Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 43

On Fri­days I share articles/resources I have found help­ful recent­ly in think­ing about broad­er cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

  1. Mid­dle Knowl­edge and the Calvin­ist-Armin­ian Debate (Craig Blomberg, per­son­al blog): This is what I was talk­ing about in my ser­mon this week. Also see the YouTube video where Dr. William Lane Craig explains it to a Sun­day School class.
  2. What Apple’s Encryp­tion Fight Has To Do With Reli­gious Free­dom (Chelsea Langston, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “[Apple’s] exam­ple reminds us of the broad impor­tance of pro­tect­ing organizations—both sec­u­lar and reli­gious, for-prof­it and non-profit—from com­pul­sion to act against their most foun­da­tion­al val­ues.”
  3. How To Hack An Elec­tion (Jor­dan Robert­son, Michael Riley, and Andrew Willis, Bloomberg Busi­ness­week): this is a fas­ci­nat­ing and unset­tling arti­cle. ‘On the ques­tion of whether the U.S. pres­i­den­tial cam­paign is being tam­pered with, he is unequiv­o­cal. “I’m 100 per­cent sure it is,” he says.’
  4. Is Islam a Reli­gion of Peace? A For­mer Mus­lim Weighs In. (Dar­gan Thomp­son, Rel­e­vant Mag­a­zine): “What I’m say­ing is the foun­da­tions of Islam—I’m talk­ing about the Quran and the life of Muhammed—are very vio­lent. Islam can be for­mu­lat­ed in non-vio­lent ways, but to do so, you have to depart from its foun­da­tions, as many Mus­lims do.”
  5. Reli­gion is the Foun­da­tion of Democ­ra­cy and Pros­per­i­ty (Clay­ton Chris­tensen, Mor­mon Per­spec­tives): the author, a Har­vard pro­fes­sor, talks about a con­ver­sa­tion he had with a friend, “I learned the impor­tance of reli­gion for the strength of democ­ra­cy and cap­i­tal­ism in a con­ver­sa­tion 12 years ago with a Marx­ist econ­o­mist from Chi­na who was near­ing the end of a Ful­bright Fel­low­ship in Boston. I asked my friend if he had learned here any­thing that was sur­pris­ing or unex­pect­ed. His response was imme­di­ate and, to me, quite pro­found: ‘I had no idea how crit­i­cal reli­gion is to the func­tion­ing of democ­ra­cy and cap­i­tal­ism.’ ”
  6. Per­son­al Love and the Call to Chasti­ty (Saman­tha Schroed­er, The Pub­lic Dis­course): there is a lot I like and a lot I don’t like about this arti­cle.
  7. Here’s Every Bib­li­cal Ref­er­ence in ‘Hamil­ton’ (Alis­sa Wilkin­son, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): of inter­est to the Hamil­ton fanat­ics who seem to abound in Chi Alpha.

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.

Past emails are archived at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links (you can also have your non-Stan­ford friends sign up to receive them at that site)

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 42

On Fri­days I share articles/resources I have found help­ful recent­ly in think­ing about broad­er cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

