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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 179

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. ‘God, I don’t want to die,’ U.S. mis­sion­ary wrote before he was killed by tribe on Indi­an island (Joan­na Slater and Annie Gowen, Wash­ing­ton Post): “An Amer­i­can mis­sion­ary try­ing to meet and con­vert one of the most iso­lat­ed hunter-and-gath­er­er tribes in the world offered them fish and oth­er small gifts before the tribes­men killed him and buried his body on the beach, jour­nals and emails show.”
    • Relat­ed: US Mis­sion­ary Killed by ‘World’s Most Iso­lat­ed’ Tribe (Kate Shell­nut, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Some have declared Chau a mar­tyr and com­pared him to Jim Elliot, who was famous­ly killed at age 28 while attempt­ing to evan­ge­lize an iso­lat­ed indige­nous group in Ecuador.”
    • Relat­ed: Death Of A Mis­sion­ary (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “If Chau had been a mis­sion­ary try­ing to sneak into North Korea, I would have thought him insane­ly brave. But the law against vis­it­ing that island was there for a very good rea­son: this tribe has had no expo­sure to out­siders, and is enor­mous­ly vul­ner­a­ble to com­mu­ni­ca­ble dis­eases. There are only a small num­ber of them in exis­tence, and they could be wiped out quick­ly by com­mon ill­ness­es for which they have no immu­ni­ty…. It is one thing to be will­ing to lay down your life for these trib­al peo­ple. It is cru­el to expect them to lay down their lives so you can prove your love for God.”
  2. How do con­ser­v­a­tives respond to archae­ol­o­gists’ skep­ti­cism about Bible his­to­ry? (Richard Ostling, Patheos): “There’s vast unex­plored ter­rain in Israel, where only 50 of an esti­mat­ed 6,000 sites have under­gone thor­ough exam­i­na­tion, with lim­it­ed work at anoth­er 300. Sur­viv­ing evi­dence from ancient times is nec­es­sar­i­ly spot­ty and inter­pre­ta­tions can be sub­jec­tive. Schol­ars usu­al­ly end up with cir­cum­stan­tial plau­si­bil­i­ty, not absolute proof or dis­proof.”
  3. Ex-Detainee Describes Tor­ture In Chi­na’s Xin­jiang Re-Edu­ca­tion Camp (Rob Schmitz, NPR): “Samarkand says he was trans­ferred to a re-edu­ca­tion camp, where peo­ple were sep­a­rat­ed into three groups: those who were reli­gious, those who were sus­pect­ed of being crim­i­nals, and those, like him, who had trav­eled abroad. All of them, says Samarkand, had one thing in com­mon, though: They had grown up in Mus­lim fam­i­lies and com­mu­ni­ties.”
  4. Info­graph­ic: You Have More Time for Bible Read­ing than You Think (Cross­way): “In just 12 min­utes per day, you could read the whole Bible in a year. Does that still feel a bit ambi­tious? In just 6 min­utes per day, you could read the entire New Tes­ta­ment over the course of 6 months.”
  5. Elisha and the She-bears (Peter J Williams, Twit­ter): a very insight­ful Twit­ter thread about a dis­turb­ing OT sto­ry. The author is the War­den of Tyn­dale House at Cam­bridge.
  6. Sir Roger Scru­ton Is a Friend to Mus­lims and Jews (Jibran Khan, Nation­al Review): “There can be no real dia­logue with some­one who doesn’t believe in any­thing, and yet this has been the guid­ing prin­ci­ple of lib­er­al ‘inter­faith’ dis­cus­sion, to so water down the dis­course that no one gets to encounter, let alone tol­er­ate and appre­ci­ate, dif­fer­ence.” I did not think I would find this arti­cle inter­est­ing.
  7. It’s time we bal­ance the scales of jus­tice in our schools (Bet­sy DeVos, Wash­ing­ton Post): “A fair process treats each par­ty with dig­ni­ty and ensures the integri­ty of final deci­sions. Hav­ing out­comes over­turned and relit­i­gat­ed because of process con­cerns — which has hap­pened dozens of times in recent years — can be coun­ter­pro­duc­tive to sur­vivors.”
    • Relat­ed: The ACLU Declines to Defend Civ­il Rights (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): “the ACLU issued a pub­lic state­ment that con­sti­tut­ed a stark, short­sight­ed betray­al of the organization’s his­toric mis­sion: It vehe­ment­ly opposed stronger due-process rights for the accused.”
    • Relat­ed: One Crim­i­nal-Defense Attorney’s Lament (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): “In cer­tain ways, social con­dem­na­tion has become some­thing even worse, the mere accu­sa­tion being all that’s required for a mob of undu­ly pas­sion­ate peo­ple to crush a career. There’s no oppor­tu­ni­ty to defend and no means to chal­lenge an accu­sa­tion. While the ‘pun­ish­ment’ isn’t levied by gov­ern­ment, and is there­fore beyond any required involve­ment of such niceties as due process, the net result can be as destruc­tive giv­en the cur­rent tide of blind accep­tance and capit­u­la­tion.”

