Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 85

1 Chronicles 12:32 - they "understood the times"
1 Chron­i­cles 12:32 — they “under­stood the times”

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. Recen­cy Illu­sions (Alan Jacobs, The New Atlantis): “I have come to believe that it is impos­si­ble for any­one who is reg­u­lar­ly on social media to have a bal­anced and accu­rate under­stand­ing of what is hap­pen­ing in the world. To fol­low a minute-by-minute cycle of news is to be con­stant­ly threat­ened by illu­sion.”
  2. The Fan­ta­sy Of Addic­tion (Peter Hitchens, First Things): “Even hero­in abusers, and gam­blers, can and do just stop. Rea­son has over­come desire. In which case the whole idea of ‘addic­tion,’ as a pow­er greater than will, is over­thrown.”
  3. Nige­ria Could Teach The West A Few Things (Tyler Cowen, Bloomberg View): “…in essence Nige­ria has in a few decades cre­at­ed an almost entire­ly new, coun­try-sized city [Lagos] built on the ideals and prac­tice of reli­gious tol­er­ance.”
  4. Com­pas­sion Has ‘Very Lit­tle Hope’ for India, Sets Dead­line to Shut Down Spon­sor­ships (Sarah Zyl­stra, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “The Indi­an gov­ern­ment objects to Compassion’s Chris­tian­i­ty, accord­ing to the ministry’s tes­ti­mo­ny to US law­mak­ers. Hin­du nation­al­ists have put increas­ing pres­sure on Chris­tians in India since the elec­tion of Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Modi in 2014.”
  5. Why Trump’s Staff Is Lying (Tyler Cowen, Bloomberg View): “If you want to ascer­tain if some­one is tru­ly loy­al to you, ask them to do some­thing out­ra­geous or stu­pid. If they balk, then you know right away they aren’t ful­ly with you.”
  6. Will There Be An Inter­nal Revolt Against Trump? (Tevi Troy, Com­men­tary Mag­a­zine): “Can­di­date Trump ran on repeal­ing Oba­macare, com­bat­ing polit­i­cal cor­rect­ness, and law and order. Many career offi­cials in these agen­cies have seen their mis­sion in oppo­site terms—they were tasked with pro­mot­ing the Afford­able Care Act, main­tain­ing speech regimes on cam­pus, and cre­at­ing new guid­ance on how to mon­i­tor alle­ga­tions of racism by police offi­cers.”
  7. Planned Parenthood’s Most Mis­lead­ing Sta­tis­tic (Joe Carter, Gospel Coali­tion): this arti­cle seems to be inspired by a three-minute sting video show­ing how dif­fi­cult it is to receive any­thing oth­er than an abor­tion at Planned Par­ent­hood. 

Things Glen Found Amusing:

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).

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.

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 84

1 Chronicles 12:32 - they "understood the times"
1 Chron­i­cles 12:32 — they “under­stood the times”

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The World’s Most Out­stand­ing Med­ical Mis­sion­ary (Sarah Eekhoff Zyl­stra, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): the fam­i­ly of God fre­quent­ly makes me proud.
  2. ‘Worst Year Yet’: The Top 50 Coun­tries Where It’s Hard­est To Be A Chris­t­ian (Jere­my Weber, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Per­se­cu­tion rose glob­al­ly again for the third year in a row, indi­cat­ing how volatile the sit­u­a­tion has become,” stat­ed Open Doors. “Coun­tries in South and South­east Asia rapid­ly rose to unprece­dent­ed lev­els and now rank among such vio­lent areas as the Mid­dle East and Sub-Saha­ran Africa.”
  3. When The Brain Scram­bles Names, It’s Because You Love Them (Michelle Trudeau, NPR): This is my defense to you all. Also, I found this bit fun­ny — in a fam­i­ly “you are much more like­ly to be [acci­den­tal­ly] called the dog’s name than you are to be called the cat’s name.”
  4. It’s inau­gu­ra­tion day, so a lot of the arti­cles relate to the new­ly sworn-in Pres­i­dent.
    • How To Live Under An Unqual­i­fied Pres­i­dent (John Piper, Desir­ing God): this is good.
    • Trump Takes Jezreel (Dou­glas Wil­son, per­son­al blog): “Polit­i­cal fac­tions want every­thing to be a sim­ple bina­ry choice on the human lev­el. You either are all in for Jezebel or all in for Jehu. What Scrip­ture invites us to is qual­i­fied sup­port, or per­haps qual­i­fied dis­ap­proval. So and so was a good king, but did not remove the high places.”
    • The Church’s Integri­ty in the Trump Years (Mark Gal­li, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “Our main polit­i­cal task in this new admin­is­tra­tion is more urgent than ever… we can speak char­i­ta­bly to one anoth­er about our dis­agree­ments, tak­ing the time to find out what each of us real­ly believes and why.”
    • The Pol­i­tics of Answered Prayer (Peter Lei­thart, First Things): sure to dis­qui­et and/or offend.
    • A Bit Of Con­text on Trump, NATO, and Ger­many (Tyler Cowen, per­son­al blog): “I strong­ly favor NATO and I don’t think you can trust the Rus­sians with just about any­thing, or for that mat­ter make much of a deal with them.” (this piece is not about the inau­gu­ra­tion, but I found it very stim­u­lat­ing)
  5. Bon­ho­ef­fer On Why God Does Not Fill The Empti­ness When A Loved One Dies (Justin Tay­lor, Gospel Coalition): “to the extent the empti­ness tru­ly remains unfilled one remains con­nect­ed to the oth­er per­son through it.”
  6. Author­i­tar­i­ans Dis­tract Rather than Debate (Alex Tabar­rok, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): “it has long been assumed that pro­pa­gan­da posts would sup­port the gov­ern­ment with praise or crit­i­cize crit­ics of the gov­ern­ment. Not so. In fact, pro­pa­gan­da posts active­ly steer away from con­tro­ver­sial issues.”
  7. Men’s Bread­win­ning Still Mat­ters For Mar­riage (Chris­tos Makridis, Insti­tute For Fam­i­ly Stud­ies): yes, that’s our Chris­tos. “The col­lege-edu­cat­ed may embrace egal­i­tar­i­an ideals of fam­i­ly life, but their behav­ior is more com­pli­cat­ed.”