  1. Jesus of Nazareth, Whose Mes­sian­ic Mes­sage Cap­ti­vat­ed Thou­sands, Dies at About 33 (Sam Roberts, Van­i­ty Fair): What would Jesus’ New York Times obit­u­ary have looked like? Clever, well-done, and Good Fri­day appro­pri­ate.
  2. Anato­my of Doubt (Ira Glass, This Amer­i­can Life): this is an amaz­ing, dis­turb­ing sto­ry. There are com­pan­ion print pieces as well, but lis­ten to the pod­cast. 
  3. Do We Still Need Pris­ons? (Paul Kir­by, Volte­face): this arti­cle by David Cameron’s for­mer direc­tor of pub­lic pol­i­cy is full of cre­ative ideas. Two relat­ed thoughts worth pon­der­ing: the Bible nev­er com­mands a gov­ern­ment to build pris­ons, and Jesus said He came to set the pris­on­ers free.
  4. How well online dat­ing works, accord­ing to some­one who has been study­ing it for years (Rober­to Fer­d­man, Wonkblog): this an inter­view with a Stan­ford prof.  “It’s kind of super­fi­cial. But it’s super­fi­cial because we’re kind of super­fi­cial; it’s like that because humans are like that. Judg­ing what some­one else looks like first is not an attribute of tech­nol­o­gy, it’s an attribute of how we look at peo­ple. Dat­ing, both mod­ern and not, is a fair­ly super­fi­cial endeav­or.”
  5. A Dia­log On Race and Speech at Yale (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): the colum­nist has a very insight­ful email inter­change with a Yale under­grad.
  6. Ban­ning Cred­it Checks Harms African-Amer­i­cans (Tyler Cowen): “In states that passed cred­it-check bans, it  became eas­i­er for peo­ple with bad cred­it his­to­ries to com­pete for employ­ment. But dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly, they seem to have elbowed aside black job-seek­ers.” — read a more thor­ough sum­ma­ry at Wonkblog.
  7. A clus­ter of voic­es speak­ing about the reli­gious free­dom case recent­ly argued before the Supreme Court:
    • Stan­ford pro­fes­sor Michael McConnell’s take on the oral argu­ments: “At a time of ris­ing divi­sive­ness and polar­iza­tion, it would be great­ly calm­ing if the Court could unite in this case to pro­tect the rights of many with absolute­ly no injury to any­one else, or to the pub­lic good.”
    • Reli­gious Free­dom Deserves Def­er­ence: Our View Edi­to­r­i­al Board, USA Today): “To imag­ine that non-prof­its whose very exis­tence is tied to reli­gion do not deserve more def­er­ence than for-prof­it busi­ness­es is quite a stretch.”
    • Lit­tle Sis­ters, Big Case (Rus­sell Moore, The Hill): “Over 100 mil­lion Amer­i­cans don’t have health plans that must offer the government’s drugs. The gov­ern­ment exempts big busi­ness­es such as Exxon and big munic­i­pal­i­ties such as New York City, and does so just to reduce admin­is­tra­tive incon­ve­nience for these enti­ties. The gov­ern­ment even exempts itself, refus­ing to require the U.S. military—the nation’s largest employer—to pro­vide the same drugs they want to force the Lit­tle Sis­ters of the Poor to pro­vide.”
  8. Quick Links

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 41

On Fri­days I share articles/resources I have found help­ful recent­ly in think­ing about broad­er cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

  1. Since yes­ter­day was St. Patrick’s Day, here are his Con­fes­sion (of faith) and his Let­ter To The Sol­diers of Coroti­cus. The open­ing lines of his con­fes­sion, “My name is Patrick. I am a sin­ner, a sim­ple coun­try per­son, and the least of all believ­ers. I am looked down upon by many.” Skip down to verse 16 for some of the wild stuff.
  2. The Shame Cul­ture (David Brooks, BYT): “The guilt cul­ture could be harsh, but at least you could hate the sin and still love the sin­ner. The mod­ern shame cul­ture alleged­ly val­ues inclu­sion and tol­er­ance, but it can be strange­ly unmer­ci­ful to those who dis­agree and to those who don’t fit in.” See also Scape­goats in the Cul­ture War (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic).
  3. OKC Thun­der Coach’s Words Res­onate With Many (Jen­ni Carl­son, The Okla­homan): this is a bit late, but I final­ly watched the eulo­gy that recent­ly gripped the sports world’s inter­est. Wow. Watch the YouTube video first (7 min­utes) and then read the arti­cle.
  4. Three Num­bers That Explain The Mod­ern Polit­i­cal Ecosys­tem (Kevin Drum, Moth­er Jones): how media and pol­i­tics inter­sect.
  5. The Glar­ing Evi­dence That Free Speech Is Threat­ened On Cam­pus (Conor Frieder­s­dorf, The Atlantic): “To sum up: free speech on cam­pus is threat­ened from a dozen direc­tions. It is threat­ened by police spies, overzeal­ous admin­is­tra­tors, and stu­dents who are intol­er­ant of dis­sent.”
  6. Now that you’re on break, please reg­is­ter to vote if you have not already done so. If you are reg­is­ter­ing in Cal­i­for­nia, I strong­ly sug­gest you reg­is­ter as a Per­ma­nent Vote-By-Mail Vot­er, which sim­ply means that you will receive a bal­lot in the mail before every elec­tion. It gives you plen­ty of time to research the can­di­dates and issues from the com­fort of your dorm room with your bal­lot in front of you. If you pre­fer to vote in anoth­er state then vis­it http://www.brennancenter.org/student-voting). If you’re a cit­i­zen of anoth­er coun­try, do what­ev­er you’re sup­posed to do there. 🙂
  7. Quick Reads:

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 40

On Fri­days I share articles/resources I have found help­ful recent­ly in think­ing about broad­er cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

  1. The KKK, White Pow­er, and Racism (Chi Alpha’s Dri­ving Diver­si­ty blog): “I woke up a lit­tle after mid­night unable to sleep. On Face­book, an African Amer­i­can stu­dent from one of our Chi Alpha groups mes­saged me ask­ing for my prayers and help. The KKK is hand­ing out fly­ers in his town (more fly­ers).“
  2. An Evan­gel­i­cal Move­ment Takes On Cli­mate Change (Tik Root, Newsweek): “Appalled, Keys found­ed a non­prof­it called Jesus Peo­ple Against Pol­lu­tion in 1992, and for more than two decades that’s been her mis­sion. She calls it her ‘king­dom assign­ment’ from God.“
  3. Defin­ing Evan­gel­i­cals In An Elec­tion Year (Ander­son and Stet­zer, Chris­tian­i­ty Today): “The desire to sur­vey white evan­gel­i­cals to deter­mine their polit­i­cal inter­ests inad­ver­tent­ly ends up con­vey­ing two ideas that are not true: that ‘evan­gel­i­cal’ means ‘white’ and that evan­gel­i­cals are pri­mar­i­ly defined by their pol­i­tics…. Bro­ken out by eth­nic­i­ty, 29 per­cent of whites, 44 per­cent of African Amer­i­cans, 30 per­cent of His­pan­ics, and 17 per­cent of peo­ple from oth­er eth­nic­i­ties have evan­gel­i­cal beliefs.” Relat­ed: The Myth of the Evan­gel­i­cal Trump Vot­ers (Dar­ren Guer­ra, First Things): “the anti-Trump vote amongst all evan­gel­i­cals in the coun­try might reach 80–90% once non-Repub­li­can pri­ma­ry vot­ers are account­ed for.” 
  4. This Is A Good Sto­ry About Grow­ing Up Evan­gel­i­cal (Lau­ra Turn­er, Jezebel): “It is rare to hear some­one in main­stream media acknowl­edge that they are glad to be or have been evan­gel­i­cal, even though about a quar­ter of Amer­i­cans are evan­gel­i­cal.” The author is John and Nan­cy Ortberg’s daugh­ter and is on staff with City Church in San Fran­cis­co.
  5. Remem­ber­ing India’s Chris­t­ian Mar­tyrs Should Be a Church Pri­or­i­ty (Thomas Allen, Crux): “In August, 2008, hos­til­i­ty toward the Chris­t­ian “oth­er” explod­ed in Kand­hamal, leav­ing rough­ly 100 peo­ple dead, thou­sands injured, 300 church­es and 6,000 homes destroyed, and 50,000 peo­ple dis­placed, many of them forced to hide in near­by forests where more died of hunger and snakebites.”
  6. The Oba­ma Doc­trine (Jef­frey Gold­berg, The Atlantic): This is real­ly long. Fas­ci­nat­ing, but for polit­i­cal junkies only.
  7. As promised in the meet­ings, some sources to cor­rob­o­rate my claims about the ben­e­fi­cial impact of mis­sions: The Defend­er of the Good News, Ques­tion­ing Lamin San­neh (an inter­view at Chris­tian­i­ty Today), San­neh’s books Trans­lat­ing the Mes­sage: The Mis­sion­ary Impact On Cul­ture (BV2063 .S23 1989), Abo­li­tion­ists Abroad : Amer­i­can Blacks and the Mak­ing of Mod­ern West Africa (DT476.S26 1999) and Dis­ci­ples of All Nations: Pil­lars of World Chris­tian­i­ty (avail­able on reserve at the cir­cu­la­tion desk and also avail­able online), the works of Rod­ney Stark such as How The West Won (CB245 .S715 2014, also avail­able online), The Tri­umph of Chris­tian­i­ty (BR145.3 .S73 2011),  For The Glo­ry of God (BL221 .S747 2003) and, of course, the arti­cle I always allude to: The Mis­sion­ary Roots of Lib­er­al Democ­ra­cy (Wood­ber­ry, Amer­i­can Polit­i­cal Sci­ence Review)
  8. Quick Links:

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.