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 provoca­tive In Defense of Flog­ging (Peter Moskos, Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion) — the author is a for­mer police offi­cer and now a crim­i­nol­o­gist at the City Uni­ver­si­ty of New York. This one was shared back before I start­ed send­ing these emails in a blog post called Pun­ish­ment.

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.

Thanksgiving

Every year we host stu­dents in our home for Thanks­giv­ing. Today we will have just shy of three dozen. They come from around the world and find it dif­fi­cult to make it home for such a short break.

Since Thanks­giv­ing in a nov­el cul­tur­al expe­ri­ence for many of them, I always give a quick expla­na­tion before the meal. For the curi­ous, here’s what I’m plan­ning to say today:

Amer­i­can Thanks­giv­ing traces its roots back to 1621 when the Euro­pean colonists of Ply­mouth Plan­ta­tion cel­e­brat­ed their first har­vest on the new con­ti­nent. 45 colonists and 90 native Amer­i­cans cel­e­brat­ed togeth­er for a three-day feast.

This became a cus­tom in many colonies, but the sched­ule and the details of the cel­e­bra­tion would vary from place to place. On Octo­ber 3, 1789 George Wash­ing­ton called for the first Fed­er­al Thanks­giv­ing with this procla­ma­tion. It’s a bit long so I’m going to read the high­lights:

By the Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, a Procla­ma­tion.

Where­as it is the duty of all Nations to acknowl­edge the prov­i­dence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grate­ful for his ben­e­fits, and humbly to implore his pro­tec­tion and favor– and where­as both Hous­es of Con­gress have by their joint Com­mit­tee request­ed me to rec­om­mend to the Peo­ple of the Unit­ed States a day of pub­lic thanks­giv­ing and prayer to be observed by acknowl­edg­ing with grate­ful hearts the many sig­nal favors of Almighty God espe­cial­ly by afford­ing them an oppor­tu­ni­ty peace­ably to estab­lish a form of gov­ern­ment for their safe­ty and hap­pi­ness.

Now there­fore I do rec­om­mend and assign Thurs­day the 26th day of Novem­ber next to be devot­ed by the Peo­ple of these States to the ser­vice of that great and glo­ri­ous Being, who is the benef­i­cent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be….

And also that we may then unite in most humbly offer­ing our prayers and sup­pli­ca­tions to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech him to par­don our nation­al and oth­er trans­gres­sions– to enable us all, whether in pub­lic or pri­vate sta­tions, to per­form our sev­er­al and rel­a­tive duties prop­er­ly and punc­tu­al­ly….

Giv­en under my hand at the City of New York the third day of Octo­ber in the year of our Lord 1789.

George Wash­ing­ton

That procla­ma­tion regard­ed a sin­gle occur­rence, not a year­ly event. A few gen­er­a­tions lat­er on Octo­ber 3, 1863 Abra­ham Lin­coln estab­lished Thanks­giv­ing as an annu­al nation­al hol­i­day which we still cel­e­brate to this day.

I am a Chris­t­ian, and so this day is very spe­cial to me because grat­i­tude is at the heart of Chris­tian­i­ty.

