Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 188

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. Assess­ing Bet­sy DeVos’s Pro­posed Rules on Title IX and Sex­u­al Assault (Jean­nie Suk Ger­son, New York­er): “The truth is that there is much to crit­i­cize in DeVos’s pro­pos­al but also much that would help to make school­s’ process­es for han­dling sex­u­al mis­con­duct fair­er to all parties.” Ger­son, a Har­vard law prof, con­sis­tent­ly offers insight­ful per­spec­tive on issues sur­round­ing cam­pus sex­u­al assault.
  2. Cru­el and Unusu­al Pun­ish­ment (Lionel Shriv­er, Harpers): “The con­tem­po­rary impulse to rebuke dis­graced cre­ators by van­ish­ing their work from the cul­tur­al mar­ket­place exhibits a mean‑­spiritedness, a venge­ful­ness even, as well as an illog­ic. Why, if you catch some­one doing some­thing bad, would you nec­es­sar­i­ly rub out what they’ve done that’s good? If you’re con­vict­ed of break­ing and enter­ing, the judge won’t send bailiffs around to tear down the tree house you built for your daugh­ter and to pour bleach on your home­made pie.”
  3. How I Knew the #Cov­ing­ton­Boys Video Was Click­bait (Clair Pot­ter, Pub­lic Sem­i­nar): “I think the most under­re­port­ed sto­ry about #Cov­ing­ton­Boys is how it got to us in the first place. It orig­i­nat­ed with a piece of click­bait that was cho­sen and edit­ed, by per­sons unknown, to pro­duce out­rage on the right and the left. Orig­i­nat­ing in a fake account, and pro­lif­er­at­ed by oth­er fake accounts, it was part of a pro­fes­sion­al social media cam­paign intend­ed to disrupt.”
    • Relat­ed: Bad, Press (Charles Cooke, Nation­al Review): “For a neat illus­tra­tion of how far­ci­cal things have become, take a look at the Wash­ing­ton Post’s most recent ‘fact check,’ which help­ful­ly informs its read­ers that the claimed ‘one thou­sand burg­er­s’ Pres­i­dent Trump bought for the Clem­son foot­ball team were not, in fact, ‘piled up a mile high’ because, ‘at two inch­es each, a thou­sand burg­ers would not reach one mile high.’ Democ­ra­cy dies in dark­ness, indeed.”
  4. Imag­ine Nations Were Selfless—It’s No Par­adise (Brad Lit­tle­john, Prov­i­dence): “We hear often today about how we live in “a glob­al soci­ety” and have to take up the respon­si­bil­i­ties of “global citizenship.” But what these exhor­ta­tions miss is that the expo­nen­tial growth in human knowl­edge over the past cen­tu­ry has not been matched by near­ly as rapid growth in human agency. It is now pos­si­ble for a house­wife in Ten­nessee to be aware of a rape in Bangladesh with­in hours or min­utes, but she is only mar­gin­al­ly more able to do any­thing about it now than she was 100 years ago.” The arti­cle as a whole is not great, but it makes a very inter­est­ing argu­ment: patri­o­tism is a nec­es­sary way to make our empa­thy pro­duc­tive.
  5. In polar­ized Wash­ing­ton, a Demo­c­rat anchors bipar­ti­san friend­ships in faith (Jack Jenk­ins, Reli­gion News Ser­vice): “A bridge builder with Repub­li­cans, Coons is known for help­ing cre­ate rare flick­ers of bipar­ti­san agree­ment. Part of his secret, it seems, is reli­gion…. Coons, who grew up attend­ing Red Clay Creek Pres­by­ter­ian Church in Hockessin, Del., explained that his faith has not only pro­vid­ed ground­ing for his own life but has also emerged as a point of con­nec­tion with Repub­li­cans, with whom he has forged last­ing rela­tion­ships — and legislation.”
  6. What The Estab­lish­ment Right Doesn’t Get (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): this essay, a large part of which is actu­al­ly com­men­tary from a read­er, is like a flamethrow­er. “…those who preach the bour­geois virtues can’t get a hear­ing if there is no sta­ble employ­ment for peo­ple who do the right thing. And, if those who do the right thing (by which I mean play by the rules: live lives of hard work, fair play, and self-dis­ci­pline) can find every­thing kicked out from under them all of a sud­den, it desta­bi­lizes the entire society.”
    • The fol­low-up, Lib­er­ty, Equal­i­ty — But Where’s The Fra­ter­ni­ty? is also stim­u­lat­ing.
    • Read­ing the lat­ter one brought to my atten­tion a very short essay by G.K. Chester­ton. I high­ly rec­om­mend it. “The Eng­lish peo­ple as a body went blind, as the say­ing is, for inter­pret­ing democ­ra­cy entire­ly in terms of lib­er­ty. They said in sub­stance that if they had more and more lib­er­ty it did not mat­ter whether they had any equal­i­ty or any fra­ter­ni­ty. But this was vio­lat­ing the sacred trin­i­ty of true pol­i­tics; they con­found­ed the per­sons and they divid­ed the substance.”
  7. 4 Facts Every Amer­i­can Should Know About Third-Trimester Abor­tions (Joe Carter, Gospel Coali­tion): “As I not­ed in an arti­cle last week, Demo­c­ra­t­ic leg­is­la­tors in places like New York and Vir­ginia are mov­ing to cod­i­fy abor­tion rights in state law to pre­pare for the day when Roe and Doe are over­turned. When the Supreme Court throws the abor­tion issue back to the indi­vid­ual states, third-trimester abor­tions will still be pro­tect­ed in states that reit­er­ate Doe’s stan­dards for ‘viability’ or ‘health.’”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

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

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it). 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 187