Past emails are archived at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links (you can also sign up to receive them at that site)

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 39

On Fri­days I share articles/resources I have found help­ful recent­ly in think­ing about broad­er cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

  1. This is the research paper behind the sto­ry I shared in my ser­mon this week: Spon­ta­neous Human Speech Mim­ic­ry By A Cetacean (Cur­rent Biol­o­gy), a read­able sum­ma­ry is The Whale Who Talked (Nature) and to hear it your­self, here is a one minute YouTube video about Noc. (the video describes his voice as kazo­o­like, which is apt).
  2. How The Church Helps Black Men Flour­ish In Amer­i­ca (Wilcox and Wolfin­ger, The Atlantic): “The black church’s suc­cess val­i­dates the cul­tur­al argu­ments made by con­ser­v­a­tives and the struc­tur­al argu­ments made by lib­er­als regard­ing race in Amer­i­ca.”
  3. Who Are The Gay Evan­gel­i­cals? (Mol­ly Worthen, NY Times):  “In an era when gay mar­riage is legal and a range of gay Chris­tians are mod­el­ing dif­fer­ent ways to rec­on­cile sex­u­al­i­ty and faith, are the deci­sions of young believ­ers like Lani­ra Postell still a result of coer­cion and con­fused self-hatred? I asked her what she thought about those lib­er­al crit­ics who might think so. ‘I under­stand where they’re com­ing from, that to them what I’m doing doesn’t make any sense,’ she said. ‘That’s why being a Chris­t­ian is not com­mon. It’s weird. It is unnat­ur­al for me to deny myself what I desire, but I do it because of the love of God.’”
  4. Are You A Fem­i­nist If You Always Let Him Pay? (Aman­da Fitzsim­mons, Elle): def­i­nite­ly not writ­ten from a Chris­t­ian per­spec­tive. I found it fas­ci­nat­ing through­out and insight­ful at points. “…of all the myr­i­ad rea­sons I’ve enter­tained as to why a guy did­n’t call me or a friend back (and, believe me, I’ve not lacked for cre­ativ­i­ty in this area), the fact that we did­n’t offer to pay the bill nev­er once occurred to me.”
  5. As the elec­tion draws ever clos­er, some stim­u­lat­ing con­tent:

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.

Past emails are archived at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links (you can also sign up to receive them at that site)

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 38

On Fri­days I share articles/resources I have found help­ful recent­ly in think­ing about broad­er cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

  1. From The The­ol­o­gy Side:
    • Was Jesus Nei­ther a Demo­c­rat Nor a Repub­li­can? (Michael Kruger, blog): Kruger argues that this is a mis­lead­ing and triv­ial­ly true state­ment.
    • The Mega Church­es of Lagos (Andrew Esiebo, The Guardian): this is a col­lec­tion of pic­tures. The third pic­ture is mind-blow­ing.
    • Tran­script: Rev. Paul Scalia’s Eulo­gy for His Father Jus­tice Antonin Scalia (Paul Scalia, USA Today): it’s rare to find a funer­al ser­mon for a famous per­son that is this the­o­log­i­cal­ly rich. Being Protes­tant there are bits I would quib­ble with, but wow.
    • What Con­ser­v­a­tive Gay Chris­tians Want (Dan Hitchens, The Spec­ta­tor): a per­spec­tive rarely heard in main­stream media: “When Shaw writes in praise of the ‘real ele­ments of beau­ty’ in gay rela­tion­ships, or laments how the C of E’s ‘hypocrisy’ has ‘hurt a lot of peo­ple’, he sounds like a lib­er­al Angli­can. At oth­er times, he sounds like any­thing but. Sex is ‘not a small issue that we can afford to dis­agree on’, he says; ‘mar­riage between a man and a woman, union in dif­fer­ence, sex with­in that’ is one of the most impor­tant ‘pic­tures of God’s love for us’. The Bible starts with a mar­riage in Eden and ends with a mar­riage between Christ and the Church. ‘It’s not just a cou­ple of vers­es in Leviti­cus that we need to change,’ Shaw argues: recon­struct­ing mar­riage would mean ‘rip­ping out the heart of almost every part of scrip­ture’.”
    • Three Lies Every Cam­pus Min­is­ter Must Silence (Paul  Worces­ter, Cam­pus Min­istry Today): this arti­cle has an amaz­ing close. Even if you skim the arti­cle, devour the tes­ti­mo­ny at the end. You nev­er know the impact you have.
    • An Economist’s Ratio­nal Road to Chris­tian­i­ty (Eric Falken­stein, per­son­al blog): one man’s jour­ney to con­ver­sion. It’s a bit long. The author’s Ph.D. is from North­west­ern Uni­ver­si­ty, he works in indus­try, and has pub­lished two well-received books. My favorite line is “in the words of a famous short green deist, ‘Do, or do not, there is no try.’”
  2. From The Polit­i­cal Side
  3. God Loved Alexan­der Hamil­ton (Susan Lim, Chris­tian­i­ty Today) — his­to­ry nerds pay atten­tion — there’s some good stuff here.
  4. Ran­dom Research