As the apos­tle tells us in 1 Thess 5:18

Give thanks in all cir­cum­stances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. (ESV)

And we do this because even when cir­cum­stances are bad, God is good. As we read in Psalm 107:1

Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his stead­fast love endures for­ev­er! (ESV)

And so this Thanks­giv­ing, join me as we offer thanks for the food.

Cre­ator God, we are grate­ful for your pro­vi­sion of a uni­verse for us to inhab­it filled with won­der­ful things, includ­ing deli­cious food. Help us to enjoy it and the con­ver­sa­tions that fill this room. Most of all, thank you for giv­ing us Jesus as a sav­ior and a Lord.  Today we declare with the Psalmist: “This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.” (Psalm 118:24, ESV)

Now let us eat with grate­ful hearts!

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 178

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom. No — real­ly. I mean them. Also, I wel­come your sug­ges­tions. If you read some­thing fas­ci­nat­ing please pass it my way.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Cul­tur­al win­some­ness will not be enough for Chris­tians (Andrew T Walk­er, Ethics and Reli­gious Lib­er­ty Com­mis­sion): “Chow is the very def­i­n­i­tion of class, dig­ni­ty and civil­i­ty. She’s a mod­el for what faith­ful Chris­t­ian dis­ci­ple­ship looks like in the pub­lic square. There is no foam­ing-at-the-mouth hatred for any­one. She loves every­one; she just did not want to vio­late her con­science. What’s the les­son here? There are many. But to focus on just one, this sto­ry is a reminder that no amount of cul­tur­al sophis­ti­ca­tion or intel­li­gence will absolve the Chris­t­ian from being seen as a back­ward-think­ing big­ot.” This is cor­rect.
    • Relat­ed: An inter­view with Isabel­la Chow (Allie Stuck­ey, Twit­ter) — this is a 4 minute video.
    • Kind of relat­ed: The State of Hate (David Mont­gomery, Wash­ing­ton Post): “In think­ing about my inter­view, I was struck by just how lit­tle he had dis­put­ed the SPLC’s claims about the frankly dis­qui­et­ing posi­tions he has tak­en. To some extent, it was sim­i­lar to my expe­ri­ence at the FRC and ADF. They sim­ply saw those posi­tions as admirable, or at the very least defen­si­ble, expres­sions of truth — where­as, to the SPLC, they were expres­sions of hate.”
    • Vague­ly relat­ed: David French on the price of pub­lic engage­ment (Twit­ter)
  2. 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.
  3. Ask and You Shall Evan­ge­lize (Sarah Eekhoff Zyl­stra, Gospel Coali­tion): “‘Mod­ern selves are so inter­nal,’ Keller said. ‘In the old days if you were con­vinced of the truth, you changed your­self. Now we adopt the truth as acces­sories that fit in with who we want to be.’” A good arti­cle on the nature of effec­tive wit­ness in con­tem­po­rary West­ern soci­ety.
  4. Why Are Young Peo­ple Hav­ing So Lit­tle Sex? (Kate Julian, The Atlantic): “I men­tioned to sev­er­al of the peo­ple I inter­viewed for this piece that I’d met my hus­band in an ele­va­tor, in 2001. (We worked on dif­fer­ent floors of the same insti­tu­tion, and over the months that fol­lowed struck up many more conversations—in the ele­va­tor, in the break room, on the walk to the sub­way.) I was fas­ci­nat­ed by the extent to which this prompt­ed oth­er women to sigh and say that they’d just love to meet some­one that way. And yet quite a few of them sug­gest­ed that if a ran­dom guy start­ed talk­ing to them in an ele­va­tor, they would be weird­ed out. ‘Creep­er! Get away from me,’ one woman imag­ined think­ing.” The arti­cle is vul­gar in places and premised on flawed assump­tions… and still man­ages to be fas­ci­nat­ing and insight­ful.
    • Relat­ed: How the GOP Gave Up on Porn (Tim Alber­ta, Politi­co): “We know that the ubiq­ui­ty of porn is a prob­lem: Even as experts debate the sci­ence of addic­tion and the link between con­sump­tion and destruc­tive behav­ior, there is sure­fire soci­o­log­i­cal evi­dence of its exac­er­bat­ing influ­ence on those most susceptible—people pre­dis­posed to vio­lence, for instance, or misog­y­ny or child abuse. There is also con­sen­sus that it has, in plen­ty of cas­es, con­tributed to abu­sive rela­tion­ships and the frac­tur­ing of fam­i­lies. And that’s just where adults are con­cerned.”
  5. The Best Way To Save Peo­ple From Sui­cide (Jason Cherkis, Huff­in­g­ton Post High­line): “Mot­to didn’t take long to write the first let­ter a patient would receive. He knew what he want­ed to say, hit­ting upon two sentences—37 words—that felt just right: ‘It has been some time since you were here at the hos­pi­tal, and we hope things are going well for you. If you wish to drop us a note we would be glad to hear from you.’” This is an engross­ing arti­cle. Rec­om­mend­ed.
  6. Over­com­ing Bar­ri­ers to Women’s Advance­ment in Polit­i­cal Sci­ence (Amy Catalinac, PDF host­ed at Har­vard): “Of the polit­i­cal sci­en­tists of my gen­er­a­tion I know well, suc­cess­ful ones do all of these things auto­mat­i­cal­ly, and those who have been less suc­cess­ful do many few­er of them.” Very straight talk on how to get a tenure-track job. From my out­side van­tage point, this seems like excel­lent advice for social sci­en­tists of either gen­der.
  7. The dra­mat­ic implo­sion of ‘I Kissed Dat­ing Good­bye’ is a les­son — and a warn­ing (Chris­tine Emba, Wash­ing­ton Post): “The next time we’re tempt­ed toward too-for­mu­la­ic think­ing, we’ll know to take it with a grain of salt. After all, life is rarely so pure.”