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. Emo­tions Make Ter­ri­ble Gods (Greg Morse, Desir­ing God): “We live in an emo­ji world where self-expres­sion and ‘being the true you’ hold high­est pri­or­i­ty — no one can tell us how to feel…. In all, the assump­tion stands: you are your emo­tions — for bet­ter or worse. To repress them is to repress yourself.”
  2. ‘I Was a TSA Agent, and You Fed Me’ (Kate Shell­nut, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “But church­es, as they join in prayer for a leg­isla­tive solu­tion, have also stepped up to sup­port com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers affect­ed by the bud­get­ing stale­mate. Here are 10 places where Chris­tians are reach­ing out to love their fur­loughed and unpaid neighbors…” This is an inspir­ing list. I am struck by both the geo­graph­ic and the denom­i­na­tion­al diver­si­ty. The extent to which church­es bless their com­mu­ni­ties is dif­fi­cult to over­state.
  3. Is Big Tech Merg­ing With Big Broth­er? Kin­da Looks Like It (David Samuels, Wired): “A nation­al or glob­al sur­veil­lance net­work that uses benef­i­cent algo­rithms to reshape human thoughts and actions in ways that elites believe to be just or ben­e­fi­cial to all mankind is hard­ly the road to a new Eden. It’s the road to a prison camp.”
  4. Death on demand: has euthana­sia gone too far? (Christo­pher de Bel­laigue, Guardian): “Altogether, well over a quar­ter of all deaths in 2017 in the Nether­lands were induced.… sui­cide leaves scars on friends and fam­i­ly that may nev­er heal. But sui­cide is an indi­vid­ual act, self-moti­vat­ed and self-admin­is­tered, and its force field is con­tained. Euthana­sia, by con­trast, is the prod­uct of soci­ety. When it goes wrong, it goes wrong for everyone.” In case you’re read­ing quick­ly, read that first sen­tence again. Over 25%!
  5. The Gay Church (Andrew Sul­li­van, New York Mag­a­zine): “A church that, since 2005, bans priests with ‘deep-seated homo­sex­u­al ten­den­cies’ and offi­cial­ly teach­es that gay men are ‘objectively dis­or­dered’ and inher­ent­ly dis­posed toward ‘intrinsic moral evil’ is actu­al­ly com­posed, in ways very few oth­er insti­tu­tions are, of gay men.” I find his lack of engage­ment with Scrip­ture and focus on church his­to­ry strik­ing and very Catholic.
  6. A lot of arti­cles about the dust­up at the March for Life. I find polar­iz­ing sit­u­a­tions like this fas­ci­nat­ing and fre­quent­ly reveal­ing.
    • The Media Botched the Cov­ing­ton Catholic Sto­ry (Caitlin Flana­gan, The Atlantic): “Among oth­er things, jour­nal­is­tic ethics held that if you didn’t have the report­ing to sup­port a sto­ry, and if that sto­ry had the poten­tial to hurt its sub­jects, and if those sub­jects were pri­vate cit­i­zens, and if they were more­over minors, you didn’t run the sto­ry. You kept report­ing it; you let your­self get scooped; and you accept­ed that speed is not the high­est val­ue. Oth­er­wise, you were the trash press.” This piece is bru­tal. If you only read one of the arti­cles in this sec­tion, make it this one.
    • For an exam­ple of a harsh­er per­spec­tive: Why do the Cov­ing­ton Catholic kids get the ben­e­fit of the doubt? (Lau­ra Turn­er, Reli­gion News Ser­vice): “There’s no virtue in rush­ing to get in a hot take! But nei­ther is there in ignor­ing clear evi­dence of racism and cru­el­ty. As new accounts and new videos of the inci­dent emerged, more stayed the same than changed: Sandmann’s sim­per­ing expres­sion remained, as did his immov­able oppo­si­tion to Phillips. (In his ‘Today’ show inter­view, Sand­mann says he now wish­es he ‘could’ve walked away and avoid­ed the whole thing.’ The use of ‘could’ve’ is doing a lot of work there — he always could have cho­sen to walk away. He chose not to.)”
    • The Cov­ing­ton Scis­sor (Ross Douthat, NY Times): “To under­stand what makes this inci­dent so bril­liant in its divi­sive­ness, you need to see the tapes­try in full, how each con­stituent ele­ment (abor­tion, race, MAGA, white boys, Catholi­cism, Native Amer­i­can rit­u­al) auto­mat­i­cal­ly con­firms pri­ors on both sides of our divide. And you also need to see how the video itself, far from being a means to achiev­ing con­sen­sus, is an amaz­ing accel­er­ant of controversy…” Douthat’s op-ed is inspired by the short sto­ry Sort By Con­tro­ver­sial (Scott Alexan­der, Slate Star Codex). It’s an easy read and I rec­om­mend it.
    • Anoth­er per­spec­tive less sym­pa­thet­ic to the boys: The real pol­i­tics behind the Cov­ing­ton Catholic con­tro­ver­sy, explained (Zack Beauchamp, Vox): “The argu­ment here is not that it’s wrong to care about the Cov­ing­ton stu­dents per se. Rather, it’s a kind of dis­gust at the hypocrisy on dis­play: Con­ser­v­a­tives and the main­stream media don’t, in the left-lib­er­al view, ever dis­play the same lev­els of con­cern for minor­i­ty kids accused of actu­al crimes. All the sym­pa­thy being extend­ed to these kids, all the ben­e­fit of the doubt, reflects the abil­i­ty of the priv­i­leged to com­mand a lev­el of sym­pa­thy that the less priv­i­leged lack.”
    • Cov­ing­ton isn’t about facts, but about iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics. Nick Sand­mann com­mit­ted ‘face­crime’ (Tuck­er Carl­son, Fox News): “People’s views evolve over time. Polit­i­cal divi­sions can heal and often do. But fights over iden­ti­ty do not; they are dif­fer­ent. Iden­ti­ty does not change. It can’t be mod­er­at­ed or con­trolled. It’s inher­ent. We’re born that way. When we go to war over who we are, it’s a per­ma­nent bat­tle. It is a dis­as­ter that lasts for gen­er­a­tions. Iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics will destroy this coun­try faster than a for­eign invasion.”
    • The Abyss of Hate Ver­sus Hate (Andrew Sul­li­van, NY Mag­a­zine): “To put it blunt­ly: They were 16-year-olds sub­ject­ed to ver­bal racist assault by grown men; and then the kids were accused of being big­ots. It just beg­gars belief that the same lib­er­als who fret about ‘micro-aggressions’ for 20-some­things were able to see 16-year-olds absorb­ing the worst racist garbage from reli­gious big­ots … and then express the desire to punch the kids in the face…. this is what will inevitably hap­pen once you’ve rede­fined racism or sex­ism to mean prej­u­dice plus pow­er. ”
  7. US mis­sion­ary who engaged with reclu­sive Brazil­ian tribe could be charged with geno­cide (Phoebe Loomes, NZ Her­ald): “Campbell has claimed that he made the expe­di­tion to the remote region at the request of the Jama­ma­di peo­ple, who he is in con­tact with, as they want­ed to learn to use GPS nav­i­ga­tors. Dur­ing this expe­di­tion he encoun­tered the iso­lat­ed Hi-Mer­imã tribe. For this, Brazil­ian offi­cials say Camp­bell could be charged with a slew of offences, includ­ing genocide.“
    • Geno­cide seems much too strong a term for a sit­u­a­tion in which no one is known to have died or even so much as sneezed. Maybe the word trans­lat­ed as geno­cide is broad­er in Por­tuguese?
    • Help­ful con­text: Brazil Inves­ti­gates If US Mis­sion­ary Encroached on Iso­lat­ed Ama­zon Tribe (Kate Shell­nut, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Ribeiro shared con­cerns about indige­nous peo­ple receiv­ing assis­tance from groups appoint­ed by the gov­ern­ment, since they rarely stay in a com­mu­ni­ty long enough to build rela­tion­ships and learn the lan­guage. Mean­while, she says field mis­sion­ar­ies often bring high lev­els of tech­ni­cal training—from anthro­pol­o­gy to nursing—while com­mit­ting to serve for an extend­ed amount of time.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

Every week I’ll high­light an old­er link still worth your con­sid­er­a­tion. This week we have This Is What Makes Repub­li­cans and Democ­rats So Dif­fer­ent (Vox, Ezra Klein): the title made me skep­ti­cal, but there are some good insights in this arti­cle (first shared in vol­ume 32 back in 2016).

