi­um): “There is a cru­cial les­son there. Amer­i­ca already has an ISIS, a Tal­iban, an SS wait­ing to be born.A group of young men will­ing to do vio­lence at the drop of a hat, because they’ve been brain­washed into hat­ing. The dem­a­gogue has blamed hat­ed minori­ties and advo­cates of democ­ra­cy and peace for those young men’s stunt­ed life chances, and they believe him. That’s exact­ly what an ISIS is, what a Tal­iban is, what an SS is. The only thing left to do by an author­i­tar­i­an is to for­mal­ize it.”
  4. Demo­c­ra­t­ic Change Still Works (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): “…look at the moun­tain of evi­dence that change through the civic process is not only pos­si­ble, but a recur­ring real­i­ty, and that it began long before Floyd’s death.” I believe much of our cur­rent cul­tur­al con­flict can be under­stood in terms of the Toc­queville Para­dox, which I have also heard referred to as “The Para­dox of Ris­ing Expectations.”
  5. On racism:
    • Prince­ton’s Pres­i­dent Is Wrong. The Uni­ver­si­ty Is Not Sys­tem­i­cal­ly Racist (Sergiu Klain­er­man, Newsweek): “Unable to iden­ti­fy spe­cif­ic cas­es of racism, these war­riors for social injus­tice are advanc­ing their agen­da by claim­ing instead that all Amer­i­can insti­tu­tions, includ­ing Prince­ton, are struc­tural­ly and sys­tem­i­cal­ly racist (‘SSR’). That is to say, that they are racist even as they man­i­fest­ly do every­thing imag­in­able to pro­mote under-rep­re­sent­ed groups. Prince­ton, for exam­ple, has had for years an extra­or­di­nar­i­ly large num­ber of admin­is­tra­tors (by some counts, over 65) ded­i­cat­ed to pro­mot­ing diver­si­ty and inclusion.” The author is a pro­fes­sor of math­e­mat­ics at Prince­ton.
    • Scholas­tics con­tra racism (Ed Fes­er, per­son­al blog): “The fal­si­ty and evil of racism, and thus of those insti­tu­tions, clear­ly fol­lows from stan­dard Scholas­tic [the­o­log­i­cal] think­ing about human nature and nat­ur­al law.”
    • Book Review: How to be an Anti-Racist by Ibram X. Ken­di(Bill Mel­one, Mere Ortho­doxy): “But recent crit­i­cism of social jus­tice advo­ca­cy and the Black Lives Mat­ter move­ment has failed to crit­i­cize the best of antiracist think­ing, and is much the less­er for it. This is par­tic­u­lar­ly true when that crit­i­cism does not engage seri­ous­ly with the work of Ibram X. Kendi.”
    • No, racism isn’t a ‘cre­ation of white peo­ple’ (David Abu­lafia, The Spec­ta­tor): “It is there­fore a sad and hor­ri­ble truth that every con­ti­nent has expe­ri­enced racist per­se­cu­tions before as well as after the age of the Euro­pean empires. Quite pos­si­bly the first Homo Sapi­ens played a big role in the dis­ap­pear­ance of the Neanderthals.” The author is a his­to­ry pro­fes­sor at Cam­bridge.
  6. Chris­t­ian musi­cian Sean Feucht held defi­ant Seat­tle wor­ship protest after con­cert was banned (Julia Duin, Reli­gion News Ser­vice): “Sean Feucht, 37, the ral­ly orga­niz­er, laughed about the con­flict with city offi­cials while wel­com­ing the crowd of 800 to 900 peo­ple. ‘Welcome to Seattle’s largest wor­ship protest,’ he said at the begin­ning of a two-hour set. ‘Turn to each oth­er and say, “Welcome to the protest.” In this city, that makes it a legal gathering.’”
  7. Chris­tians, Gun Rights, and the Amer­i­can Social Com­pact (David French, The Dis­patch): “The dis­tinc­tive Chris­t­ian pres­ence has to include mod­el­ing the respon­si­ble, vir­tu­ous exer­cise of the rights its polit­i­cal move­ments seek to secure. It has to include using its voice and pow­er to advo­cate for that respon­si­bil­i­ty and to oppose reck­less­ness. Sim­ply put, the repub­lic was not designed to thrive if those who are reli­gious are not also moral.” 

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have The Philoso­pher Redefin­ing Equal­i­ty (Nathan Heller, New York­er): “When she was three, her moth­er asked, ‘Why do you allow your broth­er to talk for you?’—why didn’t she speak for her­self? ‘Until now, it sim­ply was not necessary,’ Eliz­a­beth said. It was the first full sen­tence that she had ever uttered.” I think that’s the best first sen­tence I’ve ever heard of. The arti­cle is a tad long, but rec­om­mend­ed. First shared in vol­ume 189.

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 266

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. Do You ‘Believe in Science’…or Not? (Jacob Hess, Pub­lic Square): “…what if we’re wit­ness­ing the true nature of sci­ence in its full glo­ry? Not as an ora­cle that speaks in some mono­lith­ic voice. But as an argument—between oth­er­wise thought­ful and good-heart­ed peo­ple all seek­ing truth, but read­ing the data dif­fer­ent­ly, defin­ing terms dif­fer­ent­ly, empha­siz­ing dif­fer­ent indi­ca­tors in deter­min­ing what is true and trust­wor­thy, etc. If so, rather than wait­ing for Sci­ence to declare the truth of a matter—maybe we need to start doing some­thing else: Think­ing for ourselves.” This was a much bet­ter arti­cle than I expect­ed.
  2. Aca­d­e­mics Are Real­ly, Real­ly Wor­ried About Their Free­dom (John McWhort­er, The Atlantic): “One pro­fes­sor notes, ‘Even with tenure and author­i­ty, I wor­ry that stu­dents could file spu­ri­ous Title IX com­plaints … or that stu­dents could boy­cott me or remove me as Chair.’ I have no rea­son to sup­pose that he is being dra­mat­ic, because exact­ly this, he says, hap­pened to his predecessor.” The author is a lin­guis­tics pro­fes­sor at Colum­bia.
    • Relat­ed: The Denial of Can­cel Cul­ture (Eric Kauf­mann, Quil­lette): “Academics don’t dis­crim­i­nate more than oth­er edu­cat­ed pro­fes­sion­als, and the Right dis­crim­i­nates as much as the Left, but the fact the Left out­num­bers the Right 6:1 (9:1 among cur­rent [social sci­ences and human­i­ties] staff) means that con­ser­v­a­tives and Leavers expe­ri­ence a far high­er dis­crim­i­na­to­ry effect than the left-lib­er­al major­i­ty. On a four-per­son hir­ing pan­el, a Leaver faces an 80 per­cent chance of discrimination.” The author is a pro­fes­sor of pol­i­tics at Birk­beck Col­lege in the UK.
  3. Arti­cles Relat­ed To Race, Racism and Relat­ed Top­ics
    • Amer­i­can Chris­tian­i­ty’s White-Suprema­cy Prob­lem (David Luo, New York­er): “…Christian nation­al­ism is not the same as per­son­al reli­gios­i­ty. In fact, reli­gious commitment—as mea­sured by church atten­dance, prayer, and Scrip­ture reading—tends to improve atti­tudes on race, serv­ing as a pro­gres­sive influ­ence. This sug­gests the root of the white church’s prob­lem may not be ‘Christianity proper,’ as Dou­glass put it, so much as the cul­ture around white Chris­tian­i­ty, which nar­rows and dimin­ish­es the Amer­i­can project.” This arti­cle cov­ers a lot of ground and not all of it with equal insight (or per­haps fair­ness is the word I’m look­ing for), but as a whole well-done.
    • Black Chris­tians Play a Cru­cial Role in Ath­lete Activism (Paul Putz , Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “While some black Chris­t­ian ath­letes have abstained from the recent wave of activism in sta­di­ums and arenas—Orlando Mag­ic for­ward Jonathan Isaac, for exam­ple, cit­ed his under­stand­ing of the gospel when declin­ing to ful­ly par­tic­i­pate in a pre-game racial jus­tice ceremony—far more have played a lead­ing role.”
    • I was the woman sur­round­ed by BLM pro­test­ers at a D.C. restau­rant. Here’s why I didn’t raise my fist. (Lau­ren Vic­tor, Wash­ing­ton Post): “Last week, I went out to din­ner in D.C. with a friend. As we sat out­side at a neigh­bor­hood restau­rant, a group of pro­test­ers sur­round­ed our table and demand­ed that I raise my fist in sup­port of the Black Lives Mat­ter move­ment. I had marched repeat­ed­ly in the past sev­er­al months in sup­port of their cause, but I refused their demands. That inter­ac­tion wound up in a viral video that with­in 48 hours had been viewed more than 12 mil­lion times.” This is fas­ci­nat­ing.
    • ‘You’re Not Allowed To Film’: The Fight for Con­trol Over Who Reports From Port­land (Nan­cy Rom­mel­mann, Rea­son): “I can­not say who came up with these anti-cam­era bat­tle cries. But it’s easy to under­stand why pro­test­ers use them: to shape the nar­ra­tive the coun­try sees about the protests. And that nar­ra­tive, in my esti­ma­tion after many weeks cov­er­ing street clash­es in a city where I lived for 15 years, is 90 per­cent [men­da­cious nonsense].”
    • Don’t take your guns to town, son (Tim Car­ney, Wash­ing­ton Exam­in­er): “In life, there are hor­ri­ble sit­u­a­tions in which there are no good deci­sions or where it is extreme­ly easy to make the wrong deci­sion. So when we can avoid these hor­ri­ble sit­u­a­tions, we ought to.”
      • This is an insight with wide-rang­ing appli­ca­tion. It’s why you shouldn’t bring guns to a protest and also why there are some par­ties on cam­pus you shouldn’t go to.
    • Police reforms inspired by George Floyd face defeat in CA (Edi­to­r­i­al Board, Sacra­men­to Bee): “The leg­is­la­tors who authored these cru­cial reforms deserve sup­port and recog­ni­tion for walk­ing the walk. But Cal­i­for­ni­ans must also remem­ber the names of any leg­is­la­tors who took a knee to hon­or Black Lives Mat­ter in front of the cam­eras and then, behind the scenes, bowed down to police groups to kill much-need­ed reforms.”
  4. The Social Fab­ric of the US Is Fray­ing Severe­ly, if Not Unrav­el­ling (Glenn Green­wald, The Inter­cept): “Why is vir­tu­al­ly every met­ric of men­tal and spir­i­tu­al dis­ease — sui­cide, depres­sion, anx­i­ety dis­or­ders, addic­tion, and alco­holism — increas­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly, rapid­ly, in the rich­est coun­try on earth, one filled with advanced tech­nolo­gies and at least the pre­tense of lib­er­al democracy?”
  5. Boy­cotts Can’t Be a Test of Moral Puri­ty (Zephyr Tea­chout, The Atlantic): “We don’t ask peo­ple to boy­cott libraries in order to change library rules; we don’t ask peo­ple to boy­cott high­ways to ask for them to be safer; we don’t demand that you buy only bot­tled water while protest­ing water-util­i­ty governance.” The delight­ful­ly-named author is a law prof at Ford­ham. Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
  6. On pres­i­den­tial pol­i­tics:
    • What You Should Know About the 2020 Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty Plat­form (Joe Carter, Gospel Coali­tion): “Why should Chris­tians care about a doc­u­ment that few non-politi­cians will ever read? Because of the influ­ence the two major par­ty plat­forms have on pub­lic pol­i­cy. While the plat­form is not bind­ing on the pres­i­den­tial nom­i­nee or any oth­er politi­cians, polit­i­cal sci­en­tists have found that over the past 30 years law­mak­ers in Con­gress tend to vote in line with their party’s plat­form: 89 per­cent of the time for Repub­li­cans, and 79 per­cent of the time for Democrats.“
    • What You Should Know About the 2020 Repub­li­can Par­ty Plat­form (Joe Carter, Gospel Coali­tion): “This arti­cle will pro­vide, with­out com­men­tary, an out­line of the Repub­li­can plat­form as it relates to sev­er­al social issues. Every state­ment is either a direct quote or a sum­ma­ry of the platform’s position.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. Amer­i­ca in one tweet:“We are liv­ing in an era of woke cap­i­tal­ism in which com­pa­nies pre­tend to care about social jus­tice to sell prod­ucts to peo­ple who pre­tend to hate capitalism.” (Clay Rout­ledge, Twit­ter) First shared in vol­ume 186.