Things Glen Found Amusing

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).

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.

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 83

1 Chronicles 12:32 - they "understood the times"
1 Chron­i­cles 12:32 — they “under­stood the times”

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

Things Glen Found Interesting

There are a few more links than nor­mal because I missed send­ing out last week­s’s email.

  1. North­west­ern Grad Stu­dent Sues Evanston Police; Dash­cam Arrest Video Released (Lau­ra Podes­ta, ABC Chica­go Eye­wit­ness News): Lawrence is an alum­nus of our min­istry. This one hits close to home.
  2. The Sex Bureau­cra­cy (Jacob Gersen & Jean­nie Suk Gersen, Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion): “Under the rubric of pre­vent­ing sex­u­al vio­lence, col­leges are now deep in the busi­ness of pro­vid­ing advice on sex and rela­tion­ships. And they’re not good at it.” Even from a sec­u­lar per­spec­tive, col­lege admin­is­tra­tors are act­ing absurd­ly.
  3. We’re Liv­ing Through The First World Cyber­war — But Just Haven’t Called It That (Marin Belam, The Guardian): “It is impor­tant to remem­ber that the inter­net orig­i­nal­ly came from defence research….. we are liv­ing through the first time it is being used in anger.”
  4. Putin’s Real Long Game (Mol­ly McK­ew, Politi­co): “What both admin­is­tra­tions fail to real­ize is that the West is already at war, whether it wants to be or not…. This war seeks, at home and abroad, to erode our val­ues, our democ­ra­cy, and our insti­tu­tion­al strength; to dilute our abil­i­ty to sort fact from fic­tion, or moral right from wrong; and to con­vince us to make deci­sions against our own best inter­ests.”
  5. Sug­ar, Explained (Julia Bel­luz and Javier Zarraci­na, Vox): “The back­lash against sug­ar, and the sci­ence behind it, is a lot more com­pli­cat­ed than it seems.”
  6. The Life And Death Of Evangelicalism’s Lit­tle Mag­a­zine (John Schmalzbauer,Comment): this was extreme­ly inter­est­ing to me, although prob­a­bly less so to many oth­ers.
  7. When There’s No Ther­a­pist, How Can The Depressed Find Help? (Joanne Sil­bern­er, NPR): Dif­fi­cult to excerpt — very inter­est­ing sto­ry.
  8. Some­times the Peo­ple Need to Call the Experts (Tyler Cowen, Bloomberg View): There are some good insights here. My favorite line, though, was this: “It’s a good rule of gov­er­nance that pol­i­cy can­not race too far ahead of the cit­i­zen­ry, and I don’t view fac­ul­ty as a class of peo­ple well-suit­ed for that kind of humil­i­ty.”
  9. The Ide­o­log­i­cal Rea­sons Why Democ­rats Have Neglect­ed Local Pol­i­tics (Emma Green, The Atlantic): “The pro­gres­sive project is ulti­mate­ly about work­ing toward a soci­ety built on one uni­fied vision of pol­i­cy and cul­ture, rather than a diverse array of poli­cies and cul­tures.”
  10. Intel­lec­tu­als For Trump (Kele­fah San­neh, New York­er):  “We have grown accus­tomed to hear­ing sto­ries about the lib­er­al bub­ble, but the real sto­ry of this year’s elec­tion was about the con­ser­v­a­tive bub­ble: the results showed how sharply the pri­or­i­ties of the movement’s lead­ers dif­fered from those of their puta­tive fol­low­ers.”
  11. Harvard’s George J. Bor­jas (Robert Ver­bruggen, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): “Per­haps odd­ly for some­one who gained immense­ly from mov­ing from one coun­try to anoth­er, Bor­jas has spent much of his career try­ing to answer the ques­tions of who los­es from immi­gra­tion and how much.”