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 186

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. 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)
  2. Engi­neers of the Soul: Ide­ol­o­gy in Xi Jin­ping’s Chi­na (John Gar­naut, Sinocism): “In clas­si­cal Chi­nese state­craft there are two tools for gain­ing and main­tain­ing con­trol over “the moun­tains and the river­s”: The first is wu (weapons, vio­lence — æ­¦) and the sec­ond is wen (lan­guage, cul­ture — æ–‡). Chi­nese lead­ers have always believed that pow­er derives from con­trol­ling both the phys­i­cal bat­tle­field and the cul­tur­al domain. You can’t sus­tain phys­i­cal pow­er with­out dis­cur­sive pow­er. Wu and wen go hand-in-hand.”
  3. A Strange Argu­ment for the Com­mon­place (Cato Unbound, Agnes Callard): “We should not equal­ize the rich and poor, but rather endeav­or to make the poor of tomor­row wealth­i­er than the rich of today.” I’m includ­ing this link most­ly because of that quote. Also because it has some com­men­tary on Peter Singer which dove­tails with a con­ver­sa­tion I had ear­li­er this week.
  4. Most Teenagers Drop Out of Church as Young Adults (Aaron Earls, Life­way Research ): “Almost half (47 per­cent) of those who dropped out and attend­ed col­lege say mov­ing to col­lege played a role in their no longer attend­ing church for at least a year…. Among all those who dropped out, 29 per­cent say they planned on tak­ing a break from church once they grad­u­at­ed high school. Sev­en in 10 (71 per­cent) say their leav­ing wasn’t an inten­tion­al decision.”
    • The title is a bit mis­lead­ing. Yes, a major­i­ty of young adults who pre­vi­ous­ly attend­ed church do stop attend­ing church for at least one year between the ages of 18–22, but if you look at their under­ly­ing research about 70% even­tu­al­ly start attend­ing again. Also, it doesn’t seem to ask whether any of these peo­ple were involved in an activ­i­ty that they might not char­ac­ter­ize as church (like Chi Alpha or Inter­var­si­ty). I know some of my Chi Alpha stu­dents are not cur­rent­ly wor­ship­ing with a Sun­day morn­ing con­gre­ga­tion, but it would be wrong to infer that their faith has been put on pause.
  5. Have Aliens Found Us? A Har­vard Astronomer on the Mys­te­ri­ous Inter­stel­lar Object ‘Oumuamua (Isaac Chotin­er, New York­er): “Last year, I wrote a paper about cos­mol­o­gy where there was an unusu­al result, which showed that per­haps the gas in the uni­verse was much cold­er than we expect­ed. And so we pos­tu­lat­ed that maybe dark mat­ter has some prop­er­ty that makes the gas cool­er. And nobody cares, nobody is wor­ried about it, no one says it is not sci­ence. Every­one says that is mainstream—to con­sid­er dark mat­ter, a sub­stance we have nev­er seen. That’s com­plete­ly fine. It doesn’t both­er any­one. But when you men­tion the pos­si­bil­i­ty that there could be equip­ment out there that is com­ing from anoth­er civilization—which, to my mind, is much less spec­u­la­tive, because we have already sent things into space—then that is regard­ed as unscientific.”
    • I am skep­ti­cal, but I find the con­ver­sa­tion fas­ci­nat­ing. Relat­ed: an arti­cle on the Fer­mi para­dox I shared back in vol­ume 159 and an arti­cle on gov­ern­ment inves­ti­ga­tion of UFO reports from vol­ume 132.
  6. The mar­vel of the human dad (Anna Machin, Aeon): “But cru­cial­ly, dad has not evolved to be the mir­ror to mum, a male moth­er, so to speak. Evo­lu­tion hates redun­dan­cy and will not select for roles that dupli­cate each oth­er if one type of indi­vid­ual can ful­fil the role alone. Rather, dad’s role has evolved to com­ple­ment mum’s.” Dr. Machin is a pro­fes­sor of evo­lu­tion­ary anthro­pol­o­gy at Oxford.
  7. The Virtue Sig­nalers Won’t Change the World (John McWhort­er, The Atlantic): “Just as the first and sec­ond waves of both fem­i­nism and antiracism trans­formed social struc­tures, third-wave antiracism may seem par­al­lel to third-wave fem­i­nism in mov­ing on to a dif­fer­ent form of abuse, psy­cho­log­i­cal rather than insti­tu­tion­al. But this focus on the psy­cho­log­i­cal has mor­phed, of late, from a prag­mat­ic mis­sion to change minds into a witch hunt dri­ven by the per­son­al ben­e­fits of virtue sig­nal­ing, obsessed with uncon­scious and sub­con­scious bias. As noble as this cul­ture of sham­ing gen­uine­ly seems to many, it’s a dead end.”
    • A use­ful, detailed fol­low-up: The Per­ils of a Psy­cho­log­i­cal Approach to Anti-racism (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): “If the phe­nom­e­non McWhort­er described is real, we should be able to find left­ists who intend to fight bias by call­ing out psy­cho­log­i­cal harms, only to fall into ‘hypersensitivity, over­sim­pli­fi­ca­tion, and even a degree of per­for­mance’ as par­tic­i­pants sig­nal virtue in ways that help no one.”

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

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

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it). 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 185

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

In case you’re won­der­ing: I just don’t find sto­ries about the Rus­sia inves­ti­ga­tion or the gov­ern­ment shut­down inter­est­ing. I think they’re impor­tant, but few peo­ple are writ­ing things about them that catch my atten­tion. Rec­om­men­da­tions are wel­come.

Also, one of you men­tioned that you some­times can’t open the links. If you, being a broke col­lege stu­dent, ever can’t access an arti­cle because of a pay­wall, try putting http://outline.com/ in front of the link. I did it for the first arti­cle as an exam­ple. Hav­ing said that, please sup­port jour­nal­ism once you are able.