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 265

lots about race and racial ten­sion

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. Here are the things about race and racial ten­sion that stood out to me.
    • Why Did the Police Shoot Jacob Blake? (Trevor Noah, The Dai­ly Show): “I could tell you this sto­ry with my eyes closed by now. If I want­ed to I could pre­re­cord five of these seg­ments and go on vaca­tion and you would nev­er know.” Ten worth­while min­utes.
    • The Kenosha shoot­ing did­n’t hap­pen in a vac­u­um (Denise Lock­wood, CNN): “I am remind­ed of what Rod­ney Prunty, the for­mer exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Unit­ed Way of Racine Coun­ty, said to me dur­ing an inter­view: ‘If you have a pond full of fish and a few of them die, you ask what’s wrong with the fish. But when the pond full of fish dies, we ask what’s wrong with the pond.’ In Wis­con­sin, it’s time we talked about what’s wrong with the pond.”
    • Riots in John Piper’s Neigh­bor­hood (Sarah Eekhoff Zyl­stra, Gospel Coali­tion): “Piper’s peo­ple moved in with­out a mas­ter plan, which was both con­fus­ing (‘What should we do?’) and exact­ly what When Help­ing Hurts authors would lat­er advise (start with build­ing rela­tion­ships, watch­ing, and learn­ing). Every­one end­ed up doing some­thing dif­fer­ent. But for decades, they’ve kept at it, work­ing through dis­ap­point­ments and chal­lenges, loot­ing and riots, bro­ken glass and home­less tent cities in the parks. They’re still doing it.” This is an out­stand­ing sto­ry.
    • Feel Good or Do Good (George Yancey, Patheos): “To gain the sup­port of real con­vic­tion we need the type of con­ver­sa­tions where we lis­ten to oth­ers as much as dis­cuss our point of view with them. We con­nect with oth­ers and get at the core of why they dis­agree with us. We under­stand their argu­ments and con­sid­er how to deal with the issues they bring up. We admit the valid­i­ty of those issues even if we dis­agree with them. Does this sound like any­thing that is hap­pen­ing with antiracism?” The author, who is black, is a soci­ol­o­gist at Bay­lor whom I have ref­er­enced sev­er­al times. 
    • Rule of Law Imper­iled (R. R. Reno, First Things): “The destruc­tion of prop­er­ty is not just an attack on another’s pos­ses­sions. It is a vio­la­tion of jus­tice. This is why riot­ing and loot­ing affects far more than those whose stores are burned. Cit­i­zens begin to wor­ry that they do not live in a soci­ety com­mit­ted to jus­tice. As we know from blacks who resent mis­treat­ment by the police, which is also unjust, this wor­ry can become explo­sive, even among those not per­son­al­ly affected.”
    • Kyle Rit­ten­house, Pop­ulist Hero (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “If I were a polling firm, I would run a nation­al poll ask­ing peo­ple who have heard of Kyle Rit­ten­house whether they think he’s a vil­lain, a hero, or don’t know. That would tell us a lot about the mood of the country.”
  2. Unbe­com­ing Amer­i­can (Johann N. Neem, Hedge­hog Review): “A shared cul­ture is not a total­iz­ing one; indeed, it makes real plu­ral­ism pos­si­ble by giv­ing us some­thing larg­er to share regard­less of our many dif­fer­ences. Or so I believed. But when that shared world was rede­fined as white—and when white peo­ple, threat­ened by its loss, reclaimed it—I found myself an exile. A per­son los­ing his coun­try. I felt myself unbe­com­ing in more than one sense. On col­lege cam­pus­es, includ­ing the one where I now teach, the left impos­es new bound­aries on thought and speech in its effort to chal­lenge his­tor­i­cal bound­aries, while, in pol­i­tics, the right embraces bound­aries that we had hoped nev­er to see again.” The author, a man of Indi­an descent, is a his­to­ri­an at West­ern Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty. I real­ly liked this arti­cle.
    • Fol­low-up inter­view: An Immi­grant’s Plea: “Don’t Con­vert to White­ness” (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): “My biggest fear, actu­al­ly, is vio­lence. We for­get that social order is frag­ile. You don’t have to look far to see how preva­lent eth­nic or reli­gious vio­lence is around the world. If we form tribes, we will respond in hate­ful ways to each oth­er. Right­ly or wrong­ly, peo­ple will feel belea­guered. We will get angri­er and angri­er. There will be less empathy.” I share his con­cern. 
  3. Advice For Stu­dents In a Time of Strife (a whole pas­sel of Prince­ton pro­fes­sors, First Things): “Remember, as an Amer­i­can col­lege or uni­ver­si­ty stu­dent you are one of the luckiest—most privileged—people on plan­et earth. Do not fall into the trap of think­ing of your­self as a vic­tim or build­ing an iden­ti­ty for your­self around that idea. You can avoid the trap while strong­ly stand­ing up for your right to fair and equal treat­ment and bold­ly work­ing for reform where there are dou­ble stan­dards need­ing to be rectified.” Tech­ni­cal­ly not a whole pas­sel, which con­notes a large but uncer­tain num­ber. I count 16 sig­na­to­ries!
  4. Chi­na Secret­ly Built A Vast New Infra­struc­ture To Imprison Mus­lims (Megha Rajagopalan, Ali­son Killing, and Chris­to Buschek, Buz­zfeed): “Downloading What­sApp, which is banned in Chi­na, main­tain­ing ties with fam­i­ly abroad, engag­ing in prayer, and vis­it­ing a for­eign web­site are all offens­es for which Mus­lims have been sent to camps, accord­ing to pre­vi­ous­ly leaked doc­u­ments and inter­views with for­mer detainees. Because the gov­ern­ment does not con­sid­er intern­ment camps to be part of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem and none of these behav­iors are crimes under Chi­nese law, no detainees have been for­mal­ly arrest­ed or charged with a crime, let alone seen a day in court.” I’ve shared sim­i­lar news this before. This arti­cle is fresh and espe­cial­ly damn­ing.
    • Part 2: What They Saw: Ex-Pris­on­ers Detail The Hor­rors Of Chi­na’s Deten­tion Camps (Buz­zfeed): “More than a dozen for­mer detainees con­firmed to Buz­zFeed News that pris­on­ers were divid­ed into three cat­e­gories, dif­fer­en­ti­at­ed by uni­form col­ors. Those in blue, like Pari­da and the major­i­ty of the peo­ple inter­viewed for this arti­cle, were con­sid­ered the least threat­en­ing. Often, they were accused of minor trans­gres­sions, like down­load­ing banned apps to their phones or hav­ing trav­eled abroad. Imams, reli­gious peo­ple, and oth­ers con­sid­ered sub­ver­sive to the state were placed in the strictest group — and were usu­al­ly shack­led even inside the camp.”
    • Part 3: Blanked-Out Spots On Chi­na’s Maps Helped Us Uncov­er Xin­jiang’s Camps (Buz­zfeed): “Our break­through came when we noticed that there was some sort of issue with satel­lite imagery tiles load­ing in the vicin­i­ty of one of the known camps while using the Chi­nese map­ping plat­form Baidu Maps. The satel­lite imagery was old, but oth­er­wise fine when zoomed out — but at a cer­tain point, plain light gray tiles would appear over the camp loca­tion…. We ana­lyzed the masked loca­tions by com­par­ing them to up-to-date imagery from Google Earth, the Euro­pean Space Agency’s Sen­tinel Hub, and Plan­et Labs.” This one will be par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ing to CS peo­ple. 
  5. Alexan­dria Oca­sio-Cortez talks about trust­ing the news (Twit­ter): “…when you see a FACT that is report­ed, cit­ed, and ver­i­fied by sev­er­al rep­utable out­lets, 99.999% it’s going to be true. HOWEVER! There is a big dif­fer­ence between a fact and the STORY. And the STORY (often the head­line) that’s sur­round­ing the fact is fre­quent­ly stretched, mis­char­ac­ter­ized, or dra­ma­tized to get you to click.” She and I have a remark­ably sim­i­lar per­spec­tive on the media.
    • Relat­ed: Giv­en my time again, I would­n’t choose jour­nal­ism (Sarah Ditum, Unherd): “Being mad was impor­tant because the eco­nom­ics of this kind of con­tent required fast out­put (since time­li­ness is crit­i­cal) and high engage­ment (since this is how edi­tors, and writ­ers, mea­sure suc­cess). I write quick­ly when I’m angry, and anger begets more anger, so peo­ple are more like­ly to share and react. Not every­thing I wrote when this was my main form of jour­nal­ism was bad, but only some of it was good, and the worst of it had a dis­hon­esty that made me feel ashamed…” 
  6. Do Pro-Lif­ers Who Reject Trump Have ‘Blood on their Hands’? (David French, The DIs­patch): “Decades of data and decades of legal, polit­i­cal, and cul­tur­al devel­op­ments have com­bined to teach us a few, sim­ple real­i­ties about abor­tion in the Unit­ed States: 1. Pres­i­dents have been irrel­e­vant to the abor­tion rate; 2. Judges have been forces of sta­bil­i­ty, not change, in abor­tion law; 3. State leg­is­la­tures have had more influ­ence on abor­tion than Con­gress; 4. Even if Roe is over­turned, abor­tion will be most­ly unchanged in the U.S.; and 5. The pro-life move­ment has an enor­mous cul­tur­al advantage.“ Chock-full of insights. Despite the title, it is less about par­ti­san pol­i­tics and more about abor­tion in Amer­i­ca.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Facts Are Not Self‐Interpreting (Twit­ter) — this is a short, sound­less video. Rec­om­mend­ed. First shared in vol­ume 184.