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 an eye-open­ing (and dis­may­ing) read: What The Media Gets Wrong About Israel (Mat­tie Fried­man, The Atlantic). (first shared back in vol­ume 5): “one of the most impor­tant aspects of the media-sat­u­rat­ed con­flict between Jews and Arabs is also the least cov­ered: the press itself. The West­ern press has become less an observ­er of this con­flict than an actor in it, a role with con­se­quences for the mil­lions of peo­ple try­ing to com­pre­hend cur­rent events, includ­ing pol­i­cy­mak­ers who depend on jour­nal­is­tic accounts to under­stand a region where they con­sis­tent­ly seek, and fail, to pro­duc­tive­ly inter­vene.”

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 177

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 Two Dif­fer­ent Temp­ta­tions Fac­ing Young Evan­gel­i­cals (David French, Nation­al Review): “So, young Chris­tians, hold your faith tight­ly and your pol­i­tics loose­ly. You will not find a home here. As Peter says, you are a ‘for­eign­er and exile.’ It’s best to get used to it ear­ly on. Trust me, it can be a gut-wrench­ing dis­cov­ery to make when you’re old.”
  2. STEP Bible Data (Tyn­dale House, Github)This is the under­ly­ing data set for STEP Bible (Scrip­ture Tools for Every Per­son). If you’re a coder look­ing for a neat project, play around with this! Read the announce­ment here.
  3. Sev­er­al inter­est­ing LGBT-relat­ed pieces came across my path this week:
    • Is Sex Bina­ry?(Alex Byrne, Arc Dig­i­tal): “As Simone de Beau­voir puts it in The Sec­ond Sex (the found­ing text of mod­ern fem­i­nism), the sex­es ‘are basi­cal­ly defined by the gametes they pro­duce.’ Specif­i­cal­ly, females pro­duce large gametes (repro­duc­tive cells), and males pro­duce small ones. (Since there are no species with a third inter­me­di­ate gamete size, there are only two sex­es.) A glance at the huge vari­ety of females and males across the ani­mal and veg­etable king­doms will con­firm that there is noth­ing else the sex­es can be.” The author is a pro-trans pro­fes­sor of phi­los­o­phy at MIT.
    • Queer­ing Sci­ence (Mark Reg­nerus, First Things): “Any study that comes to con­clu­sions or even rais­es evi­dence con­trary to the taboos that have formed in recent years is tak­en hostage—first by pseu­do­ny­mous strangers at key­boards; then by the oppor­tunis­tic fac­ul­ty who jump on the band­wag­on dis­play­ing a method­olog­i­cal purism hereto­fore unknown in sex­u­al sci­ence; and then by the uni­ver­si­ties them­selves, whose inter­est has shift­ed from the pur­suit of truth to the pur­suit of virtue (sig­nal­ing).” I shared some arti­cles about the Littman brouha­ha at Brown short­ly after it hap­pened, and I’ve also shared Mark Regnerus’s research before. He is a pro­fes­sor of soci­ol­o­gy at UT Austin.
    • Bartle­by The Big­ot (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “This young Chris­t­ian, Isabel­la Chow, is now thought to be so dan­ger­ous that stu­dents (and oth­ers?) at Berke­ley believe she should be dri­ven from pub­lic life, and can­not be allowed to say what she believes on the pages of the cam­pus news­pa­per.” This is no doubt eas­i­er for many of you to imag­ine than think­ing about some­one bak­ing a cake for a gay wed­ding.