Things Glen Found Entertaining

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).

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.

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 82

1 Chronicles 12:32 - they "understood the times"
1 Chron­i­cles 12:32 — they “under­stood the times”

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. The new year is upon us. Con­sid­er read­ing through the entire Bible in 2017 (doing so will take around 10 min­utes a day). Here’s a thor­ough and help­ful arti­cle from last year about read­ing the whole Bible. If you want an app to make it eas­i­er, take a look at readscripture.org 
  2. Vari­eties of Reli­gious Expe­ri­ence (Ross Douthat, NY Times): “One of my hob­bies is col­lect­ing what you might call non­con­ver­sion sto­ries — sto­ries about sec­u­lar mod­erns who have super­nat­ur­al-seem­ing expe­ri­ences with­out being pro­pelled into any spe­cif­ic reli­gious faith.”
  3. Mark Zucker­berg says he’s no longer an athe­ist, believes ‘reli­gion is very impor­tant’ (Julie Zauzmer, Wash­ing­ton Post): Some­what relat­ed to the above. Also, if you hap­pen to bump into him or his wife then please let them know they are wel­come at Chi Alpha. 🙂
  4. The Evan­gel­i­cal Scion Who Stopped Believ­ing (Mark Oppen­heimer, NY Times): “Athe­ists and agnos­tics have long tried to rebot­tle reli­gion: to get the com­mu­ni­ty and the good works with­out the super­nat­ur­al stuff. It has worked about as well as non­al­co­holic beer. As with O’Doul’s, con­verts are few, and rarely do they end up hav­ing a very good time.” Inter­est­ing arti­cle, although Oppen­heimer mis­reads some back­ground details (in par­tic­u­lar, I think he was unfair to Stet­zer’s com­ment).
  5. In Praise of Igno­rance (Simon Cullen, Quil­lette): “Those with the audac­i­ty to admit that they have noth­ing intel­li­gent to say about a dif­fi­cult top­ic should be praised for refus­ing to fur­ther erode our com­mon epis­temic stan­dards, not scorned for fail­ing to toe some par­ty line.”
  6. Cam­pus Iden­ti­ty Pol­i­tics Is Doom­ing Lib­er­al Caus­es, a Pro­fes­sor Charges (Evan R. Gold­stein, Chron­i­cle of High­er Edu­ca­tion): an inter­view with Columbia’s Mark Lil­la — “iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics today isn’t about group belong­ing; it’s about per­son­al iden­ti­ty. From the ’70s into the ’90s, there was a shift in focus from group iden­ti­ty to the self as the inter­sec­tion of dif­fer­ent kinds of iden­ti­ties…. It’s extra­or­di­nary how much time and think­ing [stu­dents] devote to exact­ly what they are as the subto­tal of oth­er iden­ti­ties, rather than see­ing their time at the uni­ver­si­ty as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to leave those things behind, or over­come them, or become some­thing that’s actu­al­ly them­selves and autonomous in some way.” This is sort of a sequel to an arti­cle I shared back in vol­ume 77.
  7. Hous­es of Wor­ship Poised to Serve as Trump-Era Immi­grant Sanc­tu­ar­ies (Lau­rie Good­stein, NY TImes): “Church­es, schools and hos­pi­tals are con­sid­ered ‘sen­si­tive loca­tions,’ accord­ing to Immi­gra­tion and Cus­toms Enforce­ment. Immi­gra­tion offi­cers are sup­posed to avoid those loca­tions, unless they have advance approval from a super­vi­sor or face ‘exi­gent cir­cum­stances’ that require imme­di­ate action, said Jen­nifer Elzea, an agency spokes­woman.”
  8. Here’s Who Will Pray at Trump’s Inau­gu­ra­tion (Kate Shell­nut, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): it’s not obvi­ous from the arti­cle, but a sur­pris­ing num­ber of them are Pen­te­costal of one sort or anoth­er: Wayne Jack­son, Paula White, Sam­my Rodriguez.