  1. Is Mar­i­jua­na as Safe as We Think? (Mal­colm Glad­well, The New York­er): “The authors assumed that alco­hol use among stu­dents would be a pre­dic­tor of vio­lent behav­ior, and that mar­i­jua­na use would pre­dict the oppo­site. In fact, those who used only mar­i­jua­na were three times more like­ly to be phys­i­cal­ly aggres­sive than abstain­ers were; those who used only alco­hol were 2.7 times more like­ly to be aggres­sive. Obser­va­tion­al stud­ies like these don’t estab­lish cau­sa­tion. But they invite the sort of research that could.”
    • This Reporter Took a Deep Look Into the Sci­ence of Smok­ing Pot. What He Found Is Scary. (Stephanie Mencimer, Moth­er Jones): “I smoked plen­ty of weed in high school and so did all my friends, and none of us jumped off a bal­cony or killed anyone—we could bare­ly get off the couch. But the mar­i­jua­na sold today is not what we smoked, which at 1 per­cent to 2 per­cent THC was the equiv­a­lent of smok­ing oregano. Today’s weed is insane­ly more potent, as are prod­ucts like “wax” and “shatter”—forms of butane hash oil designed to be vaped or dabbed that come pret­ty close to 100 per­cent THC. And these high-poten­cy prod­ucts usu­al­ly con­tain very lit­tle CBD oil, the ingre­di­ent in cannabis that’s sup­posed to account for many of its sup­posed health benefits.”
  2. Is Sun­screen the New Mar­garine? (Rowan Jacob­sen, Out­side): “People of col­or rarely get melanoma. The rate is 26 per 100,000 in Cau­casians, 5 per 100,000 in His­pan­ics, and 1 per 100,000 in African Amer­i­cans. On the rare occa­sion when African Amer­i­cans do get melanoma, it’s par­tic­u­lar­ly lethal—but it’s most­ly a kind that occurs on the palms, soles, or under the nails and is not caused by sun expo­sure. At the same time, African Amer­i­cans suf­fer high rates of dia­betes, heart dis­ease, stroke, inter­nal can­cers, and oth­er dis­eases that seem to improve in the pres­ence of sun­light, of which they may well not be get­ting enough. Because of their genet­i­cal­ly high­er lev­els of melanin, they require more sun expo­sure to pro­duce com­pounds like vit­a­min D, and they are less able to store that vit­a­min for dark­er days. They have much to gain from the sun and lit­tle to fear.”
  3. Leav­ing Reli­gion at Home: Engag­ing Reli­gious Thought and Action in Amer­i­can Soci­ety (Nathalie Kier­sznows­ki, Stan­ford Pol­i­tics): “People’s beliefs about the world will inevitably influ­ence their posi­tions on issues like moral­i­ty, pol­i­tics, dress, gen­der, sex and more. Sim­i­lar­ly, politi­cians will nat­u­ral­ly sup­port leg­is­la­tion in accor­dance with their val­ues, reli­gious or not. Many politi­cians, like Vice Pres­i­dent Mike Pence, have faced crit­i­cism for allow­ing reli­gion to shape their polit­i­cal deci­sions. It would be unwar­rant­ed, though, to expect Pence to act ‘un-Christian’ or ‘non-religious’ exclu­sive­ly at his place of work. The notion of hav­ing both a ‘secular pub­lic self’ and a ‘religious pri­vate self’ is impos­si­ble: any pri­vate val­ue sys­tem will influ­ence deci­sions through­out all areas of life.”
  4. The case for going to bed at 2:30 am (Kate Shell­nut, Vox): “My faith doused our cul­tur­al pref­er­ence for ear­ly birds with bib­li­cal back­ing, too, mak­ing me feel even guilti­er. With­in Amer­i­can evan­gel­i­cal­ism, many expect faith­ful Chris­tians to ded­i­cate the ‘first fruit­s’ of each day to ‘quiet time’ with the Lord (prayers, devo­tion­al read­ing, Bible study). Researchers even found peo­ple to be more ‘spiritually aware’ ear­ly in the morn­ings. Faced with these expec­ta­tions, I real­ly did ques­tion whether my habits were sin­ful: Was I being self­ish by stay­ing up late? Was I putting pro­duc­tiv­i­ty over the nat­ur­al pat­terns of work and rest?”
  5. China’s Gulag for Mus­lims (Mustafa Aky­ol, New York Times): “…Russia’s gulags are long gone, as is the Com­mu­nist Par­ty of the Sovi­et Union that oper­at­ed them. But now anoth­er dic­ta­tor­ship, ruled by anoth­er Com­mu­nist Par­ty, is oper­at­ing a new chain of pris­ons that evoke mem­o­ry of the gulags — more mod­ern, more high-tech, but no less enslaving.”
    • Where Did the One Mil­lion Fig­ure for Deten­tions in Xinjiang’s Camps Come From? (Jes­si­ca Batke, Chi­naFile): “Two key stud­ies inde­pen­dent­ly arrived around the one mil­lion mark, by using lim­it­ed data sam­ples to esti­mate what per­cent­age of the eth­nic minor­i­ty Mus­lim pop­u­la­tion is detained. Both stud­ies arrive at a deten­tion rate of 10 per­cent —at least in some areas of Xinjiang—suggesting that just over one mil­lion of the region’s 11 mil­lion eth­nic Uighur pop­u­la­tion could be in the camps.”
  6. Con­querors of the Courts (David Mont­gomery, Wash­ing­ton Post): “The soci­ety itself lob­bies for no poli­cies; it nev­er signs ami­cus briefs or rep­re­sents clients in cas­es. No one at Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety head­quar­ters in Wash­ing­ton dic­tat­ed Barnett’s moves or told him how to advo­cate for what posi­tions. It’s just that at a few gath­er­ings made pos­si­ble by the Fed­er­al­ist Soci­ety that Bar­nett hap­pened to attend, synaps­es fired, a cor­ner of the hive mind engaged, and Bar­nett took it from there. Mul­ti­ply that chem­istry tens of thou­sands of times over the past 36 years and you have the Fed­er­al­ist Society’s true source of power.”
  7. Elect­ed lead­ers who weaponize reli­gion are play­ing a dan­ger­ous game (Tul­si Gab­bard, The Hill): “While I absolute­ly believe in the sep­a­ra­tion of church and state as a neces­si­ty to the health of our nation, no Amer­i­can should be asked to renounce his or her faith or mem­ber­ship in a faith-based, ser­vice orga­ni­za­tion in order to hold pub­lic office.” Gab­bard is a Demo­c­ra­t­ic con­gress­woman rep­re­sent­ing Hawaii.