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.

Past edi­tions are archived at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links (you can also sign up to receive them via email at that site)

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 37

On Fri­days I share articles/resources I have found help­ful recent­ly in think­ing about broad­er cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

Also, I nor­mal­ly include arti­cles from a vari­ety of sources, but this week I noticed that I’m includ­ing a bunch from GetRe­li­gion. I guess they’ve been on fire late­ly. 

  1. Death, The Pros­per­i­ty Gospel, and Me (Kate Bowler, NY Times): This piece is mov­ing and fun­ny and also not quite right… despite her study she still mis­un­der­stands some aspects of the Charis­mat­ic and Pen­te­costal world. All in all well worth read­ing. “No word of a lie: I once saw a megachurch pas­tor almost choke to death on his own fog machine. Some­one had cranked it up to the Holy Spir­it max­i­mum.”
  2. Think Pieces on Jus­tice Scalia, Funer­al Ser­mons, Humil­i­ty, and the First Amend­ment (Ter­ry Mat­ting­ly, GetRe­li­gion): Scalia was such a fas­ci­nat­ing man.I like what one of our lawyer alum­ni post­ed on Face­book: “Jus­tice Scalia! You wrote your opin­ions with so much life, I guess I thought you’d nev­er die. The world has lost a great grumpy con­ser­v­a­tive. Rest easy.”
  3. Why Is The Atlantic Sur­prised That Ear­ly Pro-Lif­ers Were, Uh, Lib­er­als? (Julia Dulin, GetRe­li­gion): This is an arti­cle about some arti­cles about a book. Meta but fas­ci­nat­ing.
  4. Lit­tle Sis­ters of the Poor on Supreme Court case: Why we can’t “just sign the form” (Con­stance Veit, Catholic Review): Moth­er Theresa’s com­pa­tri­ots explain their con­sci­en­tious objec­tion in their own words.
  5. Vote For Trump! Vote For Hilary! Vote For Jesus At This Racial­ly Diverse S.C. Megachurch! (Bob­by Ross, GetRe­li­gion): Inter­est­ing. Also, a reminder that reporters’ per­spec­tives on church­es often miss signif­i­cant details.  “None of the rough­ly 1,300 words in the Times report is ‘Jesus.’”
  6. Caus­es and Con­se­quences of the Protes­tant Ref­or­ma­tion (Beck­er, Pfaff & Rubin, a work­ing paper): There’s a lot here. Rec­om­mend­ed for social sci­en­tists. One cool bit: “They argue that the spread of uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents from Protes­tant strong­holds (Wit­ten­berg and Basel, the intel­lec­tu­al homes of Luther and Zwingli) and ortho­dox Catholic strong­holds (Cologne and Lou­vain) had a sig­nif­i­cant impact on whether a town ulti­mate­ly adopt­ed the Ref­or­ma­tion.” Which is a very fan­cy way of say­ing God uses uni­ver­si­ty stu­dents.
  7. On the ran­dom side:

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.