Things Glen Found Amusing

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).

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.

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 81

1 Chronicles 12:32 - they "understood the times"
1 Chron­i­cles 12:32 — they “under­stood the times”

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Pas­tor, Am I A Chris­t­ian? (Nicholas Kristof, NY Times): Skep­ti­cal but inter­est­ed pub­lic intel­lec­tu­al invites Tim Keller to answer his ques­tions about Chris­tian­i­ty and then pub­lish­es the con­ver­sa­tion. #goals  (rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent)
  2. Free Pas­tor Andrew: Chris­tians Ral­ly for Mis­sion­ary Jailed in Turkey (Kate Shell­nut, Chris­tian­i­ty Today) : “Turkey has accused mul­ti­ple pas­tors of being ‘a threat to nation­al secu­ri­ty.’”
  3. China’s Great Leap Back­ward (James Fal­lows, The Atlantic): “This assess­ment implies that U.S. atten­tion should be focused on get­ting through an upcom­ing time of dif­fi­cul­ty, which could last years or decades, with­out pan­ick­ing that his­to­ry now seems to favor the repres­sive Chi­nese mod­el of gov­er­nance.” This is a long piece, but the issue is an impor­tant one and it is worth your time. For some sor­ta semi-relat­ed thoughts on Rus­sia, read The Russ­ian Ques­tion by Niall Fer­gu­son: “the Unit­ed States should be clos­er to each of Rus­sia and Chi­na than they are to one anoth­er.”
  4. How Out­ra­geous Are the New North Car­oli­na Laws? (Tyler Cowen, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion) is help­ful, and for some per­spec­tive read His­to­ry Can Teach Both Par­ties (John Hood, Car­oli­na Jour­nal). The most alarmist view I have seen is North Car­oli­na Is No Longer Clas­si­fied as a Democ­ra­cy, an op-ed by a polit­i­cal sci­ence pro­fes­sor at UNC. 
  5. Why the Catholic Church some­times turns to sci­ence to inves­ti­gate mir­a­cles (Kelsey Dal­las, Deseret News): “The patient is still alive, pos­ing an ongo­ing chal­lenge to sci­en­tif­ic researchers. ‘I have zero expla­na­tion for why she’s alive. She does,’ Duf­fin said.”
  6. Why Oxford Dictionary’s 2016 Word of the Year Mat­ters (Ravi Zacharias, Gospel Coali­tion): “There is an ulti­mate cry for jus­tice in every heart. Jus­tice counts on the truth. With­out those two real­i­ties, civ­i­liza­tion will die.” Rec­om­mend­ed by a stu­dent.
  7. The Impact of Holy Land Cru­sades on State For­ma­tion: War Mobi­liza­tion, Trade Inte­gra­tion, and Polit­i­cal Devel­op­ment in Medieval Europe (Lisa Blay­des and Christo­pher Paik, Inter­na­tion­al Orga­ni­za­tion): “Areas with high lev­els of cru­sad­er mobi­liza­tion wit­nessed more polit­i­cal sta­bil­i­ty in the cen­turies to fol­low. The causal mech­a­nism that we put for­ward is that the depar­ture of rel­a­tive­ly large num­bers of Euro­pean land­ed elites for the Holy Land reduced the absolute num­ber of elites who might serve as chal­lengers to the king.” File away under expla­na­tions I had nev­er con­sid­ered. Blay­des is a pro­fes­sor at Stan­ford and Paik at NYU Abu Dhabi.

Things Glen Found Amusing

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).

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.