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 unfor­tu­nate­ly date-speci­fic Read­ing The Whole Bible in 2016: A FAQ (Gospel Coali­tion, Justin Tay­lor): “There are about 775,000 words in the Bible. Divid­ed by 365, that’s 2,123 words a day. The aver­age per­son reads 200 to 250 words per minute. So 2,123 words/day divid­ed by 225 words/minute equals 9.4 min­utes a day.” This arti­cle is full of good advice for what could be the best com­mit­ment you make all year. Do it! (first shared in vol­ume 31 — use­ful for any year)

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 184

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

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The Moral Hor­ror of America’s Pris­ons (Tyler Cowen, Bloomberg): “…if you think America’s cur­rent penal sys­tem is the very best we can do, that is about the most pes­simistic ver­dict on this coun­try I have ever heard. Has any­one ever sug­gest­ed that the Amer­i­can prison sys­tem is the world’s best? The can-do atti­tude is one of my favorite fea­tures of Amer­i­can life. We just need to apply it a lit­tle more broadly.”
  2. The Num­ber 1 Rea­son For The Decline In Church Atten­dance… (Thom Ranier, Facts & Trends): “Stated sim­ply, the num­ber one rea­son for the decline in church atten­dance is that mem­bers attend with less fre­quen­cy than they did just a few years ago. Allow me to explain. If the fre­quen­cy of atten­dance changes, then atten­dance will respond accord­ing­ly. For exam­ple, if 200 mem­bers attend every week the aver­age atten­dance is, obvi­ous­ly, 200. But if one-half of those mem­bers miss only one out of four weeks, the atten­dance drops to 175. Did you catch that? No mem­bers left the church. Every­one is still rel­a­tive­ly active in the church. But atten­dance declined over 12 per­cent because half the mem­bers changed their atten­dance behav­ior slightly.”
  3. Bib­li­cal Archaeology’s Top 10 Dis­cov­er­ies of 2018 (Gor­don Govi­er, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “These dis­cov­er­ies, rel­a­tive­ly insignif­i­cant indi­vid­u­al­ly, join with many oth­er dis­cov­er­ies over the decades to give us a great deal of con­fi­dence in the his­tor­i­cal details con­tained in the Bible.” Note: these are pre­cise­ly the sort of mun­dane, ongo­ing dis­cov­er­ies we would expect from a book describ­ing real peo­ple doing real things in real places. I encour­age you to con­trast it with the texts of oth­er reli­gions.
  4. Facts Are Not Self-Inter­pret­ing (Twit­ter) — this is a short, sound­less video. Rec­om­mend­ed.
  5. Evan­gel­i­cal Mega-donors Are Rethink­ing Mon­ey in Pol­i­tics (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “‘What Chris­t­ian phil­an­thropists see now, maybe more than in past gen­er­a­tions, is the full land­scape of how they can deploy their [mon­ey] toward the entire­ty of what God cares about,’ said Josh Kwan, who was recent­ly appoint­ed the head of the Gathering—the organization’s first new leader in its three-decade run.”
  6. Two Roads for the New French Right (Mark Lil­la, New York Review of Books): “Continental con­ser­vatism going back to the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry has always rest­ed on an organ­ic con­cep­tion of soci­ety. It sees Europe as a sin­gle Chris­t­ian civ­i­liza­tion com­posed of dif­fer­ent nations with dis­tinct lan­guages and cus­toms. These nations are com­posed of fam­i­lies, which are organ­isms, too, with dif­fer­ing but com­ple­men­tary roles and duties for moth­ers, fathers, and chil­dren. On this view, the fun­da­men­tal task of soci­ety is to trans­mit knowl­edge, moral­i­ty, and cul­ture to future gen­er­a­tions, per­pet­u­at­ing the life of the civ­i­liza­tion­al organ­ism. It is not to serve an agglom­er­a­tion of autonomous indi­vid­u­als bear­ing rights.”
    • This arti­cle pro­voked let­ters to the edi­tor to which Lil­la respond­ed: How to Write About the Right: An Exchange. Lil­la ends his rebut­tal with this, “For those con­cerned about the antilib­er­al forces gain­ing strength in world pol­i­tics, the most impor­tant thing is to main­tain one’s sangfroid. Before we judge we must be sure of what exact­ly we are judg­ing. We need to take ideas seri­ous­ly, make dis­tinc­tions, and nev­er pre­sume that the present is just the past in dis­guise. Greil Mar­cus falls into that last trap, I’m afraid, by shift­ing from dis­cussing the affini­ties among coun­tries to imag­in­ing a Fas­cist Inter­na­tion­al with poles in the US and Rus­sia. What­ev­er we are fac­ing, it is not twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry fas­cism. Hell keeps on dis­gorg­ing new demons to beset us. And as sea­soned exor­cists know, each must be called by its prop­er name before it can be cast out.”
    • There is some­thing help­ful about read­ing about pol­i­tics in anoth­er cul­ture. If you are inclined to skip this because you’re not French, I encour­age you to at least skim it.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

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

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

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

Merry Christmas!

May you forge warm mem­o­ries, enjoy deli­cious food, and expe­ri­ence the joy and peace that came into this world two thou­sand years ago this Christ­mas.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 183

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. You Are Doing It Wrong: Read­ing Entire Books Of The Bible (Tim Miller, Detroit Bap­tist The­o­log­i­cal Sem­i­nary): “Imagine being in Rome when the book of Romans was first deliv­ered. Now imag­ine the read­er only read­ing for three min­utes (cor­re­spond­ing to the end of chap­ter one) and say­ing, ‘well, that is enough for today, we will read some more tomorrow.’ The crowd would be out­raged and would demand the man con­tin­ue reading.”
  2. Shame Storm (Helen Andrews, First Things): “The more online shame cycles you observe, the more obvi­ous the pat­tern becomes: Every­one comes up with a prin­ci­pled-sound­ing pre­text that serves as a bar­ri­er against admit­ting to them­selves that, in fact, all they have real­ly done is joined a mob. Once that bar­ri­er is erect­ed, all rules of decen­cy go out the win­dow, but the pre­text is almost always a lie.” I found this essay engross­ing.
  3. China’s Deten­tion Camps for Mus­lims Turn to Forced Labor (Chris Buck­ley and Austin Ramzy, New York Times): “The evo­lu­tion of the Xin­jiang camps echoes China’s ‘re-education through labor’ sys­tem, where cit­i­zens once were sent with­out tri­al to toil for years. Chi­na abol­ished ‘re-education through labor’ five years ago, but Xin­jiang appears to be cre­at­ing a new version.”
  4. Inter­net Church Isn’t Real­ly Church (Lau­ra Turn­er, New York Times): “The inten­tion behind live-stream­ing ser­vices — to make church, and its atten­dant ben­e­fits of com­mu­ni­ty, prayer and wor­ship, avail­able to every­one with a smart­phone — is a good one. But it pre­sumes that God is pri­mar­i­ly present to us one on one, as indi­vid­u­als, rather than as a com­mu­ni­ty of believers.” Kind of a fol­low-up to last week’s John Crist video.
  5. A mother’s leap of faith at an African air­port, and a 15-year mys­tery (Petu­la Dvo­rak, Wash­ing­ton Post): “The sto­ry of Tom and Maya and Zainab is about trust, about lis­ten­ing to your heart over your mind, and about that gut feel­ing you have when you meet a good per­son. And it’s a sto­ry that could’ve gone hor­ri­bly wrong.” Heart­warm­ing.
  6. Is There Such a Thing as an Author­i­tar­i­an Vot­er? (Mol­ly Worthen, New York Times): “In one of the ironies of his­to­ry, as the social sci­en­tif­ic por­trait of human­i­ty grows more psy­cho­log­i­cal and irra­tional, it comes clos­er and clos­er to approx­i­mat­ing the old Adam of tra­di­tion­al Chris­tian­i­ty: a fall­en, depraved crea­ture, unable to see him­self clear­ly except with the aid of a high­er power.”
  7. Men and Mar­riage: Debunk­ing The Ball and Chain Myth (Brad Wilcox & Nicholas Wolfin­ger, Nation­al Mar­riage Project): “…the ben­e­fits of mar­riage for men are sub­stan­tial by every con­ceiv­able mea­sure, includ­ing more mon­ey, a bet­ter sex life, and sig­nif­i­cant­ly bet­ter phys­i­cal and men­tal health. Yet many men remain igno­rant of these ben­e­fits, a view seem­ing­ly pro­mot­ed by pop­u­lar culture.” This is a PDF of a brochure from the Insti­tute for Fam­i­ly Stud­ies. The two authors are soci­ol­o­gists whom I have linked to in pre­vi­ous issues.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