  4. Reli­gion and Depres­sion in Ado­les­cence (Frue­hwirth, Iyer, and Zhang, Jour­nal of Polit­i­cal Econ­o­my): “Many stud­ies show a cor­re­la­tion between reli­gios­i­ty and men­tal health, yet the ques­tion remains whether the rela­tion­ship is causal…. Explo­ration of mech­a­nisms sug­gests that reli­gios­i­ty buffers against stres­sors in ways that school activ­i­ties and friend­ships do not.” If you can’t access the ver­sion accept­ed for pub­li­ca­tion you can see an ear­li­er ver­sion at SSRN. Found via Tyler Cowen — see his com­men­tary.
  5. Why Do Women Earn Less Than Men? Evi­dence from Bus and Train Oper­a­tors (Emanuel Bolot­nyy, job mar­ket paper from Har­vard): “Even in a union­ized envi­ron­ment, where work tasks are sim­i­lar, hourly wages are iden­ti­cal, and tenure dic­tates pro­mo­tions, female work­ers earn $0.89 on the male-work­er dol­lar (week­ly earn­ings). We use con­fi­den­tial admin­is­tra­tive data on bus and train oper­a­tors from the Mass­a­chu­setts Bay Trans­porta­tion Author­i­ty (MBTA) to show that the week­ly earn­ings gap can be explained entire­ly by the work­place choic­es that women and men make. Women val­ue time and flex­i­bil­i­ty more than men.”

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 20 Argu­ments For God’s Exis­tence (Peter Kreeft, per­son­al web­site): “You may be blessed with a vivid sense of God’s pres­ence; and that is some­thing for which to be pro­found­ly grate­ful. But that does not mean you have no oblig­a­tion to pon­der these argu­ments. For many have not been blessed in that way. And the proofs are designed for them—or some of them at least—to give a kind of help they real­ly need. You may even be asked to pro­vide help.” I was remind­ed of this by a con­ver­sa­tion with an alum­nus. The author is a phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor at Boston Col­lege. (first shared in vol­ume 116)

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.

Some Nonpartisan California Voter Guides

If you haven’t vot­ed yet and are try­ing to get some infor­ma­tion on the bal­lot ini­tia­tives and can­di­dates, here are some web­sites I have found help­ful:

  1. ballot.fyi
  2. Voter’s Edge Cal­i­for­nia
  3. CAL­mat­ters Elec­tion Guide [edit: one of my friends thinks the propo­si­tion explain­er videos on this site are biased. I watched two and they seemed fair­ly neu­tral to me, but I might not have watched the ones he is react­ing to. FYI]

These are all non­par­ti­san web­sites that focus on explain­ing what’s going on rather than advo­cat­ing for one side or anoth­er.

And if you haven’t reg­is­tered to vote in Cal­i­for­nia you can reg­is­ter online now for the next elec­tions at https://registertovote.ca.gov/ or you can still reg­is­ter to vote con­di­tion­al­ly in this elec­tion at https://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/voter-registration/conditional-voter-reg/ (that means that you’ll be able to cast a bal­lot and they’ll count your vote if your reg­is­tra­tion process­es suc­cess­ful­ly).