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 264

sub­stan­tive pieces this week, plus reli­gious argu­ments for and against both Biden 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.

As always, just skim and open the links that seem inter­est­ing to you in new tabs.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The Chal­lenge of Marx­ism (Yoram Hazony, Quil­lette): “Not very long ago, most of us liv­ing in free soci­eties knew that Marx­ism was not com­pat­i­ble with democ­ra­cy…. Indeed, the entire pur­pose of demo­c­ra­t­ic gov­ern­ment, with its plu­ral­i­ty of legit­i­mate par­ties, is to avoid the vio­lent recon­sti­tu­tion of soci­ety that Marx­ist polit­i­cal the­o­ry regards as the only rea­son­able aim of pol­i­tics.”
  2. The par­ti­cle col­lec­tion that fan­cied itself a physi­cist (Ed Fes­er, per­son­al blog): “Democritus’s point is that if the atom­ist says both that atoms are all that exist and that col­or, sweet­ness, etc. and the oth­er qual­i­ties of con­scious expe­ri­ence are not to be found in the atoms, then we have a para­dox.” Fes­er, as I’ve men­tioned before, is one of my favorite philoso­phers.
  3. Anti-racist Argu­ments Are Tear­ing Peo­ple Apart (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): “I made a series of rapid assump­tions about what I was watch­ing. I sur­mised that Broshi was a col­lege-edu­cat­ed, upper-mid­dle-class pro­gres­sive who sits on some sort of edu­ca­tion coun­cil in the pub­lic-school sys­tem and owns copies of White Fragili­ty and How to Be an Antiracist. I sur­mised that she was call­ing some­one out. And I sur­mised that her white, male tar­get was off­screen rolling his eyes. All of which turned out to be cor­rect.” This is amaz­ing.
    • Relat­ed: Why we can­not ignore Insti­tu­tion­al Racism (George Yancey, Patheos): “Pre­tend that we are going to have a mile race a year from now. I tell a third of the class about the race and hire a train­er for them. For anoth­er third of the class I tell them about the race six months lat­er but do not hire them a train­er. But I do advise them that they may want to work on their own to get ready for the race. The last third of the class I call them the morn­ing of the race and tell them that it is time to run. Assum­ing that the class is ran­dom­ly divid­ed into thirds, we know what will hap­pen in the race do we not?”
    • Relat­ed: Black and White evan­gel­i­cals once talked about ‘racial rec­on­cil­i­a­tion.’ Then Trump came along. (Sarah Pul­liam Bai­ley, Wash­ing­ton Post): “…despite shared Chris­t­ian beliefs and com­mit­ment to reli­gious obser­vance, White evan­gel­i­cals are among the most strong­ly Repub­li­can con­stituen­cies, while Black Protes­tants tend to vote Demo­c­ra­t­ic. And that divide appears to have grown hard­er to bridge since Trump took office.”
    • Col­leges aren’t report­ing anti-Semi­tism as a crime (Aiden Pink, For­ward): “A For­ward analy­sis com­par­ing news reports of cam­pus anti­semitism between 2016 and 2018 to the fil­ings for those years found that few­er than half of the inci­dents that could have been report­ed as hate crimes actu­al­ly were. Out of a total of 158 inci­dents at 64 schools, 93 — includ­ing anti­se­mit­ic van­dal­ism at brand-name schools known for vibrant Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ties like Har­vard, Prince­ton, MIT, UCLA and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Mary­land — were left out of the fed­er­al fil­ings.” Stan­ford comes off look­ing pret­ty good in this arti­cle. 
  4. The Amer­i­can Mis­un­der­stand­ing of Nat­ur­al Rights (Cameron Hilditch, Nation­al Review): “Our inher­i­tance of human rights was built to reflect the fact that we are all liv­ing images of a par­tic­u­lar cru­ci­fied crim­i­nal from Galilee, who pro­claimed that we are each and all more than what Cae­sar would make of us. If we care to enjoy the rights bequeathed to us by this tra­di­tion through­out the com­ing years, decades, and cen­turies, then we can no longer avoid pub­licly dis­cussing the inex­tri­ca­ble nature of reli­gious and polit­i­cal ideas.” 
    • Relat­ed: Is Amer­i­can Chris­t­ian Jurispru­dence a Thing? (Steven D. Smith, Law & Lib­er­ty): “Tak­en togeth­er, these assump­tions gen­er­ate an over­all atti­tude toward the project of law that resists oppos­ing extremes: on the one hand, an exces­sive or decon­struc­tive cynicism—one that would reduce the law to sim­ply a man­i­fes­ta­tion of pow­er based on class, race, or gender—and on the oth­er hand a dan­ger­ous utopi­anism that would use law to achieve per­fect jus­tice but end up destroy­ing human free­dom.” The author is a law pro­fes­sor at the Uni­ver­si­ty of San Diego. 
    • Relat­ed. Ish. The end of sec­u­lar­ism is nigh (Tom Hol­land, UnHerd): “That there exist­ed things called ‘reli­gions’ — ‘Hin­duism’, ‘Islam’, ‘Judaism’ ­— and that these func­tioned in a dimen­sion dis­tinct from entire spheres of human activ­i­ty — spheres called ‘sec­u­lar’ in Eng­lish — was not a con­vic­tion native to any­where except for West­ern Europe.”
  5. Chi­na’s Arti­fi­cial Intel­li­gence Sur­veil­lance State Goes Glob­al (Ross Ander­sen, The Atlantic): “In the ear­ly aughts, the Chi­nese tele­com titan ZTE sold Ethiopia a wire­less net­work with built-in back­door access for the gov­ern­ment. In a lat­er crack­down, dis­si­dents were round­ed up for bru­tal inter­ro­ga­tions, dur­ing which they were played audio from recent phone calls they’d made. Today, Kenya, Ugan­da, and Mau­ri­tius are out­fit­ting major cities with Chi­nese-made sur­veil­lance net­works.” I think hor­ri­fy­ing might be the best word for this arti­cle. 
  6. On pres­i­den­tial pol­i­tics and Chris­tian­i­ty:
    • From the right: Let­ter to an Anti-Trump Chris­t­ian Friend (Wayne Gru­dem, Town­Hall): “In every col­umn that I’ve pub­lished in sup­port of Trump, I have explic­it­ly reg­is­tered my dis­ap­proval of his char­ac­ter flaws and pre­vi­ous immoral behav­ior. I sup­port him because of the poli­cies he has enact­ed and will enact, and in spite of his char­ac­ter flaws (which I don’t think rise to a lev­el that would dis­qual­i­fy him from being pres­i­dent; more on this below).” The author is a pro­fes­sor at Phoenix Sem­i­nary.
    •  From the left: The Joe Biden that I know is a man of faith (Chris Coons, Fox News): “For Democ­rats like Joe and me, tak­ing care of the plan­et isn’t just about ris­ing sea lev­els and extreme weath­er, it’s also about pro­tect­ing and hon­or­ing God’s cre­ation. For Democ­rats like Joe and me, fight­ing for civ­il rights and equal­i­ty isn’t just about polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness, it’s about lov­ing our neigh­bor and rec­og­niz­ing that all of us are cre­at­ed equal in the eyes of God.” The author is a US Sen­a­tor.
    • A crit­i­cism of the right: Why Evan­gel­i­cals Sup­port Trump—and Why They Shouldn’t (George Yancey, The Bul­wark): “Many evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians see Trump as some­one who will save them from Chris­tianopho­bia. And while I under­stand and respect the nature of these Chris­tians’ fears—in fact, I share them—I believe that Trump is not only not a solu­tion to these issues but in the long run he will make things worse.” The author is a pro­fes­sor at Bay­lor.
    • A crit­i­cism of the left: Devout Catholics and Sec­u­lar Pro­gres­sives (Robert George, First Things): this one is dif­fi­cult to excerpt. Very well done. The author is a pro­fes­sor at Prince­ton. 

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have God­speed: The Pace Of Being Known (Vimeo): a stu­dent brought this 30 minute video to my atten­tion and said it made her think about how she should be liv­ing in her dorm (sad­ly irrel­e­vant for that pur­pose at the moment). First shared in vol­ume 181.