Past emails are archived at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 36

On Fri­days I share articles/resources I have found help­ful recent­ly in think­ing about broad­er cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

  1. The Weight of Glo­ry (C.S. Lewis): this is a PDF of the 9 pages of thought­ful good­ness I ref­er­enced in my ser­mon this week. It was orig­i­nal­ly preached as a ser­mon and then print­ed in a the­ol­o­gy mag­a­zine. Relat­ed: see the C. S. Lewis Doo­dle YouTube chan­nel — it’s real­ly good!
  2. Leave Chi­na, Study In Amer­i­ca, Find Jesus (Han Zhang, For­eign Pol­i­cy) — “U.S. uni­ver­si­ties are the first places that hun­dreds of thou­sands of edu­cat­ed young Chi­nese are exposed to dif­fer­ent reli­gious ideas, and invit­ed to con­sid­er them freely. Sens­ing an oppor­tu­ni­ty, on-cam­pus Chris­t­ian fel­low­ships and church­es have gone out of their col­lec­tive way to help those fresh from Chi­na.”
  3. Uncov­er­ing the Assem­blies of God’s Black Her­itage (Dar­rin Rodgers, Vital Mag­a­zine): the Assem­blies of God is Chi Alpha’s spon­sor­ing denom­i­na­tion and the group with which I am ordained. Some neat anec­dotes here.
  4. Why Nepal Has One of the World’s Fastest Grow­ing Chris­t­ian Pop­u­la­tions (Danielle Preiss, NPR): my favorite bit, “a team were also in Nepal in Octo­ber help­ing rebuild the earth­quake-dam­aged house that belongs to the fam­i­ly of Sum­i­tra Pari­yar, a young woman who believes she was healed from paral­y­sis and seizures by her accep­tance of Christ.” I find the choice of words fun­ny: she “believes” she was healed from paral­y­sis by Christ. I’m pret­ty sure she knows whether she was par­a­lyzed or not. How about “a young woman who says she was healed from paral­y­sis and seizures by her accep­tance of Christ.” That’s just bet­ter jour­nal­ism.
  5. Reli­gious Free­dom Keeps Us Strong (Barack Oba­ma, Reli­gion News Ser­vice): yes, this is by Pres­i­dent Oba­ma. The thing I am most pleased about is his use of the phrase “free­dom of reli­gion” as opposed to the much less expan­sive “free­dom of wor­ship.”
  6. What A Super Bowl Ad Reveals About Our Abor­tion Cul­ture (Rus­sell Moore, per­son­al blog): this went in a dif­fer­ent direc­tion than I assumed it would. Rec­om­mend­ed.
  7. Some humor:

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.

Past emails are archived at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 35

On Fri­days I share articles/resources I have found help­ful recent­ly in think­ing about broad­er cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues. Be sure to see the expla­na­tion and dis­claimers at the bot­tom.

  1. The Grounds Of Our Assur­ance (D. A. Car­son, YouTube): Dr. Car­son is one of my favorite schol­ars. This youtube clip is def­i­nite­ly worth three min­utes of your time.
  2. Hal­lelu­jah Col­lege (Mol­ly Worthen, NY Times): “The thing you’ll run into with any of the cam­pus activists that I’ve encoun­tered is this idea that human nature is a col­lec­tion of iden­ti­ty cat­e­gories, that I as a human being am com­posed of a gen­der iden­ti­ty, a sex­u­al iden­ti­ty, a racial iden­ti­ty and so forth,” he said. “Their per­cep­tion of Chris­tians, or of reli­gious peo­ple more gen­er­al­ly, is: ‘O.K., these are peo­ple who have this one iden­ti­ty cat­e­go­ry, reli­gion, and the reli­gion they iden­ti­fy as is over­step­ping its bounds. It’s telling my gen­der or sex­u­al iden­ti­ty how to act.’ The Chris­t­ian response has to be: There’s some­thing more to what a human being is than just these col­lec­tive attrib­ut­es.”
  3. Pas­tor Of China’s Largest Church Jailed For Protest­ing Removal of 1,500 Cross­es (Mor­gan Lee, Chris­tian­i­ty Today). Note that he is the pas­tor of China’s largest offi­cial church — there are under­ground church­es that are much larg­er. The Com­mu­nist Par­ty must be get­ting ner­vous about the strength of Chris­tian­i­ty in Chi­na if they are oppress­ing the state-sanc­tioned church as well.
  4. Chris­tians In Latin Amer­i­ca Are Numer­ous But Still Vul­ner­a­ble (John Allen, Crux): a very strong arti­cle about Chris­t­ian per­se­cu­tion in the west­ern hemi­sphere. “Chili­to was exe­cut­ed by a right-wing para­mil­i­tary and Castil­la by a left-wing guer­ril­la group, prov­ing that mar­tyr­dom in Colom­bia is an equal-oppor­tu­ni­ty enter­prise. Glob­al­ly, the two women are chap­ters in one of the most wide­spread human rights scourges of the ear­ly 21st cen­tu­ry, which is lethal anti-Chris­t­ian per­se­cu­tion. Though esti­mates vary wide­ly, even low-end counts sug­gest that one Chris­t­ian is killed for motives relat­ed to the faith some­where in the world every hour of every day.”
  5. Main­stream­ing “Ani­mal Per­son­hood” (Wes­ley J. Smith, First Things): this is some­thing you should do some think­ing about. Start by reflect­ing on Gen­e­sis 1:26–30, Gen­e­sis 9:1–6, Num­bers 22:21–34, Proverbs 12:10, Jon­ah 4:10–11, and Matthew 6:26.
  6. Mey­er vs Nebras­ka: As Told By The Lawyer Who Won It (David Kopel, Wash­ing­ton Post): this sto­ry of a 1922 Supreme Court deci­sion absolute­ly sucked me in. It touch­es on issues of parental rights, pub­lic edu­ca­tion, reli­gious lib­er­ty, and nation­al­is­tic prej­u­dice.
  7. 3 Ways To Work For The Glo­ry of God (Chris­tos Makridis, The Rebe­lu­tion). Yes, this is writ­ten by our very own Chris­tos. Good thoughts, Chris­tos!
  8. Some comics that amused me:

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.

Things Glen Found Interesting, Volume 34

Here are some things I found inter­est­ing this week. See the bot­tom for con­text.

  1. On The Via­bil­i­ty of Con­spir­a­to­r­i­al Beliefs (David Robert Grimes, PLOS One): Oxford physi­cist Grimes came up with an equa­tion that shows how like­ly a con­spir­a­cy will be to suc­ceed under ide­al con­di­tions. Of par­tic­u­lar inter­est is the chart on the bot­tom of page 11, show­ing that a con­spir­a­cy with more than 502 peo­ple has a 95% like­li­hood of expo­sure after just 25 years. Read­ing that puts 1 Corinthi­ans 15:3–6 in a new light: “For what I received I passed on to you as of first impor­tance: that Christ died for our sins accord­ing to the Scrip­tures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day accord­ing to the Scrip­tures, and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hun­dred of the broth­ers and sis­ters at the same time, most of whom are still liv­ing, though some have fall­en asleep.” Please note that there are all kinds of assump­tions in the paper that are sub­ject to chal­lenge… but if one of your friends brings this study up you should men­tion this pas­sage to them. 🙂
  2. Cer­ti­tude And Seek­ing The Truth (Peter Wehn­er, Com­men­tary). Rec­om­mend­ed by an alum­nus (the rec­om­men­da­tion was actu­al­ly for a blog post excerpt­ing this arti­cle, but I thought the whole thing was worth read­ing — it aligns nice­ly with my dis­claimer at the bot­tom).
  3. My Major, Myself: (Olga Khaz­an, The Atlantic). What does your major reveal (prob­a­bilis­ti­cal­ly) about your per­son­al­i­ty?
  4. Why Humans Find It Hard To Do Away With Reli­gion (John Gray, The New States­man): Gray is him­self an athe­ist. My favorite line: “The invet­er­ate human incli­na­tion to reli­gion is, in effect, the athe­ist prob­lem of evil.” This isn’t quite right but it is amus­ing.
  5. Peo­ple Can Be Con­vinced They Com­mit­ted A Non-Exis­tant Crime In Just Three Hours (Bec Crew, Sci­ence Alert). Dis­turb­ing. This is a sum­ma­ry of the find­ings of an aca­d­e­m­ic paper: Con­struct­ing Rich False Mem­o­ries of Com­mit­ting Crime (Shaw & Porter, Psy­cho­log­i­cal Sci­ence).
  6. How Reli­gion Is Shap­ing the 2016 Pres­i­den­tial Race (Pew Research). If pol­i­tics is your thing, this arti­cle will be inter­est­ing.
  7. Are Aca­d­e­mics Dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly Gay? (Colleen Fla­her­ty, Inside High­er Edu­ca­tion). The tl;dr ver­sion is yes.

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.

To that end, on Fri­days I’ve been shar­ing articles/resources I have found help­ful recent­ly in think­ing about broad­er cul­tur­al, soci­etal and the­o­log­i­cal issues (be sure to see the dis­claimer at the bot­tom). 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.

Past emails are archived at http://glenandpaula.com/wordpress/category/links