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

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it). 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 182

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. If They Weren’t Tak­ing Notes, How Did the Dis­ci­ples Remem­ber Jesus’s Exact Teach­ing? The 3‑Step Process for For­mu­lat­ing the 4 Gospels (Justin Tay­lor, Gospel Coali­tion): “I might not be able to tell you what I did last week, but I could give you a three-hour lec­ture about Jesus and the Jew­ish roots of the Last Sup­per with zero prepa­ra­tion because I have been talk­ing about it all the time for the last ten years. That’s one key dif­fer­ence between rehearsed mem­o­ries and inci­den­tal memories.”
  2. What Straight‑A Stu­dents Get Wrong (Adam Grant, New York Times): “The evi­dence is clear: Aca­d­e­m­ic excel­lence is not a strong pre­dic­tor of career excel­lence. Across indus­tries, research shows that the cor­re­la­tion between grades and job per­for­mance is mod­est in the first year after col­lege and triv­ial with­in a hand­ful of years. For exam­ple, at Google, once employ­ees are two or three years out of col­lege, their grades have no bear­ing on their performance.” The author is an orga­ni­za­tion­al psy­chol­o­gist at Penn’s Whar­ton School.
    • This arti­cle was sent to me by an alum­na who said, “I some­times skipped Chi Alpha or oth­er mean­ing­ful activ­i­ties with friends for that one extra hour of study­ing, which I now regret.”
  3. Hun­dreds of sex abuse alle­ga­tions found in fun­da­men­tal Bap­tist church­es across U.S. (Sarah Smith, Star-Telegram): “One hun­dred and six­ty-eight church lead­ers were accused or con­vict­ed of com­mit­ting sex­u­al crimes against chil­dren, the inves­ti­ga­tion found. At least 45 of the alleged abusers con­tin­ued in min­istry after accu­sa­tions came to the atten­tion of church author­i­ties or law enforce­ment.… Inde­pen­dent fun­da­men­tal Bap­tist church­es preach sep­a­ra­tion: Stay sep­a­rate from the world, sep­a­rate from non-believ­ers and sep­a­rate from Chris­tians who do not believe as they do. That includes South­ern Bap­tists, who are deemed by the strict sect as too liberal.” This is hor­ri­fy­ing stuff.
  4. Chi­na cracks down on Chris­tians — a new era of reli­gious per­se­cu­tion has arrived (Nina Shea and Bob Fu, Fox News): “The government’s repres­sion against the church­es is being done in the name of Pres­i­dent Xi Jinping’s ‘sinicization’ cam­paign, osten­si­bly to strength­en Chi­nese cul­ture. How­ev­er, it increas­ing­ly appears aimed at remov­ing the Bible and its teach­ings from Chi­nese Christianity.” (relat­ed cov­er­age at the New York Times)
    • My Dec­la­ra­tion of Faith­ful Dis­obe­di­ence (Wang Yi, Chris­t­ian Dai­ly Reporter): “As a pas­tor, my dis­obe­di­ence is one part of the gospel com­mis­sion. Christ’s great com­mis­sion requires of us great dis­obe­di­ence. The goal of dis­obe­di­ence is not to change the world but to tes­ti­fy about anoth­er world.” A now-impris­oned pas­tor wrote this let­ter with instruc­tions that it be pub­lished if he was detained for more than 48 hours. STRAIGHT FIRE.
  5. Mas­ter­piece Cakeshop and how “religious lib­er­ty” became so tox­ic (Andrew Kop­pel­man, Vox): “Deep dis­agree­ment about moral fun­da­men­tals is noth­ing new; it is what reli­gious diver­si­ty con­sists of. That ought to include dis­agree­ment about such fraught mat­ters as sex­u­al­i­ty. Moral dis­agree­ment about things that mat­ter a lot is an inevitable con­se­quence of a free soci­ety. The best we can hope for is to live peace­ful­ly togeth­er in mutu­al contempt.” The author is a law pro­fes­sor at North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty.
    • Relat­ed: ‘Fairness For All’: Smart Pol­i­tics, Or A Sell­out? (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “…there real­ly is a ques­tion of jus­tice with­in a plu­ral­is­tic soci­ety that con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­tians have to face. We may sin­cere­ly believe that homo­sex­u­al­i­ty is moral­ly wrong, but at what point does the com­mon good require that we agree that gay peo­ple have a right to be wrong? Espe­cial­ly because we are ask­ing them to agree that we have a right to be wrong (in their eyes) too.”
    • Response to the above: Mis­guid­ed Pro­pos­al From Chris­t­ian Lead­ers and LGBT Activists Is Any­thing but ‘Fairness for All’ (Ryan T. Ander­son, The Dai­ly Sig­nal): “Establishing bad pub­lic pol­i­cy for every­one and then exempt­ing select reli­gious insti­tu­tions is not act­ing for the com­mon good—and is cer­tain­ly not fair for all. And there are bet­ter ways for­ward for those who seek compromise.”
    • Kin­da dif­fer­ent, but kin­da relat­ed: The Cul­ture Wars Are Ancient His­to­ry (Peter Lei­thart, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “The real fight isn’t between reli­gion and sec­u­lar­ism, but between two kinds of reli­gion. His book makes the case that today’s cul­ture war shares much in com­mon with the cul­ture war that rocked ancient Rome.” Insight­ful.
  6. The Case Against Mer­i­toc­ra­cy (Ross Douthat, New York Times): “…meritocrats are often edu­cat­ed to be bad lead­ers, and bad peo­ple, in a very spe­cif­ic way — a way of arro­gant intel­li­gence unmoored from his­tor­i­cal expe­ri­ence, ambi­tion untem­pered by self-sac­ri­fice. The way of the ‘best and the bright­est’ at the dawn of the tech­no­crat­ic era and the ‘smartest guys in the room’ decades lat­er, the way of the arson­ists of late-2000s Wall Street and the ‘move fast and break things’ cul­ture of Sil­i­con Valley.”
  7. Is Sex Social­ly Con­struct­ed? (Alex Byrne, Arc Dig­i­tal): “Clearly many ani­mals have belonged to the cat­e­go­ry female (or male) with­out exist­ing with­in a soci­ety of any kind. Indeed, there would have been females and males even if life on Earth had been destroyed by an aster­oid half a bil­lion years ago and humans had nev­er evolved. Female and male are there­fore not social­ly con­struct­ed cat­e­gories; that is, sex is not social­ly constructed.” Byrne is the head of MIT’s depart­ment of lin­guis­tics and phi­los­o­phy. I shared a relat­ed arti­cle of his back in issue 177.