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 263

this one is short­er than nor­mal

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. Pan­demics Aren’t New—Just Look at Plagues in the Bible (Karen Engle, Logos): “With coro­n­avirus on everyone’s mind, ques­tions abound of whether the word ‘pandemic’ appears in the Bible, too. The short answer is no—’pandemic’ is not in the Bible. How­ev­er, the words “plague” and ‘pestilence’ are (no less than 122 times) and often ref­er­ence indi­vid­u­als or nations afflict­ed with a ter­ri­ble illness.”
  2. ‘Chris­tian­i­ty Will Have Pow­er’ (Eliz­a­beth Dias, New York Times): “‘Trump’s an out­sider, like the rest of us,’ he said. ‘We might not respect Trump, but we still love the guy for who he is. Is he a man of integri­ty? Absolute­ly not,’ he went on. ‘Does he stand up for some of our moral Chris­t­ian val­ues? Yes.’ The guys agreed. ‘I’m not going to say he’s a Chris­t­ian, but he just doesn’t attack us,’ his friend Jason Mul­der said.” Need­less­ly snarky at times, but one of the rare mus­ings on evan­gel­i­cal Trump sup­port in a promi­nent media source that gets a lot of things right.
    • An inter­est­ing counter-per­spec­tive: Chris­tians want pow­er? Sioux Cen­ter push­es back on New York Times sto­ry (Lee Pitts, Reli­gion Unplugged): “Our church small group [in Sioux Cen­ter] is more diverse than my small groups in Wash­ing­ton, D.C. We enjoy the com­pa­ny of three peo­ple from Mex­i­co, a gen­tle­man from Paraguay, a woman from Japan, an engi­neer­ing pro­fes­sor from Ghana and a cou­ple orig­i­nal­ly from that exot­ic place called South Car­oli­na (that’s me). In fact, out of our 12-mem­ber small group, only two orig­i­nal­ly hail from North­west Iowa. Mean­while my D.C. small groups fea­tured all upper mid­dle-class White peo­ple most­ly sport­ing advanced degrees and flashy jobs inside the Belt­way. But the stereo­type would reverse that. My Sioux Cen­ter small group should be all White and my D.C. one would sure­ly be full of diver­si­ty, right? Wrong.” This arti­cle doesn’t real­ly rebut many of the reli­gious claims of the NY Times arti­cle, but it does under­cut some of the cul­tur­al ones.
  3. Wok­e­ness: old reli­gion in a new bot­tle (Sean Collins, Spiked): “What we’re see­ing now is an ampli­fi­ca­tion of what I wrote about five years ago: an intense spir­i­tu­al hunger that has no out­let. There’s no way to see peo­ple kneel­ing, or singing ‘Hands up, don’t shoot’, or sway­ing while they hold up can­dles, and avoid acknowl­edg­ing that it’s dri­ven by a spir­i­tu­al desire. I per­ceived this when I wrote about Occu­py Wall Street, and it’s become even more like this. It is an intense spir­i­tu­al hunger that is man­i­fest­ing itself more vio­lent­ly. Because to the post-Protes­tants, the world is an out­rage and we are all sinners.”
  4. How Megachurch­es Spent Coro­n­avirus Relief Funds (Luke Scorziell, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “According to Vaughn’s account­ing, the church spent 93 per­cent of the mon­ey on pay­roll. The addi­tion­al 7 per­cent went to rent and util­i­ties. The PPP rules say loans will be con­vert­ed to grants if 75 per­cent of the funds are used for pay­roll and the rest for spec­i­fied needs, includ­ing rent and util­i­ties. The mon­ey helped with more than just pay­ing the bills, how­ev­er. Because Palm Valley’s staff didn’t have to wor­ry about their job secu­ri­ty, they were able to focus ful­ly on car­ing for the church in the pan­dem­ic, Vaughn said.”
  5. Abol­ish the Police? Those Who Sur­vived the Chaos in Seat­tle Aren’t So Sure (Nel­lie Bowles, New York Times): “Faizel Khan was being told by the news media and his own may­or that the protests in his home­town were peace­ful, with ‘a block par­ty atmosphere.’ But that was not what he saw through the win­dows of his Seat­tle cof­fee shop.”
    • Relat­ed: replac­ing police with social work­ers (Jes­si­ca Crispin, per­son­al blog): “If we do not have police, an armed squadron of men and women asked to inter­vene in sit­u­a­tions we our­selves can­not man­age, whether that be crime, acute men­tal ill­ness, or vio­lence, then who will we turn to in those sit­u­a­tions? One such pro­pos­al is to replace police with social work­ers. But as my friend R. said to me as we dis­cussed these ideas, ‘I don’t think these peo­ple have inter­act­ed with social work­ers.’ ” This is a per­spec­tive I had not heard before.
  6. Injus­tice, Out­rage, and the Prob­lem of Atheod­i­cy (Pub­lic Square): “In a world with­out God, there is no ulti­mate pur­pose in the injus­tice. And there is no pos­si­bil­i­ty of any ulti­mate prov­i­den­tial redemp­tion. It is just raw, rank, irra­tional injus­tice. And so what is the appro­pri­ate reac­tion? Out­rage! (And per­haps also despair.)” The author is a law prof at the Uni­ver­si­ty of San Diego. Also, bear in mind that Pub­lic Square is the Mor­mon equiv­a­lent of First Things.
  7. Bill Gates on Covid: Most US Tests Are ‘Completely Garbage’ (Steven Levy, Wired): “The major­i­ty of all US tests are com­plete­ly garbage, wast­ed. If you don’t care how late the date is and you reim­burse at the same lev­el, of course they’re going to take every cus­tomer. Because they are mak­ing ridicu­lous mon­ey, and it’s most­ly rich peo­ple that are get­ting access to that. You have to have the reim­burse­ment sys­tem pay a lit­tle bit extra for 24 hours, pay the nor­mal fee for 48 hours, and pay noth­ing [if it isn’t done by then]. And they will fix it overnight.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Elisha and the She‐bears (Peter J Williams, Twit­ter): an insight­ful Twit­ter thread about a dis­turb­ing OT sto­ry. The author is the War­den of Tyn­dale House at Cam­bridge. First shared in vol­ume 179.

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 262

Hon­est­ly, this week’s col­lec­tion of arti­cles has some of the best I’ve seen in some time.

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

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. A Bib­li­cal Cri­tique of Sec­u­lar Jus­tice and Crit­i­cal The­o­ry (Tim Keller, Gospel In Life): “In the Bible Chris­tians have an ancient, rich, strong, com­pre­hen­sive, com­plex, and attrac­tive under­stand­ing of jus­tice. Bib­li­cal jus­tice dif­fers in sig­nif­i­cant ways from all the sec­u­lar alter­na­tives, with­out ignor­ing the con­cerns of any of them. Yet Chris­tians know lit­tle about bib­li­cal jus­tice, despite its promi­nence in the Scriptures.” The read of the week.
  2. The Church Forests of Ethiopia (YouTube): nine min­utes. This com­men­tary by Rod Dreher was what brought the video to my atten­tion. Watch the video before you read the com­men­tary. These forests are a beau­ti­ful pic­ture of the way the Church bless­es the world around it, and what the Church must do to thrive in the envi­ron­ment we find our­selves in.
  3. Lis­ten to Thomas Sow­ell (Cole­man Hugh­es, City Jour­nal): “…people pre­dictably line up on oppo­site sides of polit­i­cal issues that seem­ing­ly have noth­ing in com­mon. For instance, know­ing someone’s posi­tion on cli­mate change some­how allows you to pre­dict their views on tax­ing the rich, gun con­trol, and abor­tion. It’s tempt­ing to dis­miss this as mere polit­i­cal trib­al­ism. But Sow­ell con­tends that more is at work: that there are two fun­da­men­tal ways of think­ing about the social world, two sets of basic assump­tions about human nature, and two con­flict­ing ‘visions,’ from which most polit­i­cal dis­agree­ments follow.” Sow­ell is a senior fel­low at the Hoover Insti­tu­tion.
  4. Some reflec­tions on the media:
    • The Truth Is Pay­walled But The Lies Are Free (Nathan J. Robin­son, Cur­rent Affairs): “You want ‘Portland Pro­test­ers Burn Bibles, Amer­i­can Flags In The Streets,’ ‘The Moral Case Against Mask Man­dates And Oth­er COVID Restrictions,’ or an arti­cle sug­gest­ing the Nation­al Insti­tutes of Health has admit­ted 5G phones cause coronavirus—they’re yours. You want the detailed Times reports on neo-Nazis infil­trat­ing Ger­man insti­tu­tions, the rea­sons con­tact trac­ing is fail­ing in U.S. states, or the Trump administration’s under­cut­ting of the USPS’s effectiveness—well, if you’ve clicked around the web­site a bit you’ll run straight into the paywall.”
      • This is a good arti­cle. For the record, I agree with his assess­ment of the New York Times: it often con­tains the facts, but some­times incor­rect­ly framed with fool­ish infer­ences built upon them. That burn­ing Bibles and flags thing Robin­son knocks, though? That real­ly hap­pened: Did Port­land Pro­test­ers Burn Bibles and Amer­i­can Flags? (Snopes)
    • How the Media Could Get the Elec­tion Sto­ry Wrong (Ben Smith, New York Times): “The coro­n­avirus cri­sis means that states like Penn­syl­va­nia may be count­ing mail-in bal­lots for weeks, while Pres­i­dent Trump tweets false alle­ga­tions about fraud. And the last bar­ri­ers between Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy and a deep polit­i­cal cri­sis may be tele­vi­sion news and some ver­sion of that mad­den­ing nee­dle on The New York Times website.”
      • This is ter­ri­fy­ing and is 100% worth using up one of your pay­wall arti­cles for.
    • How the Media Led the Great Racial Awak­en­ing (Zach Gold­berg, Tablet): “During this same peri­od, while exot­ic new phras­es were enter­ing the dis­course, uni­ver­sal­ly rec­og­niz­able words like ‘racism’ were being rad­i­cal­ly rede­fined. Along with the new lan­guage came ideas and beliefs ani­mat­ing a new moral-polit­i­cal frame­work to apply to pub­lic life and Amer­i­can society.”
  5. On the divi­sions in Amer­i­ca:
    • To unite the coun­try, we need hon­esty and courage (Robert George and Cor­nell West, Boston Globe): “Honesty and courage alone can save our wound­ed, dis­unit­ed coun­try now. We need the hon­esty and courage to speak the truth — includ­ing painful truths that unset­tle not only our foes but also our friends and, most espe­cial­ly, ourselves.” The authors (both Chris­t­ian) are pro­fes­sors at Prince­ton and Har­vard, respec­tive­ly. 
    • Remem­ber­ing John Lewis, and the Polit­i­cal The­ol­o­gy that Changed a Nation (David French, The Dis­patch): “What looks inevitable in hind­sight was any­thing but cer­tain. In fact, if you were plac­ing con­tem­po­rary bets on a polit­i­cal out­come, would you guess that some ver­sion of a three-cen­tu­ry sta­tus quo would pre­vail, or that the civ­il rights move­ment would achieve a legal rev­o­lu­tion near­ly on par with eman­ci­pa­tion itself? At the same time, can we even recall a mod­ern Chris­t­ian polit­i­cal move­ment so con­sis­tent with the upside-down log­ic of bib­li­cal Christianity?”
    • This is Not The Amer­i­can Cul­tur­al Rev­o­lu­tion (Tan­ner Greer, per­son­al blog): “Americans are extreme­ly fond of exag­ger­at­ing the threat their polit­i­cal ene­mies pose. Histri­on­ics about Don­ald Trump end­ing Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy are every­where to be found; read­ers will no doubt remem­ber the pro­tes­tors who claimed that Dick Cheney was the sec­ond com­ing of Hitler, or that Barack Oba­ma was a stealth author­i­tar­i­an socialist.” This is a reas­sur­ing essay.
    • Sec­u­lar­ism Can­not Sus­tain Lib­er­ty, a Response to Greg Forster (Al Mohler, Law & Lib­er­ty): “I believe that the project of civ­i­liza­tion in the West, and in the Eng­lish-speak­ing world in par­tic­u­lar, has brought the great­est flow­er­ing of lib­er­ties and the great­est oppor­tu­ni­ties for human flour­ish­ing in human his­to­ry. I also believe that this civ­i­liza­tion­al project has arrived at this moment of max­i­mum dan­ger after decades of both neglect and mount­ing oppo­si­tion. The most fun­da­men­tal prob­lem is the loss of the intel­lec­tu­al and moral pre­con­di­tions that make the project of ordered lib­er­ty possible.”
    • Could Amer­i­ca split up? (Damon Link­er, The Week): “I often catch myself pon­der­ing exact­ly what it is that keeps our coun­try togeth­er. What do we hold in com­mon? What do we share?” 
  6. Church­es and the pan­dem­ic:
    • How Two Cal­i­for­nia Megachurch­es Kept Wor­ship­ing (Kate Shell­nutt and Nicole Shanks, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Two Cal­i­for­nia church­es were so eager to meet last week­end that when their ser­vices began, wor­shipers erupt­ed in applause. In Sun Val­ley, con­gre­gants fill­ing Grace Com­mu­ni­ty Church’s 3,500-seat sanc­tu­ary rose and cheered, some doc­u­ment­ing the moment with their iPhones, when pas­tor John MacArthur opened the sec­ond week in a row of in-per­son ser­vices…. An hour away in River­side, Cal­i­for­nia, wor­ship­pers at Har­vest Chris­t­ian Fel­low­ship were greet­ed with cheeky pink and pur­ple signs that said, ‘Smile with your eyes (and wear a mask)’ and ‘Just leave room for your Bible—and anoth­er 5½ feet.’ It was the third Sun­day that Har­vest met in a white tent half the size of a foot­ball field to com­ply with state orders restrict­ing indoor worship.”
    • Should Church­es in Cal­i­for­nia Defy Gov­ern­ment Restric­tions? A Response to John MacArthur (Gavin Ortlund, per­son­al blog): “To my mind, there are at least four bib­li­cal val­ues that should inform our deci­sion-mak­ing in this sit­u­a­tion: 1. the impor­tance of wor­ship (Hebrews 10:25), 2. love for neigh­bor (Mark 12:31), 3. obe­di­ence to gov­ern­ment (Romans 13:1–7), and 4. main­tain­ing a good wit­ness (Colos­sians 4:5–6). What con­cerns me about defy­ing the state order right now is that it seems to pri­or­i­tize 1 at the expense of 2–4.”
    • Mask­ing and Masks: A Hypo­thet­i­cal Inter­view (Doug Wil­son, per­son­al blog): “A free peo­ple should be jeal­ous of their lib­er­ty. And one of the best ways to be jeal­ous of your lib­er­ty is to require the gov­ern­ment, when­ev­er it exer­cis­es its author­i­ty coer­cive­ly, to be able to give a very spe­cif­ic rea­son. A gen­er­al rea­son is not good enough. The law should pro­hib­it steal­ing, for exam­ple, and when the cops arrest a thief, they should be able to say that they arrest­ed him because he was ‘stealing.’ Neg­a­tive pro­hi­bi­tions are the foun­da­tion of civic lib­er­ty, and broad, gen­er­al feel-good direc­tives are the foun­da­tion of tyranny.“ I am not opposed to manda­to­ry masks, but this is a good defense of the oppo­si­tion. 
  7. Con­cern­ing Chi­na:
    • The Tik­Tok War (Ben Thomp­son, Strat­e­ch­ery): “TikTok’s algo­rithm, unmoored from the con­straints of your social net­work or pro­fes­sion­al con­tent cre­ators, is free to pro­mote what­ev­er videos it likes, with­out any­one know­ing the dif­fer­ence. Tik­Tok could pro­mote a par­tic­u­lar can­di­date or a par­tic­u­lar issue in a par­tic­u­lar geog­ra­phy, with­out any­one — except per­haps the can­di­date, now indebt­ed to a Chi­nese com­pa­ny — know­ing. You may be skep­ti­cal this might hap­pen, but again, Chi­na has already demon­strat­ed a will­ing­ness to cen­sor speech on a plat­form banned in Chi­na; how much of a leap is it to think that a Par­ty com­mit­ted to ide­o­log­i­cal dom­i­nance will for­ev­er leave a route direct­ly into the hearts and minds of mil­lions of Amer­i­cans untouched?”
    • Books pulled from the library shelves, songs banned…it’s the new nor­mal in Hong Kong (Louisa Lim, The Guardian): “Put sim­ply, with­in a sin­gle month, Bei­jing has dis­man­tled a par­tial­ly free soci­ety and is try­ing to use its new law to enforce glob­al cen­sor­ship on speech regard­ing Hong Kong.”
    • Chris­tians Wor­ry Hong Kong’s New Law Will Ham­per Mis­sions (D. Cheng, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “…Christians liv­ing out­side of Chi­na now won­der: Is it still safe for them to com­mu­ni­cate open­ly with friends and col­leagues in Hong Kong? For years, the ter­ri­to­ry has served as a stag­ing ground for min­istry orga­ni­za­tions oper­at­ing across the region. But now, will they face pres­sure or per­se­cu­tion, as those in the main­land do? If they are crit­i­cal of Bei­jing on social media or in an arti­cle such as this, will they be denied entry to Hong Kong—or worse, detained and pos­si­bly impris­oned upon land­ing in Hong Kong?”
    • ‘Clean Up This Mess’: The Chi­nese Thinkers Behind Xi’s Hard Line (Chris Buck­ley, New York Times): “While China’s Com­mu­nist Par­ty has long nur­tured legions of aca­d­e­mics to defend its agen­da, these author­i­tar­i­an thinkers stand out for their unabashed, often flashily eru­dite advo­ca­cy of one-par­ty rule and assertive sov­er­eign­ty, and their turn against the lib­er­al ideas that many of them once embraced.”
    • Trump Admin­is­tra­tion Penal­izes Chi­nese Offi­cials for Hong Kong Crack­down (Pran­shu Ver­ma and Edward Wong, New York Times): “The action is anoth­er in a series of mea­sures the Trump admin­is­tra­tion has tak­en in recent months to ratch­et up pres­sure on Bei­jing. Last month, the admin­is­tra­tion imposed sanc­tions on the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment, includ­ing a senior mem­ber of the Com­mu­nist Par­ty, over human rights abus­es against the large­ly Mus­lim Uighur minority.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have What Is It Like to Be a Man? (Phil Christ­man, The Hedge­hog Review): “I live out my mas­culin­i­ty most often as a per­verse avoid­ance of com­fort: the refusal of good clothes, mois­tur­iz­er, painkillers; hard phys­i­cal train­ing, pur­sued for its own sake and not because I enjoy it; a sense that there is a set amount of phys­i­cal pain or self‐imposed dis­ci­pline that I owe the universe.” Very well‐written. Every­one will like­ly find parts they res­onate with and parts they reject. The author is a lec­tur­er at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan and based on his CV seems to be a fair­ly devot­ed Epis­co­palian. First shared in vol­ume 178.