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 80

1 Chronicles 12:32 - they "understood the times"
1 Chron­i­cles 12:32 — they “under­stood the times”

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Rage and Heart­break: Required Reac­tions to Alep­po (Richard Stearns, ERLC): “Let your heart be bro­ken for the suf­fer­ing in the Mid­dle East and around the world. Pray it stays bro­ken as long as any moth­er any­where pleads for help and any child fears this night will be her last.” For some con­text, read 9 Things You Should Know About Alep­po and the Syr­i­an Cri­sis (Joe Carter, Gospel Coali­tion). And this is an inter­est­ing Mus­lim take on Alep­po (Omed Safi, Wash­ing­ton Post).
  2. The Cri­sis of Chris­tians in Egypt (Gabriel Reynolds, First Things):  “It is telling, for exam­ple, that almost no such attacks have tak­en place in major­i­ty Shi’ite Iran against the Chris­t­ian minor­i­ty there. What, then, dis­tin­guish­es Egypt and Pak­istan from Iran?”
  3. My Pres­i­dent Was Black (Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Atlantic): this is a long, beau­ti­ful­ly-writ­ten piece. The Atlantic is pub­lish­ing response pieces. The first one is intense: “My pres­i­dent was black and I still am.”
  4. Why Hillary Clin­ton Bombed With White Evan­gel­i­cal Vot­ers (Ruth Gra­ham, Slate): “It was as if she was try­ing to alien­ate evan­gel­i­cals… and it worked.” This arti­cle nails a big part of the dynam­ic.
  5. With Jesus’ Birth, Why Does The Bible List Two Dif­fer­ent Fam­i­ly Trees? (Richard Ostling, Patheos): “The gen­er­al con­sen­sus on the dif­fer­ences is that Matthew depict­ed Jesus’ legal descent from David, on the assump­tion Joseph adopt­ed him. If Mary had no broth­ers, by com­mon cus­tom Joseph would have been his father-in-law’s legal ‘son’ and heir through the mar­riage. Luke defined Jesus through Mary as a blood descen­dant of David.” (for some oth­er pos­si­ble expla­na­tions, see Mark Strauss at Zon­der­van Aca­d­e­m­ic)
  6. The Defense of Lib­er­ty Can’t Do With­out Iden­ti­ty Pol­i­tics (Jacob Levy, Niska­nen Cen­ter): “Iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics… is about fight­ing for polit­i­cal jus­tice by draw­ing on the com­mit­ment that aris­es out of tar­get­ed injus­tice…. It lets us spot the major­i­ty group’s iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics rather than treat­ing it as the nor­mal back­ground state of affairs, and to rec­og­nize the oppres­sion and injus­tice that it gen­er­ates.” The author is a pro­fes­sor of polit­i­cal sci­ence at McGill.
  7. The Right Shuts Down Free Speech, Too (Cather­ine Ramp­bell, Wash­ing­ton Post): it’s almost as though human nature is the same regard­less of what one thinks about the tax code. 
  8. On the academic/research side of things:

Things Glen Found Amusing

  • Indul­gences  (Pearls Before Swine): the­o­log­i­cal warn­ing — this form of recur­sion does not actu­al­ly work 
  • Local Man Relieved After Spir­i­tu­al Gift Test Comes Back Neg­a­tive For Giv­ing (Baby­lon Bee): “Accord­ing to sources, Shep­herd ripped open his results pack­et Thurs­day, and after ner­vous­ly perus­ing the cov­er let­ter, jumped for joy upon dis­cov­er­ing he had no desire or respon­si­bil­i­ty to be gen­er­ous what­so­ev­er.”
  • Band Offers Admin­is­tra­tion $60,000 To Drop Accu­sa­tions (The Flip­side): bru­tal and well-deserved (if you don’t get the joke, check out two recent edi­tions of the Foun­tain Hop­per (dirty lan­guage ahead): about the $60,000 and about the band. In case you’re won­der­ing, I do think the band is being treat­ed unfair­ly (and I have not been a huge fan of the band’s cul­ture his­tor­i­cal­ly). 
  • How To Get Vin­di­ca­tion (Basic Instruc­tions): if you are squea­mish, this one may not be for you. I found it hilar­i­ous. There is a video in the notes below the com­ic and I rec­om­mend it — if you are not squea­mish.

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).

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.