Less Serious Things Which Also Interested/Amused Glen

Things Glen Found Interesting A While Ago

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

Why Do You Send This Email?

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

Disclaimer

Chi Alpha is not a par­ti­san orga­ni­za­tion. To para­phrase anoth­er min­is­ter: we are not about the donkey’s agen­da and we are not about the elephant’s agen­da — we are about the Lamb’s agen­da. Hav­ing said that, I read wide­ly (in part because I believe we should aspire to pass the ide­o­log­i­cal Tur­ing test and in part because I do not believe I can fair­ly say “I agree” or “I dis­agree” until I can say “I under­stand”) and may at times share arti­cles that have a strong par­ti­san bias sim­ply because I find the arti­cle stim­u­lat­ing. The upshot: you should not assume I agree with every­thing an author says in an arti­cle I men­tion, much less things the author has said in oth­er arti­cles (although if I strong­ly dis­agree with some­thing in the arti­cle I’ll usu­al­ly men­tion it). 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 181

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. America’s New Reli­gions (Andrew Sul­li­van, New York Mag­a­zine): “The need for mean­ing hasn’t gone away, but with­out Chris­tian­i­ty, this yearn­ing looks to pol­i­tics for sat­is­fac­tion. And reli­gious impuls­es, once anchored in and tamed by Chris­tian­i­ty, find expres­sion in var­i­ous polit­i­cal cults. These polit­i­cal man­i­fes­ta­tions of reli­gion are new and crude, as all new cults have to be. They haven’t been expe­ri­enced and refined and mod­eled by mil­len­nia of prac­tice and thought. They are evolv­ing in real time. And like almost all new cultish impuls­es, they demand a total and imme­di­ate com­mit­ment to save the world.”
  2. Is the Protes­tant Work Eth­ic Real? (Stephen J. Dub­n­er, Freako­nom­ics): “The ran­dom­ized con­trolled tri­al of a mis­sion­ary project in the Philip­pines found that very poor peo­ple earned more mon­ey as a result of receiv­ing reli­gious instruc­tion. Why? The researchers sus­pect there were two pri­ma­ry dri­vers: opti­mism and grit.”
    • The researchers in ques­tion wrote up their research in Ran­dom­iz­ing Reli­gion: The Impact of Protes­tant Evan­ge­lism on Eco­nom­ic Out­comes (Gharad T. Bryan, James J. Choi, Dean Kar­lan, NBER): “To study the causal impact of reli­gios­i­ty, we part­nered with Inter­na­tion­al Care Min­istries (ICM), an evan­gel­i­cal Protes­tant anti-pover­ty orga­ni­za­tion that oper­ates in the Philip­pines, to con­duct an eval­u­a­tion that ran­dom­ly assigned invi­ta­tions to attend Chris­t­ian the­ol­o­gy and val­ues training.” The authors are affil­i­at­ed with the Lon­don School of Eco­nom­ics, Yale, and North­west­ern. The sec­ond author, Choi, is an evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian.
  3. Dutch Asy­lum Ser­vice Nears 1,000 Hours, With Evan­gel­i­cal­s’ Sup­port (Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “A marathon wor­ship ser­vice held by a church in the Nether­lands to shield a fam­i­ly of asy­lum seek­ers has gar­nered world­wide atten­tion. The feat has proved impres­sive for its longevi­ty alone—now going on six weeks—but also rep­re­sents a unique ecu­meni­cal moment among Chris­tians in the tiny Euro­pean nation.”
  4. For­mer Stan­ford post­doc crit­i­cized for cre­at­ing the world’s first gene-edit­ed babies (Ele­na Shao, Stan­ford Dai­ly): “On Nov. 28, He Jianku — a post­doc­tor­al fel­low at Stan­ford from 2011–2012 — announced to hun­dreds of sci­en­tists, col­leagues and jour­nal­ists that he had cre­at­ed the world’s first genet­i­cal­ly edit­ed babies: twin girls with the pseu­do­nyms Lulu and Nana whose DNA he claims to have altered to make them HIV-resistant.” FYI Bill Hurl­burt, one of the Stan­ford bioethics experts inter­viewed in this arti­cle, is a sol­id believ­er.
  5. God­speed: The Pace Of Being Known (Vimeo): a frosh brought this 30 minute video to my atten­tion and said it made her think about how she should be liv­ing in her dorm. Rec­om­mend­ed.
  6. I read two inter­est­ing pro­files of famous Chris­tians from the past this week:
    • Phillis Wheat­ley: An Evan­gel­i­cal and the First Pub­lished African Amer­i­can Female Poet (Thomas Kidd, Gospel Coali­tion): “Phillis Wheat­ley, the first pub­lished African Amer­i­can female poet and a devout Chris­t­ian, died on Decem­ber 5, 1784. We can’t be sure of her birth­date, because she was born in West Africa and sold into slav­ery by 1761.”
    • Evan­gel­i­cal retail­er John Wana­mak­er built for­tune by blend­ing faith with busi­ness (Mark Kell­ner, Reli­gion News Ser­vice): “Wanamaker, who also served four years as post­mas­ter gen­er­al of the Unit­ed States, was fore­most an evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian who meld­ed faith and works, specif­i­cal­ly the work­ing of his retail empire. While build­ing the first depart­ment store in Philadel­phia, he also fund­ed the growth of the city’s first megachurch, which fea­tured a range of social ser­vices under­gird­ed by a strong evan­ge­lis­tic out­reach. He offered young male employ­ees of his store guid­ance through a YMCA-like pro­gram aimed at pro­mot­ing spir­i­tu­al dis­ci­pline. All employ­ees could spend a sum­mer vaca­tion at a church-run resort, albeit with strict behav­ioral codes.”
  7. Have U.S. Protes­tants gone soft on alco­hol? (Richard Ostling, Patheos): “…from 2007 to 2017 U.S. deaths attrib­uted to alco­hol increased 35 per­cent, and 67 per­cent among women (while teen deaths declined 16 per­cent). These fatal­i­ties well out­num­ber those from opi­oid over­dos­es that have roused such pub­lic con­cern…. Only 2 per­cent of evan­gel­i­cals admit­ted they some­times over-indulge.”