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 261

Links to some encour­ag­ing sto­ries, some hor­ri­fy­ing sto­ries, and some con­fus­ing sto­ries. Because it be like that some­times.

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

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. How I Redis­cov­ered Faith (Mal­colm Glad­well, Rel­e­vant Mag­a­zine): “I have always believed in God. I have grasped the log­ic of Chris­t­ian faith. What I have had a hard time see­ing is God’s pow­er. I put that sen­tence in the past tense because some­thing hap­pened to me…” Shared with me by a stu­dent.
  2. Swe­den, Which Nev­er Had Lock­down, Sees COVID-19 Cas­es Plum­met as Rest of Europe Suf­fers Spike (Soo Kim, Newsweek): “Amid fears over a poten­tial sec­ond wave of the nov­el coro­n­avirus across Europe, new infec­tions in Swe­den, where full lock­down mea­sures were not imple­ment­ed, have most­ly declined since late June…. Mean­while, oth­er parts of Europe have report­ed large spikes in new cas­es over the same peri­od, includ­ing Spain, France, Ger­many, Bel­gium and The Nether­lands, which have seen increas­es between 40 and 200 per­cent over the last month, accord­ing to the lat­est WHO report Wednesday.” Huh. Real­i­ty is com­pli­cat­ed and that’s why they make get­ting a PhD so ardu­ous. 
  3. John Roberts: Inside his sur­pris­ing streak of lib­er­al wins (Joan Biskupic, CNN): “…CNN offers a rare glimpse behind the scenes at how jus­tices on the Roberts court assert­ed their inter­ests, forged coali­tions and nav­i­gat­ed polit­i­cal pres­sure and the coro­n­avirus pan­dem­ic. The jus­tices’ opin­ions are pub­lic, but their delib­er­a­tions are pri­vate and usu­al­ly remain secret.”
  4. Har­vard Cre­ates Man­agers Instead of Elites (Saf­fron Huang, Pal­la­di­um Mag­a­zine): “At Har­vard, the implic­it sig­nal we receive every day is that every­thing requires a man­ag­er. Our extracur­ric­u­lars, despite vary­ing club names, most­ly revolve around admin­is­tra­tive work and send­ing emails. Emails solic­it­ing dona­tions, emails invit­ing speak­ers to a con­fer­ence, emails pub­li­ciz­ing your mag­a­zine launch with ‘FREE DONUTS’ dom­i­nat­ing the sub­ject line. Grant­ed, exe­cu­tion of mun­dane tasks is nec­es­sary for real work to be done. The skills of sub­tly bump­ing an unre­spon­sive team­mate, deft­ly achiev­ing a friend­ly-but-pro­fes­sion­al tone, and cre­at­ing Excel files wor­thy of a UI/UX design­er will serve you well in cor­po­rate life…. Very few clubs cre­ate a gen­er­a­tive and imag­i­na­tive vision for your future self at work, or for what you should be work­ing on. Although this is the stat­ed pur­pose of a Har­vard lib­er­al arts edu­ca­tion, cam­pus cul­ture has ele­vat­ed man­age­ri­al­ism above cre­ation…. The result is a class that excels at being judged and excels at man­ag­ing and exe­cut­ing defined tasks.” Quite inter­est­ing and very rel­e­vant to Stan­ford.
  5. The Supreme Court’s sur­pris­ing deci­sion on church­es and the pan­dem­ic, explained (Ian Mill­his­er, Vox): “Unlike his fel­low Repub­li­can jus­tices, in oth­er words, Roberts appears to believe that courts have a par­tic­u­lar­ly strong duty to defer to demo­c­ra­t­i­cal­ly account­able offi­cials dur­ing an his­toric pub­lic health crisis.” I found this analy­sis of Robert’s vote quite inter­est­ing. 
    • Obey­ing God Rather than Men? A Con­sti­tu­tion­al Schol­ar on What’s Real­ly a Reli­gious Lib­er­ty Issue (Ed Stet­zer inter­view­ing John Inazu, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Be peo­ple of hope who are known for putting the inter­ests of oth­ers above your own. Lament the costs of this virus to human life, men­tal health, and mate­r­i­al well-being. Lament our inabil­i­ty to gath­er for wor­ship. Pray for the end of this virus. But in the mean­time, love your neigh­bors and seek the peace of the city, even if it feels costly.”
    • We Can’t Roll the Dice on Reli­gious Lib­er­ty: Neva­da, the Supreme Court, and Church­es (Ed Stet­zer, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Nevada won the injunc­tion bat­tle, but church­es need to help the state back up and make the right choice. This is the line that every main­stream evan­gel­i­cal group said they would draw, and it has now been crossed.”
    • Christ, not Cae­sar, Is Head of the Church (John MacArthur, Grace To You): “History is full of painful reminders that gov­ern­ment pow­er is eas­i­ly and fre­quent­ly abused for evil pur­pos­es. Politi­cians may manip­u­late sta­tis­tics and the media can cov­er up or cam­ou­flage incon­ve­nient truths. So a dis­cern­ing church can­not pas­sive­ly or auto­mat­i­cal­ly com­ply if the gov­ern­ment orders a shut­down of con­gre­ga­tion­al meetings—even if the rea­son giv­en is a con­cern for pub­lic health and safety.”
    • A Time for Civ­il Dis­obe­di­ence? A Response to Grace Com­mu­ni­ty Church’s Elders (Jonathan Lee­man, 9 Marks): “We under­stand that we are not ancient Israel. And though in one sense all space is sacred for a Chris­t­ian because all space is under Christ’s lord­ship, in anoth­er sense no space is sacred, at least in a Tem­ple-like way; and the government’s author­i­ty also extends every­where inside its borders.”
    • Fur­ther Reflec­tions on Recent Con­ver­sa­tions about Chris­t­ian Free­dom (Jonathan Lee­man, 9 Marks): “…my arti­cle and our pod­cast tried to do one sim­ple thing: remind fel­low believers—as we all ven­ture for­ward on our polit­i­cal­ly tumul­tuous landscape—of the cru­cial role of Chris­t­ian free­dom when we take these kinds of stances. On this and so many oth­er issues, believ­ers will come to dif­fer­ent con­clu­sions about the best path to take. And for the sake of main­tain­ing uni­ty, the unique author­i­ty of Scrip­ture, and the gospel, we need to keep train­ing our instincts to have a quick grasp for what belongs in the realm of free­dom and what does not.”
    • Our Gal­va­niz­ing Grand­fa­ther (Dou­glas Wil­son, per­son­al blog): “Suffice it to say that the civ­il gov­ern­ment does have legit­i­mate author­i­ty around sacred things (cir­ca sacra), but no author­i­ty what­ev­er in sacred things (in sac­ris). And when the gov­ern­ment abus­es this basic dis­tinc­tion willy nil­ly, as our gov­ern­ments have been doing in their overt and dis­crim­i­na­to­ry treat­ment of the church, it is time for the lead­er­ship of the church to take a stand. So with all of that run­ning in the back­ground, my pur­pose here this morn­ing is sim­ply to hon­or John MacArthur for his lead­er­ship in this.”
  6. Inter­view: Jour­nal­ist Michael Tracey on Riots & Protests (Michael Bren­dan Dougher­ty, Nation­al Review): “…the diver­gence in opin­ion — between local black and minor­i­ty pop­u­la­tions about the eth­i­cal impli­ca­tions of the riots, and the activists/journalists who claim to speak on their behalf — is striking.”
  7. Are Chris­tians For­bid­den to Eat Blood? (David Clos­son, Gospel Coali­tion): “We can learn at least two things from the Jerusalem Coun­cil. First, on mat­ters per­tain­ing to the gospel, there is no room for com­pro­mise. The apos­tles and elders were firm and swift in their denun­ci­a­tion of those who sought to add works to the gospel. Sal­va­tion is by faith alone through grace alone; human effort is exclud­ed. Sec­ond, grace should be extend­ed for dif­fer­ences that aren’t cen­tral to the gospel.” Peo­ple dunked on this arti­cle, but it’s good and deals with an impor­tant ques­tion that will occur to any Bible read­er. 