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 176

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. Mass Shoot­ings at Hous­es of Wor­ship: Pitts­burgh Attack Was Among the Dead­liest (Sarah Mer­vosh, NY Times): “Mass shoot­ings have become a recur­ring part of Amer­i­can life, and reli­gious insti­tu­tions a recur­ring set­ting. In each case, the shock is com­pound­ed by the vio­lence at what is sup­posed to be a safe space for peace and heal­ing.”
    • Relat­ed: If You Hate Jews, You Hate Jesus (Rus­sell Moore, per­son­al blog): “I will often hear Chris­tians say, ‘Remem­ber that Jesus was Jew­ish.’ That’s true enough, but the past tense makes it sound as though Jesus’ Jew­ish­ness were some­thing he sloughed off at the res­ur­rec­tion. Jesus is alive now, enthroned in heav­en…. When Jesus appeared before Saul of Tar­sus on the Road to Dam­as­cus, the res­ur­rect­ed Christ intro­duced him­self as ‘Jesus of Nazareth’ (Acts 22:8). Jesus is Jew­ish, present tense.”
    • Relat­ed: Holi­ness & Dr. Cohen (Rod Dreher, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “What Dr. Cohen — who is a mem­ber of Tree of Life syn­a­gogue — and his Jew­ish staff showed is moral courage, but more than that, it is holi­ness.”
    • Relat­ed: The Jews of Pitts­burgh Bury Their Dead (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “‘We, the Jews, are good at death,’ says Rab­bi Seth Adel­son, whose syn­a­gogue, Beth Shalom, is less than a mile from Tree of Life. ‘The cus­toms that we ful­fill at this time are real­ly help­ful for those who have suf­fered a loss.’ In the face of extra­or­di­nary tragedy—the dead­liest attack on Jews in Amer­i­can his­to­ry, accord­ing to the Anti-Defama­tion League—ordinary rit­u­als help Jews grieve.”
  2. ‘God Is Going to Have to For­give Me’: Young Evan­gel­i­cals Speak Out (Eliz­a­beth Dias, New York Times): “With just days left before the midterm elec­tions — two years after Pres­i­dent Trump won the White House with a record share of white, evan­gel­i­cal sup­port — we asked young evan­gel­i­cals to tell The Times about the rela­tion­ship between their faith and their pol­i­tics.” These are inter­est­ing inter­views, although I sus­pect a skew in the sam­ple.
  3. The Big and Small World of Bible Geog­ra­phy (David Bar­rett, The Gospel Coali­tion): “As I have stud­ied and mapped the events of Scrip­ture over the years, I have been struck by an intrigu­ing para­dox: The world of the Bible was at the same time very small and very large.” Rec­om­mend­ed for the pic­tures even more than the text.