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 Land of We All (Richard Mitchell, The Gift of Fire), an essay  built on this insight: “Thinking can not be done cor­po­rate­ly. Nations and com­mit­tees can’t think. That is not only because they have no brains, but because they have no selves, no cen­ters, no souls, if you like. Mil­lions and mil­lions of per­sons may hold the same thought, or con­vic­tion or sus­pi­cion, but each and every per­son of those mil­lions must hold it all alone.” (first shared in vol­ume 2)

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 180

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

This week was espe­cial­ly hard for me to put togeth­er. I stum­bled upon so much insight­ful writ­ing this week! I had to ruth­less­ly elim­i­nate some that I real­ly liked, so I hope you enjoy these gems that sur­vived my ruth­less win­now­ing process.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Slain mis­sion­ary John Chau pre­pared much more than we thought, but are mis­sion­ar­ies still fools? (Ed Stet­zer, Wash­ing­ton Post): “…Mary Ho, who leads All Nations (the agency that sent Chau on mis­sions), indi­cat­ed that he was heav­i­ly vac­ci­nat­ed and even quar­an­tined before going on the mis­sion. The Wash­ing­ton Post report­ed Tues­day night that Chau also under­took lin­guis­tic and med­ical train­ing to pre­pare for the out­reach. These new reports at a min­i­mum chal­lenge the sim­plis­tic image of an adven­ture-seek­ing zealot will­ing to reck­less­ly risk the lives of a remote group of islanders.” By far the best arti­cle I’ve read on this sub­ject.
  2. Lib­er­al Par­ents, Rad­i­cal Chil­dren (David Brooks, New York Times): “In the age of social media, virtue is not defined by how com­pas­sion­ate­ly you act. Virtue is defined by how vehe­ment­ly you react to that which you find offen­sive. Virtue involves the self-dis­play of a cer­tain indig­nant sen­si­bil­i­ty, and any­body who doesn’t dis­play that sen­si­bil­i­ty is moral­ly suspect.” An insight­ful col­umn — this excerpt does not do it jus­tice.
    • Relat­ed but not obvi­ous­ly: The Ques­tion With­out A Solu­tion (Alan Jacobs, The Week­ly Stan­dard): “You read all this with a feel­ing of ris­ing hor­ror, and not just because of the phys­i­cal and men­tal and spir­i­tu­al suf­fer­ing. You feel that hor­ror also because it becomes increas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult, as the sto­ry pro­gress­es, to imag­ine how the even the worst of the pain could have been avoid­ed. Not one man, or woman, knew a pru­dent remedy.” Haunt­ing and high­ly rec­om­mend­ed.
    • More clear­ly relat­ed: Debate ends when we label views we sim­ply dis­agree with as ‘hatred’ (Kenan Malik, The Guardian): “‘It is bet­ter to debate a ques­tion with­out set­tling it,’ observed the 18th-cen­tu­ry French writer Joseph Jou­bert, ‘than to set­tle a ques­tion with­out debat­ing it.’ How naive that sounds today.”
  3. My New Vagi­na Won’t Make Me Hap­py (Andrea Long Chu, New York Times): “Until the day I die, my body will regard the vagi­na as a wound;as a result, it will require reg­u­lar, painful atten­tion to main­tain. This is what I want, but there is no guar­an­tee it will make me hap­pi­er. In fact, I don’t expect it to.”
    • See also this response piece: The New York Times Reveals Painful Truths about Trans­gen­der Lives (Ryan T. Ander­son, Pub­lic Dis­course): “Why should a doc­tor per­form surgery when it won’t make the patient hap­py, it won’t accom­plish its intend­ed goal, it won’t improve the under­ly­ing con­di­tion, it might make the under­ly­ing con­di­tion worse, and it might increase the like­li­hood of suicide?” Ander­son was men­tioned in Chu’s op-ed.
  4. Amer­i­can Exor­cism (Mike Mar­i­ani, The Atlantic): “If nei­ther the men­tal-health eval­u­a­tion nor a sub­se­quent phys­i­cal exam turns up a stan­dard expla­na­tion for the person’s afflic­tion, the priest starts to take the case more seri­ous­ly. At this point he may begin look­ing for what the Church con­sid­ers the clas­sic signs of demon­ic pos­ses­sion: facil­i­ty in a lan­guage the per­son has nev­er learned; phys­i­cal strength beyond his or her age or con­di­tion; access to secret knowl­edge; and a vehe­ment aver­sion to God and sacred objects, includ­ing cru­ci­fix­es and holy water.”
  5. What If The Place­bo Effect Isn’t A Trick? (Gary Green­berg, New York Times Mag­a­zine): “The find­ings of the I.B.S. study were in keep­ing with a hypoth­e­sis Kaptchuk had formed over the years: that the place­bo effect is a bio­log­i­cal response to an act of car­ing; that some­how the encounter itself calls forth heal­ing and that the more intense and focused it is, the more heal­ing it evokes.”
  6. For Cal­i­for­ni­ans liv­ing in their cars, a church park­ing lot can briefly be home (Kim­ber­ly Win­ston, Wash­ing­ton Post): “As they often do in hard times, hous­es of wor­ship stepped in. In Chico, a hub for Par­adise refugees, church­es have opened their build­ings and park­ing lots as tem­po­rary shel­ters. But while those church­es have been laud­ed, con­gre­ga­tions in oth­er areas that open their park­ing lots to those they some­times refer to as ‘vehicle res­i­dents’ face hur­dles and hos­til­i­ty. Many Bay Area munic­i­pal­i­ties, includ­ing the tech cen­ters of San Fran­cis­co and San Jose, have out­lawed sleep­ing in a car parked on the street overnight, while neigh­bors speak out against hav­ing the home­less next door.”
  7. A Time To Fast (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “Over one hun­dred years ago researchers demon­strat­ed that calo­rie restric­tion in rats increased lifes­pan, some­times by as much as 50%. Since that time, the find­ing has been repli­cat­ed and extend­ed to pri­mates. A few humans have tak­en up the diet but for most of us easy access to deli­cious food trumps willpow­er. A new paper in Sci­ence reviews the lit­er­a­ture on calo­rie restric­tion and also offers some evi­dence that less restric­tive regimes such as inter­mit­tent fast­ing may have sim­i­lar effects.” A sec­u­lar per­spec­tive on the ben­e­fits of cer­tain types of fast­ing (this is a sum­ma­ry of an arti­cle in the jour­nal Sci­ence).

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 Spir­i­tu­al Shape of Polit­i­cal Ideas (Joseph Bot­tum, The Week­ly Stan­dard): many mod­ern polit­i­cal ideas are derived from Chris­t­ian the­o­log­i­cal con­cepts. (first shared in vol­ume 1)

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.