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Eat, Pray, Code: Rule of St. Bene­dict Becomes Tech Developer’s Com­mu­ni­ty Guide­lines (Kate Shell­nutt, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “SQLite—a data­base man­age­ment engine used in most major browsers, smart phones, Adobe prod­ucts, and Skype—adopted a code of ethics pulled direct­ly from the bib­li­cal pre­cepts set by the ven­er­at­ed sixth‐century monk.” This arti­cle blew my mind. First shared in vol­ume 175.

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.

Christianity For Modern Pagans: Alienation, Death, and Selfishness

It’s like we’re all watch­ing the same for­eign-lan­guage movie with sub­ti­tles for dif­fer­ent films. We’re see­ing the same things and can’t under­stand why we dis­agree about the plot.

Blog read­ers: Chi Alpha @ Stan­ford is engag­ing in our annu­al sum­mer read­ing project. As we read through an anno­tat­ed trans­la­tion of Pascal’s Pensees called Chris­tian­i­ty For Mod­ern Pagans, I’ll post the thoughts I’m email­ing the stu­dents here (which will large­ly con­sist of excerpts I found insight­ful). They are all tagged sum­mer-read­ing-project-2020. The read­ing sched­ule is online.

My sum­ma­ry of this week’s read­ing is a bit of a rant. Buck­le up.

I was caught off-guard by this tweet yes­ter­day from ABC News: “Pro­test­ers in Cal­i­for­nia set fire to a cour­t­house, dam­aged a police sta­tion and assault­ed offi­cers after a peace­ful demon­stra­tion inten­si­fied.”

It was those last few words that caught my eye: “a peace­ful demon­stra­tion inten­si­fied.” I would have thought the inten­si­fi­ca­tion of peace was some­thing akin to heav­en, but appar­ent­ly inten­si­fy­ing peace leads to a place full of flames.

I sup­pose it is pos­si­ble that the per­son who wrote the tweet sim­ply meant that the peace­ful protest changed into some­thing vio­lent, but it’s so in line with oth­er lan­guage that’s float­ing around that I sus­pect it reflects the author’s per­spec­tive: peace­ful demon­stra­tions are some­times accom­pa­nied by fire and vio­lence.

Per­haps the tweet was noth­ing more than poor­ly-word­ed. Even if so, it illus­trates the schism in our cul­ture. Go read the com­ments on the tweet. It’s like we’re all watch­ing the same for­eign-lan­guage movie with sub­ti­tles for dif­fer­ent films. We’re see­ing the same things and can’t under­stand why we dis­agree about the plot.

Exam­ples abound. Is the 1619 Project is a nec­es­sary cor­rec­tion of the stan­dard Amer­i­can nar­ra­tive or is it a mali­cious dis­tor­tion of our his­to­ry? Is can­cel cul­ture even a thing? Is free speech a real val­ue to cel­e­brate in all areas of life, a nec­es­sary legal stan­dard which we should con­strue as nar­row­ly as pos­si­ble, or a hyp­o­crit­i­cal tool used to mar­gin­al­ize peo­ple? How do you feel about Black Lives Mat­ter? Does it mat­ter whether we are talk­ing about Black Lives Mat­ter as an orga­ni­za­tion, as a slo­gan, or as a grass­roots upris­ing? Is reli­gious lib­er­ty the cor­ner­stone of human rights or does it deserve scare quotes because “reli­gious lib­er­ty” is real­ly a pre­text for priv­i­lege? Who should be pres­i­dent? How many gen­ders are there? Is the envi­ron­ment on the brink of col­lapse? Is social­ism one of the most ruinous mis­takes in his­to­ry or a hope­ful inevitabil­i­ty we should embrace? Can a well-informed and decent per­son be a con­ser­v­a­tive? Can a well-informed and decent per­son be a lib­er­al?

Peo­ple strong­ly (and even vio­lent­ly) dif­fer about each of these ques­tions. With that on my mind, two pas­sages from the read­ing stood out to me. The first is a reminder that the bro­ken­ness we see out there is an aggre­gate of the bro­ken­ness that is in each of us.

The prob­lem is not in our sys­tems but in our selves. This is the rea­son all soci­eties col­lapse, why the dams of good­ness nev­er hold out long against the floods of evil, why the bad peo­ple always some­how seem to come to the top. Soci­ety is only us. There is no “them”. If there were no such thing as Orig­i­nal Sin, why else couldn’t we ever attain the good­ness and jus­tice and joy and peace that the major­i­ty of sane peo­ple always want and have always want­ed? Orig­i­nal Sin is the only key that opens the mys­tery of his­to­ry.

Kreeft com­ment­ing on Pensee 211 (page 155)

And then, as a cau­tion­ary note, this one:

Stag­ger­ing­ly enor­mous mis­eries have been the fruit of modernity’s five great rev­o­lu­tions: the Indus­tri­al Rev­o­lu­tion, the French Rev­o­lu­tion, the Bol­she­vik Rev­o­lu­tion, the Nation­al Social­ist Rev­o­lu­tion and the Sex­u­al Rev­o­lu­tion. These five rev­o­lu­tions are one rev­o­lu­tion: five vis­i­ble out-crop­pings of the same invis­i­ble under­sea con­ti­nent. Each stems from the same root: the idol­a­trous search for a new absolute, the diviniza­tion of pow­er or free­dom or equal­i­ty or pride or plea­sure, respec­tive­ly.

Kreeft com­ment­ing on Pensee 199 (page 135)

I have opin­ions about all of the ques­tions I rat­tled off ear­li­er, and I hold this opin­ion as strong­ly as any of them: words are bet­ter than weapons and bal­lots are bet­ter than bul­lets. Our dis­agree­ments must not dri­ve us to destroy one anoth­er or to tear down the soci­ety we live in. Peo­ple suf­fer when a soci­ety col­laps­es, and those who are already vul­ner­a­ble suf­fer even more.

I don’t think Amer­i­ca is on the cusp of a vio­lent rev­o­lu­tion, but why keep walk­ing down this road? Opt out. As fol­low­ers of Christ let us instead become what I’ve heard called “a cre­ative coun­ter­cul­ture for the com­mon good.” As our Mas­ter said, “Love your ene­mies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mis­treat you”(Luke 6:27–28).

Let your peace inten­si­fy. Here endeth the rant.

Some oth­er quotes from the read­ing that stood out to me:

Pas­cal, Pensee 165: The last act is bloody, how­ev­er fine the rest of the play. They throw earth over your head and it is fin­ished for ever. 

Kreeft com­ment­ing: A sto­ry, like a syl­lo­gism, gets its uni­ty and point from its con­clu­sion, its end. Life seems wretched and vain because its end, and hence its point, seems to be death, and death seems to be noth­ing­ness. There­fore the ques­tion of immor­tal­i­ty is exis­ten­tial­ly cru­cial.

Pas­cal, Pensee 165 (page 144)

This may seem abstract to you while you’re in col­lege, but Pas­cal makes an excel­lent point else­where:

Any­one with only a week to live will not find it in his inter­est to believe that all this is just a mat­ter of chance. Now, if we were not bound by our pas­sions, a week and a hun­dred years would come to the same thing. 

Pas­cal, Pensee 326 (page 141)

Relat­ed:

Is not our span of life equal­ly infin­i­tes­i­mal in eter­ni­ty, even if it is extend­ed by ten years?

Pas­cal, Pensee 199 (page 125)

On a dif­fer­ent note:

Sec­u­lar moral­i­ty is a plan for the ful­fill­ment of self­ish­ness, Chris­tian­i­ty is a plan for its destruc­tion. It cuts to the heart. In fact, it is heart surgery. Clear­ly, this is going to appear opti­mistic only to one who knows he has heart dis­ease. No one who thinks he is healthy is going to be hap­py to be offered a free heart trans­plant.

Kreeft intro­duc­ing chap­ter 12 (page 148)

And a use­ful reminder that peo­ple are the same wher­ev­er you go, whether 17th cen­tu­ry France, con­tem­po­rary Amer­i­ca, or ancient Israel (see Eccle­si­astes 7:21–22):

No one talks about us in our pres­ence as he would in our absence. Human rela­tions are only based on this mutu­al decep­tion; and few friend­ships would sur­vive if every­one knew what his friend said about him behind his back, even though he spoke sin­cere­ly and dis­pas­sion­ate­ly.

Pas­cal, from Pensee 978 (page 151)

In my expe­ri­ence this next obser­va­tion is spot-on:

The great­est liar in the world is still out­raged by being lied to. No one is a moral rel­a­tivist, sub­jec­tivist or min­i­mal­ist when it comes to oth­er­s’ behav­ior to him, only his to oth­ers.