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 79

1 Chronicles 12:32 - they "understood the times"
1 Chron­i­cles 12:32 — they “under­stood the times”

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. First Dinosaur Tail Found Pre­served In Amber (Kristin Romey, Nation­al Geo­graph­ic): this is awe­some. And yo, it’s got feath­ers. Feath­ers! I’ve heard for years that dinosaurs like­ly had feath­ers, but see­ing them is super-cool. Quick, some­one redo the CGI in Juras­sic Park.
  2. Requiem For A Despot (Car­los Eire, First Things): some of you have asked what I thought of Fidel Cas­tro. This sums it up well. He was a car­toon­ish­ly wicked man. The author is a pro­fes­sor of his­to­ry at Yale.
  3. The Neces­si­ty Of Cred­i­bil­i­ty (Nathan J. Robin­son, Cur­rent Affairs): “Cur­rent­ly, peo­ple don’t trust the main­stream media. And the first thing the media must do is acknowl­edge that part of that mis­trust is entire­ly ratio­nal and rea­son­able” (empha­sis in orig­i­nal). An insight­ful cri­tique of the media from the left.
  4. The Media Kow­tow (Mark Hem­ing­way, The Week­ly Stan­dard): this is an old­er piece but still very rel­e­vant.  “For the last sev­er­al years, a huge­ly influ­en­tial por­tion of the Amer­i­can media has vac­il­lat­ed between open­ly admir­ing the Chi­nese gov­ern­ment and pro­vid­ing a forum for its apol­o­gists.” With that in mind, read this — Tsai calls Trump, World Com­men­tari­at IQ drops 50 points (Michael Tur­ton, per­son­al blog). The author lives in Tai­wan and has a unique per­spec­tive. His fol­low-up is also worth read­ing.
  5. Sev­en Rea­sons You Should Not Indulge In Pornog­ra­phy (Andy Nasel­li, Theme­lios): “You should not indulge in pornog­ra­phy for at least sev­en rea­sons: (1) It will send you to hell. (2) It does not glo­ri­fy God with your body. (3) It is a poi­so­nous, fleet­ing plea­sure. (4) It fool­ish­ly wastes your life. (5) It betrays your wife and chil­dren. (6) It ruins your mind and con­science. (7) It par­tic­i­pates in sex slav­ery.”
  6. Jen Hat­mak­er: Hermeneu­tics, Hurt, and Human Affec­tion (Joe Dal­las, per­son­al blog): the fol­low-up con­tains this nugget, “Gen­er­al­ly, when you feel right about your­self, you can live with some­one else’s dis­agree­ment or dis­ap­proval. You may not like them say­ing you’re wrong, but you don’t feel a need to pre­vent them from doing so.”
  7. Con­tra Robin­son on School­ing (Slate Star Codex): like all Slate Star Codex arti­cles, this is long, thought­ful, and well-researched. The fol­low-up post is extreme­ly infor­ma­tive.

Things Glen Found Amusing

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).

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.

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 78

1 Chronicles 12:32 - they "understood the times"
1 Chron­i­cles 12:32 — they “under­stood the times”

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. On Wednes­day I men­tioned how some mod­ern research about speak­ing in tongues aligns very well with Paul’s com­ments about tongues strength­en­ing believ­ers even while their mind is unfruit­ful (1 Cor 14:4, 14). A read­able sum­ma­ry from a few years back is A Neu­ro­sci­en­tif­ic Look At Speak­ing In Tongues (Bene­dict Carey, NYT) and also Speak­ing in Tongues: Glos­salalia and Stress Reduc­tion (The Dana Foun­da­tion). If you want to see the actu­al research they are allud­ing to, check out the uni­ver­si­ty press release Lan­guage Cen­ter of the Brain Is Not Under the Con­trol of Sub­jects Who “Speak in Tongues” (U Penn, 2006) or the aca­d­e­m­ic papers Sali­vary Alpha-Amy­lase and Cor­ti­sol Among Pen­te­costals on a Wor­ship and Non­wor­ship Day (Amer­i­can Jour­nal of Human Biol­o­gy, 2013) and Glos­so­lalia is asso­ci­at­ed with dif­fer­ences in bio­mark­ers of stress and arousal among Apos­tolic Pen­te­costals (Reli­gion, Brain and Behav­ior, 2012).
  2. A hor­ri­fy­ing look into the mind of 9/11’s mas­ter­mind, in his own words (Marc Thiessen, Wash­ing­ton Post): Indis­putably inter­est­ing. Two caveats: you should look up the name James E. Mitchell for con­text and there are sure­ly those who tes­ti­fy dif­fer­ent­ly than Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Hav­ing said that… fas­ci­nat­ing.
  3. Reli­gious Lib­er­ty Experts Stand Togeth­er, on Cas­es Inside Prison Walls (Ter­ry Mat­ting­ly, On Reli­gion): “There is space enough in our cul­ture to allow dif­fer­ent peo­ple with dif­fer­ent beliefs to live peace­ably in the same land.”
  4. Texas elec­tor who crit­i­cized Trump says he’s resign­ing (Kyle Cheney, Politi­co): “Since I can’t in good con­science vote for Don­ald Trump, and yet have sin­ful­ly made a pledge that I would, the best option I see at this time is to resign my posi­tion as an Elec­tor…. I will sleep well at night know­ing I nei­ther gave in to [the people’s] demands nor caved to my con­vic­tions. I will also mourn the loss of our repub­lic.” The elec­tor is clear­ly a thought­ful Chris­t­ian who made his deci­sion very the­o­log­i­cal­ly. Read his own words about it at Con­flict­ed Elec­tor In A Cor­rupt Col­lege. Even if you dif­fer with his the­ol­o­gy at points, applaud his con­sis­ten­cy. Also note how much Politi­co edit­ed out his the­o­log­i­cal con­vic­tions in their report­ing — a very com­mon occur­rence in major media out­lets.
  5. Gays, Bias, And Pho­ny Sci­ence (Nao­mi Schae­fer Riley,  NY Post): “In the end, nei­ther LaCour nor Hatzen­buehler actu­al­ly did the work to prove their the­ses — because there would be no real con­se­quences if they were caught, and any­way acad­e­mia writ large didn’t want to ‘catch’ them at all.”
  6. The Under­stud­ied Female Sex­u­al Preda­tor (Conor Frieder­dorf, The Atlantic): “In inci­dents of sex­u­al vio­lence report­ed to the Nation­al Crime Vic­tim­iza­tion Sur­vey, 38 per­cent of vic­tims were men…”
  7. Cheat or Go Home: Inside the ‘Dys­func­tion­al Hell’ of Becom­ing a CFB Coach (Matt Hayes, Bleach­er Report): “Auburn offi­cials have always denied it, the NCAA could nev­er nail it down and the statute of lim­i­ta­tions on infrac­tions has long since passed. But here’s the catch: I’ve seen the ledger.” Even if you don’t like sports, this is a worth­while read.