  4. What Pro­gres­sives Can Learn From Michael Avenatti’s Mis­take (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): “Inso­far as Democ­rats are con­vinced that Amer­i­ca is a white-suprema­cist patri­archy, that racism and sex­ism were the deci­sive fac­tors cost­ing Democ­rats the 2016 elec­tion, and that fas­cism is nigh, you can see how they would con­clude that a Cory Book­er or an Eliz­a­beth War­ren can’t real­ly best Trump, or would face much longer odds than a white man, and that win­ning should be the pri­or­i­ty. Con­jure in your mind an insti­tu­tion­al­ly racist, white-suprema­cist patri­archy. Does its pop­u­lar­ly elect­ed pres­i­dent look like Kamala Har­ris?” This is the most provoca­tive­ly insight­ful thing I read this week.
    • Not real­ly relat­ed, just sim­i­lar­ly provoca­tive: The Real Rea­son They Hate Trump (David Gel­ern­ter, Wall Street Jour­nal): “The dif­fer­ence between cit­i­zens who hate Mr. Trump and those who can live with him—whether they love or mere­ly tol­er­ate him—comes down to their views of the typ­i­cal Amer­i­can: the farmer, fac­to­ry hand, auto mechan­ic, machin­ist, team­ster, shop own­er, clerk, soft­ware engi­neer, infantry­man, truck dri­ver, house­wife.” The author is a pro­fes­sor of com­put­er sci­ence at Yale..
  5. Free rent in Seat­tle, no catch: Land­lords’ faith inspired a gift for ten­ants (Mike Rosen­berg, Seat­tle Times): “They’re also devout Pen­te­costal Chris­tians. When Slaatthaug, a 74-year-old retired car­pen­ter, does repairs at the build­ing, he dri­ves there in a Jeep with a 4‑foot-tall Bible on top. The Old Tes­ta­ment has a pas­sage about the year of jubilee — every 50 years, debts are to be for­giv­en. So Slaatthaug and Bam­brick are cel­e­brat­ing the family’s 50 years as prop­er­ty own­ers by doing some­thing unheard of for a land­lord: For the month of Novem­ber, every­one in the 11-unit build­ing goes rent-free.”
  6. Kiss­ing Puri­ty Cul­ture Good­bye (Abi­gail Rine Favale, First Things): “Chris­tian­i­ty does not offer mere pre­scrip­tions; it offers a world­view, one cen­tered on a God who descend­ed into our bod­i­ly nature and there­by viv­i­fied it. With­in the con­text of this world­view, the sex­u­al mores of Chris­tian­i­ty become com­pelling, con­nect­ed as they are to the cos­mos as a whole. Removed from this con­text, they enslave.”
  7. Lack Of Atten­tion To Chi­nese Inter­pol Chief’s Dis­ap­pear­ance Shows The Khashog­gi Furor’s Fak­ery (Ben Wein­garten, The Fed­er­al­ist): “Why do cer­tain indi­vid­ual vic­tims of tyran­ni­cal regimes become cause célèbres, wor­thy of dra­mat­i­cal­ly alter­ing U.S. for­eign pol­i­cy, while oth­ers dis­ap­pear into the ether? …con­cur­rent with the Khashog­gi affair, Meng, the pres­i­dent of Inter­pol, also dis­ap­peared, and may have suc­cumbed to a sim­i­lar­ly grim fate at the hands of Chi­nese hench­men. Let me repeat that: The pres­i­dent of Inter­pol, the world’s largest inter­na­tion­al police orga­ni­za­tion, dis­ap­peared.” I dis­like the title of this piece and the way it frames a few things, but it rais­es a very impor­tant point.