Kreet com­ment­ing on Pensee 978 (page 153)

And I am always amused when some­one pulls the move Kreeft describes here:

In Pas­cal, as in the Mid­dle Ages, the vast size of the uni­verse is used to show forth the vast­ness of God’s pow­er. The very same fact is com­mon­ly used by the mod­ern mind (which igno­rant­ly thinks it is the first to dis­cov­er the fact) as evi­dence for athe­ism! “How could you believe in a God when Man is but a lost speck in an infi­nite abyss?” Why the size of the uni­verse should count against the­ism is nev­er argued for, only assumed. For the argu­ment is worth­less or nonex­is­tent, but the feel­ing is strong. That’s where the change takes place: in feel­ing, in sen­si­bil­i­ty.

Kreeft com­ment­ing on Pensee 199 (page 128)

Sim­i­lar­ly:

Sci­ence no more proves that nature is not a moth­er but only mat­ter than an X‑ray proves that a woman is not a moth­er but only a bag of bones.

Kreeft, intro­duc­tion to chap­ter 10 (page 120)

And this last one seems to me to be most­ly true. It’s true enough to think about.

How nat­ur­al and nor­mal is our unnat­ur­al injus­tice! Of course we are annoyed at crit­i­cism, even true crit­i­cism. Espe­cial­ly true crit­i­cism. A man will for­give you for unjust crit­i­cism but not for just crit­i­cism. A bul­ly will for­give you if you call him a cow­ard but not if you call him a bul­ly. A cow­ard will for­give you if you call him a bul­ly but not if you call him a cow­ard.

Kreeft com­ment­ing on Pensee 978 (page 153)

It reminds me of the say­ing, “when you throw a stone into a pack of dogs, the dog that yelps is the one that got hit.” What makes you yelp? It’s worth pon­der­ing.

For this week we’re read­ing chap­ters 13 (Diver­sion) & 14 (Indif­fer­ence). I think you’ll be shocked at how con­tem­po­rary they seem.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 260

From naked pro­tes­tors in Port­land to slav­ery in Chi­na to the­o­log­i­cal reflec­tions on con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries.

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. Chi­na’s Xin­jiang Province a Moral Quandary for the West (Michael Bren­dan Dougher­ty, Nation­al Review): “The attempt to place mod­ern slaves in the sup­ply chain of West­ern lux­u­ry goods is an attempt to impli­cate and moral­ly geld West­ern nations who would crit­i­cize or pun­ish the Chi­nese Com­mu­nist Par­ty for its crimes.”
  2. USS Uni­ver­si­ty (Scott Gal­loway, per­son­al blog): “There is a dan­ger­ous con­fla­tion of the dis­cus­sion about K‑12 and uni­ver­si­ty reopen­ings. The two are stark­ly dif­fer­ent. There are strong rea­sons to reopen K‑12, and there are stronger rea­sons to keep uni­ver­si­ties shuttered.“ The author is a busi­ness prof at NYU. Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus.
    • Relat­ed: Col­leges Are Get­ting Ready to Blame Their Stu­dents (Julia Mar­cus and Jes­si­ca Gold, The Atlantic): “Students will get infect­ed, and uni­ver­si­ties will rebuke them for it; cam­pus­es will close, and stu­dents will be blamed for it. Rely­ing on the self-con­trol of young adults, rather than deploy­ing the pub­lic-health infra­struc­ture need­ed to con­trol a dis­ease that spreads eas­i­ly among peo­ple who live, eat, study, and social­ize togeth­er, is not a safe reopen­ing strategy—and yelling at stu­dents for their dan­ger­ous behav­ior won’t help either.” The authors are pro­fes­sors at Har­vard and Wash­ing­ton Uni­ver­si­ty, respec­tive­ly. 
    • Vague­ly relat­ed: Your State’s COVID Num­bers In Con­text (Poli­Math, Sub­stack): “Headlines are aller­gic to con­text and the high-pop­u­la­tion states get all the atten­tion because they show big num­bers (because they are big states). When a small­er state gets any report­ing, it is entire­ly out­side any con­text. In Wash­ing­ton, it was report­ed that we had 754 new cas­es and 7 new deaths. Is that a lot? How does that com­pare to oth­er states?” Very detailed and insight­ful. 
  3. Coro­n­avirus, Con­spir­a­cy The­o­ries, and the Ninth Com­mand­ment (David French, The Dis­patch): “Christian teach­ing about our lives in our work­places is not pri­mar­i­ly about how to obtain a pro­mo­tion, how to invest our mon­ey, or how to start a busi­ness. In oth­er words, it’s not about the objec­tives of eco­nom­ic engage­ment, though those objec­tives are impor­tant. Instead, the focus is on min­is­ter­ing to col­leagues, cul­ti­vat­ing faith in adver­si­ty, and gen­er­al­ly learn­ing how to be salt and light even in some­times hos­tile or intim­i­dat­ing envi­ron­ments. [But we don’t do this with politics.]” Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus, this one was real­ly good.
  4. 8 facts about reli­gion and gov­ern­ment in the Unit­ed States (Dalia Fah­my, Pew Research Cen­ter): “While the U.S. Con­sti­tu­tion does not men­tion God, every state con­sti­tu­tion ref­er­ences either God or the divine. God also appears in the Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence, the Pledge of Alle­giance and on U.S. currency.” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
  5. Where is the nation­al news cov­er­age of cur­rent surge of van­dal­ism at Catholic church­es? (Clemente Lisi, GetRe­li­gion): “Who’s respon­si­ble for this anti-Catholic vio­lence? Is it Mus­lim ter­ror­ists? Neo-Nazis? Left-wing rad­i­cals? Are these iso­lat­ed inci­dents or part of a coor­di­nat­ed attack? We don’t know because the elite news­rooms with the tal­ent and resources to han­dle this kind of inves­ti­ga­tion are miss­ing in action, in this case.… One has to won­der how these inci­dents would have been cov­ered had they been mosques? What about pub­lic schools? Or say Planned Par­ent­hood facilities?”
    • Relat­ed: Roman Catholics: The Orig­i­nal Abo­li­tion­ists (Paul Ken­gor, Cri­sis Mag­a­zine): “Last week­end, one of Serra’s mis­sion church­es in Cal­i­for­nia went up in flames, with the cause of the fire not yet known. In the last few days, a stat­ue of Mary was set on fire in Boston and anoth­er was van­dal­ized in Brook­lyn (among oth­ers). As to what Mary has to do with the mod­ern anti-stat­ue-racism move­ment is anyone’s guess. Nonethe­less, if the issue is (right­ly so) a just con­dem­na­tion of slav­ery and racism, and if one is gen­uine­ly seek­ing accu­rate his­to­ry, then today’s activists ought to look back in admi­ra­tion at the impres­sive track record of the Roman Catholic Church.” The author is a pro­fes­sor of polit­i­cal sci­ence at Grove City Col­lege. The his­to­ry of the Catholic Church on the issue of slav­ery is bet­ter than the Protes­tant church.
  6. What You Need To Know About The Bat­tle of Port­land (Robert Evans, Belling­cat): “I report­ed on the fight­ing in Mosul back in 2017, and what hap­pened that night in the streets of Port­land was, of course, not near­ly as bru­tal or dan­ger­ous as actu­al com­bat. Yet it was about as close as you can get with­out using live ammunition.“ A sig­nif­i­cant qual­i­fi­er at the end of that sen­tence, inter­est­ing nonethe­less.
    • Portland’s protests were sup­posed to be about black lives. Now, they’re white spec­ta­cle. (E.D. Mondainé, Wash­ing­ton Post): “We wel­come our white broth­ers and sis­ters in this strug­gle. In fact, we need them. But I must ask them to remain humbly attuned to the oppor­tu­ni­ty of this moment — and to reflect on whether any actions they take will tru­ly help estab­lish jus­tice, or whether they are sim­ply for show.” The author is pres­i­dent of the Port­land branch of the NAACP.
    • Out of Port­land tear gas, an appari­tion emerges, cap­tur­ing the imag­i­na­tion of pro­test­ers (Los Ange­les Times): “She emerged as an appari­tion from clouds of tear gas as fed­er­al agents fired pep­per balls at angry pro­test­ers in the ear­ly Sat­ur­day dark­ness. A woman wear­ing noth­ing but a black face mask and a stock­ing cap strode toward a dozen heav­i­ly armed agents attired in cam­ou­flage fatigues, lined up across a down­town Port­land street.” Port­land gonna port.
    • Tan­gen­tial­ly Relat­ed: Amer­i­can Crime and the Bal­ti­more Mod­el (Bret Stephens, New York Times): “Idealists may hope these changes will elim­i­nate police bru­tal­i­ty as com­mu­ni­ties find bet­ter ways to pre­vent crime than deter­rence and force. But on the hunch that human nature hasn’t changed, that isn’t going to hap­pen. Crim­i­nals, fear­ing less, will con­tin­ue to prey on oth­ers. Police, fear­ing more, will hold back from doing their jobs. Those with means to leave their neigh­bor­hoods, will. Those with­out the means will suffer.”
  7. A new intel­li­gentsia is push­ing back against wok­e­ness (Batya Ungar-Sar­gon, For­ward): “The anti-woke Black intel­li­gentsia is lead­ing a counter-cul­ture to a woke hege­mo­ny and the online cul­ture that pop­u­lar­ized it. But their views hew more close­ly to those of most Black Amer­i­cans than the new antiracism. Polling has long indi­cat­ed that white lib­er­als express rad­i­cal­ly more lib­er­al views on racial and social issues than their Black and Lati­no neighbors.” Very inter­est­ing inter­views.
    • Relat­ed: The Left is Now the Right (Matt Taib­bi, Sub­stack): “Things we once despised about the right have been ampli­fied a thou­sand-fold on the flip. Con­ser­v­a­tives once tried to leg­is­late what went on in your bed­room; now it’s the left that obsess­es over sex­u­al cod­i­cils, not just for the bed­room but every­where. Right-wingers from time to time made head­lines cam­paign­ing against every­thing from The Last Temp­ta­tion of Christ to ‘Fuck the Police,’ though we laughed at the idea that Ice Cube made cops lit­er­al­ly unsafe… today Matt Ygle­sias sign­ing a group let­ter with Noam Chom­sky is con­sid­ered threatening.”
    • Relat­ed: When Wokes and Racists Actu­al­ly Agree on Every­thing (Ryan Long Com­e­dy, YouTube) : two min­utes of bril­liance

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have Dis­solv­ing the Fer­mi Para­dox (Scott Alexan­der, Slate Star Codex): “Imagine we knew God flipped a coin. If it came up heads, He made 10 bil­lion alien civ­i­liza­tion. If it came up tails, He made none besides Earth. Using our one para­me­ter Drake Equa­tion, we deter­mine that on aver­age there should be 5 bil­lion alien civ­i­liza­tions. Since we see zero, that’s quite the para­dox, isn’t it? No. In this case the mean is mean­ing­less. It’s not at all sur­pris­ing that we see zero alien civ­i­liza­tions, it just means the coin must have land­ed tails. SDO say that rely­ing on the Drake Equa­tion is the same kind of error.”  First shared in vol­ume 159.