Things Glen Found Amusing

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).

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.

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 77

1 Chronicles 12:32 - they "understood the times"
1 Chron­i­cles 12:32 — they “under­stood the times”

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. White Chris­t­ian Apoc­a­lypse? (Philip Jenk­ins, The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive): Jenk­ins is a well-known his­to­ri­an. “On one crit­i­cal issue, though, con­tem­po­rary debate and the­o­riz­ing real­ly is tres­pass­ing on my areas of exper­tise.” Jenk­ins unpacks some long-term trends and their impli­ca­tions for Amer­i­ca’s demo­graph­ic des­tiny.
  2. The End of Iden­ti­ty Lib­er­al­ism (Mark Lil­la, NY Times): One of the more insight­ful things I’ve read late­ly. It’s inspired by the recent elec­tion, but is about some­thing much broad­er — some intrin­sic weak­ness­es of iden­ti­ty pol­i­tics. For a very strong reac­tion against it, read Mak­ing White Suprema­cy Respectable. Again. (Kather­ine Franke, LA Review of Books). Both authors are pro­fes­sors at Colum­bia, which will no doubt make for tense times in the fac­ul­ty lounge.
  3. Yes, Trump will build his bor­der wall. Most of it is already built. (Peter Andreas, Wash­ing­ton Post): “It is impor­tant to remem­ber that Trump’s pre­de­ces­sors care­ful­ly avoid­ed call­ing any new bor­der bar­ri­ers a ‘wall.’” Wow. I did not real­ize how much of the south­ern bor­der is already bar­ri­cad­ed. It would be help­ful if reporters peri­od­i­cal­ly brought this fact up for con­text.
  4. Try­ing To Think Through The Log­ic Of Abor­tion Rights (Justin Tay­lor, The Gospel Coali­tion): Tay­lor sum­ma­rizes the argu­ments of two phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sors. For me, med­i­tat­ing on Luke 1:39–45 has been impor­tant when think­ing about abor­tion. 
  5. Every­one should have the right to assist­ed sui­cide — or no one should (Feli­cia Nimue Ack­er­man, Vox): “a soci­ety that ‘pathol­o­gizes’ sui­ci­dal feel­ings of indig­ni­ty and degra­da­tion in rape vic­tims while endors­ing them in the ter­mi­nal­ly ill is, I con­tend, engag­ing in a hor­ri­fy­ing, odi­ous form of big­otry.” The author is a phi­los­o­phy pro­fes­sor at Brown.

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).

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.

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 76

1 Chronicles 12:32 - they "understood the times"
1 Chron­i­cles 12:32 — they “under­stood the times”

On Fri­days I share articles/resources about broad cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