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 Sis­ter… Show Mer­cy! (Dan Phillips, Team Pyro): “Sis­ter, if there’s one thing you and I can cer­tain­ly agree on, it’s this: I don’t know what it’s like to be a woman, and you don’t know what it’s like to be a man. We’re both prob­a­bly wrong where we’re sure we’re right, try as we might. So let me try to dart a telegram from my camp over to the distaff side.” (first shared in vol­ume 148)

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 175

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. Few­er Sex Part­ners Means a Hap­pi­er Mar­riage (Olga Khaz­an, The Atlantic): “Nicholas Wolfin­ger, a soci­ol­o­gist at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Utah, has found that Amer­i­cans who have only ever slept with their spous­es are most like­ly to report being in a ‘very hap­py’ mar­riage. Mean­while, the low­est odds of mar­i­tal happiness—about 13 per­cent­age points low­er than the one-part­ner women—belong to women who have had six to 10 sex­u­al part­ners in their lives.”
    • This arti­cle was inspired by the longer and even more fas­ci­nat­ing Does Sex­u­al His­to­ry Affect Mar­i­tal Hap­pi­ness? (Nicholas Wolfin­ger, Insti­tute for Fam­i­ly Stud­ies): “For a com­bined sam­ple of men and women, spous­es report­ing only one life­time sex­u­al part­ner are 7% more like­ly to be hap­py than are those with oth­er part­ners in their past. This is larg­er than the five-per­cent­age-point dif­fer­ence asso­ci­at­ed with a four-year col­lege degree, larg­er than the six-point dif­fer­ence that comes with attend­ing reli­gious ser­vices sev­er­al times a month or more, and larg­er than the boost that comes with hav­ing an income above the nation­al medi­an.”
  2. 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.
  3. Find­ing ‘Com­mon Good’ Among Evan­gel­i­cals In The Polit­i­cal Sea­son (Sarah McCam­mon, NPR): “On a recent evening in Hous­ton, under the heavy branch­es of live oak trees, Doug Pagitt stood before a cou­ple dozen peo­ple gath­ered on blue fold­ing chairs on the Rice Uni­ver­si­ty cam­pus. ‘You’ve heard it said that to be a true Chris­t­ian, you must vote like a Repub­li­can,’ he said. ‘But we are here to be remind­ed that just ain’t so.’”
    • Relat­ed: Cory Book­er could be a can­di­date for the ‘reli­gious left’ (Jack Jenk­ins, Reli­gion News Ser­vice): “Ques­tions about reli­gion can par­a­lyze some politi­cians, but not [Demo­c­ra­t­ic Sen­a­tor] Cory Book­er. If any­thing, the top­ic seems to relax him. Sit­ting in his spa­cious but spar­tan office on Capi­tol Hill in ear­ly Octo­ber, the sen­a­tor propped his sneak­ered feet up on his desk and waxed poet­ic about spir­i­tu­al mat­ters, bounc­ing between dis­cus­sions of Jesus’ dis­ci­ples, hous­ing pol­i­cy and his own reli­gious prac­tices.”
  4. The White House Says Social­ism Is a Threat. It’s Right. (Tyler Cowen, Bloomberg Opin­ion): “Who would have thought that an attack on social­ism would be so con­tro­ver­sial? But these days it is. The White House’s Coun­cil of Eco­nom­ic Advis­ers issued a report called ‘The Oppor­tu­ni­ty Costs of Social­ism’ to a scathing recep­tion on social media: ‘dreck,’ said the econ­o­mist Justin Wolfers, while Paul Krug­man referred to it as ‘amaz­ing­ly dis­hon­est.’ I’m here to tell you that I have read the entire report, and many of the sources it cites, and most of it is cor­rect.” FYI: one of our alum­ni helped to write the report in ques­tion.
  5. The Car­a­van Is a Chal­lenge to the Integri­ty of U.S. Bor­ders (David Frum, The Atlantic): “If lib­er­als insist that only fas­cists will defend bor­ders, then vot­ers will hire fas­cists to do the job lib­er­als will not do.” That sen­tence is one of the most hon­est things I’ve heard in the recent immi­gra­tion debate. When decid­ing what immi­gra­tion pol­i­cy you deem best, rec­og­nize that you have to fac­tor in how pas­sion­ate­ly oth­er­wise apo­lit­i­cal peo­ple feel about this.
  6. A Chris­t­ian Man Receives Jus­tice (David French, Nation­al Review): “gov­ern­ment offi­cials demon­strat­ed sub­stan­tial intol­er­ance in the name of ‘inclu­sion’ and rather than seek­ing solu­tions that allowed each mem­ber of the com­mu­ni­ty to exer­cise their lib­er­ty (to enjoy rights to cakes and con­science, for exam­ple), they took sides against Chris­tians, using their pow­er to send a clear mes­sage: Tra­di­tion­al Chris­tian­i­ty is incom­pat­i­ble with the pro­gres­sive state. That is not a deci­sion the Con­sti­tu­tion empow­ers them to make.”
  7. The midterms are already hacked. You just don’t know it yet. (Ben­jamin Wof­ford, Vox): “The secu­ri­ty expert at a big tech cor­po­ra­tion, who spoke on back­ground in order to speak frankly about elec­tion vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties, put it this way: ‘On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the Pentagon’s [secu­ri­ty mea­sures], elec­tions have prob­a­bly moved from a 2 to a 3.’” Very alarm­ing.

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 Let­ter To My Younger Self (Ryan Leaf, The Player’s Tri­bune): “Con­grat­u­la­tions. You offi­cial­ly have it all — mon­ey, pow­er and pres­tige. All the things that are impor­tant, right?… That’s you, young Ryan Leaf, at his absolute finest: arro­gant, boor­ish and nar­cis­sis­tic. You think you’re on top of the world and that you’ve got all the answers. Well I’m sor­ry to have to tell you this, but the truth is….” Such a grip­ping let­ter. High­ly rec­om­mend­ed. (first shared in vol­ume 99)

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.