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 259

This week con­tains some of the most fas­ci­nat­ing arti­cles I ever have passed along. Def­i­nite­ly worth skim­ming!

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. Fer­til­i­ty rate: ‘Jaw-drop­ping’ glob­al crash in chil­dren being born (James Gal­lagher, BBC): “China, cur­rent­ly the most pop­u­lous nation in the world, is expect­ed to peak at 1.4 bil­lion in four years’ time before near­ly halv­ing to 732 mil­lion by 2100. India will take its place.” From a long-term per­spec­tive, this is pos­si­bly the most sig­nif­i­cant news you will read this year. Some of you will still be alive when China’s pop­u­la­tion is half what it is now. And it’s not just Chi­na — many nations are on the same path (with only a few siz­able ones head­ed in the oppo­site direc­tion).
  2. The Coro­n­avirus and the Right’s Sci­en­tif­ic Coun­ter­rev­o­lu­tion (Ari Schul­man, The New Repub­lic): “That so many views tut-tut­ted as the irra­tional defi­ance of expert con­sen­sus actu­al­ly became the expert con­sen­sus in the span of just a few weeks vivid­ly sug­gests that we need to reex­am­ine just how our cul­ture talks about exper­tise. The prob­lem is not main­ly that the experts were wrong—that is to be expect­ed. It is, rather, that our lead insti­tu­tions and pub­lic infor­ma­tion out­lets con­tin­u­al­ly treat­ed the assur­ances of experts as neu­tral inter­pre­ta­tions of set­tled sci­ence when they plain­ly were not.” Inter­est­ing through­out. This will like­ly enter my rota­tion of clas­sics that I repost from time to time. 
    • Relat­ed: An Open Let­ter To My Fel­low Chris­tians (David Carreon, per­son­al blog): “Large gath­er­ings are dan­ger­ous with a spread­ing virus regard­less of the rea­son for the assem­bly. Some resist the straight­for­ward response to this out of idol­a­try of church atten­dance and the church build­ing. Any good thing can become an idol. Gold is good but can be shaped into a gold­en calf (Exo 32:4). Sex is good but can we can also per­vert it through for­ni­ca­tion (1 Cor 6:9). A church build­ing or even phys­i­cal atten­dance at church can be mis­tak­en for the Church itself. This, too, is idolatry.” David is a Stan­ford psy­chi­a­trist (and a friend of mine)
    • Relat­ed: Andy Stan­ley Explains Why His Megachurch Won’t Gath­er on Sun­days Until 2021 (Ed Stet­zer, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Here is where I think the church needs to think about this: As a local church, we have lim­it­ed time, lim­it­ed staff, and lim­it­ed resources; it makes no sense to focus our staff time and resources on cre­at­ing a sub­par envi­ron­ment on Sun­day morn­ing for a nine and 11 o’clock ser­vice that only 20% of the peo­ple may attend. We decid­ed to focus on the 100% of all of our church folks and their friends and the rest of the world that may show up later.“
  3. David Shor’s Uni­fied The­o­ry of the 2020 Elec­tion (Eric Levitz, New York Mag­a­zine): “Campaigns do want to win. But the peo­ple who work in cam­paigns tend to be high­ly ide­o­log­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed and thus, super-prone to con­vinc­ing them­selves to do things that are strate­gi­cal­ly dumb.” Super inter­est­ing — well worth read­ing.
  4. Dis­turb­ing video shows hun­dreds of blind­fold­ed pris­on­ers in Xin­jiang (Matt Rivers, Max Fos­ter and James Grif­fiths, CNN): “The video — which was post­ed online anony­mous­ly last week — shows hun­dreds of men, most of whom are dressed in pur­ple and orange vests with the words ‘Kashgar Deten­tion Cen­ter’ print­ed on them, seat­ed in rows on the ground of what appears to be a large court­yard out­side a train sta­tion. Their heads are shaved and their hands bound behind their backs. All of the men are wear­ing black blind­folds over their eyes and they are being watched over by dozens of police offi­cers in SWAT uniforms.”’
    • Relat­ed: Chi­na cuts Uighur births with IUDs, abor­tion, ster­il­iza­tion (Asso­ci­at­ed Press): “While indi­vid­ual women have spo­ken out before about forced birth con­trol, the prac­tice is far more wide­spread and sys­tem­at­ic than pre­vi­ous­ly known, accord­ing to an AP inves­ti­ga­tion based on gov­ern­ment sta­tis­tics, state doc­u­ments and inter­views with 30 ex-detainees, fam­i­ly mem­bers and a for­mer deten­tion camp instruc­tor. The cam­paign over the past four years in the far west region of Xin­jiang is lead­ing to what some experts are call­ing a form of ‘demographic genocide.’”
  5. Sit With Neg­a­tive Emo­tions, Don’t Push Them Away (Arthur C. Brooks, The Atlantic): “In sum, if we want a life full of deep mean­ing, true love, and emo­tion­al strength, it’s going to involve the risk (and often the real­i­ty) of dis­com­fort, con­flict, and loss. This means there will be sad­ness, fear, anger, and dis­gust. If we elim­i­nate neg­a­tive emo­tions and expe­ri­ences from our lives, we will be poor­er and weak­er for hav­ing done so.” The author is a pro­fes­sor at Har­vard, rec­om­mend­ed by a friend.
  6. 10 The­ses About Can­cel Cul­ture (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “The point of can­cel­la­tion is ulti­mate­ly to estab­lish norms for the major­i­ty, not to bring the stars back down to earth…. The goal isn’t to pun­ish every­one, or even very many some­ones; it’s to shame or scare just enough peo­ple to make the rest conform.”
    • The Will­ful Blind­ness of Reac­tionary Lib­er­al­ism (Osi­ta Nwane­vu, The New Repub­lic): “The ten­sions we’ve seen late­ly have been inter­nal to lib­er­al­ism for ages: between those who take the asso­cia­tive nature of lib­er­al soci­ety seri­ous­ly and those who are deter­mined not to. It is the for­mer group, the defend­ers of pro­gres­sive iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics, who in fact are protecting—indeed expanding—the bounds of lib­er­al­ism. And it is the lat­ter group, the reac­tionar­ies, who are most guilty of the illib­er­al­ism they claim has over­tak­en the Amer­i­can Left.” Writ­ten before the let­ter I shared last week, this is one of the best defens­es of can­cel cul­ture.
    • The World That Twit­ter Made (Tan­ner Greer, per­son­al blog): “I sus­pect an entire class of pun­dits has inter­nal­ized the idea that [Twit­ter debate] is what pub­lic dis­cus­sion is. Of course they don’t believe in free expres­sion, civ­il debate, the spir­it of lib­er­al­ism, and all of that jazz. To this gen­er­a­tion those things are just words. The pub­lic sphere they have known has always been a bare-knuck­le brawl.”
    • Res­ig­na­tion Let­ter (Bari Weiss, per­son­al web­site): “What rules that remain at The Times are applied with extreme selec­tiv­i­ty. If a person’s ide­ol­o­gy is in keep­ing with the new ortho­doxy, they and their work remain unscru­ti­nized. Every­one else lives in fear of the dig­i­tal thunderdome.” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
    • See You Next Fri­day (Andrew Sul­li­van, New York Mag­a­zine): “What has hap­pened, I think, is rel­a­tive­ly sim­ple: A crit­i­cal mass of the staff and man­age­ment at New York Mag­a­zine and Vox Media no longer want to asso­ciate with me, and, in a time of ever tight­en­ing bud­gets, I’m a lux­u­ry item they don’t want to afford. And that’s entire­ly their prerogative.”
    • Illu­sion and Agree­ment in the Debate over Intol­er­ance (Justin Wein­berg, Dai­ly Nous): “In short, I don’t think soci­ety has got­ten more intol­er­ant, but tech­nol­o­gy has facil­i­tat­ed, among oth­er things, the expres­sion of intolerance.”
    • A More Spe­cif­ic Let­ter on Jus­tice and Open Debate (many authors, The Objec­tive): “In truth, Black, brown, and LGBTQ+ peo­ple — par­tic­u­lar­ly Black and trans peo­ple — can now cri­tique elites pub­licly and hold them account­able social­ly; this seems to be the letter’s great­est con­cern. What’s per­haps even more grat­ing to many of the sig­na­to­ries is that a cri­tique of their long held views is persuasive.”
    • Liked tweets near­ly cost me my uni­ver­si­ty job (Mike McCul­loch, Unherd): “To think that I could have lost my career to a sin­gle com­plaint about my liked tweets shows just how hys­ter­i­cal the present social mood is. Now more than ever, it is vital that we — and in par­tic­u­lar the uni­ver­si­ties — stand up for enlight­en­ment prin­ci­ples and replace fear with rea­son and fact.” The author is a math lec­tur­er (sim­i­lar to an assis­tant pro­fes­sor in the US) at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Ply­mouth. 
    • A Dec­la­ra­tion of Inde­pen­dence by a Prince­ton Pro­fes­sor (Joshua T. Katz, Quil­lette): “I am friends with many peo­ple who signed the Prince­ton let­ter, which requests and in some places demands a dizzy­ing array of changes, and I sup­port their right to speak as they see fit. But I am embar­rassed for them.” 
    • Attempt­ed Putsch At Prince­ton (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “I am a Prince­ton pro­fes­sor who signed the let­ter that you wrote about today. I am also a devout Chris­t­ian and a dai­ly read­er of your blog.” Con­tains a let­ter from a Prince­ton prof with a dif­fer­ent view than the one above, worth con­trast­ing.
  7. My Time in Prison (George Car­di­nal Pell, First Things): “There is a lot of good­ness in pris­ons. At times, I am sure, pris­ons may be hell on earth. I was for­tu­nate to be kept safe and treat­ed well. I was impressed by the pro­fes­sion­al­ism of the warders, the faith of the pris­on­ers, and the exis­tence of a moral sense even in the dark­est places.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have How the State Serves Both Sal­va­tion and Reli­gious Free­dom (Jonathan Lee­man, 9 Marks): “Two basic kinds of gov­ern­ments, then, show up in the Bible: those that shel­ter God’s peo­ple, and those that destroy them. Abim­elech shel­tered; Pharoah destroyed. The Assyr­i­ans destroyed; the Baby­lo­ni­ans and Per­sians, ulti­mate­ly, shel­tered. Pilate destroyed; Fes­tus shel­tered. And depend­ing on how you read Rev­e­la­tion, the his­to­ry of gov­ern­ment will cul­mi­nate in a beast­ly slaugh­ter of saint­ly blood. Romans 13 calls gov­ern­ments ser­vants; Psalm 2 calls them imposters. Most gov­ern­ments con­tain both. But some are bet­ter than others.” First shared in vol­ume 165. 

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.