Things Glen Found Interesting

  1. Some thoughts about slav­ery and the Bible — Does The Bible Sup­port Slav­ery? (a lec­ture giv­en by the war­den of Tyn­dale House at Cam­bridge Uni­ver­si­ty, the link is to the video with notes) and Does God Con­done Slav­ery In The Bible? (Part One — Old Tes­ta­ment) and also Part Two — New Tes­ta­ment (longer pieces from Glenn Miller at Chris­t­ian Think­tank). All three are quite help­ful.
  2. Struc­tur­al Racism (John Piper, Desir­ing God): “if your mind is Bible-sat­u­rat­ed, you would con­sid­er it absolute­ly aston­ish­ing if struc­tur­al racism were not per­va­sive wher­ev­er sin is per­va­sive. In oth­er words, Bible-shaped peo­ple should expect to see struc­tur­al racism almost every­where in a fall­en world.”
  3. How Methodists Invent­ed Your Kid’s Grape Juice Sug­ar High (Luke Har­ring­ton, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): why many church­es use grape juice for com­mu­nion.
  4. More post-elec­tion thoughts:
    1. Why Can’t I Mourn? (Kyle James Howard, per­son­al blog): “For many, it appears that it is unac­cept­able for me to grieve racism and abor­tion equal­ly. That for many, a Chris­t­ian only has the capac­i­ty to grieve one or the oth­er but not both.”
    2. No, the Major­i­ty of Amer­i­can Evan­gel­i­cals Did Not Vote for Trump (Joe Carter, Gospel Coali­tion): you may recall that I sug­gest­ed some­thing sim­i­lar in last week’s email — here’s a wide-rang­ing expla­na­tion. There is no doubt more to be said on this.
    3. You Are Still Cry­ing Wolf (Scott Alexan­der, Slat­eStar­Codex): “I real­ize that all of this is going to make me sound like a crazy per­son and put me com­plete­ly at odds with every respectable thinker in the media, but luck­i­ly, being a crazy per­son at odds with every respectable thinker in the media has been a pret­ty good tick­et to pre­dic­tive accu­ra­cy late­ly, so what­ev­er.” This is a long and detailed argu­ment that Trump is not racist (or at least not more racist than lots of peo­ple). I was sur­prised at how well it held my inter­est. See also Ross Douthat’s insight­ful twit­ter cri­tique of the arti­cle. For a con­trary point of view (sort of — it’s less about Trump and more about what Trump sig­ni­fies), see Racism Prob­a­bly Is Get­ting Worse. (I Hope I’m Wrong.) (Tyler Cowen, Bloomberg View). If you read one, read all three.
    4. Stunned By Trump, The New York Times Finds Time For Some Soul-Search­ing (Michael Cieply, Dead­spin): “By and large, tal­ent­ed reporters scram­bled to match sto­ries with what inter­nal­ly was often called ‘the nar­ra­tive.’ We were occa­sion­al­ly asked to map a nar­ra­tive for our var­i­ous beats a year in advance, square the plan with edi­tors, then gen­er­ate sto­ries that fit the pre-des­ig­nat­ed line.” This piece is impor­tant and depress­ing.
    5. The coali­tion for diver­si­ty whose diver­si­ty did diver­si­ty just win? (Tyler Cowen, Mar­gin­al Rev­o­lu­tion): do not let the con­fus­ing title put you off. Cowen argues that the Repub­li­cans are in some sens­es sig­nif­i­cant­ly more diverse than the Democ­rats.
    6. #Nev­erTrump And Pres­i­dent Trump (Jake Meador, Mere Ortho­doxy): “The church’s great­est the­olo­gians have long said that a prop­er­ly Chris­t­ian com­mon­wealth will be con­cerned not with the greater good—the most good for the most people—or with the pri­vate good of Chris­tians alone, but with the com­mon good.”
    7. How cov­er­ing the Red­skins name debate pre­pared me for Don­ald Trump’s win (Dan Stein­berg, Washing­ton Post): “They told me that media Twit­ter wasn’t the real world, that it cre­at­ed a pho­ny idea of con­sen­sus for a stance that wasn’t actu­al­ly ascen­dant. And they argued that a polit­i­cal­ly cor­rect onslaught from big-city elites would only strength­en their con­vic­tions.”
    8. Don­ald Trump can absolute­ly ban Mus­lims from enter­ing the US, with­out Con­gress (Zack Beauchamp, Vox): “I [asked] sev­er­al experts on US immi­gra­tion law. Their answer was unan­i­mous: Trump would be able to imple­ment his ban. In fact, he would be able to do it eas­i­ly.” I didn’t know the pres­i­dent had this pow­er. Sur­pris­ing giv­en our sys­tem of checks and bal­ances.
    9. The Cul­ture That Cre­at­ed Don­ald Trump Was Lib­er­al Not Con­ser­v­a­tive (Jim Lewis, The Inter­cept): “Lib­er­als were sure the dev­il would come slouch­ing out of Alaba­ma or Texas, beat­ing a bible and shout­ing about sodomy and sin. They didn’t expect him to be a busi­ness­man who lives on Fifth Avenue and 57th Street.” This is some­thing I saw allud­ed to in the pri­maries but haven’t seen men­tioned in a while. 

Things Glen Found Amusing

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).

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.

Archives at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links.